Talk:Roman tribe

Needs updating
This page is overly dependent on the now well out of date Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. It presents the ancient accounts in a very jejune way. It needs some serious work. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 22:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

The article needs updating and can be quite problematic
I totally agree with Eponymous-Archon. The article relies heavily on Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities (27 quotes), which was published in 1898 and a 1970 (2nd) edition the Oxford Classical Dictionary (12 quotes). The Oxford publication has been revised and updated to reflect the latest scholarship three times since then (1996, 3rd ed., 2003, revised 3rd ed., 2013, 4th ed.) The article also quotes a work by Ogilvie, which was published in 1965. As a consequence, there is material which comes from theories which were around in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries which were rejected by subsequent historians a long time ago. Thus, some of the problems with the article are related to the fact that it does not use more recent sources. It does not keep up with historiographic developments.

Moreover, some of what has been written is based on misunderstandings of the material.

Here are some problematic examples:

1) The article says: "According to tradition, the first three tribes were established by Romulus; originally these were the voting units of the comitia curiata, but from an early date they were superseded by their own subdivisions, the thirty curiae, or wards. The original Romulean tribes gradually vanished from history". This is an example of misunderstanding of material.

Here we have a sequence of three wrong statements: i) the Romulean tribes were not the voting units of the comitia curiata, ii) they were not superseded by the curiae, iii) they did not gradually vanish from history.

i) The voting units of the comitia curiata were the curiae. The name of this assembly clearly indicates this. The Romulean tribes and the curiae were two different administrative entities. These tribes served for the military levy and for taxation, [Dionysius of Halicarnassus (4.14), Varro (5.181)]. They had no function beyond this. The article gets confused here because it does not grasp this and gets the two entities muddled together. The curiae did contribute their share to the levy, but their role in dealing with local issues and in electing the kings was totally separate from the tribes. ii) Far from superseding the Romulean tribes, the curiae and these tribes existed side by side throughout their “Romulean” period. iii) The Romulean tribes were superseded by the Servian tribes (that is, by the reforms of the tribes carried out by Servius Tullius), rather than gradually disappear (where the heck does this come from? It is not referenced).

2) “... Servius Tullius established thirty new tribes, constituting the comitia tributa. This number was reduced to twenty at the beginning of the Roman Republic” … “Ten of the original rural tribes, whose names are lost to history, were destroyed in the war against Lars Porsena at the commencement of the Republic.”

a) The tribes established by Servius Tullius did not constitute the comitia tributa. This assembly was created long after the end of his reign. These tribes were originally created solely for the census and for citizen registration. Here there is a chronological misunderstanding of the material.

b) This stuff is about 30 and 20 tribes is related to the theories of Niebuhr and P. Conrelius, whose works were published in 1827-31 and 1940 respectively. P. Conrelius views came from the times when some of Niebuhr's early 19th century ideas which were still influential. However, this one has long been rejected and are now recognised as being hardly plausible. Historiography moved on from such theories (which were uncorroborated) decades ago. There is no evidence whatsoever that there had been 30 tribes and that they were then reduced to 20. Dionysius of Halicarnassus quoted the statements of various ancient writers who said that Servius Tullius created 30 or 35 tribes, but wisely noted that Cato the Elder, whom he considered more trustworthy, did not specify any number. It has been long recognised the figures given by Dionysius’ sources were erroneous and the consensus now is that one cannot reconstruct how many tribes Servius Tullius created. This theory was an awkward attempt to reconcile the above figures with Livy's statement that in 495 BC there were 21 tribes (2.21.7)- which is supported by Dionysius (7.64.6).

c) It has to be noted that the above theories are based on two very brief and isolated passages which suggest a conquest of Rome by Lars Porsena. One is by Tacitus in which he stated that Rome gave itself up to Lars Porsena (Hist. 3.27), and one is by Pliny, who wrote that Lars Porsena forbade the Romans from using iron for any other purpose but agriculture. (H. N, 34.14). However, according to Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lars Porsena did not conquer Rome. Therefore, this part of the article is also historiographically incomplete. It does not mention that there were different opinions among the ancient sources.

3) The article mentions a theory according to which the original tribes probably originated from Taquinius Priscus, rather than Romulus and that "the names, if not the ethnic character of all three of the Romulean tribes appear to be Etruscan." This is fine, but not without further qualification. This theory is dated. The article should also say that a) historiography had moved on from this, b) there is no evidence whatsoever for this contention. Now the view is simply that these tribes had nothing to do with ethnic or kinship groups and were just administrative divisions (Lintott and Cornell are among the more recent historians who highlight this). There is now a reluctance to unwisely come up with conjectures.

I object to theories which are abstract and not substantiated by any evidence being presented as if they were a matter of fact, as if they pertained to things which actually happened when in actual fact there is no proof and they are just total conjectures.

There are also problems with another statement. The article says that i) the settlers who moved to Rome with Appius Claudius "became the basis of the tribus Claudia, which was admitted in 495 BC during Claudius' consulship," and ii) adds a quote (without making use of quotations marks) from Harper's Dictionary: "subsequently enlarged to become the tribus Crustumina or Clustumina."

i) This connection with Claudius' first consulship is a very long shot to say the least. Neither Livy (2.16.4-5) nor Dionysius of Halicarnassus (5.40.3-5) mention that this tribe was created in 495 BC in their accounts of its formation. It is not mentioned in Harper's Dictionary either. Livy states that Appius Claudius was enrolled in the senate and "came in a short time to be regarded as one of its leading members." Becoming a senator must clearly have happened before he was elected as consul. To became a senator, he must have been given Roman citizenship. Given that in order to become a Roman citizen you had to be enrolled in a tribe, this tribe was probably created (not admitted; tribes were created, not admitted) before 495 BC. In any case, there is no evidence for either of these hypotheses. The article presents uncorroborated material as if it was a matter of fact again.

ii) This enlargement of the Claudia to become Crustumina/Clustumina sounds terribly odd. Neither Livy not Dionysus of Halicarnassus mention anything of the kind. I have not found anything of the kind in the secondary literature. Festus wrote that the Crustumina tribe was named after a Tuscan city (Lindsay ed. p. 55). This shows that the Crustumina/Clustimina existed as a separate tribe. Moreover, with this statement the article contradicts itself because it then lists the Clustumina as one of the rural tribes in its list of tribes. So, which is which?

