The
statement of Festus to which I here allude is that Tarquinius Superbus
increased the number of the Vestals in order that each tribe might have
two. With this we must connect a passage from the tenth book of Livy,
where he says that the augurs were to represent the three tribes. The
numbers in the Roman colleges of priests were always multiples either of
two or of three; the latter was the case with the Vestal Virgins and the
great Flamines, and the former with the Augurs, Pontiffs, and Fetiales,
who represented only the first two tribes. Previously to the passing of
the Ogulnian law the number of augurs was four, and when subsequently
five plebeians were added, the basis of this increase was different, it
is true, but the ancient rule of the number being a multiple of three
was preserved. The number of pontiffs, which was then four, was
increased only by four: this might seem to contradict what has just been
stated, but it has been overlooked that Cicero speaks of _five_ new ones
having been added, for he included the Pontifex Maximus, which Livy does
not. In like manner there were twenty Fetiales, ten for each tribe. To
the Salii on the Palatine Numa added another brotherhood on the
Quirinal; thus we everywhere see a manifest distinction between the
first two tribes and the third, the latter being treated as inferior.

The third tribe, then, consisted of free citizens, but they had not the
same rights as the members of the first two; yet its members considered
themselves superior to all other people; and their relation to the other
two tribes was the same as that existing between the Venetian citizens
of the mainland and the _nobili_. A Venetian nobleman treated those
citizens with far more condescension than he displayed toward others,
provided they did not presume to exercise any authority in political
matters. Whoever belonged to the Luceres called himself a Roman, and if
the very dictator of Tusculum had come to Rome, a man of the third tribe
there would have looked upon him as an inferior person, though he
himself had no influence whatever.

Tullus was succeeded by Ancus. Tullus appears as one of the Ramnes, and
as descended from Hostus Hostilius, one of the companions of Romulus;
but Ancus was a Sabine, a grandson of Numa. The accounts about him are
to some extent historical, and there is no trace of poetry in them. In
his reign, the development of the state again made a step in advance.
According to the anc