Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/97

Rh privileges of rank: the fact that the Tities took precedence of the Ranines, and both ranked before the Luceres, did not affect their equality in all legal rights. The burgess cavalry, which at this period was used for single combat in front of the line on horseback or even on foot, and was rather an élite or reserve troop than a special arm of the service, and which accordingly contained by far the wealthiest, best-armed, and best-trained men, was naturally held in higher estimation than the burgess infantry; but this was a distinction purely de facto, and admittance to the cavalry was doubtless conceded to any patrician. It was solely the constitutional subdivision of the burgess-body that gave rise to any distinctions in the eye of the law. The legal equality of all the members of the community was carried out even in their external appearance. Dress indeed served to distinguish the president of the community from its members, the senator from the burgess who did not belong to the senate, the grown-up man under obligation of military service from the boy not yet capable of enrolment; but otherwise, the rich and the noble as well as the poor and low-born were only allowed to appear in public in the like simple wrapper (toga) of white woollen stuff. This complete equality of rights among the burgesses had, beyond doubt, its original basis in the Indo-Germanic type of the constitution, but in the precision with which it was thus apprehended and embodied it formed one of the most characteristic and influential peculiarities of the Latin nation. It is well, in connection with this, to recall the fact that in Italy we do not meet with any race of earlier settlers, less capable of culture, that had become subject to the Latin immigrants (P. 9). They had no conquered race to deal with, and therefore no such condition of things as that which gave rise to the Indian system of caste, to the nobility of Thessaly and Sparta, and indeed, of Hellas generally, and probably also to the Germanic distinction of ranks.

The maintenance of the state economy devplved, of course, upon the burgesses. The most important function of the burgess was his service in the army; for the burgess alone had the right and duty of bearing arms. The burgesses were at the same time the "body of warriors" (populus, related to populari, to lay waste, and popa, the butcher): in the old litanies it is upon the "spear-armed warrior-body" (pilumnus poplus) that the blessing of Mars was asked