The members of the ten gentes united in a curia were called curiales among themselves. They elected a priest, curio, who was the chief officer of the fraternity. Each curia had its sacred rites, in the observance of which the brotherhood participated; its sacellum as a place of worship, and its place of assembly where they met for the transaction of business. Besides the curio, who had the principal charge of their religious affairs, the curiales also elected an assistant priest, flamen curialis, who had the immediate charge of these observances. The curia gave its name to the assembly of the gentes, the comitia curiata which was the sovereign power in Rome to a greater degree than the senate under the gentile system. Such, in general terms, was the organization of the Roman curia or phratry.[334]
Next in the ascending scale was the Roman tribe, composed of ten curiæ and a hundred gentes. When a natural growth, uninfluenced externally, a tribe would be an aggregation of such gentes as were derived by segmentation from an original gens or pair of gentes; all the members of which would speak the same dialect. Until the tribe itself divided, by processes before pointed out, it would include all the descendants of the members of these gentes. But the Roman tribe, with which alone we are now concerned, was artificially enlarged for special objects and by special means, but the basis and body of the tribe was a natural growth.
Prior to the time of Romulus each tribe elected a chief officer whose duties were magisterial, military and religious.[335] He performed in the city magisterial duties for the tribe, as well as administered its sacra, and he also commanded its military forces in the field.[336] He was probably elected by the curiæ collected in a general assembly; but here again our information is defective. It was undoubtedly an ancient office in each Latin tribe, peculiar in character and held by an elective tenure. It was also the germ of the still higher office of rex, or general military commander, the functions of the two offices being similar. The tribal chiefs are styled by Dionysius leaders of the tribes (τριβῶν ἡγεμονίας).[337] When the three Roman tribes had coalesced into one people, under one senate, one assembly of the people, and one military commander, the office of tribal chief was overshadowed and became less important; but the continued maintenance of the office by an elective tenure confirms the inference of its original popular character.
An assembly of the tribe must also have existed, from a remote antiquity. Before the founding of Rome each Italian tribe was practically independent, although the tribes were more or less united in confederate relations. As a self-governing body each of these ancient tribes had its council of chiefs (who were doubtless the chiefs of the gentes), its assembly of the people, and its chiefs who commanded its military bands. These three elements in the organization of the tribe; namely, the council, the tribal chief, and the tribal assembly, were the types upon which were afterwards modeled the Roman senate, the Roman rex, and the comitia curiata. The tribal chief was in all probability called by the name of rex before the founding of Rome; and the same remark is applicable to the name of senators (senex), and the comitia (con-ire). The inference arises, from what is known of the condition and organization of these tribes, that their institutions were essentially democratical. After the coalescence of the three Roman tribes, the national character of the tribe was lost in the higher organization; but it still remained as a necessary integer in the organic series.
The fourth and last stage of organization was the Roman nation or people, formed, as stated, by the coalescence of three tribes. Externally the ultimate organization was manifested by a senate (senatus), a popular assembly (comitia curiata), and a general military commander (rex). It was further manifested by a city magistracy, by an army organization, and by a common national priesthood of different orders.[338]
A powerful city organization was from the first the central idea of their governmental and military systems, to which all areas beyond Rome remained provincial. Under the military democracy of Romulus, under the mixed democratical and aristocratical organization of the republic, and under the later imperialism it was a government with a great city in its centre, a perpetual nucleus, to which all additions by conquest were added as increments, instead of being made, with the city, common constituents of the government. Nothing precisely like this Roman organization, this Roman power, and the career of the Roman race, has appeared in the experience of mankind. It will ever remain the marvel of the ages.
As organized by Romulus they styled themselves the Roman People (Populus Romanus), which was perfectly exact. They had formed a gentile society and nothing more. But the rapid increase of numbers in the time of Romulus, and the still greater increase between this period and that of Servius Tullius, demonstrated the necessity for a fundamental change in the plan of government. Romulus and the wise men of his time had made the most of gentile institutions. We are indebted to his legislation for a grand attempt to establish upon the gentes a great national and military power; and thus for some knowledge of the character and structure of institutions which might otherwise have faded into obscurity, if they had not perished from remembrance. The rise of the Roman power upon gentile institutions was a remarkable event in human experience. It is not singular that the incidents that accompanied the movement should have come to us tinctured with romance, not to say enshrouded in fable. Rome came into existence through a happy conception, ascribed to Romulus, and adopted by his successors, of concentrating the largest possible number of gentes in a new city, under one government, and with their united military forces under one commander. Its objects were essentially military, to gain a supremacy in Italy, and it is not surprising that the organization took the form of a military democracy.
