Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/95

Rh ginally perhaps regarded as fixed, it must very soon have i liable to vary amidst the accidents of human affairs, and tbe normal scheme of exactly a thousand households and exactly a hundred clans, can only have had more than a mere theoretical significance in its earliest infancy—the infancy of an institution which meets us matured on the threshold of history. The practical unimportance of these numbers is palpably evinced by the entire absence of instances where they were really applied. It is not affirmed by tradition, nor is it credible, that one foot-soldier was taken precisely from each house, and one horseman and one senator precisely from each clan; although three thousand of the former and three hundred of the latter were selected in all, the selection in detail was doubtless determined from the remotest times wholly by practical considerations, and if the Romans did not allow these normal numbers to fall entirely into abeyance, the reason of their retention lay simply in the tendency deeply implanted in the Latin character towards the systematic adjustment of proportions. If these views be correct, the only member that remains, and that really fulfilled important functions in this primitive itutional organization, is the curia. Of these there were ten, or, where there were several tribes, ten to each tribe. Such a "wardship" was a real corporate unit, the members of which assembled at least for holding common festivals. Each wardship was under the charge of a special warden (curio), and had a priest of its own (flamen curialis); beyond doubt, also, levies and valuations took place according to curial divisions, and the burgesses met in judgment by curies and voted by curies. This organization, however, cannot have been introduced primarily with a view to voting,