Th. Mommsen in his Roman History (I. 95-96 English Trans.) has laid down that land was the basis of assessment, on the analogy of the Teutonic hide. He makes the members of the First Class those who held a whole hide; and the remaining four classes were made up of those who held proportionally smaller freeholds. When Mommsen has once spoken, it is presumptuous to raise doubts. If however it can be shown that the Italians rather based their assessments on cattle, and that furthermore the statements of the later historians point to an original rating which harmonizes well with such an original condition, it may have been worth while to start enquiry once again in a case where the data are so scanty and obscure.
Pliny H. N. XXXIII. 3. 13. Maximus census CXX. assium fuit illo rege, ideo haec prima classis. This is confirmed by Festus (s.v. infra censum, p. 113 Müller) infra classem significantur qui minore summa quam centum et viginti millia aeris censi sunt.
Livy I. 42 says the rating of the prima classis was Centum millia aeris, of the secunda classis was infra centum assium ad quinque et septuaginta millia. Tertia classis quinquaginta millia, Quarta classis, quinque et viginti millia. Quinta classis, undecim millia.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (IV. 16-17) puts the rating of the 1st class at 100 minae (of silver) or 10,000 drachms; of the 2nd at 75 minae, of the 3rd at 50 minae, of the 4th at 25 minae, and that of the 5th at 12 minae.
All are agreed that it is absolutely incredible that the original rating of the first class was 120,000 libral asses of bronze. The cow was worth 100 libral asses at Rome in 451 B.C. Therefore the rating of 120,000 asses would have been equivalent to 1200 cows. It is impossible to believe that there could have been a numerous body of men in early Rome possessed of such vast capital. Boeckh’s explanation is that with the reduction of the as from its original weight of a libra to two ounces, and one ounce, there was a corresponding raising of the amount of the rating of the several classes.
Mommsen on the other hand thinks that the rating was originally on land, and that the change in the method of rating from land to bronze took place at a time when land had greatly risen in value, and that accordingly 120,000 asses of the First Class are libral asses. Such a change as Mommsen supposes must have taken place before 260-241 B.C., for the as was reduced to two ounces during the first Punic War. Yet we cannot easily suggest any period before that date when there was likely to have been so great a rise in the value of land, as is necessary to account for the large rating of 120,000 asses, which according to Mommsen’s reckoning would be worth about 400 lbs. of silver (or according to Soutzo 1000 lbs. of silver).
Boeckh’s hypothesis seems to fit better the conditions of the problem. Much of the importance of the rating of the various classes passed away when Marius (104 B.C.) changed the whole military system and chose the troops from the Capite censi, as well as from the five property classes.
The as had been reduced to a single uncia in the 2nd Punic War (cf. [p. 377]). Thus 12 asses of the uncial standard were required to make up the weight of the old libral as. Accordingly 120,000 asses of the 2nd century B.C. would be equal to 10,000 libral asses of the earlier days. But as by the Lex Tarpeia 100 asses is the value of a cow, 10,000 libral asses = 100 cows. This would be by no means an unlikely number of cows, to form the minimum of the wealthiest class of a pastoral community. There is another curious piece of evidence which seems to confirm my hypothesis. One of the provisions of the Licinian Rogations (367 B.C.) was that no one should hold more than 500 jugera of the Public Land, or should be allowed to feed more than one hundred large cattle or 500 small cattle on public pastures. μηδένα ἔχειν τῆσδε τῆς γῆς πλέθρα πεντακοσίων πλείονα, μηδὲ προβατεύειν ἑκατὸν πλείω τὰ μείζονα καὶ πεντακοσίων τὰ ἐλάσσονα. Appian, Bell. Civ. I. 8. If 100 large cattle were the number which qualified a Roman for the first class, there was every reason why Licinius and Sextus should have taken 100 as the maximum number of cows which a citizen could keep on the public pastures.
Next I shall show that the method of rating by cattle and not by land was that actually practised in Sicily. That island stood in such close relations to the Italian Peninsula both geographically and ethnologically that we may reasonably infer that the method of rating in use there was also in use in Italy.
Now we learn from Aristotle’s Oeconomica (II. 21) that when the tyrant Dionysius oppressed the Syracusans with excessive exactions, they ceased to keep cattle: