Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/122

102 as a minimum 10,000 full hides, this would imply a superficies of 190 square miles of arable land; and on this calculation, if we make a very moderate allowance for pasture and the space occupied by houses and downs, the territory, at the period when this reform was carried, out, must have had at least an extent of 420 square miles, probably an extent still more considerable. If we follow tradition, we must assume even a number of 84,000 burgesses freeholders and capable of bearing arms; for such, we are told, were the numbers ascertained by Servius at the first census. A glance at the map, however, shows that this number must be fabulous; it is not even a genuine tradition, but a conjectural calculation, proceeding apparently on the fact that the 16,800 capable of bearing arms, who constituted the normal strength of the infantry, will yield, on an average of five persons to each family, the number of 84,000 free burgesses active and passive. But even according to the more moderate positions laid down above, with a territory of some 16,000 hides containing a population of nearly 20,000 capable of bearing arms, and at least three times that number of women, children, and old men, persons who had no land, and slaves, it is necessary to assume not merely that the region between the Tiber and Anio had been acquired, but that the Alban territory had also been conquered, before the Servian constitution was established; a result with which tradition agrees. What were the numerical proportions of patricians and plebeians originally in the army, cannot be ascertained; we cannot draw any inference from the case of the cavalry, for, while it was a settled point that no plebeian might serve in the first six centuries, it is not equally clear that no patrician might serve in the twelve lesser.

Upon the whole it is plain that this Servian constitution did not originate in a conflict between, the orders; on the contrary, it bears on it the stamp of a reforming legislator