sands" of footmen (milites), under the three leaders of division of the infantry (tribuni militum). To these there may perhaps have been added a number of light-armed, archers especially, fighting apart from the regular ranks.[1] The general was ordinarily the king himself; as the cavalry had regularly a colonel of their own (magister equitum) appointed over them, it would appear that the king led mainly the infantry, and that this accordingly, as is probable also on other grounds, formed from the first the chief part of the armed force. Besides service in war, other personal burdens might devolve upon the burgesses; such as the obligation of undertaking the king's commissions in peace and in war (P. 68), and the tasks of tilling the king's lands or of constructing public buildings. How heavily in particular the burden of building the walls of the city pressed upon the community, is evidenced by the fact that the ring-walls retained the name of "tasks" (mœnia). There was no regular direct taxation, nor was there any direct regular expenditure on the part of the state. Taxation was not needed for defraying the burdens of the community, since the state gave no recompense for service in the army, for task-works or for public service generally; so far as there was such recompense at all, it was given to the person who
- ↑ This is indicated by the evidently very old forms, velites and arquites, and by the subsequent organization of the legion.
celerum with the Celer of Antias, the magister equitum of the dictator under the Republic, and the Præfectus prætorio of the Empire.
Of these the only statements which are extant regarding the tribuni celerum, the last mentioned not only proceeds from late and quite untrustworthy authorities, but is inconsistent with the meaning of the term, which can only signify "divisional leaders of horsemen." Above all, the master of the horse of the republican period, who was nominated only on extraordinary occasions, and was in later times no longer nominated at all, cannot possibly have been identical with the magistracy that was required for the annual festival of the 19th March and was consequently a standing office. Laying we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result, that the tribuni celerum entirely corresponded in number and character to the tribuni militum, and that they were the leaders of division of the horsemen, and therefore quite distinct from the magister equitum, an office which forming as it did a necessary appanage of the dictator must likewise have existed in the regal period. Out of the three tribuni celerum there subsequently arose, in consequence of the well-known doubling of the centuries of the cavalry, the seviri equitum Romanorum.[see Errata]
