[220] At the beginning of each consular year, the magistrates or deputies of the towns were obliged to repair to Rome, and the consuls there fixed the contingent which each of them was to furnish according to the list of the census. These lists were drawn up by the local magistrates, who sent them to the Senate, and were renewed every five years, except in the Latin colonies, where they seem to have taken for a constant basis the number of primitive colonists.
[221] The country of the Samnites, among others, was completely cut up by these domains.
[222] Titus Livius places in the mouth of the consul Decius, in 452, these remarkable words: “Jam ne nobilitatis quidem suæ plebeios pœnitere” (Titus Livius, X. 7); and later still, towards 538, a tribune expresses himself thus: “Nam plebeios nobiles jam eisdem initiatos esse sacris, et contemnere plebem, ex quo contemni desierint a patribus, cœpisse.” (Titus Livius, XXII. 34.)
[223] Titus Livius, XIV. 48.
[224] We have the proof of this in the condemnation of those who transgressed the law of Stolo. (Titus Livius, X. 13.)
[225] Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 5.—Plutarch, Cato, iii.
[226] Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 6.
[227] Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 9.
[228] Titus Livius, IX. 46.
[229] “The goods of the debtor, not his body, should be responsible for the debt. Thus all the captured citizens were free, and it was forbidden for ever to put in bonds a debtor.” (Titus Livius, VIII. 28.)