Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/117

Rh as a rule that, in the ease of the infantry, the levy should be in the proportion of eighty holders of an entire hide, twenty from each of the three next classes, and twenty-eight from the last.

While political distinctions were disregarded as concerned the infantry, it was otherwise with the formation of the cavalry. The existing burgess-cavalry was retained, but a troop twice as strong was added to it, which consisted entirely, or at any rate for the most part, of non-burgesses. The reason for this deviation is probably to be sought in the fact that at that period the divisions of infantry were embodied anew for each campaign, and discharged on their return home, whereas in the cavalry horses as well as men were, on military grounds, kept together also in time of peace, and held their regular drills, which were perpetuated as festivals of the Roman equites down to the latest times. Thus it happened that, even under this organization which in other instances disregarded on principle the distinction between burgess and non-burgess, the first third of the equestrian centuries remained exclusively composed of burgesses; military and not political reasons occasioned this anomaly. They chose for the cavalry the most opulent and considerable landholders among burgesses and non-burgesses; and at an early period, perhaps from the very first, a certain measure of land seems to have been regarded as involving an obligation to serve in the cavalry. Along with these, however, there existed a number of free places in the ranks, as the unmarried women, the boys under age, and the old men without children, who had land, were bound instead of personal service to provide horses for particular troopers (each trooper had two), and to furnish them with fodder. There was one horseman in all to nine foot-soldiers; but, in actual service, the horsemen were used more sparingly. The class of non-freeholders ("children-begetters," proletarii) had to supply workmen and musicians for the army, as well as a number of substitutes (adcensi, supernumeraries) who marched with the army unarmed (velati), and, when vacancies occurred, took their places in the ranks, equipped with the armour of the sick or of the fallen.

To facilitate the levying of the infantry, the city and its