ĔQUĪRĬA, horse-races, which are said to have been instituted by Romulus in honour of Mars, and were celebrated in the Campus Martius. There were two festivals of this name; of which one was celebrated A.D. III. Cal. Mart., and the other prid. Id. Mart.

ĔQUĬTES, horsemen. Romulus is said to have formed three centuries of equites; and these were the same as the 300 Celeres, whom he kept about his person in peace and war. A century was taken from each of the three tribes, the Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres. Tarquinius Priscus added three more, under the title of Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres posteriores. These were the six patrician centuries of equites, often referred to under the name of the sex suffragia. To these Servius Tullius added twelve more centuries, for admission into which, property and not birth was the qualification. These twelve centuries might therefore contain plebeians, but they do not appear to have been restricted to plebeians, since we have no reason for believing that the six old centuries contained the whole body of patricians. A property qualification was apparently also necessary by the Servian constitution for admission into the six centuries. We may therefore suppose that those patricians who were included in the six old centuries were allowed by the Servian constitution to continue in them, if they possessed the requisite property; and that all other persons in the state, whether patricians or plebeians, who possessed the requisite property, were admitted into the twelve new centuries. We are not told the amount of property necessary to entitle a person to a place among the equites, but it was probably the same as in the latter times of the republic, that is, four times that of the first class. [[Comitia], [p. 105].] Property, however, was not the only qualification; for in the ancient times of the republic no one was admitted among the equestrian centuries unless his character was unblemished, and his father and grandfather had been born freemen. Each of the equites received a horse from the state (equus publicus), or money to purchase one, as well as a sum of money for its annual support; the expense of its support was defrayed by the orphans and unmarried females; since, in a military state, it could not be esteemed unjust, that the women and the children were to contribute largely for those who fought in behalf of them and of the commonwealth. The purchase-money for a knight’s horse was called aes equestre, and its annual provision aes hordearium. The former amounted, according to Livy, to 10,000 asses, and the latter to 2000.—All the equites, of whom we have been speaking, received a horse from the state, and were included in the 18 equestrian centuries of the Servian constitution; but in course of time, we read of another class of equites in Roman history, who did not receive a horse from the state, and who were not included in the 18 centuries. This latter class is first mentioned by Livy, in his account of the siege of Veii, B.C. 403. He says that during the siege, when the Romans had at one time suffered great disasters, all those citizens who had an equestrian fortune, and no horse allotted to them, volunteered to serve with their own horses; and he adds, that from this time equites first began to serve with their own horses. The state paid them, as a kind of compensation for serving with their own horses. The foot soldiers had received pay a few years before; and two years afterwards, B.C. 401, the pay of the equites was made three-fold that of the infantry. From the year B.C. 403, there were therefore two classes of Roman knights: one who received horses from the state, and are therefore frequently called equites equo publico, and sometimes Flexumines or Trossuli, and another class, who served, when they were required, with their own horses, but were not classed among the 18 centuries. As they served on horseback they were called equites; and when spoken of in opposition to cavalry, which did not consist of Roman citizens, they were also called equites Romani; but they had no legal claim to the name of equites, since in ancient times this title was strictly confined to those who received horses from the state.—The reason of this distinction of two classes arose from the fact, that the number of equites in the 18 centuries was fixed from the time of Servius Tullius. As vacancies occurred in them, the descendants of those who were originally enrolled succeeded to their places, provided they had not dissipated their property. But in course of time, as population and wealth increased, the number of persons who possessed an equestrian fortune, also increased greatly; and as the ancestors of these persons had not been enrolled in the 18 centuries, they could not receive horses from the state, and were therefore allowed the privilege of serving with their own horses among the cavalry, instead of the infantry, as they would otherwise have been obliged to have done.