[1313] Röm. Staatsr. iii. 274 with notes; cf. Guiraud, in Rev. hist. xvii (1881). 16.
[1314] Rep. ii. 22. 39: “Quae discriptio, si esset ignota vobis, explicaretur a me; nunc rationem videtis esse talem.”
[1315] Seventy in Cicero’s description, eighty according to the annalists; p. 67 f., 205, n. 5.
[1316] It is unnecessary here to enter into the controversy regarding the text. Evidently the second hand has drawn from a reliable source (Klebs, ibid. 200-210); yet in view of its uncertainty the passage should not be made the foundation of a theory so thoroughly objectionable as Mommsen’s.
[1317] To Soltau, Jahrb. f. cl. Philol. xli (1895). 411, n. 3, this explanation seems “too cheap.”
[1318] In the clause “Ut equitum centuriae cum sex suffrages et prima classis addita centuria, quae ... data, LXXXVIIII centuriae habeat,” centuriae applies to the centuries proper, but in the clause immediately following, “Quibus ex centum quattuor centuriis (tot enim reliquae sunt) octo solae accesserunt,” the word on Mommsen’s supposition must denote not the centuries themselves but the voting groups of centuries. Though Mommsen usually avoids the application of the term century to the assumed voting units, he allows himself to do so on p. 274 and in n. 2. Granting that in this instance he has used the word correctly, we should have the first class composed of simple centuries and the others of centuries which were themselves composed of centuries—an evidently absurd result of his assumption.
[1319] Klebs, in Zeitschr. d. Savignyst. xii (1892). 197. Not less complicated is Le Tellier’s supposition (Organ. cent. 88, n. 1) that the four classes may have differed in number of votes (for example, 30, 28, 28, 14), and that the several voting groups of a class comprised the same number of centuries, in some cases with a fraction of a century, e.g., 2, 2½, 2½, 5 centuries for the four classes respectively. This combination would be as undemocratic and as impracticable as any of those proposed by Klebs.
[1320] Klebs, ibid. 187.
[1321] P. 214, n. 6.
[1322] I. 43. 12.