Note 20 — Chapter I · THE POPULUS AND ITS EARLIEST POLITICAL DIVISIONS

Against the view that the three tribes were once independent communities are Volquardsen, in Rhein. Mus. xxxiii. 542 ff.; Meyer, Gesch. d. Alt. ii. 510; Lécrivain, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. ii. 1514 a; Holzapfel, in Beitr. z. alt. Gesch. i. 241, 249 ff.; Platner, Top. and Mon. of Anc. Rome, 33. Ihne, Hist. of Rome, i. 114, thinks they probably had reference only to the army. The double nature of many Roman institutions—a phenomenon on which scholars chiefly rely for their theory of a once existent two-tribe state—may better be explained by the union of the Sabines with the Romans after the institution of the three tribes; as this relatively later date would at the same time explain the six-fold character of various institutions. That the union took place at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. is believed by Pais, Storia di Roma, I. i. 277. Or the stated increase in the number of members of the vestals, augurs, pontiffs, and more particularly of senators, may be due to an ancient theory, dimly hinted at in the sources, of an admission of the second and third tribes successively to representation in these bodies; cf. Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. i. 320 f., English, i. 157; Bloch, Orig. d. sén. 32 ff.