—The inspection of the equites who received horses from the state belonged to the censors, who had the power of depriving an eques of his horse, and reducing him to the condition of an aerarian, and also of giving the vacant horse to the most distinguished of the equites who had previously served at their own expense. For these purposes they made during their censorship a public inspection, in the forum, of all the knights who possessed public horses (equitatum recognoscere). The tribes were taken in order, and each knight was summoned by name. Every one, as his name was called, walked past the censors, leading his horse. If the censors had no fault to find either with the character of the knight or the equipments of his horse, they ordered him to pass on (traducere equum); but if on the contrary they considered him unworthy of his rank, they struck him out of the list of knights, and deprived him of his horse, or ordered him to sell it, with the intention no doubt that the person thus degraded should refund to the state the money which had been advanced to him for its purchase.—This review of the equites by the censors must not be confounded with the Equitum Transvectio, which was a solemn procession of the body every year on the Ides of Quintilis (July). The procession started from the temple of Mars outside the city, and passed through the city over the forum, and by the temple of the Dioscuri. On this occasion the equites were always crowned with olive chaplets, and wore their state dress, the trabea, with all the honourable distinctions which they had gained in battle. According to Livy, this annual procession was first established by the censors Q. Fabius and P. Decius, B.C. 304; but according to Dionysius it was instituted after the defeat of the Latins near the lake Regillus, of which an account was brought to Rome by the Dioscuri.—It may be asked how long did the knight retain his public horse, and a vote in the equestrian century to which he belonged? On this subject we have no positive information; but as those equites, who served with their own horses, were only obliged to serve for ten years (stipendia) under the age of 46, we may presume that the same rule extended to those who served with the public horses, provided they wished to give up the service. For it is certain that in the ancient times of the republic a knight might retain his horse as long as he pleased, even after he had entered the senate, provided he continued able to discharge the duties of a knight. Thus the two censors, M. Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero, in B.C. 204, were also equites, and L. Scipio Asiaticus, who was deprived of his horse by the censors in B.C. 185, had himself been censor in B.C. 191. But during the later times of the republic the knights were obliged to give up their horses on entering the senate, and consequently ceased to belong to the equestrian centuries. It thus naturally came to pass, that the greater number of the equites equo publico, after the exclusion of senators from the equestrian centuries, were young men.—The equestrian centuries, of which we have hitherto been treating, were only regarded as a division of the army: they did not form a distinct class or ordo in the constitution. The community, in a political point of view, was divided only into patricians and plebeians, and the equestrian centuries were composed of both. But in the year B.C. 123, a new class, called the Ordo Equestris, was formed in the state by the Lex Sempronia, which was introduced by C. Gracchus. By this law, or one passed a few years afterwards, every person who was to be chosen judex was required to be above 30 and under 60 years of age, to have either an equus publicus, or to be qualified by his fortune to possess one, and not to be a senator. The number of judices, who were required yearly, was chosen from this class by the praetor urbanus. As the name of equites had been originally extended from those who possessed the public horses to those who served with their own horses, it now came to be applied to all those persons who were qualified by their fortune to act as judices, in which sense the word is usually used by Cicero. After the reform of Sulla, which entirely deprived the equestrian order of the right of being chosen as judices, and the passing of the Lex Aurelia (B.C. 70), which ordained that the judices should be chosen from the senators, equites, and tribuni aerarii, the influence of the order, says Pliny, was still maintained by the publicani, or farmers of the public taxes. We find that the publicani were almost always called equites, not because any particular rank was necessary in order to obtain from the state the farming of the taxes, but because the state was not accustomed to let them to any one who did not possess a considerable fortune. Thus the publicani are frequently spoken of by Cicero as identical with the equestrian order. The consulship of Cicero, and the active part which the knights then took in suppressing the conspiracy of Catiline, tended still further to increase the power and influence of the equestrian order; and “from that time,” says Pliny, “it became a third body (corpus) in the state, and, to the title of Senatus Populusque Romanus, there began to be added Et Equestris Ordo.” In B.C. 63, a distinction was conferred upon them, which tended to separate them still further from the plebs. By the Lex Roscia Othonis, passed in that year, the first fourteen seats in the theatre behind the orchestra were given to the equites. They also possessed the right of wearing the Clavus Angustus [[Clavus]], and subsequently obtained the privilege of wearing a gold ring, which was originally confined to the equites equo publico. The number of equites increased greatly under the early emperors, and all persons were admitted into the order, provided they possessed the requisite property, without any inquiry into their character, or into the free birth of their father and grandfather. The order in consequence gradually began to lose all the consideration which it had acquired during the later times of the republic.