Selecting a magnificent situation upon the Tiber, where, after leaving the mountain range it had entered the campagna, Romulus occupied the Palatine Hill, the site of an ancient fortress, with a tribe of the Latins of which he was the chief. Tradition derived his descent from the chiefs of Alba, which is a matter of secondary importance. The new settlement grew with marvelous rapidity, if the statement is reliable that at the close of his life the military forces numbered 46,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which would indicate some 200,000 people in the city and in the surrounding region under its protection. Livy remarks that it was an ancient device (vetus consilium) of the founders of cities to draw to themselves an obscure and humble multitude, and then set up for their progeny the autocthonic claim.[339] Romulus pursuing this ancient policy is said to have opened an asylum near the Palatine, and to have invited all persons in the surrounding tribe, without regard to character or condition, to share with his tribes the advantages and the destiny of the new city. A great crowd of people, Livy further remarks, fled to this place from the surrounding territories, slave as well as free, which was the first accession of foreign strength to the new undertaking.[340] Plutarch,[341] and Dionysius[342] both refer to the asylum or grove, the opening of which, for the object and with the success named, was an event of probable occurrence. It tends to show that the people of Italy had then become numerous for barbarians, and that discontent prevailed among them in consequence, doubtless, of the imperfect protection of personal rights, the existence of domestic slavery, and the apprehension of violence. Of such a state of things a wise man would naturally avail himself if he possessed sufficient military genius to handle the class of men thus brought together. The next important event in this romantic narrative, of which the reader should be reminded, was the assault of the Sabines to avenge the entrapment of the Sabine virgins, now the honored wives of their captors. It resulted in a wise accommodation under which the Latins and Sabines coalesced into one society, but each division retaining its own military leader. The Sabines occupied the Quirinal and Capitoline Hills. Thus was added the principal part of the second tribe, the Tities, under Titius Tatius their military chief. After the death of the latter they all fell under the military command of Romulus.
Passing over Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, who established upon a broader scale the religious institutions of the Romans, his successor, Tullus Hostilius, captured the Latin city of Alba and removed its entire population to Rome. They occupied the Cœlian Hill, with all the privileges of Roman citizens. The number of citizens was now doubled, Livy remarks;[343] but not likely from this source exclusively. Ancus Martius, the successor of Tullus, captured the Latin city of Politorium, and following the established policy, transferred the people bodily to Rome.[344] To them was assigned the Aventine Hill, with similar privileges. Not long afterwards the inhabitants of Tellini and Ficana were subdued and removed to Rome, where they also occupied the Aventine.[345] It will be noticed that in each case the gentes brought to Rome, as well as the original Latin and Sabine gentes, remained locally distinct. It was the universal usage in gentile society, both in the Middle and in the Upper Status of barbarism, when the tribes began to gather in fortresses and in walled cities, for the gentes to settle locally together by gentes and by phratries.[346] Such was the manner the gentes settled at Rome. The greater portion of these accessions were united in the third tribe, the Luceres, which gave it a broad basis of Latin gentes. It was not entirely filled until the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the fourth military leader from Romulus, some of the new gentes being Etruscan.
By these and other means three hundred gentes were gathered at Rome and there organized in curiæ and tribes, differing somewhat in tribal lineage; for the Ramnes, as before remarked, were Latins, the Tities were in the main Sabines and the Luceres were probably in the main Latins with large accessions from other sources. The Roman people and organization thus grew into being by a more or less constrained aggregation of gentes into curiæ, of curiæ into tribes, and of tribes into one gentile society. But a model for each integral organization, excepting the last, had existed among them and their ancestors from time immemorial; with a natural basis for each curia in the kindred gentes actually united in each, and a similar basis for each tribe in the common lineage of a greater part of the gentes united in each. All that was new in organization was the numerical proportions of gentes to a curia, of curiæ to a tribe, and the coalescence of the latter into one people. It may be called a growth under legislative constraint, because the tribes thus formed were not entirely free from the admixture of foreign elements; whence arose the new name tribus=a third part of the people, which now came in to distinguish this organism. The Latin language must have had a term equivalent to the Greek phylon (φῦλον) = tribe, because they had the same organization; but if so it has disappeared. The invention of this new term is some evidence that the Roman tribes contained heterogeneous elements, while the Grecian were pure, and kindred in the lineage of the gentes they contained.