may reasonably infer that the method of rating in use there was also in use in Italy.
Now we learn from Aristotle’s Oeconomica (II. 21) that when the tyrant Dionysius oppressed the Syracusans with excessive exactions, they ceased to keep cattle:
Τὼν δὲ πολιτῶν διὰ τὰς εἰσφορὰς οὐ τρεφόντων βοσκήματα, εἶπεν ὅτι ἱκανὰ ἦν αὐτῷ πρὸς τοσοῦτον· τοὺς οὖν νῦν κτησαμένους ἀτελεῖς ἔσεσθαι, πολλῶν δὲ ταχὺ κτησαμένων πολλὰ βοσκήματα, ὡς ἀτελῆ ἑξόντων, ἐπεὶ ᾤετο καιρὸν εἶναι, τιμήσασθαι κελεύσας ἐπέβαλε τέλος, κ.τ.λ.
If the citizens of Syracuse, a great Greek trading city, were still rated in cattle in the time of Dionysius (405-367 B.C.), à fortiori we may expect the same primitive method of assessment to prevail among the pastoral peoples of Central Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.
Among the Kelts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, the same system probably prevailed. Thus in the ancient Irish laws, where the various classes of freemen are described, there are a number of them called Bo-aires1, cow-freemen.