[72] II. 7. 4. The curiales must have been neighbors in order to use a common drying oven; n. 8 below.
[73] Fest. 174. 12. The first is evidently named after the Forum, the second after the Velia; cf. Plut. Rom. 20, who states that many were named after places. Of the other five Velitia (Fest. ibid.), Titia (ibid. ep. 366), Faucia (Livy ix. 38. 15), and Acculeia (Varro, L. L. vi. 23) have gentile endings. We should not imagine these four to be named after gentes, which were of later origin; Botsford, in Pol. Sci. Quart. xxi. (1907). 685 ff. It would be safer to assume that they, like gentilicia, are derived from the names of persons real or imaginary. Rapta (Fest. 174. 12) and Titia possibly suggested to the ancients the derivation of the curial names from those of the captive Sabine women; cf. p. 8, n. 6.
[74] Dion. Hal. iv. 12. 2. This statement is confirmed by the nature of the Fornacalia, the chief festival of the curiae; it was celebrated in connection with the drying of the far in ovens; Pliny N. H. xviii. 2. 8; Fest. ep. 83, 93. Evidently the members of a curia were those who had a common drying oven; Wissowa, Rel. u. Kult. d. Röm. 142.
[75] Διῄρηνται δὲ καὶ εἰς δεκάδας αἰ φράτραι, πρὸς αὑτοῦ, καὶ ἡγεμὼν ἐκὰστην ἐκόσμει δεκάδα, δεκουρίων κατὰ τὴν ἐπιχώριον, γλῶτταν προσαγομευόμενος.
[76] Polyb. vi. 25. 1; cf. 20. 9.
[77] L. L. v. 91.
[78] There is no need of assuming, with Bloch, Origines du sénat Romain, 102-5, that the decuriae mentioned by Dionysius are “purely imaginary.”
[79] Röm. Gesch. i. 334 f.; Eng. 163; cf. also Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 612 f. The antiquated view is still held by Herzog, Röm. Staatsverf. i. 96, and by Lécrivain, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. ii. 1504. Though Ihne, History of Rome, i. 113, n. 3, believes that the curiae were composed of gentes, he is doubtful as to the number.
[80] “Cum ex generibus hominum suffragium feratur, curiata comitia esse; cum ex censu et aetate, centuriata; cum ex regionibus et locis, tributa.”
[81] Mommsen, too, supposes that genera here means gentes but is used so as to include also the plebeian stirpes; nevertheless he knows that the voting in the curiate assembly was by heads rather than by gentes; Röm. Staatsr. iii. 9, n. 2; 90, n. 5.