Note 443 — Chapter IV · THE CENTURIES AND THE CLASSES

This distinction of rank among the patrician centuries of the comitia centuriata is proved by the expression “proceres patricii” in the Censoriae Tabulae, quoted by Fest. 249. 1: “Procum patricium in descriptione classium, quam fecit Ser. Tullius, significat procerum. I enim sunt principes;” Cic. Orat. 46. 156: “Centuriam fabrum et procum, ut censoriae tabulae loquuntur, audeo dicere, non fabrorum aut procorum.” Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. 109, n. 1, has rightly referred it to one of the sex suffragia, for no century outside this group could have been so designated; cf. Livy ii. 20. 11, who speaks of the cavalry as proceres iuventutis. The mention of a century of leading patricians implies the existence of one or more centuries of the less distinguished members of the same rank, which must have been the rest of the sex suffragia. The superior rank of the equites in early Rome is proved by Dion. Hal. ii. 13. 1; iv. 18. 1; Livy i. 43. 8 f.; ii. 20. 11. In ii. 24. 2 Livy implies that the patricians did not serve on foot (militare), and in iii. 27. 1 he speaks of a patrician who, as an exception among his rank, served on foot because of his poverty. In ii. 42 f. he distinguishes the cavalry from the infantry as patricians from plebeians. The fact that in the political conflict between the two social classes the patricians often threatened to carry on foreign wars with the aid merely of their clients (cf. Dion. Hal. x. 15, 27 f., 43) proves that the phalanx was essentially plebeian. On the honorable place of the equites in the camp, see Nitzsch, in Hist. Zeitschr. vii (1862). 145. That the sex suffragia remained patrician down to the reform of the comitia centuriata is probable; cf. Sallust, Hist. i. 11, who represents the struggle between the social classes as continuing to the opening of the war with Hannibal; see also Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. 254.