war-service

Updated: June 15, 2025

When in the course of time a large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently, by treating the members of the community without reference to their political position once for all according to their freeholding, and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders a step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed by the concession of public rights.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)