Need for a better definition of tribe
The article starts with “A tribus, or tribe, was a division of the Roman people, constituting the voting units of a legislative assembly of the Roman Republic.” This is a partial definition. A crucial aspect of its functions, namely, the census and citizen registration, is missed out in the definition. Enrollment in the tribes is mentioned three paragraphs later. However, it is cursory and it is only referred to in relation to the entitlement to vote. The importance of the tribes as the basis of the census and citizen registration should be spelled out more clearly and should be part of the definition.

A more comprehensive and chronological phrasing could be: “A tribe was a territorial division [specify what type of division] of the Roman people. Originally it was the basis for the military levy and for taxation. * Later it also became the basis for the census and for the registration of Roman citizens.** During the Roman Republic it was also a voting district of one of Rome’s popular assemblies. *** |>>> [these assemblies are called popular assemblies in the secondary literature because they were not only legislative assemblies; they also elected magistrates and conducted trials.]

Such phrasing would include * its Romulean functions, ** its subsequent Servian functions and *** its becoming a voting district during the Republic. - 020amonra (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * A few responses are required to all of this. I'll try to address them serially in order to keep the issues separate.
 * First, the article doesn't intentionally quote from any source; if any phrases match the original wording of the source material, it's unintentional. However, you're mistaken in asserting that the passage you cite is an unattributed quotation.  The original source says, "This tribe was subsequently enlarged, and was then designated by the name Crustumina or Clustumina."  The paraphrase, which is clearly cited to the source, is "subsequently enlarged to become the tribus Crustumina or Clustumina."  Five of the same words are used; "subsequently enlarged" is hard to improve upon without changing the meaning, and I don't know how else you would say "Crustumina or Clustumina".
 * The second paragraph of the lead just needed to be reworded. The curiae certainly originated subdivisions of the Romulean tribes; you've cited no authority to the contrary.  I'm not sure what you mean by "the Romulean period" of the tribes and their curiae, but the lead never stated that the Romulean tribes ceased to exist before the establishment of the Servian tribes.  History provides no evidence that the Romulean tribes were ever abolished; Livy describes them as if they still existed in the time of Tarquinius Priscus.  Their constituent elements, the curiae, existed down to the end of Roman history.  But the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres do disappear as discrete entities.  Are there any mentions of them at all that can be securely dated to the period of the Republic?  Down to what date, if any?  As far as I know, there is no authority either for their abolition or their continuation.
 * Again, simple rewording resolves the misleading suggestion that Servius Tullius instituted the comitia tributa. Easily fixed.  Just because something is misstated doesn't mean that an editor is incapable of understanding it.
 * In your previous revisions, you devoted a great deal of time to "proving" that Servius Tullius didn't establish thirty tribes, and you've done so again here. But you haven't presented any authority that contradicts that statement that he did; the fact that one of three historians consulted by Dionysius didn't give a number doesn't establish what that number was, even if he was the most reliable.  Two of his three sources state that he instituted at least thirty tribes; none contradict this; at least some scholarly sources interpret this to mean that some of the original tribes were lost, and assign this fact to Porsena; do you have any scholarly sources that contradict them?  You keep saying "it is now recognized" but have yet to indicate who else recognizes it.
 * Arguing about whether Porsena entered Rome or didn't enter Rome is the definition of going off on a tangent. The article doesn't even say whether he did, and it's not really relevant to a discussion of the tribes.  Argument about the probable end result of Porsena's campaign belongs in other articles, and not this one.
 * It seems to be your contention that the names of the Romulean tribes being Etruscan is "dated" and that "historiography has moved on from this" (whatever that means). If you mean that other scholars now write, "the names are clearly Latin, not Etruscan as those old fogeys thought in the 1960's and 1970's", then you need to identify who says so and what exactly they say about the subject.
 * Livy at ii. 21 states that a new tribe was enrolled, shortly after he describes Appius Claudius becoming consul. We have the dates that all of the other "new" tribes were admitted, and the tribus Claudia could hardly have been created before the arrival of Claudius a decade earlier.  The article cited implies what you're saying it doesn't, and is supported by Livy and deductive reasoning; why are you arguing that it couldn't have happened, without any authority saying that it didn't?
 * I don't know why you're arguing about the statement concerning the tribus Crustumina. It is in a secondary source.  That source expressly says that the tribe was named after a place and isn't contradicted at all by Festus.  It doesn't say it wasn't a separate tribe; it says it was created out of the tribus Claudia, after it had been enlarged, seems perfectly reasonable, in the same way that Nevada was created out of the Utah Territory, without remaining part of Utah.  You seem to be confusing the idea that it was named after a town with the distinction between the urban and rural tribes; but there were only ever four urban tribes, and they were all part of the city of Rome.  Neither Claudia nor Crustumina were ever urban tribes; it's completely irrelevant whether it was named after a town or whether a town was within its territory.
 * The discussion about redefining the concept of tribe seems to argue that it's not comprehensive enough; but the purpose of an article lead is just to give a very brief overview to the topic; not to describe every relevant aspect of the topic. The primary concern of the lead is to explain what the tribes were in the context of Roman history and why they were important; their most important function was in the voting assemblies of the Roman Republic; taxation is relevant, but seldom the focus of secondary sources on the topic.  Details like this belong in the body of the article, not in the lead.  The current lead is four paragraphs, which is long for a lead; many articles have only a single paragraph or even a single sentence for a lead.  As you rewrote it last week, it had almost nine hundred words, and began with a paragraph longer than the entire lead is now.  In order to keep articles like this accessible to readers, it's vital not to lose focus and become lost in details.  Details go in the body of articles, and if they become too involved, they should become their own articles, with simple summaries and links here.
 * You seem to be objecting to the inclusion of material from scholarly sources, merely because of their age, and in the process making a lot of presumptions, without presenting any contradictory material or a basis on which to judge the difference. The article is not directly based on Niebuhr, but if some of it were that would hardly be a fault.  Much of Niebuhr's work continues to remain highly relevant and valuable in Roman history; as someone who claims to favour a historiographic approach (mentioned three times in the above paragraphs), you're giving precious little credit to the father of historiography.  I can confidently say that none of the article is based on "P Conrelius"; you just pulled that out of thin air.  And if you're going to assert that scholarship from 1965 and 1970 should be excluded or qualified based solely on age and not because it's contradicted by specific scholarship (most of what you're saying is very general, and doesn't address anything specific), then you're just picking and choosing sources that support your viewpoints, based on invalid criteria.
 * I hope these answer the major concerns. Many of the objections posted above concern matters that can easily be resolved simply by rewording sentences or paragraphs (and I've already edited some to address them).  Others involve issues where you contend that various statements are contradicted by current scholarship, but examples of that contradiction are lacking.  It's not enough to dismiss sources because they're "old".  You still need to provide authority that clearly and logically contradicts what is stated in other reliable sources.  I'm not saying that scholarship doesn't evolve over time; but you can't simply assume that whatever the most recent analysis is must necessarily be the best.  And above all, the article must remain accessible to readers.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:21, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * 1) Point taken.