—Augustus formed a select class of equites, consisting of those equites who possessed the property of a senator, and the old requirement of free birth up to the grandfather. He permitted this class to wear the latus clavus; and also allowed the tribunes of the plebs to be chosen from them, as well as the senators, and gave them the option, at the termination of their office, to remain in the senate or return to the equestrian order. This class of knights was distinguished by the special title illustres (sometimes insignes and splendidi) equites Romani. The formation of this distinct class tended to lower the others still more in public estimation. In the ninth year of the reign of Tiberius, an attempt was made to improve the order by requiring the old qualifications of free birth up to the grandfather, and by strictly forbidding any one to wear the gold ring unless he possessed this qualification. This regulation, however, was of little avail, as the emperors frequently admitted freedmen into the equestrian order. When private persons were no longer appointed judices, the necessity for a distinct class in the community, like the equestrian order, ceased entirely; and the gold ring came at length to be worn by all free citizens. Even slaves, after their manumission, were allowed to wear it by special permission from the emperor, which appears to have been usually granted provided the patronus consented.—Having thus traced the history of the equestrian order to its final extinction as a distinct class in the community, we must now return to the equites equo publico, who formed the 18 equestrian centuries. This class still existed during the latter years of the republic, but had entirely ceased to serve as horse-soldiers in the army. The cavalry of the Roman legions no longer consisted, as in the time of Polybius, of Roman equites, but their place was supplied by the cavalry of the allied states. It is evident that Caesar in his Gallic wars possessed no Roman cavalry. When he went to an interview with Ariovistus, and was obliged to take cavalry with him, we are told that he did not dare to trust his safety to the Gallic cavalry, and therefore mounted his legionary soldiers upon their horses. The Roman equites are, however, frequently mentioned in the Gallic and civil wars, but never as common soldiers; they were officers attached to the staff of the general, or commanded the cavalry of the allies, or sometimes the legions.—After the year B.C. 50, there were no censors in the state, and it would therefore follow that for some years no review of the body took place, and that the vacancies were not filled up. When Augustus, however, took upon himself, in B.C. 29, the praefectura morum, he frequently reviewed the troops of equites, and restored the long neglected custom of the solemn procession (transvectio). From this time these equites formed an honourable corps, from which all the higher officers in the army and the chief magistrates in the state were chosen. Admission into this body was equivalent to an introduction into public life, and was therefore esteemed a great privilege. If a young man was not admitted into this body, he was excluded from all civil offices of any importance, except in municipal towns; and also from all rank in the army, with the exception of centurion. All those equites, who were not employed in actual service, were obliged to reside at Rome, where they were allowed to fill the lower magistracies, which entitled a person to admission into the senate. They were divided into six turmae, each of which was commanded by an officer, who is frequently mentioned in inscriptions as Sevir equitum Rom. turmae I. II., &c., or commonly Sevir turmae or Sevir turmarum equitum Romanorum. From the time that the equites bestowed the title of principes juventutis upon Caius and Lucius Caesar, the grandsons of Augustus, it became the custom to confer this title, as well as that of sevir, upon the probable successor to the throne, when he first entered into public life, and was presented with an equus publicus. The practice of filling all the higher offices in the state from these equites appears to have continued as long as Rome was the centre of the government and the residence of the emperor. After the time of Diocletian, the equites became only a city guard, under the command of the praefectus vigilum; but they still retained, in the time of Valentinianus and Valens, A.D. 364, the second rank in the city, and were not subject to corporal punishment. Respecting the Magister Equitum, see [Dictator].

