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TRIBUS
Originally the name of each of the three classes of Roman patricians (Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres), who were divided into ten curioe (q.v.). In direct contrast with this was the classification made by king Servius, whereby Roman citizens, together with the whole territory of Rome, were divided into four city (tribus urbanoe) and twenty-six country tribes (tribus rusticae). These were geographical divisions, according to which the census was taken, troops levied, and the war tax imposed and collected. From time to time the number was diminished; but it increased again until 241 B.C., when it was raised to thirty-five (four city and thirty-one country tribes), and this number remained fixed for the future, even under the Empire. The new citizens admitted after 241 were distributed amongst the existing tribes. This was the case with all the Italian communities, which in 89 B.C., by the extension of the citizenship to all dwellers in Italy, were included in the tribes. Every citizen (with the exception of those called oerarii, q.v.) belonged to some special tribe, to which he himself or his ancestors had been assigned, even when he no longer had his home there. Accordingly, in the official designation of a free citizen, the name of his tribe was added to his family names. Originally the country tribes were on an equality with those of the city, but subsequently they were deemed superior, on the ground that they consisted of owners of property in land, whilst the chief part of the city tribes was made up of merchants, workmen, and the proletariate, who possessed no landed property, and amongst whom freedmen were included. The tribes attained political importance on the establishment of the comitia tributa (q.v.), in which those present voted as individuals, and not as members of property-classes, as in the comitia centuriata. The comitia tributa thus had a democratic character. The importance of the tribes was further increased on the reform of the comitia centuriata (q.v.), since each of the thirty-five tribes was thereby divided into five property-classes, each consisting of two centurioe, seniores and iuniores. Under the Empire they lost all political importance; the country-tribes were used merely as geographical subdivisions, while the lists of the whole number of the thirty-five tribes were treated as a register for the distribution of the State doles of corn. Thus the tribes sank at last into corporate groups of pauperized citizens.
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