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A more real historical difficulty with respect to the original connotation of these words, is to determine whether they denoted the whole people, Plebeians as well as Patricians. Roman records do not use populus as equivalent to the patrician community alone; but these records all refer to a time after the Plebeians had won political rights, at least the rights of serving in the legions and of voting. If populus and quirites denoted the aggregate of fighting, and therefore privileged, men, they must have originally referred exclusively to the patrician community. After the Servian constitution the words denote the whole people (universus populus). Populus and plebs are henceforth only distinguished as the whole to the part—the distinction being necessary, since the Plebs continued to form a corporation apart, and this corporation excluded the patrician families.[123] So, in a later official formula, senatus populusque Romanus denotes two corporations, the latter composed of all the members of the state, but in this the individual members of the smaller corporation are included.

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