 * 2) I did not say that the lead stated that the Romulean tribes ceased to exist before the establishment of the Servian tribes. The establishment of the Servian tribes is what brought the Romulean tribes (for the evidence of this see below). My comment was about something different: “but from an early date they were superseded by their own subdivisions, the thirty curiae or wards.” Anyway, this has been replaced with correct info.


 * I did not dispute the fact that the curiae originated as subdivisions of the Romulean tribes. What I said was that the remit of the curiae was wider than that of these tribes and that they performed some functions independently for the tribes. The Romulean tribes were solely for the military levy and for taxation. (Dion. Hal. 4.14) (Varro, 5.181) The management of the internal affairs of the curiae and their voting were separate from the tribes. The curiae and tribes were interrelated but the former acted separately in their non-military and non-fiscal functions.


 * Regarding the question of the Romulean tribes gradually disappearing from history, here is the evidence that this was not the case and that they were replaced by the new tribes established by Servius Tullius: “Servius Tullius divided the city into four regions which he named after the hills, calling the first the Palatina, the second the Subura, the third the Collina, and the fourth the Esquilina region; and by this means he made the city contain four tribes, whereas it previously had consisted of but three … and the levies of troops, the collection of taxes for military purposes, and the other services which every citizen was bound to offer to the commonwealth, he no longer based upon the three national tribes, as aforetime, but upon the four local tribes established by himself. (Dion. Hal. 4.14.1-2)


 * 3) I would never have even dreamt to suggest or imply incapability. Sorry it came across that way. Misunderstandings need not imply incapability. Anyway, this has also been changed. The date of the creation of the comitia tributa is known. It was established by Volero Publilius in 471 BC (Livy 2.56.3, Dion. Hal. 6.89.1-2).


 * 4) That was a mistake. I did not realise I wrote that. It was sloppy of me. I should have written ‘present a puzzle’ and I should have also handled the next paragraph better. The thing is that I did not want to go into the various theories which tried to resolve the 30/35 and 20/21 tribes discrepancy: the Lars Porsena theory, the theory which argued that the divisions Servius Tullius created outside the city were pagi instead of tribes, and the argument that these tribes were not created by Servius Tullius, but during the early Republic. These theories are uncorroborated conjectures which have no evidence base and did not really solve the puzzle. The main point I was trying to make was that the origins of the rural tribes are rather obscure because the information form the ancient sources is not quite clear. I should have thought what I am thinking now, to just write something along the lines “some modern historians came up with theories which attempted to account for this discrepancy but they did not manage to solve the puzzle due to limited information from the ancient sources,” and then provide references.


 * 5) I was not suggesting arguing about whether Porsena conquered Rome or not. In actual fact, I think that leaving it out would do no harm and that just a brief mention that some theories which tried to reconcile as mentioned above the discrepancy would do. Note that the Lars Porsena theory has been rejected (see Cornell, Thomsen and Taylor under 10).


 * 6) The question is not about whether historians argue about Etruscan or Latin origins of the names. It is broader than that. Historiography had moved on in two ways. One is about “Etruscanist” theories. In those days, there were fashionable theories about an Etruscan conquest of Rome or at least an Etruscan cultural dominance. Any progress in archaic Rome was down to the superiority of Etruscan civilisation. Ogilvie was one of the historians who upheld this view and his idea of a Tarquinian origin of the tribes came within this context. The also wrote “the Etruscans came to Rome and settled in force … It was a deep interpenetration of society at every level.” (Ogilvie, Early Rome and the Etruscans, 30) There is absolutely no evidence for either this statement or the Tarquinian origin theory. The evidence base the other strands of "Etruscanist" theories is very flimsy. This body of theories has been questioned by Colonna, J-C Mayer and others. Cornell pulled it apart, including material form Ogilvie. Of course, this criticism does not apply to Ogilvie’s work on Livy. Nevertheless, this “Etruscanism” is a thing in the past. The other moving on is that speculating about the origins of the tribes is not something which is pursued anymore (there cannot possibly be any evidence for any such conjectures). It is a thing of the past, too. Now there is the view that the tribes were not based on ethnicity or kinship.


 * In any case, my main point was that Ogilvie’s theory should not be left unqualified. To say that the ethnic view had fallen out of favour and then present the Tarquinian origin theory made it sound like this is the current line of thinking, which is not. A qualification has been added. However, I still see some problems. i) It would be better to introduce the Ogilvie theory by saying something like “there is also a theory according to which ...” This because it is better to clarify that it is a theory, rather than a matter of fact, and because this theory is separate form and later than the ethnic origin theories. ii) The ethnic origin theory is represented only in old books. It is not found in more recent works, except as a historiographic reference to older theories. It has been ditched. Thus, something like, “more recently some historians have argued that the Romulean tribes were not based on ethnicity or kinship and that they were simply administrative divisions” would be better. This structure would also strengthen the historiographic character of the paragraph.


 * A couple of examples for the latter view are: Lintott: “the word tribus had nothing to do with kinship groups; it meant simply a division or district into which people were distributed.” (Lintott, A., The Constitution of the Roman Republic, 50); Cornell: "The three tribes and thirty curiae were artificial units deliberately instituted for political and administrative purposes." (Cornell, T. J., The Beginnings of Rome, 116)


 * 7) OK, I forgot about the connection the between the 21 tribes in 495 BC and the first consulship of Appius Claudius. Point taken. I did not actually make any arguments about anything that could not have happened. I put things in term of probabilities. Also, what I wrote was incorrect, but I did not write anything that would imply that formation of the Claudia would or could have happened before Appius Claudius migrated, so I do not see the point in that comment. So, it must have been that only Appius Claudius was given Roman citizenship when he was enrolled in the senate. Tribes were created/formed, not admitted.


 * 8) The problem with this is that it is rather ambiguous. It can be read as you did, that the Clustumina was created out of the Claudia. It can also be read as meaning the Claudia was enlarged and was then given another name. That one might have been created out of the other is not actually clearly stated. Maybe, this is a US English way of putting things I am not familiar with. I feel that the fact that Harper’s did not reference this statement is unhelpful. No, I do not confuse the fact that this tribe was named after a town with the distinction between rural urban tribes. I know that rural tribes meant tribes outside the city of Rome and that there were towns in these tribes. The Scaptia tribe was also named after a town. I know that the urban tribes were only the four Servian tribes in the city of Rome. The point about Festus was that it showed that the Clustumina was separate from the Claudia.


