[279] The supposition that there were originally but four rests upon those passages which mention only that number in connection with Servius, as Livy 1. 43. 13; Fest. ep. 368; (Aurel. Vict.) Vir. Ill. 7. 7; the discussion of the four city tribes as though they were the only Servian tribes by Dionysius (iv. 14. 1), whereas in the next chapter he describes those also of the country; and the designation of the rural districts as regiones rather than tribes by Varro, De vit. pop. rom. i, in Non. Marc. 43: “Et extra urbem in regiones xxvi agros viritim liberis attribuit.” In L. L. v. 56, however, he calls the country districts tribes.
[280] Grotefend, ibid. 27.
[281] Inferred from an obscure passage in Fest. 213. 13, and from inscriptions cited by Mommsen, Röm. Trib. 215; Grotefend, ibid. 67.
[282] Lange, Röm. Alt. i. 504; Herzog, Röm. Staatsverf. i. 39 and n. 2; Pelham, Rom. Hist. 39; Soltau, Altröm. Volksversamml. 457 ff.; Greenidge, Rom. Pub. Life, 67.
[283] Röm. Staatsr. iii. 163 ff. Mommsen calls attention to epigraphic evidence, cited more fully by Kubitschek, Imp. rom. trib. discr. 26 f., which assigns Ostia unmistakably to the Voturia tribus. He notices further that the same sort of evidence which places Ostia in the Palatina would give Puteoli, Sutrium, Canusium, and Fundi to the same city tribe, which is impossible. The error of including Alba and Ostia in the Palatina is due to neglect of the fact that men excluded from the country tribes were assigned to those of the city irrespective of domicile; cf. Röm. Staatsr. iii. 442 f., with notes.
[284] Stor. di Rom. I. i. 320, n. 1, relying on Livy ix. 46. 14.
[285] Fest. 246. 30: “‘Pro censu classis iuniorum’ Ser. Tullius cum dixerit in descriptione centuriarum;” cf. 249. 1; Livy 1. 60. 4; iv. 4. 2. Cicero, Rep. ii. 22. 39, writes discriptio, which Lange, Röm. Alt. i. 464, following Bücheler, in Rhein. Mus. xiii (1858). 598, accepts as the correct form.
[286] P. 67.
[287] Fabius Pictor, in Livy 1. 44. 2. Altogether unnecessary therefore is Soltau’s supposition (Altröm. Volksversamml. 458, n. 2), in itself improbable, that Fabius, who wrote his annals in Greek, applied the word φυλαί incorrectly to the rural districts. However that may be, Cato, as good an authority, spoke of these same districts as tribes. If the number thirty was suggested to Fabius by the curiate organization (cf. Ullrich, Centuriatcomitien, 9), this circumstance would be no argument against the existence of country tribes. On the strength of the army in the early republic, see p. 83.
[288] P. 57.