This privilege, and especially exemption from curial functions, was not purely personal, but also hereditary. It was so, in the case of military men, on condition that the children also should embrace the profession of arms; and in the case of civilians, it was continued to those children who were born since their fathers had belonged to the class of clarissimi, or had occupied posts in the palace. Among the classes exempt from curial functions was the cohortal militia, a subaltern service to which those who entered it were hereditarily bound, and from which there was no means of passing into a superior class.
The class of curials comprehended all the inhabitants of the towns, whether natives thereof, municipes, or settlers therein, incolæ, who possessed a landed property of more than twenty-five acres, jugera, and did not belong to any privileged class. Members of the curial class became so either by origin, or by appointment. Every child of a curial was a curial also, and liable to all the charges attached to that quality. Every inhabitant who, by trade or otherwise, acquired a landed property of more than twenty-five acres, might be summoned to enter the curia, and could not refuse to do so. No curial could, by a voluntary act, pass into another condition. They were interdicted from dwelling in the country, entering the army, or engaging in employments which would have liberated them from municipal functions, until they had passed through every curial gradation, from that of a simple member of a curia to the highest civic magistracies. Then alone they might become military men, public functionaries, and senators. The children born to them before their elevation remained curials. They were not allowed to enter the clergy except by granting the enjoyment of their property to any one who agreed to be a curial in their place, or by making a present of their possessions to the curia itself. As the curials were incessantly striving to escape from their bondage, a multitude of laws were passed directing the prosecution of those who had escaped from their original condition, and succeeded in effecting their entrance furtively into the army, the clergy, public offices, or the Senate; and ordaining their restoration to the curia from which they had fled.
Functions And Charges Of The Curials.
The following were the functions and charges of the curials thus confined, voluntarily or perforce, in the curia.
1. The administration of the affairs of the municipium, with its expenditure and revenues, either by deliberating thereon in the curia, or by discharging the magisterial offices of the town. In this double position, the curials were responsible not only for their individual management, but also for the necessities of the town, for which they were bound to provide out of their own resources, in case the municipal revenues were insufficient.
2. The collection of the public taxes, also under the responsibility of their private property in case of defaulters. Lands which were subject to the land-tax and had been abandoned by their possessors, were allotted to the curia, which was bound to pay the tax thereon until it had found some one willing to take them off its hands. If it could find no one, the tax on the abandoned land was divided amongst the other estates.
3. No curial could sell the property from which he derived his qualification, without the permission of the governor of the province.
4. The heirs of curials, when not members of the curia, and the widows or daughters of curials, who married men belonging to other classes, were bound to give a fourth part of their goods to the curia.
5. The curials who had no children could not dispose, by will, of more than a fourth of their property: the other three-fourths went, by right, to the curia.
6. They were not allowed to absent themselves from their municipium, even for a limited time, without permission from the judge of the province.
7. When they had withdrawn from their curia, and could not be brought back, their property was confiscated to the benefit of their curia.
8. The tax known by the name of aurum coronarium, and which consisted in a sum to be paid to the prince, on the occasion of certain events, was levied on the curials alone.
Advantages Granted To The Curials.
The only advantages granted to the curials in compensation for these burdens were:
1. Exemption from torture, except in very serious cases.
2. Exemption from certain afflictive and dishonouring punishments which were reserved for the populace; such as being condemned to work in the mines, to be burned alive, and so forth.
3. Decurions who had fallen into indigence were supported at the expense of the municipium.