at was first to be done
was to adopt some plan for classifying and arranging them.

It is most probable, as a matter of fact, that the organization and
the institutions which in subsequent times appeared in the Roman
state, were not deliberately planned and formally introduced by
Romulus at the outset, but that they gradually grew up in the progress
of time, and that afterward historians and philosophers, in
speculating upon them at their leisure, carried back the history of
them to the earliest times, in order, by so doing, to honor the
founder of the city, and also to exalt and aggrandize the institutions
themselves in public estimation, by celebrating the antiquity and
dignity of their origin.

The institutions which Romulus actually founded, were of a very
republican character, if the accounts of subsequent writers are to be
believed. He established, it is true, a gradation of ranks, but the
most important offices, civil and military, were filled, it is said,
by election on the part of the people. In the first place, the whole
population was divided into three portions, which were called
_tribes_, which word was formed from the Latin word _tres_, meaning
three. These tribes chose each three presiding officers, selecting for
the purpose the oldest and most distinguished of their number. It is
probable, in fact, that Romulus himself really made the selection, and
that the action of the people was confined to some sort of expression
of assent and concurrence, for it is difficult to imagine how any
other kind of election than this could be possible among so rude and
ignorant a multitude. The tribes were then subdivided each into thirty
_counts_ or _counties_, and each of these likewise elected its head.
Thus there was a large body of magistrates or chieftains appointed,
ninety-nine in number, namely, nine heads of tribes and ninety heads
of counties. Romulus himself added one to the number, of his own
independent selection, which made the hundredth. The men thus chosen,
constituted what was called the senate. They formed the great
legislative council of the nation. They and the families descending
from them became, in subsequent times, an aristocratic and privileged
class, called the Patricians. The remaining portion of the population
were called Plebeians.

The Plebeians comprised, of course, the industrial and useful classes,
and were in rank and station inferior to the Patricians. They were,
however, not all upon