[458] In time of especial danger, however, the legion was increased to five thousand; Polyb. vi. 20. 8.
[459] Cf. Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. 268, n. 2.
[460] That the phalanx was a comparatively late institution at Rome, or that it was slow in becoming the only military system, is indicated by the survival in tradition of a more primitive mode of warfare. Sometimes in the early republic a single gens with its clients took the field; for the Fabian gens, see Livy ii. 48 ff. Often the patricians threatened to arm their clients, to carry on a war without the aid of the troublesome plebeians; cf. Dion. Hal. x. 15, 27 f., 43. As there was no motive in later time for the invention of such stories, they must contain a kernel of real tradition; hence they could not go back to the sixth century, and it is difficult to believe that they are so old as the fifth.
Collateral evidence that the second and third divisions were instituted relatively late may be found in the circumstance that the scutum, the distinctive piece of armor of these divisions, was introduced no earlier than the age of Camillus—the period of the war with Veii and the Gallic conflagration; Livy viii. 8. 3; Müller-Deecke, Etrusker, i. 366. It was Samnite (Athen. vi. 106, p. 273 f.; cf. Sall. Cat. 51), and was therefore probably adopted in the fourth century when Rome first came into contact with that people.
[461] It is evident to the reader that these proportions are those of the discriptio centuriarum of Livy and Dionysius (p. 66 above), and it will be made clear below (p. 86) that the ratings were originally in terms of iugera, the minima of the five ratings being in all probability 20, 15, 10, 5, and 2½ or 2 iugera respectively.
[462] For the date, see Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. ii. 334 f.; Kubitschek, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. iii. 1902 f.; Pais, Storia di Roma, I. ii. 13, 33 f.
[463] There may be some truth in the etymology suggested by Varro, L. L. v. 89; cf. Soltau, Altröm. Volksversamml. 256.
[464] Cf. Liers, Kriegsw. d. Alten, 46.
[465] Dionysius Hal. iv. 17. 1, includes the fourth rating in the phalanx of heavy infantry. For other possibilities of arrangement, see Smith, Röm. Timokr. 46 f.
[466] Thuc. v. 68; p. 86 above.