The populus Romanus

As was noted before, the population of early Rome was made up, for the most part, of three elements, the Latins, the Sabines and the Etruscans, with the Latin element being the predominant one.

For military and political purposes the entire citizen body, referred to as populus Romanus Quirites (or populus Romanus Quiritium)?⁶ was divided into three tribes (tribus'), the Ramnes, the Titles and the Luceres. Each tribe was headed by a tribal commander (tribunus). The tribes were subdivided further into smaller groups known as curiae (wards or brotherhoods of men), each consisting of a number of clans or groups of families (gentes). There were thirty curiae in all, ten in each tribe.^[139] [140] Membership in these groups was probably hereditary. Each curia was distinguished by a different name and had its own place of assembly (also called curia) where its members held their religious ceremonies (sacra), settled disputes over the legitimacy of a person's membership in their group^[141] and witnessed the formalities relating to adoptions and testaments. These meetings were presided over by the head of the curia (called curio). The meetings of all thirty curiae were headed by the curio maximus, chosen out of the heads of the thirty curiae, while a flamen curialis supervised the common worship of the members of the curiae. The curiae originated from the prehistoric organisation of the Italian tribes into groups of clans, probably bound together by blood-ties and united for common defence. Besides kinship, territorial proximity between different clans must also have played a part in the formation of these groups. The division of the Roman people into curiae furnished the basis for Rome's earliest popular assembly, the comitia curiata.^[142]

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