All are agreed that it is absolutely incredible that the original rating of the first class was 120,000 libral asses of bronze. The cow was worth 100 libral asses at Rome in 451 B.C. Therefore the rating of 120,000 asses would have been equivalent to 1200 cows. It is impossible to believe that there could have been a numerous body of men in early Rome possessed of such vast capital. Boeckh’s explanation is that with the reduction of the as from its original weight of a libra to two ounces, and one ounce, there was a corresponding raising of the amount of the rating of the several classes.
Mommsen on the other hand thinks that the rating was originally on land, and that the change in the method of rating from land to bronze took place at a time when land had greatly risen in value, and that accordingly 120,000 asses of the First Class are libral asses. Such a change as Mommsen supposes must have taken place before 260-241 B.C., for the as was reduced to two ounces during the first Punic War. Yet we cannot easily suggest any period before that date when there was likely to have been so great a rise in the value of land, as is necessary to account for the large rating of 120,000 asses, which according to Mommsen’s reckoning would be worth about 400 lbs. of silver (or according to Soutzo 1000 lbs. of silver).
Boeckh’s hypothesis seems to fit better the conditions of the problem. Much of the importance of the rating of the various classes passed away when Marius (104 B.C.) changed the whole military system and chose the troops from the Capite censi, as well as from the five property classes.
The as had been reduced to a single uncia in the 2nd Punic War (cf. p. 377). Thus 12 asses of the uncial standard were required to make up the weight of the old libral as. Accordingly 120,000 asses of the 2nd century B.C. would be equal to 10,000 libral asses of the earlier days. But as by the Lex Tarpeia 100 asses is the value of a cow, 10,000 libral asses = 100 cows. This would be by no means an unlikely number of cows, to form the