Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/118

98 precincts were distributed into four "parts" (tribus), a measure by which the old triple division was superseded, at least so far as concerned its local significance. These were the Palatine, which comprehended the height of that name along with the Velia; the Suburan to which the street so named, the Carinæ, and the Cælian belonged; the Esquiline; and the Colline, formed by the Quirinal and Viminal, the "hills" as contrasted with the "mounts" of the Capitol and Palatine. We have already spoken of the formation of these regions, and shown how they originated out of the ancient double city of the Palatine and the Quirinal. Beyond the walls each region must have included the land-district adjacent to it, for Ostia was reckoned in the Palatine region. That the four regions were nearly on an equality in point of numbers is evident from their contributing equally to the levy. This division, which had primarily reference to the soil alone, and applied only inferentially to those who possessed it, was merely for administrative purposes; and no religious significance in particular ever attached to it, for the fact that in every city-district there were six chapels of the enigmatical Argei, no more confers upon them the character of ritual districts than the erection of an altar to the Lares in each street implies such a character in the streets.

Each of these four levy-districts had to furnish the fourth part not only of the force as a whole, but of each of its military subdivisions, so that each legion and each century numbered an equal proportion of conscripts from each region; evidently for the purpose of merging all distinctions of a gentile and local nature in the one common levy of the community, and above all of blending, through the powerful levelling influence of the military spirit, the metœci and the burgesses into one people.

In a military view, the male population capable of bearing arms was divided into a first and second levy, the former of which, the "juniors" from the commencement of the seventeenth to the completion of the forty-sixth year, were especially employed for service in the field, while the "seniors" guarded the walls at home. The military unit in the infantry continued as formerly to be the legion (P. 78), a phalanx, arranged and armed exactly in the old Doric style, of three thousand men, who, six file deep, formed a front of five hundred heavy-armed soldiers; to which were attached twelve hundred "unarmed" (velites, see P. 78). The four