Ab urbe condita

The knights were first summoned to record their vote, then the eighty centuries of the infantry of the First Class; if their votes were divided, which seldom happened, it was arranged for the Second Class to be summoned; very seldom did the voting extend to the lowest Class.

Nor need it occasion any surprise, that the arrangement which now exists since the completion of the thirty-five tribes, their number being doubled by the centuries of juniors and seniors, does not agree with the total as instituted by Servius Tullius.

For, after dividing the City with its districts and the hills which were inhabited into four parts, he called these divisions “tribes,” I think from the tribute they paid, for he also introduced the practice of collecting it at an equal rate according to the assessment. These tribes had nothing to do with the distribution and number of the centuries.

The work of the census was accelerated by an enactment in which Servius denounced imprisonment and even capital punishment against those who evaded assessment. On its completion he issued an order that all the citizens of Rome, knights and infantry alike, should appear in the Campus Martius, each in their centuries.

After the whole army had been drawn up there, he purified it by the triple sacrifice of a swine, a sheep, and an ox.[*](As in the case of Tullus Hostilius (see note 9). This sacrifice was afterwards regularly offered on the completion of each five-year period (lustrum).) This was called “a closed lustrum,” because with it the census was completed. Eighty thousand citizens are said to have been included in that census. Fabius Pictor, the oldest of our historians states that this was the number of those who could bear arms.