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To begin with, we may ask the pertinent question, how the corn sold cheap by the State was made into bread for the small consumer. Pliny gives us very valuable information, which we may accept as roughly correct, that until the year 171 B.C. there were no bakers in Rome. "The Quirites," he says, "made their own bread, which was the business of the women, as it is still among most peoples."
For some time also under the Republic, when a vote was to be taken in the Comitia upon a proposed law, the question was thus put: "Is this your pleasure, O Quirites, and do you hold it to be the will of the gods?"
Others, again, say that the spear-head or spear was called by the ancients Quiris, and that the statue of Juno leaning on a spear is called Juno Quirites, and that the dart which is placed in the Regia is addressed as Mars, and that it is customary to present with a spear those who have distinguished themselves in war, and therefore that it was as a warrior, or god of war, that Romulus was called Quirinus.
The distinction between Quirites and soldiers became more and more deeply rooted in the minds of the burgesses. Government of the Patriciate Time however was required for the development of these consequences of the new republicanism; vividly as posterity felt its effects, the revolution probably appeared to the contemporary world at first in a different light.
He had restrained his aversion for a long time, it is true; but once when he brought her two quails, which he had bought in the market with his own earned money, the descendant of the Quirites spoke out in Vinicius, for whom one who had wandered in from a strange people had less worth than the meanest worm.
Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate matrimony: 'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of care /ea molestia careremus/; but since nature has so managed it that we cannot live with women comfortably, nor without them at all, let us rather provide for the human race than our own temporary felicity."
They still beheld the splendid mechanism of government, the glitter and the pomp of armies, triumphal processions, new monuments of victory, the proud eagles, and all the emblems of unlimited dominion. What had they to fear? "Nihil est, Quirites, quod timere possitis." Nor to the eye of contemporaries was the great change, which had gradually taken place since the reign of Trajan, apparent.
He rose; advanced a step or two, in front of his curule chair, and in a clear slow voice gave utterance to the solemn words, which formed the exordium to all senatorial business. "May this be good, and of good omen, happy, and fortunate to the Roman people, the Quirites; which now I lay before you, Fathers, and Conscript Senators."
The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen, when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.
Then, when they came into the assembly of the Samnites, and to the tribunal of Pontius, Aulus Cornelius Arvina, a herald, pronounced these words: "Forasmuch as these men, here present, without orders from the Roman people, the Quirites, entered into surety, that a treaty should be made, and have thereby rendered themselves criminal; now, in order that the Roman people may be freed from the crime of impiety, I here surrender these men into your hands."
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