For the moment we may overlook the cavalry and fix our attention on the bulk of the citizens who form the infantry. These are split up into five divisions, which were at a later period called classes. The basis of division was wealth, and the crucial question is “what kind of wealth?” It is almost certain that it could not have been wealth reckoned in money. Although Rome was a seaport and a trading state, it is doubtful whether even the old libral as, which was used as a medium of exchange by weight, was in current use at this time;[281] and therefore the detailed accounts given of the money valuations by which the classes were fixed must refer to a later period in the history of this organisation. The alternative that has been suggested is land.[282] There would be no difficulty in accepting this substitute, paralleled as it is by the similar organisation of Solon, were it not that the hypothesis ignores sources of wealth which the earliest Roman law seems to have classed with land, i.e. slaves and domesticated beasts. These res mancipi are as much the object of quiritarian ownership as land, and they may exist without it. A man might own no land and yet be rich in cattle and sheep which he drove on the ager publicus, or in slaves engaged in productive handicrafts,[283] and the state was interested in all that was duly owned and was properly the subject of assessment (res censui censendo);[284] the Servian census must have been based on res mancipi, and to a certain degree it was a census based on currency, for cattle (pecus) were recognised as a medium of exchange (pecunia).
On the basis of such a census five classes were distinguished; the census of each, in terms of the later assessment, which was probably expressed in asses sextantarii, being respectively 100,000, 75,000, 50,000, 25,000, 11,000 asses.
Each of these divisions was subdivided into two with reference to age, the juniores (from eighteen to forty-five) being the effective fighting force, the seniores (forty-five to sixty) the home defence. The final division is into the military unit, the century (centuria), consisting nominally of a hundred men. This was the minimum strength of the lowest unit, but the census list did not represent the effective fighting force of the legion organised for battle, but the numbers qualified for service; consequently the centuries of a particular class were raised to the quota required to include all the members of that class. The numerical proportion of the centuries of the different classes to one another is very striking. The centuries of the first class (eighty in number) are almost equal to those of the four other classes put together (collectively ninety in number). If this table exhibits the real proportion of social classes to one another, it would show a wonderfully equal distribution of land in the state, one so equal as to cause most of the landholders to be placed in the same class, for the list would mainly represent holders of land (the other res mancipi not being usually divorced from its possession). But the proportions of the classes may only show that the centuries of richer citizens were still regarded as forming the more permanent force, the other divisions, not much more numerous though drawn from a larger population, being merely supplementary. We know that members of the first class were more perfectly equipped,[285] and the fact of their being the main strength of the army would be proved if it were true that this class alone was originally classis (“the line”) and that all the others were infra classem.[286]
As will be seen from the accompanying table of the census, the mass of citizens whose property fell below that of the lowest class was not wholly unprovided for. They were organised, according to Livy, into six, according to Dionysius into five, centuries. Some of these were composed of professional persons, whose services were indispensable to an army, and who were, perhaps, members of the trade guilds (collegia) which are said to have existed in the regal period.[287] Such were the carpenters (fabri) who formed two centuries, and the horn-blowers and trumpeters (cornicines and tibicines) who formed one each.
THE SERVIAN CLASSIFICATION
The Cavalry
18 centuries, with no fixed property qualification.