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Besides the heavy infantry and the cavalry, there may have been a corps of light-armed troops (velites and arquites), and these would doubtless have been composed mainly of clients. We do not know whether the free Plebeians were forced to serve; but, if they did, it would only have been in this inferior capacity, which required no time for training and no cost of maintaining a panoply. It is evident that the whole burden of the regular levy, and of such war-taxation as then existed, fell upon the Patricians, and before the close of the monarchy an effort was made to remedy this unequal distribution of burdens—an effort which had as its result the abolition of the patrician tribes as the leading divisions of the state and a serious infringement of patrician rights.

The thirty curiae, originally local units, as is proved by their names,[147] were divided, ten into each of the three tribes. The members of the clans belonging to the same curia were called curiales. But, although the curiae had local centres, membership of these bodies did not depend on residence in a given locality. It was hereditary; and if the members of a gens migrated from its curia, the gentiles were still members of that state-division. The curiae were religious as well as political associations, which had from the first, or finally developed, a close corporate life. Each had its peculiar sacra[148] and a place of worship, containing an altar and chapel, which itself bore the name curia;[149] and the religious affairs of each were conducted by a priest called curio, assisted by a flamen curialis.[150] The thirty curiones formed a college, of which the curio maximus was the president.[151]