 * 9) The Servian tribes had three primary functions, not one: the (regular) census, citizen registration and the vote. Originally, from the reign of Servius Tullius, to 471 BC, there was no voting by the tribes. There was roughly a gap of a century between the creation of these tribes and the establishment of the comitia tributa and prior to this the Servian tribes were only for the census and citizen registration. New tribes, census and citizen registration were the intrinsic parts of a threefold reform package. Census and registration were crucial for the functioning of late archaic and mid-to-late Republican society in many ways. In any case, in order to vote you had to be registered as a Roman citizen and this was done by the tribes. If you were not registered in a tribe you could not vote. Thus, registration in the tribes at the census were extremely important. This is why the question of the tribal registration of freedmen was at times such a big political issue. This is why the exclusion of a citizen from the tribes by the censors as a punishment was a disenfranchisement. This is not about describing every relevant aspect of the topic. It about the fact that these three elements were intertwined and of equal political importance. I see your objection to the length of my lead. However, the suggested definition is concise. With regard to taxation, the point in mentioning it is about the evolution of the tribes. The Romulean tribes were used only for the levy and taxation and the Servian reform introduced more functions, the census and citizen registration. Mentioning these things would involve the use of only 32 extra words. It is not a redefinition of a concept. It is not about concepts. It is an alternative description.


 * 10) Of course, the article is not directly based on Niebuhr. Of course, the article is not based on P Conrelius. I did not say these things at all. What I have said is that the material on Lars Porsena which was drawn from Harper’s Dictionary is derived from the theories of these two men. Therefore, it is not pulled out of the air. I have pointed out the sources of that material in Harper’s which had been used in the article. Harper’s did not reference it. And, yes, this theory had been rejected. Cornell writes “The ingenious arguments used to support this unlikely hypothesis have been shown to be fallacious, however, and is now generally rejected.” (Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, 174) Thomsen has written a detailed refutation of this theory (Thomsen, King Servius Tullius: A Historical Synthesis, 119-21) Taylor has also criticised it. (Taylor, L. R., The voting districts of the Roman Republic, 5)


 * Of course, much of Niebuhr's work continues to remain highly relevant and valuable. I did not intend to imply that. The point is that some of his ideas (some, not all) have been questioned. The same applies to the works of Mommsen and other early writers. What I am saying is that this particular idea of Niebuhr's (not all of them) is now recognised as being hardly plausible. 020amonra (talk) 10:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Some quick responses (I hope):
 * 2. I don't think that's the natural reading of this passage in Dionysius. It mentions the creation of an institution that superseded the Romulean tribes, but doesn't state or even imply that the Romulean tribes ceased to exist at this time.  And since the curiae were subdivisions of the Romulean tribes, it would be reasonable to assume that they continued to exist until abolished by some action, which is not known from any ancient source.  Is it possible that the Romulean tribes were abolished under the kings?  Of course.  But there's no evidence that they were ever abolished, and it's not clear from Dionysius that anything was done to them other than transferring some of their functions to the new tribes that he was creating.  On the whole, it's safer to say that they "vanished from history" at some indefinite point, because rather than when Servius instituted the new tribes.
 * 4. The best way to deal with recent conjectures is to footnote them, in the most concise language possible, at the point they would make the most sense. Using footnotes (the  format is used in this and many other articles in this project) allows you to digress in reasonable detail, while allowing the reader to bypass the discussion and come back to it once the basic or general scheme is understood.  The only drawback to this method is that you can't place ref tags inside the footnotes; but you can use inline citations, or simply place the citations after the footnote (especially if the same section or page from the source relates to the original point being footnoted).
 * 5. I don't quite see where you're going with Porsena. Cornell at 216–217 discusses both the "main annalistic tradition" in which he was prevented from taking the city, and the "variant tradition" in which he succeeded in entering the city, but later withdrew.  He seems sympathetic to the second, but notes that it still presents problems and that the conflict between the two may not be resolvable—and that resolving it isn't really necessary to understand the events associated with that period of time.  Really, no discussion of Porsena is necessary in this article except that, at least in one interpretation, his war at the beginning of the Republic accounts for the loss of ten of the original Servian tribes (presumably because whether he did or didn't occupy the city, he did occupy the territory assigned to these tribes for some period of time; when he withdrew, whatever was left was simply divided among the twenty remaining tribes).
 * 6. The theory you're worried about, as cited by the article, says only that the names of the tribes are Etruscan, and leaves unresolved whether the Romulean tribes themselves were an Etruscan institution. However, you can't dismiss the fact that a great many of Rome's citizens and institutions during this period were Etruscan.  A number of Rome's leading families at the beginning of the Republic were Etruscan (not just the kings); the emblems of imperium were Etruscan; and Etruscan culture is very evident in a number of areas, including Roman religion.  I'm not saying that Etruscans were the dominant portion of the populace; by all accounts Rome was still predominantly Latin.  But the Etruscans were still a large segment of the population, two of the last three kings were Etruscan, and the Etruscans were highly influential not just in Rome but throughout Latium.  So there's nothing revolutionary in the suggestion that the names of the Romulean tribes might have been Etruscan.  As for whether the tribes were or weren't originally ethnic divisions, I thought I'd already made the article more equivocal, but I'll look again.
 * 8. I don't think it's a variant of English in question; creating one thing out of another doesn't imply that the original thing ceases to exist, unless you state clearly that it did. I don't think this is particularly ambiguous.  I think that a typical reader would interpret it to mean that the territory and/or populace allocated to the tribus Claudia became very large and was then divided into two tribes, Claudia and Crustumina; that seems like the natural reading to me.  I mentioned the urban/rural distinction because in your comments above you said that the statement that Crustumina was a rural tribe contradicted a previous statement in the article.  I never figured out where that contradiction was.
 * 9. My point was about keeping the lead short and focused. An additional thirty-two words about taxation in the lead would probably make it sound as if taxation were the most important feature of the Servian tribes.  A section on taxation seems perfectly appropriate in the body of the article.  All of the aspects you mentioned are important, but most of them are best described in the body and not the lead.
 * 10. Could you identify the work of "P Conrelius" more specifically? I can't find it cited anywhere, and Google searches only come up with "Cornelius", which is too common to locate a work without more information.  You said he wrote in the 1940's, which would mean he can't be a source for Harper's.  Possibly if you meant the 1840's.  He's not cited in OCD2, so I can only assume his work didn't form a significant part of the articles used from that source.  Afraid I don't have access to all of the scholarly sources you do; it's unclear exactly what you're arguing since I can't see the context.  If you're saying that Servius Tullius didn't institute thirty tribes, I can see that Cornell is equivocal on the point; he describes various theories that would explain the discrepancy in the historical sources, but he doesn't state that one of these theories is true and the others false, much less that everyone agrees on which is true.  So to that extent at least, nothing is being discredited.  But bear in mind that the framework of this article has always been, "this is the traditional account, which has usually been interpreted to mean this; (a few, some, most) scholars now (question, disagree with) this understanding, and suggest that instead..."  It's as neutral as can be, without becoming meaningless.  And that's how it should be written.  Not "the current (correct) interpretation is... other (foolish, naïve) scholars from a long time ago used to believe... but we're smarter than they were."  That's precisely the kind of writing we need to avoid on Wikipedia.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:07, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * 2) Dionysius' statement that the Servian tribes superseded/supplanted the Romulean tribes does imply that the latter ceased to exist. He says that ALL the administrative functions of the Romulean tribes were transferred: “and the levies of troops, the collection of taxes for military purposes, and the other services which every citizen was bound to offer to the commonwealth, he no longer based upon the three national tribes as afore time, but upon the four local tribes established himself.” Dionysius was very clear, ALL services citizens were required to offer were transferred. There is not reference in the ancient literature of these two types of tribes existing in parallel or the earlier ones losing their functions but remaining only for ceremonial purposes. Furthermore, you do not seem to understand what I have already explained: a) the sole functions of the Romulean tribes were the military levy and taxation. (Dion. Hal. 4.14) (Varro, 5.181); b) the curiae were subdivisions of these tribes in terms of these two functions of these tribes, but in their non-military and non-fiscal functions (the management of their internal affairs and voting) they functioned separately from the Romulean tribes. Arguing that since the curiae were subdivisions of the Romulean tribes makes it reasonable to assume that these tribes continued to exist is a non sequitur. Because they had functional purposes independent from these tribes they could continue to exist even after the latter had ceased to exist. The Romulean tribes no longer had any administrative functions and, in the absence of evidence that they continued as some sort of ceremonial institutions, this does imply that they became defunct.


