senate concluded peace), and decided as a supreme court, on appeal, all cases involving capital punishment of Roman citizens. By the side of the senate and the public meeting stood the rex, corresponding to the Grecian basileus, and by no means, such an almost absolute king as Mommsen would have it.26 The rex was also a military leader, a high priest and a chairman of certain courts. He had no other functions, nor any power over life, liberty and property of the citizens, except such as resulted from his disciplinary power as military leader or from his executive power as president of a court. The office of rex was not hereditary. On the contrary, he was elected, probably on the suggestion of his predecessor, by the assembly of curiae and then solemnly invested by a second assembly. That he could also be deposed is proved by the fate of Tarquinius Superbus.
As the Greeks at the time of the heroes, so the Romans at the time of the so-called kings lived in a military democracy based on and developed from a constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes. What though the curiae and tribes were partly artificial formations, they were moulded after the genuine and spontaneous models of a society from which they originated and that still surrounded them on all sides. And though the sturdy patrician nobility had already gained ground, though the reges attempted gradually to enlarge the scope of their functions—all this does not change the elementary and fundamental character of the constitution, and this alone is essential.
Meantime the population of the city of Rome and of the Roman territory, enlarged by conquest, increased partly by immigration, partly through the inhabitants of the annexed districts, Latins most of them. All these new members of the state (we disregard here the clients) stood outside of the old gentes, curiae and tribes and so did not form a part of the populus Romanus, the Roman people proper. They were personally free, could own land, had to pay taxes and were subject to military service. But they were not eligible to office and could neither take part in