on
of barriers against those that were without was accompanied by an
absolute banishment of all difference of rights among the members
included in the burgess community of Rome. We have already mentioned
that the distinctions existing in the household, which of course
could not be set aside, were at least ignored in the community; the
son who as such was subject in property to his father might thus,
in the character of a burgess, come to have command over his father
as master. There were no class-privileges: the fact that the Tities
took precedence of the Ramnes, and both ranked before the Luceres,
did not affect their equality in all legal rights. The burgess
cavalry, which at this period was used for single combat in front
of the line on horseback or even on foot, and was rather a select
or reserve corps than a special arm of the service, and which
accordingly contained by far the wealthiest, best-armed, and
best-trained men, was naturally held in higher estimation than the
burgess infantry; but this was a distinction purely -de facto-, and
admittance to the cavalry was doubtless conceded to any patrician.
It was simply and solely the constitutional subdivision of the
burgess-body that gave rise to distinctions recognized by the law;
otherwise the legal equality of all the members of the community
was carried out even in their external appearance. Dress indeed
served to distinguish the president of the community from its members,
the grown-up man under obligation of military service from the boy
not yet capable of enrolment; but otherwise the rich and the noble
as well as the poor and low-born were only allowed to appear in
public in the like simple wrapper (-toga-) of white woollen stuff.
This complete equality of rights among the burgesses had beyond
doubt its original basis in the Indo-Germanic type of constitution;
but in the precision with which it was thus apprehended and
embodied it formed one of the most characteristic and influential
peculiarities of the Latin nation. And in connection with this we
may recall the fact that in Italy we do not meet with any race of
earlier settlers less capable of culture, that had become subject
to the Latin immigrants.(8) They had no conquered race to deal
with, and therefore no such condition of things as that which gave
rise to the Indian system of caste, to the nobility of Thessaly
and Sparta and perhaps of Hellas generally, and probably also to
the Germanic distinc