 * Regarding your view that "On the whole, it's safer to say that they "vanished from history" at some indefinite point, because rather than when Servius instituted the new tribes." Where is the actual evidence that the Romulean tribes "gradually vanished from history"? There is not anything in the ancient literature which suggests this.


 * Harper’s text is unclear. As I have already said, it seems to get the Romulean tribes and the curiae jumbled up. It says: "The history and organization of the three ancient tribes are mentioned under Patricii." However, under that heading it just mentions that the patricians were divided into three tribes – the notion that these tribes were patrician, as I have already noted, was ditched a long time ago. Then there is no further elucidation about these tribes. Later it says that the “political importance which the patrician Comitia Curiata possessed, through its right to confirm the decisions of the Comitia Centuriata, was lost in B.C. 286. The Comitia Tributa, in which the plebs had the preponderance …” What is this? The Lex Hortensia of 287 BC, made the resolutions of the plebeian council binding on all Roman citizens. It had nothing whatsoever to do with comitia centuriata or the comitia curiata. In any case, the comitia curiata was not the Romulean tribes.


 * Harper's also says that the Romulean tribes “continued of political importance almost down to the period of the decemviral legislation.” Again, it seems to get the Romulean tribes and the curiae jumbled up. The only attested institutional changes prior to the decemviri were a) the creation of the plebeian tribunes and aediles and the plebeian assembly in 494 BC; b) the lex Publilia of in 471 BC introduced by Volero Publilius which provided for the election of the plebeian tribunes by the tribes. According to Dionysius (6.89.1-2) and Asconius (Commentary on Cicero’s pro Cornelius, 68.4-5) form 494 BC (the year of the 1st plebeian secession and the creation of mentioned plebeian institutions) to 471 BC this had been done by the curae, which were not the same as the Romulean tribes. This does not prove that the latter continued to exist after the Servian reforms. Maybe Harper's jumbled the curiae and the Romulean tribes together because both were considered to be patrician institutions and, therefore, as politically coterminous.


 * Here is what OCD4 (2012) says: “Everything about the three original tribes is obscure. The modern theory that they represent different ethnic groups (e.g. Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans) is unfounded and improbable. The three tribes were subdivided into curiae and were supposedly the basis of the earliest military organisation of the state. A vestige [my italic] of this system survived in the Roman cavalry; the six oldest centuries of cavalry comprised two each of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. In republican times these original tribes had been replaced by a system of local tribes, to which Roman citizens belonged by virtue of residence. Tradition ascribes the local tribes to Servius Tullius, who divided the city into four tribes and the countryside into a number of rustic tribes. By 495 BC there were seventeen rustic tribes." Five things can be highlighted here:


 * A) The ethnic origin theory is presented as unfounded and improbable. This has been the view for quite some time. The revision in the article says that " Although the theory that the Romulean tribes represented the city's original ethnic components continues to be represented in modern scholarship ..." No, it is not. This is because nobody thinks this anymore. It is only represented as a historiographic reference to old theories which are no longer upheld.


 * B) It gives military organisation (the levy) as the function of the Romulean tribes. It does not mention taxation, but this was stated by Dionysius and Varro. These tribes had no other functions.


 * C) It says that by the Romulean tribes were replaced before the beginning of the Republic (i.e. had been replaced, not were replaced) and it does not say or suggest that they continued to exist.


 * D) Mommsen wrote that in historical times the names of the Romulean tribes was found only in the six cavalry centuries (which he saw as being patrician) (Roman History, ch. 4; Römisches Staatsrecht, III, p. 31). The only connection with the name of the Romulean tribes (not the tribes themselves) after the Servian reforms was only and exclusively be the names of the sex suffragia, which OCD4 calls the six oldest centuries of cavalry and describes as a vestige. The passage from Livy (1.36) you mentioned with regard to Tarquinius Priscus, does not actually refer to the Romulean tribes. It refers to the cavalry centuries called Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres and the disagreement with this king, who wanted to name the three new centuries he created after himself. This led to the names becoming Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres priores (or primae) for the old centuries and Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres posteriores (or secundae) for the new ones. These then became the sex suffragia of the comitia centuriata. There is a reason why OCD4 presents the six cavalry centuries as a vestige of the system of the Romulean tribes; it no longer existed.


