Note 264 — Chapter III · THE THIRTY-FIVE TRIBES

We are not to think of the state as granting a certain district to the tribe, which then parcelled it among the component curiae, etc., for this reason that the tribes and the curiae did not themselves possess common lands. Rather the state divided a given district among the families which were already included, or which it wished to include, in a given curia or tribe. In this way the later tribes were formed in historical time, and in this way the Claudian tribe was originally constituted; Livy ii. 16. 4 f.; cf. Plut. Popl. 21. When therefore Dionysius, ii. 7. 4, states that Romulus divided the land into thirty lots and assigned a lot to each of the thirty curiae, he means, if he correctly understands the matter, that land was assigned not to the curia as a whole but to the families which composed the curia, unless indeed the curiae once had a right of landholding not possessed in historical time.