ingent laws regulated their intercourse. In
other ancient communities it has been shown how the separation of the
sexes created in time an upper and lower class, and to the same origin may
perhaps be assigned the most remarkable feature of the Roman constitution,
_i. e._ the two-fold division of the people into patricians and plebeians.

While the foregoing statements throw light upon the ideas associated with
the Middle and show that Rome was originally a dual state, the following
facts furnish indications of a quadruplicate division. At an early period
Rome was laid out and enclosed in a square, the population _was divided
into four tribes_ and mention is made of "the state, under Servius
Tullius, being an entity divided into _four cities_ and twenty-six tribes
... this being strictly a geographical division analogous to our parishes.
The division of the city into four tribes continued until the reign of
Augustus (B.C. 29)...."(128)

The four chief religious corporations of ancient Rome, mentioned in the
Century Dictionary, evidently correspond to this fourfold division and it
is specially stated of one of these corporations that it was represented
and governed by a group consisting of seven "septemvir epulones" who
formed a "septemvirate."

The number of septemvirs corresponded to the "seven hills" which were
enclosed by Tullus Hostilius, and it is stated that there were seven
places of worship in ancient Rome. It is interesting to find that between
A.D. 193 and 211, Septimius Severus, a native of an ancient Punic colony
in Africa, erected a Septizonium (an edifice consisting, like the
Babylonian zikkurat, of seven stories) on the Palatine, where a large
temple of Apollo had previously been built.(129)

Although it is thus evident that, at different periods, seven-fold
division was carried out in ancient Rome, it was not until after the reign
of Theodosius, according to some authors, that the seven-day period was
imported from Alexandria and the term "septimana" adopted in Rome.
"Previously to this Rome had counted her periods by eight days, the eighth
day itself being originally called Nundinae--a term later applied to the
whole cycle" (Chambers' Encyclopaedia). Noting that the period of eight
(=2x4) days accords with the quadruplicate system applied to the primitive
state, I draw attention to the numerical classification of the citizens of
Rome employed during centuries, which so curiously agrees with the system