ni- (Becker, Handb. ii. 20
seq.)

In the face of these facts nothing but ignorance of language and of
history can still adhere to the idea that the Roman community was
once confronted by a Quirite community of a similar kind, and that
after their incorporation the name of the newly received community
supplanted in ritual and legal phraseology that of the receiver.--Comp.
iv. The Hill-Romans On The Quirinal, note.

10. Among the eight ritual institutions of Numa, Dionysius (ii. 64)
after naming the Curiones and Flamines, specifies as the third the
leaders of the horsemen (--oi eigemones ton Kelerion--). According to
the Praenestine calendar a festival was celebrated at the Comitium
on the 19th March [adstantibus pon]tificibus et trib(unis) celer(um).
Valerius Antias (in Dionys. i. 13, comp. iii. 41) assigns to
the earliest Roman cavalry a leader, Celer, and three centurions;
whereas in the treatise De viris ill. i, Celer himself is termed
-centurio-. Moreover Brutus is affirmed to have been -tribunus
celerum- at the expulsion of the kings (Liv. i. 59), and according
to Dionysius (iv. 71) to have even by virtue of this office made the
proposal to banish the Tarquins. And, lastly, Pomponius (Dig. i.
2, 2, 15, 19) and Lydus in a similar way, partly perhaps borrowing
from him (De Mag. i. 14, 37), identify the -tribunus celerum- with
the Celer of Antias, the -magister equitum- of the dictator under
the republic, and the -Praefectus praetorio- of the empire.

Of these-the only statements which are extant regarding the -tribuni
celerum- --the last mentioned not only proceeds from late and quite
untrustworthy authorities, but is inconsistent with the meaning of
the term, which can only signify "divisional leaders of horsemen,"
and above all the master of the horse of the republican period, who
was nominated only on extraordinary occasions and was in later times
no longer nominated at all, cannot possibly have been identical with
the magistracy that was required for the annual festival of the
19th March and was consequently a standing office. Laying aside, as
we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently
arisen solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with
ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result that
the -tribuni celerum- entirely correspond in number and character
to the -tribuni militum-, and that they were the leaders-of-division
of the horsemen, consequently quit