Rousseau_contrat-social

First the censors, after having for a long time claimed the right of
transferring citizens arbitrarily from one tribe to another, allowed
most persons to enrol themselves in whatever tribe they pleased. This
permission certainly did no good, and further robbed the censorship of
one of its greatest resources. Moreover, as the great and powerful all
got themselves enrolled in the country tribes, while the freedmen who
had become citizens remained with the populace in the town tribes, both
soon ceased to have any local or territorial meaning, and all were so
confused that the members of one could not be told from those of another
except by the registers; so that the idea of the word tribe became
personal instead of real, or rather came to be little more than a
chimera.
It happened in addition that the town tribes, being more on the spot,
were often the stronger in the comitia and sold the State to those who
stooped to buy the votes of the rabble composing them.
As the founder had set up ten curiæ in each tribe, the whole Roman
people, which was then contained within the walls, consisted of thirty
curiæ, each with its temples, its gods, its officers, its priests and
its festivals, which were called compitalia and corresponded to the
paganalia, held in later times by the rural tribes.
When Servius made his new division, as the thirty curiæ could not be
shared equally between his four tribes, and as he was unwilling to
interfere with them, they became a further division of the inhabitants
of Rome, quite independent of the tribes: but in the case of the rural
tribes and their members there was no question of curiæ, as the tribes
had then become a purely civil institution, and, a new system of levying
troops having been introduced, the military divisions of Romulus were
superfluous. Thus, although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, there
were very many who were not members of a curia.
Servius made yet a third division, quite distinct from the two we have
mentioned, which became, in its effects, the most important of all. He
distributed the whole Roman people into six classes, distinguished
neither by place nor by person, but by wealth; the first classes
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