 * E) It does not say how many rural tribes Servius Tullius has created. This is most probably because, as I have said, the origin of these tribes is rather obscure due to lack of clarity in the ancient sources (as Cornell clearly demonstrated), and maybe because the OCD4 contributor did not want to go into the theories about the discrepancy between 30/35 and 20/21 tribes I have mentioned.


 * 4) "The best way to deal with recent conjectures is to footnote them." Not necessarily. I suggested one sentence at the end of a paragraph: "More recently some historians have argued that the Romulean tribes were not based on ethnicity or kinship and that they were simply administrative divisions." That is concise. The simply could be dropped. I was not suggesting any digressions. I provided two quotations to show two examples of the argument. I was not necessarily suggesting to include them. And if they were to be included, yes, then they could be inserted as citations.


 * 5) We seem to have got our wires crossed. We are referring two different texts of Cornell which deal with two different matters. This is not about whether or not Lars Porsena seized Rome and it is not about the primary sources. It is about the modern thesis which tried to account for the discrepancy between 30/35 at the time of Servius Tullius and the and 20/21 tribes in 495 BC by putting it down to the loss of Roman territory through military reverses in the Lars Porsena episode. This is what Thomsen and Taylor have refuted. This is what Cornell points out as being fallacious: the idea that “Rome’s territory was more extensive under Servius Tullius than in the early 5th century, and that military reverses had caused it contract,” resulting in the 21 tribes in 495 BC. I have explained this further under 10).


 * 6) NB. I do not think that there is anything wrong with the way the article mentions the ethnic origin of the tribes theory. What I was suggesting was to give the paragraph a stronger historiographic structure.


 * The theory does not as you state, only say that the names of the tribes are Etruscan. It also says that Luceres belong to the Tarquinian period, rather than the time of Romulus. And it claims that there was large scale Etruscan presence in Rome in that period. This is questionable. These are uncorroborated conjectures without any evidence which came as part of these “Etrucanist” theories which have been proven to be fallacious. No, there is no evidence whatsoever that there was a large Etruscan segment of the population of Rome in this period. This is exactly one of the things Cornell directly refutes. He also says that these theories were based on “mistaken a-priori assumptions.” Remember that the material from the sources regarding this period is very scant. It contains no reference to a large Etruscan population. There is no archaeological evidence for this either.


 * This “Etruscanist” stuff came as part of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiments which were around in Europe at the time of decolonisation. The Romans became a symbol of imperialism who had to be run down. The early Romans were portrayed as a primitive lot and it took the superior Etruscan civilisation to civilise them. Ironically, as some scholars have pointed out, it reproduced the colonialist idea of one group being superior to another. Instead of trying to test whether one’s hypotheses are valid or not, these scholars manipulated the scant material to suit their theories. There are plenty of examples of this. There was also a lot of history rewriting, including changes in the historical chronology.


 * As for influences, Cornell notes that in the 1980s scholars begun “to abandon the old ‘imperialist models of cultural superiority and diffusion” and concentrate on the idea of interaction. He endorses the concept of ‘peer polity interaction’ introduced by archaeologists. This sees cultural change as occurring through “contacts, exchange and competition” between independent polities within a region through two-way, mutual interaction, rather than the “one-way traffic” view of the “Etruscanist” theories. Using this alternative model, Cornell argues for a common Tyrrhenian cultural koine; that is, “the spread of a common cultural idiom throughout Tyrrhenian Italy involving the ethnic groups of Etruria, Latium and Campania.” The “interchange of goods, ideas and persons” between these areas “and the outside word”, produced a "common material culture shared by peoples with distinct ethnic and linguistic identities.” Outside world refers to influence by the Greeks in Italy. Let us not forget that the Etruscan civilisation emerged as the result of trade with and very deep the influence by the Greeks (the orientalising period). It is unlikely that Rome was totally isolated from this Geek influence and let us not forget that the Greek city of Cumae was only 125 miles from Rome.


 * The process of formation of a common Tyrrhenian cultural koine was aided by trade throughout the Tyrrhenian Italy (attested by outside-the walls sanctuaries for traders in Etruscan and Latin towns), aristocratic horizontal mobility (aristocrats moving to different towns, and being welcomed by local aristocrats) and Greek-influenced pan-ethnic aristocratic identities which produced uniform iconography. There is evidence of the presence of Latin and Roman high ranking men in Etruscan towns and of Latin influence in Etruria, as well as the other way round. Besides uniformity in material culture and high status objects, “interaction also led to parallel developments in political and religious institutions and promoted intensification of production, more complex and hierarchical social systems, and the process of urbanisation and state formation.” Rome’s adoption of Greek mythology and divine iconography in the 7th and 6th centuries was “in the mainstream of cultural development in Tyrrhenian Italy”.


 * 8) I am not convinced about this. I am not convinced that it reads automatically the way you say. It can be read differently.


 * 9) You did not get what I meant. You say that the additions I suggest give the impression that the most important feature of the Servian tribes was taxation. Given that the Servian tribes are not even mentioned in the sentence, how can this be? At this point a reader might not even know what the Servian tribes were. My wording says that originally the tribe was for the military levy and taxation (not just taxation) – these were exactly the sole functions of the Romulean tribes. It adds that later it also became the basis for the census and for the registration of Roman citizens. Therefore, it is put in a chronological framework in which there was evolution. It also mentions what the very purpose of the creation of the Servian tribes was: the census and citizen registration by the tribes (roughly a century before voting by the tribes was introduced), which was crucial for the functioning of Roman society from Servius Tullius to the late Republic. And after that it says that during the Republic it became a voting unit (the last stage of its development).


 * 10) Yes, that’s right, the source for Harper’s is Niebuhr. F. Cornelius came later. He further elaborated Niebuhr’s theory. And sorry, it is F. Cornelius, Friedrich Cornelius. There is a page on him on the German Wikipedia. He was an important early 20th century German scholar. I do not think that his work has been translated into English. The book is called Untersuchungen zur frühen römischen Geshichte. (Studies on Early Roman History).


 * No, I am not saying that Servius Tullius did not institute 30 tribes. What I have said is that the origin of the rural tribes is rather (not totally) obscure because the sources (as Cornell has pointed out) are not quite clear on this subject. Moreover, on the point of whether or not Servius Tullius created 30/35 tribes, I am in disagreement with Cornell, who disagrees with this.