ĔQUŬLĔUS or ĔCŬLĔUS, an instrument of torture, which is supposed to have been so called because it was in the form of a horse.

ĔRĂNI (ἔρανοι), were clubs or societies, established for charitable, convivial, commercial, or political purposes. Unions of this kind were called by the general name of ἑταιρίαι, and were often converted to mischievous ends, such as bribery, overawing the public assembly, or influencing courts of justice. In the days of the Roman empire friendly societies, under the name of erani, were frequent among the Greek cities, but were looked on with suspicion by the emperors, as leading to political combinations. The gilds, or fraternities for mutual aid, among the ancient Saxons, resembled the erani of the Greeks.

ERGASTŬLUM, a private prison attached to most Roman farms, where the slaves were made to work in chains. The slaves confined in an ergastulum were also employed to cultivate the fields in chains. Slaves who had displeased their masters were punished by imprisonment in the ergastulum; and in the same place all slaves, who could not be depended upon or were barbarous in their habits, were regularly kept.

ĒRĪCĬUS, a military engine full of sharp spikes, which was placed by the gate of the camp to prevent the approach of the enemy.

ĔRŌTĬA or ĔRŌTĬDĬA (ἐρώτια or ἐρωτίδια), the most solemn of all the festivals celebrated in the Boeotian town of Thespiae. It took place every fifth year, and in honour of Eros, the principal divinity of the Thespians. Respecting the particulars nothing is known, except that it was solemnised with contests in music and gymnastics.

ESSĔDĀRĬI. [[Essedum].]

ESSĔDA, or ESSĔDUM (from the Celtic Ess, a carriage), the name of a chariot used, especially in war, by the Britons, the Gauls, and the Germans. It was built very strongly, was open before instead of behind, like the Greek war-chariot, and had a wide pole, so that the owner was able, whenever he pleased, to run along the pole, and even to raise himself upon the yoke, and then to retreat with the greatest speed into the body of the car, which he drove with extraordinary swiftness and skill. It appears also that these cars were purposely made as noisy as possible, probably by the creaking and clanging of the wheels; and that this was done in order to strike dismay into the enemy. The warriors who drove these chariots were called essedarii. Having been captured, they were sometimes exhibited in the gladiatorial shows at Rome, and seem to have been great favourites with the people. The essedum was adopted for purposes of convenience and luxury among the Romans. As used by the Romans, the essedum may have differed from the cisium in this; that the cisium was drawn by one horse (see cut, [p. 90]), the essedum always by a pair.

EUMOLPĬDAE (εὐμολπίδαι), the most distinguished and venerable among the priestly families in Attica. They were devoted to the service of Demeter at Athens and Eleusis, and were said to be the descendants of the Thracian bard Eumolpus, who, according to some legends, had introduced the Eleusinian mysteries into Attica. The high priest of the Eleusinian goddess (ἱεροφάντης or μυσταγωγός), who conducted the celebration of her mysteries and the initiation of the mystae, was always a member of the family of the Eumolpidae, as Eumolpus himself was believed to have been the first hierophant. The hierophant was attended by four epimeletae (ἐπιμεληταί), one of whom likewise belonged to the family of the Eumolpidae. The Eumolpidae had on certain occasions to offer up prayers for the welfare of the state. They had likewise judicial power in cases where religion was violated. The law according to which they pronounced their sentence, and of which they had the exclusive possession, was not written, but handed down by tradition; and the Eumolpidae alone had the right to interpret it, whence they are sometimes called Exegetae (ἐξηγηταί). In cases for which the law had made no provisions, they acted according to their own discretion. In some cases, when a person was convicted of gross violation of the public institutions of his country, the people, besides sending the offender into exile, added a clause in their verdict that a curse should be pronounced upon him by the Eumolpidae. But the Eumolpidae could pronounce such a curse only at the command of the people, and might afterwards be compelled by the people to revoke it, and purify the person whom they had cursed before.