The new constitution, attributed to rex Servius Tullius and following the Grecian model, more especially that of Solon, created a new public assembly including or excluding all the members of populus and plebs according to whether they rendered military service or not. The whole population, subject to enlistment, was divided into six classes according to wealth. The lowest limitis in the five highest classes were: I., 100,000 ass; II., 75,000; III., 50,000; IV., 25,000; V., 11,000; which according to Dureau de la Malle is equal to about $3,155, $2,333, $1,555, $800, and $388. The sixth class, the proletarians, consisted of those who possessed less and were exempt from military service and taxes. In this new assembly of centuriae (comitia centuriata) the citizens formed ranks after the manner of soldiers, in companies of one hundred (centuria), and every centuria had one vote. Now the first class placed 80 centuriae in the field; the second 22, the third 20, the fourth 22, the fifth 30 and the sixth, for propriety's sake, one. To this were added 18 centuriae of horsemen composed of the most wealthy. Hence, there were 193 centuriae, giving a lowest majority vote of 97. Now the horsemen and the first class alone had together 98 votes. Being in the majority, they had only to agree, and they could pass any resolution without asking the consent of the other classes.
This new assembly of centuriae assumed all the political rights of the former assembly of curiae, a few nominal privileges excepted. The curiae and the gentes composing them now were degraded to mere private and religious congregations, analogous to their Attic prototypes, and as such they vegetated on for a long time. But the assembly of curiae soon became obsolete. In order to drive also the three old tribes out of existence, a system of four local tribes was introduced. Every tribe was assigned to one quarter of the city and received certain political rights.
Thus the old social order of blood kinship was destroyed also in Rome even before the abolition of the so-called royalty. A new constitution, founded on territorial division and difference of wealth took its place and virtually created the state. The public power of coërcion consisted here of citizens liable to military duty, to be used against the slaves and the so-called proletarians who were excluded from military service and general armament.
After the expulsion of the last rex, Tarquinius Superbus, who had really usurped royal power, the new constitution was further improved by the institution of two military leaders (consuls) with equal powers, analogous to the custom of the Iroquois. The whole history of the Roman republic moves inside of this constitution: the struggles between patricians and plebs for admission to office and participation in the allotment of state lands, the merging of the patrician nobility in the new class of large property and money owners; the gradual absorption by the latter of all the land of the small holders who had been ruined by military service; the cultivation of these enormous new tracts by slaves; the resulting depopulation of Italy which not only opened the doors to the imperial tyrants, but also to their successors, the German barbarians.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Translator's note.
The term caput received the meaning of legal right of a person from the legal status of the head of a family.... Legal science extended the meaning of the term so that it related not alone to slaves, but also to minors and women. This legal right, so conceived, could be curtailed in three ways: Capitis deminutio maxima was the loss of the status libertatis (personal liberty), which included the loss of the status civitatis and familiae (civil and family rights); the capitis deminutio minor or media was the loss of the status civitatis (civil rights), including the loss of the status familiae (family rights); the capitis deminutio minima was the loss of the status familiae (family rights). Lange, Römische Alterthümer, Berlin, 1876, Vol. I., p. 204.
[26] Author's note.
The Latin rex is equivalent to the Celtic-Irish righ (tribal chief) and the Gothic reiks. That this, like the German Fürst, English first and Danish forste, originally signified gentile or tribal chief is evident from the fact that the Goths in the fourth century already had a special term for the king of later times, the military chief of a whole nation, viz., thiudans. In Ulfila's translation of the Bible Artaxerxes and Herod are never called reiks, but thiudans, and the empire of the emperor Tiberius not reiki, but thiudinassus. In the name of the Gothic thiudans, or king as we inaccurately translate, Thiudareiks (Theodoric, German Dietrich), both names flow together.