Note 1215 — Chapter X · THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMITIA CENTURIATA

The five classes contained accordingly 80, 20, 20, 20, and 28 centuries respectively; cf. p. 66 f., 77; see also table on p. 210. A great difference exists between Livy and Dionysius, on the one hand, and Cicero, on the other, as to the number of centuries in the highest class. Cicero (Rep. ii. 22. 39: “Nunc rationem videtis esse talem, ut equitum centuriae cum sex suffragiis et prima classis addita centuria, quae ad summum usum urbis fabris tignariis est data, LXXXVIIII centurias habebat”) states that the eighteen centuries of knights, the centuries of the first class, and one century of mechanics amounted to eighty-nine, which would give but seventy to the first class. The most satisfactory explanation of this difficulty seems to be that Cicero, while professing to describe the earlier centuriate system, had in mind a formative stage of the new organization, in which the first class comprised seventy centuries; p. 67, 215, n. 2. On the number in the fifth class, see p. 66, 77, 208.