7. The evidence alleged for this (comp. e. g. Schwegler, S. G. i. 480) mainly rests on an etymologico-historical hypothesis started by Varro and as usual unanimously echoed by later writers, that the Latin quirisand quirinus are akin to the name of the Sabine town Cures, and that the Quirinal hill accordingly had been peopled from CuresEven if the linguistic affinity of these words were more assured, there would be little warrant for deducing from it such a historical inference. That the old sanctuaries on this eminence (where, besides, there was also a "Collis Latiaris") were Sabine, has been asserted, but has not been proved. Mars quirinus, Sol, Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine, but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. If a name like that of Semo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of the Quirinal which afterwards diminished in its importance (comp. the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from a neighbouring land. In so speaking we do not mean to deny that it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated in producing this state of things; but if such was the case, they have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the constitution of Rome are only fitted seriously to warn us against such baseless speculations leading to no result.

1. This was not merely the case under the old religious marriage (matrimonium confarreatione); the civil marriage also (matrimonium consensu), although not in itself giving to the husband proprietary power over his wife, opened up the way for his acquiring this proprietary power, inasmuch as the legal ideas of "formal delivery" (coemptio), and "prescription" (usus), were applied without ceremony to such a marriage. Till he acquired it, and in particular therefore during the period which elapsed before the completion of the prescription, the wife was (just as in the later marriage by -causae probatio-, until that took place), not uxor, but pro uxore. Down to the period when Roman jurisprudence became a completed system the principle maintained its ground, that the wife who was not in her husband's power was not a married wife, but only passed as such (uxor tantummodo habetur. Cicero, Top. 3, 14).

2. The following epitaph, although belonging to a much later period, is not unworthy to have a place here. It is the stone that speaks: Hospes, quod deico, paullum est. Asta ac pellige. Heic est sepulcrum haud pulcrum pulcrai feminae, Nomen parentes nominarunt Claudiam, Suom mareitum corde dilexit sovo, Gnatos duos creavit, horunc alterum In terra linquit, alium sub terra locat; Sermone lepido, tum autem incessu commodo, Domum servavit, lanam fecit. Dixi.  Abei. (Corp. Inscr. Lat. 1007.)

Still more characteristic, perhaps, is the introduction of wool-spinning among purely moral qualities; which is no very unusual occurrence in Roman epitaphs.  Orelli, 4639: optima et pulcherrima, lanifica pia pudica frugi casta domiseda. Orelli, 4861: modestia probitate pudicitia obsequio lanificio diligentia fide par similisque cetereis probeis femina fuit. Epitaph of Turia, i. 30: domestica bona pudicitiae, opsequi, comitatis, facilitatis, lanificiis [tuis adsiduitatis, religionis] sine superstitione, ornatus non conspiciendi, cultus modici.

3. I. III. Clan-villages

4. Dionysius affirms (v. 25) that lameness excluded from the supreme magistracy. That Roman citizenship was a condition for the regal office as well as for the consulate, is so very self-evident as to make it scarcely worth while to repudiate expressly the fictions respecting the burgess of Cures.

5. I. III. Clan-villages

6. Even in Rome, where the simple constitution of ten curies otherwise early disappeared, we still discover one practical application of it, and that singularly enough in the very same formality which we have other reasons for regarding as the oldest of all those that are mentioned in our legal traditions, the confarreatio. It seems scarcely doubtful that the ten witnesses in that ceremony had the same relation to the constitution of ten curies the thirty lictors had to the constitution of thirty curies.

7. This is implied in their very name. The "part" (tribus) is, as jurists know, simply that which has once been or may hereafter come to be a whole, and so has no real standing of its own in the present.

8. I. II. Primitive Races of Italy

9. Quiris, quiritis, or quirinus is interpreted by the ancients as "lance-bearer", from quiris or curis = lance and ire, and so far in their view agrees with samnis, samnitis and sabinus, which also among the ancients was derived from saunion, spear. This etymology, which associates the word with arquites, milites, pedites, equites, velites - those respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment - may be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a burgess. So too Juno quiritis, (Mars) quirinus, Janus quirinus, are conceived as divinities that hurl the spear; and, employed in reference to men, quiris is the warrior, that is, the full burgess. With this view the usus loquendi coincides.  Where the locality was to be referred to, "Quirites" was never used, but always "Rome" and "Romans" (urbs Roma, populus, civis, ager Romanus), because the term quiris had as little of a local meaning as civis or miles. For the same reason these designations could not be combined; they did not say civis quiris, because both denoted, though from different points of view, the same legal conception. On the other hand the solemn announcement of the funeral of a burgess ran in the words "this warrior has departed in death" (ollus quiris leto datus); and in like manner the king addressed the assembled community by this name, and, when he sat in judgment, gave sentence according to the law of the warrior-freemen (ex iure quiritium, quite similar to the later ex iure civili). The phrase populus Romanus, quirites (populus Romanus quiritium is not sufficiently attested), thus means "the community and the individual burgesses," and therefore in an old formula (Liv. i. 32) to the populus Romanus are opposed the prisci Latini, to the quirites the homines prisci Latini(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.