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This centuriate organisation seems to have little or no connexion with the four Servian tribes,[304] beyond the accidental one that the basis of qualification was mainly land, and that all land which was private property was registered in the tribes. Its primary meaning was the assembly and registration of those liable for military service. It acquired a secondary meaning when (at what period we do not know but perhaps from its first organisation) it was used as a scheme for the collection of taxes on the registered wealth of the citizens in the classes. The act of registration (census) was a solemn religious function conducted by the king. He numbered his fighting force, saw that each warrior was in his due rank, excluded from these ranks men who were stained with sin, and then concluded the examination with a ceremony of purification (lustrum). It is only with reference to the collection of taxes imposed at this levy that the tribe would be of importance. The century was a military unit, dissolved as soon as the army was disbanded; the tribe was permanent, hence the war-tax (tributum) was perhaps collected from the first by the presidents of the tribes.[305]

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