ted
and numbered and divided off into centuries according to their wealth.
Then these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the persons they chose,
when it was a question of peace or war. Their meeting was called the
Comitia; but as there were more patrician centuries than plebeian ones,
the patricians still had much more power. Besides, the Senate and all
the magistrates were in those days always patricians. These magistrates
were chosen every year. There were two consuls, who were like kings for
the time, only that they wore no crowns; they had purple robes, and sat
in chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were always attended by
lictors, who carried bundles of rods tied round an axe--the first for
scourging, the second for beheading. There were under them two praetors,
or judges, who tried offences; two quaestors, who attended to the public
buildings; and two censors, who had to look after the numbering and
registering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls in
general commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need,
one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes a
dictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the
head of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, all
the priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called Pontifex
Maximus. Some say this was because he was the _fax_ (maker) of
_pontes_ (bridges), as he blessed them and decided by omens where
they should be; but others think the word was Pompifex, and that he was
the maker of pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as well as
augurs, who had to draw omens from the flight of birds or the appearance
of sacrifices, and who kept the account of the calendar of lucky and
unlucky days, and of festivals.

[Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES.]

The Romans were a grave religious people in those days, and did not
count their lives or their affections dear in comparison with their
duties to their altars and their hearths, though their notions of duty
do not always agree with ours. Their dress in the city was a white
woollen garment edged with purple--it must have been more like in shape
to a Scottish plaid than anything else--and was wrapped round so as to
leave one arm free: sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No one
might wear it but a free-born Roman, and he never went out on public
business without it, even when more convenient fashions had been copied
from