 * Cornell is not equivocal with regard to the three theories about the discrepancy as you say. You seem to have in mind a different text of his, rather than the one I am referring to. You mention a discussion of the annalistic tradition and the "variant tradition" on pp. 216–217 of some text. I am talking about pp. 175-78 of “The Beginnings of Rome”, in which Cornell discusses the three theories about the discrepancy which are found in the secondary literature, not in the ancient sources. He points out the refutation of the mentioned loss of territory (due to Lars Porsena) theory and endorses it by saying that its arguments have been shown to be fallacious. He is not equivocal about the idea Servius Tullius created pagi instead of rural tribes and he is not neutral because he says this theory is more acceptable. With regard to the idea that the rural tribes did not date back to the regal period and that they were created in the early Republic, he argues that there is not sufficient evidential support for this, that it has weaknesses, and that a regal origin cannot be ruled out. This is not equivocal either. He also presents another possible hypothesis and argues that Servius Tullius could not have created more than 15 rural tribes. I do not agree with this. I think that we cannot know anything for sure.


 * My suggestion does not contain anything whatsoever which suggests or implies that “the current (correct) interpretation is... other (foolish, naïve) scholars from a long time ago used to believe... but we're smarter than they were." What I wrote is “more recently some historians have argued that ..." There is absolutely no value judgement involved in this wording. It just points out that new arguments have emerged (things simply evolve). How do you see this wording as implying what you say? Have I referred to the older ideas as being foolish or naïve, or implied any such thing? No, I have not. Have referred to the more recent ideas as correct or implied that they are so? No I have not. Have I suggested that the more recent historians are smarter? No, I have not. Have I suggested that they disagree with the previous understanding? No, I have not. I have not even done that. I simply have reported that there are new ideas. Funnily enough, you are the one who in wrote in the article that the ethnic view is rejected by many scholars. My wording just says that there is a more recent view and spells out what it is.


 * 2. There's a difference between something being obsolete or defunct, and being abolished. There's no evidence that the Romulean tribes ceased to exist at any particular time or with any particular act.  You can't substitute your interpretation of Dionysius for the conclusions explicitly stated in reliable secondary sources.  I wish you'd stop saying that I don't understand your argument; I understand it perfectly.  But it's basically your interpretation, not something stated in any ancient authority or by any secondary source.  If you can find a scholarly source stating that the Romulean tribes were utterly abolished rather than merely rendered obsolete, that would still require some qualification, since it's not a general opinion, but that of one scholar; but at least it could go in the article.


 * You think that Harper's has the tribes and curiae mixed up in the sentence you're quoting. That's not impossible, but it's your theory based on your interpretation of various sources, and that's the definition of "original research".  Harper's is a valid secondary source; you and I are not.  Readers don't have the opportunity to evaluate our qualifications, expertise, or logic.  But as to the merits, as you yourself pointed out, some scholars have suggested that the Servian tribes didn't actually assume the character of tribes until the early Republic, and perhaps the period of the decemvirs.  So there is a logical explanation that would support the statement.  But since this particular statement isn't in this article, the reason for it or whether it's accurate isn't actually relevant.


 * Different secondary sources say different things about the idea that the tribes originally represented the ethnic divisions of early Rome; you can't point at one of them and say "this one says 'foo', therefore 'foo' is so and all the sources that said 'fee' are wrong and outdated," yet that's still your central argument. You say that "nobody believes this anymore" but all you have are sources that say that it's "improbable", which is not the same as saying whether it was or wasn't the case.  And what this article says is that it was once widely believed, which is true.  It would be inappropriate to present this theory as "incorrect" or "outmoded" simply because it's "improbable", because that would imply that the theory is wrong, which is not what OCD says.


 * You're putting a lot of weight on the word "vestige" to show that the Romulean tribes didn't exist in any form; but at the same time you're ignoring the possibility that the word implies continued existence in a minimal form. Again, there's a huge difference between stating what a secondary source clearly says and what you interpret to be its unstated intention.  For the same reason, your theory as to the reasons why the author of this article didn't address the discrepancies over the number of the Servian tribes can't go in this article.


 * 4. The fact that the Romulean tribes may have had nothing to do with ethnicity is stated in the article. It may reasonably be rephrased or improved.  But detailed discussion of the various theories belongs in footnotes or a separate article, perhaps about the Romulean tribes specifically.  Have you considered writing such an article, where you could go into as much detail as you think necessary?  In any case, a footnote is where explanatory notes and details belong in this article.  That's where all the notes are now; the references are only citations to the sources.  It would be confusing to have such notes in two different places, or hidden amidst a list of short citations.


 * 5. This also seems to be your interpretation of what the authors of the secondary sources were saying. The argument only makes sense if you assume that the older sources were basing their statement on the reduction in the number of tribes on a permanent loss of Roman territory; but they don't say that this was the reason.  Certainly Roman territory was affected by the invasion of Lars Porsena, since whether he conquered the city or not, he controlled all of the territory up to the city for at least some period of time; and that alone might be enough to account for the loss of some tribes, even if Rome recovered all of its possessions when Porsena withdrew.  We simply can't substitute our ideas of what the secondary sources had in mind for what they actually say.


 * 6. I think you're still misinterpreting what I've said about the theory that the names of the tribes were Etruscan. I am not arguing that the tribes were of Etruscan origin or that Etruscanizing views of early Rome are correct.  All of that is irrelevant to this article, because this article only says that the names were probably Etruscan.  You can argue till the cows come home about the other things that sources cited in this article said and whether those things are correct, but they're not relevant to this article unless this article says those things, which it does not.  I would be going off on a tangent if I said that clearly there was a large Etruscan element in the population of the early Republic, since not only had the royal family been Etruscan by birth, adoption, or marriage for more than a century, but so were the first two consuls, two of the three heroes said to have held the Sublician bridge, and nearly all the emblems of leadership or authority adopted by the nascent Republic.  A number of leading families in the early Republic are thought by at least some scholars to have been Etruscan.  But as I said, this is a tangent, because this article isn't arguing that.  All it says is that the names of the Romulean tribes, as transmitted by later historians, were probably Etruscan.


 * 8. Placed in the context that both tribes still existed after one was enlarged and the other created out of it, which is what the article says, the interpretation of "created out of" is unambiguous.


 * 9. The question is not one of inclusion, but one of emphasis. An article lead is supposed to be a short summary of the main points.  The level of detail you're trying to add to the lead changes it from a short summary of the main points to a discourse about the tribes, which belongs in the body of the article, like all of the other details that aren't mentioned in the lead.  This material can go in the article.  But it needs to be in an appropriate location, and not in the lead.


