Note 302 — Chapter XIII · THE AFRICAN PROVINCES.

The technical designation gens comes into prominence particularly in the fixed title of the praefectus gentis Musulamiorum, etc.; but, as this is the lowest category of the independent commonwealth, the word is usually avoided in dedications (comp. C. I. L. viii. p. 1100) and civitas put instead, a designation, which, like the oppidum of Pliny foreign to the technical language (p. 331, note), includes in it all communities of non-Italian or Greek organisation. The nature of the gens is described by the paraphrase (C. I. L. viii. 68) alternating with civitas Gurzensis (ib. 69): senatus populusque civitatium stipendiariorum pago Gurzenses, that is, the “elders and community of the clans of tributary people in the village of Gurza.”