 * 10. I'm not sure why you're arguing that Cornell's view isn't equivocal. He plainly states that there are conflicting theories that cannot easily be reconciled, and that it is impossible to unravel the truth of the matter with any certainty at this point in time.  That's the very definition of being equivocal about the issue.  The fact that some ideas are more probable than others due to A, B, and C does not amount to Cornell determining that one tradition is right and the other wrong.  Saying that A is more probable than B or that C is likely and D unlikely doesn't amount to endorsing, refuting, or rejecting anything.  You're trying to impose truth on something that the best scholars are uncertain about.  As Wikipedia editors, we can only state what our sources say.  We cannot interpret what we think they mean and substitute that for what they say.  I realize that sometimes writing about complex topics veers toward synthesis, and that the line between summarizing something and original research is not always clear.  But in this case, what you want to say is unquestionably substituting your interpretation for what the sources actually say.  If you can avoid that tendency, you have a great deal of expertise to contribute to this article or other articles on Wikipedia.  P Aculeius (talk) 00:52, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Problems with Harper's
I need to point out some problems with Harper’s due to the fact that it is a 19th century publication. In those days, the theory was that the patricians were the original citizens of Rome and the plebeians were later settlers. Under "Patricii" Harper’s says that originally, the patricians were "the actual citizens who constituted the populus Romanus." They were divided in tribes and curiae and "Besides [the patricians] there were originally only clientes, settlers enjoying no legal rights, with the citizens for their protectors (or patroni). Afterwards, when a new element of the population, endowed with partial citizenship, called the plebs (q.v.), sprang up from the settlement of subjugated Latin tribes, the patricii stood in contrast to them as old citizens possessing full rights." Harper's also says that Servius Tullius gave the plebs fuller citizenship. Under "Tribus" it says that “the three ancient Romulian tribes … must be distinguished from the thirty plebeian tribes of Servius Tullius …”

This kind of stuff was questioned and left behind decades ago. Now nobody believes this view of patricians as the original citizens, their clients as the only other original inhabitants of the city and the plebeians as later settlers or that there were differences in citizenship status anymore. It is recognised as being implausible. Moreover, there is no real evidence for it. Now nobody says that the Romulean tribes were patrician and the Servian tribes were plebeian either.

Harper’s also says “The history and organization of the three ancient tribes are mentioned under Patricii. They continued of political importance almost down to the period of the decemviral legislation; but after this time they no longer occur in the history of Rome, except as an obsolete institution.” This wording is confusing. This must pertain the curaie, not the Romulean tribes. The latter ended with their replacement by the Servian tribes. It was the curiae which continued to exist, not the Romulean tribes. It was the curae, not the Romulean tribes, which became an obsolete institution. They ceased to function as a popular assembly and became something which was used only for formal ceremonies and with no popular participation. In the late Republic Cicero wrote that the comitia curiata was "convened in appearance, to keep up an ancient custom." (Cicero, On the Agrarian Law, 2.12.31) Taylor thinks that the comitia curiata eventually functioned as nothing more than a reminder of Rome's regal heritage. (Taylor, L. R., Roman Voting Assemblies) The curaie as the city of Rome's subdivisions ended with the reform of Augustus which redivided the city of Rome into fourteen regions. 020amonra (talk) 11:41, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The problem with the main part of this argument is that it's not about the material that's actually cited, but about whether the source itself has value. Simply because some of the understandings we have about the structure of Roman society have changed doesn't mean that the rest of the work is inaccurate or useless as a source.  And you have to realize that interpretations change over time; the current interpretations may not be definitive, any more than those of twenty, forty, or sixty years ago, which current writers have abandoned.


 * The belief that the Patricii were the descendants of the original settlers of Rome in the time of Romulus, and that the plebeians were descended from refugees, freedmen, and captives taken in war, isn't a 19th century concept. It was how the Romans themselves viewed their origins, and that view itself is of value in describing the development of institutions from the traditional standpoint.  It's fine to note where scholarship questions or disagrees with traditional viewpoints, and to explain other theories, but it's not okay to wallpaper over the Romans' own account or other interpretations of it merely because the currently prevailing theories disagree with them.


 * I'm not sure what you're saying about there being no difference in the status of patricians and plebeians; I'm not aware of any credible source that makes such a claim. With respect to whether the plebeians made up the whole of the Servian Tribes, I admit the article "tribus" words it misleadingly, but it also refers the reader to the article "plebs", which states of the comitia tributa, "the plebeians had the chief weight in that assembly", i.e. patricians were included, but did not form the majority.  The belief that the comitia curiata excluded the plebeians was questioned by Mommsen, fifty years before Harper's, the mere use of which you're questioning based primarily on age; and the fact of that disagreement is clearly expressed in the Wikipedia article.  The use or inclusion of a source does not imply the adoption or endorsement of every point or opinion found in it, nor does the rejection of a point or opinion mean that the source should be avoided.  That's why our article cites multiple sources, not just one.


 * I don't find the wording about the disappearance of the Romulean tribes confusing; there's not a single source that states when or even if the Romulean tribes were ever abolished. Indeed, the continued existence of their subdivisions, the curiae, implies that at least in theory, the tribes still existed, if only in name.  The curiae, while they lost a considerable degree of importance, didn't lose all of their significance at any point in the Republic, since they were still required to confer imperium on magistrates, and retained other powers that were never transferred to the other comitia.  It was, as the article states, the Romulean tribes, not the curiae, that were rendered obsolete with the passage of time.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:46, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The article could gain a lot from using the reference work of Lily Ross Taylor, The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic: The Thirty-five Urban and Rural Tribes, which is indeed better than Harper. T8612  (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

OCD 2 entry authors
Hello there. Do you know who authored the various entries cited in OCD2? (If it's anything like OCD4, the entries would have initials which have to be cross-referenced back to names.) If so, I think it worthwhile to include the authors in the bibliography. Ifly6 (talk) 19:19, 1 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm a bit under the weather right now. Can you be more specific about which entries?  The article on Roman tribes is attributed to "A. M.", which according to the list of contributors is Arnaldo Momigliano.  P Aculeius (talk) 19:38, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * All fine. There aren't any deadlines. Feel free to respond whenever convenient. I'm referring to the entries in OCD2 sv tribus, tribuni aerarii, and comitia. I'll add in Template:Harvc anchor for tribus. Ifly6 (talk) 00:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Comitia and Tribus are Arnaldo Momigliano; Tribuni Aerarii is Piero Treves. P Aculeius (talk) 03:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Ifly6 (talk) 04:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)