the second order in the State. Its members were necessarily men of wealth and substance, and necessarily likewise they were men who renounced the chances held out to ambition by the official career of magistracy. The new order borrowed a name from the centuries of Knights, which had originally formed the cavalry of the State, and for which a high property qualification was required. Every Roman who was in possession of the requisite property (about £4ooo),[1] and who had never held a magistracy or sat in the Senate, now called himself a "Roman Knight." The phrase implies pretty much what we mean when we speak of a "private gentleman." The consolidation of the order is due to Caius Gracchus. He gave the Knights outward signs of distinction, the narrow hem of purple on the tunic, the gold ring, and the right to reserved seats, immediately behind the senatorial stalls, in the theatre; he multiplied their influence and their gains by ordering the collection of the taxes of Rome's new province of Asia to be farmed out to them; and above all he gave them a controlling power over the Nobles, by bestowing on them the exclusive right to sit as jurors in the criminal courts.
This new order occupied a position midway between ruling senatorial families and the mass of the
- ↑ Throughout this volume I count 100 sesterces as equal to £1 sterling, and an Attic talent as equal to £250. This is a rough compromise between the weight of gold and the weight of silver in the sums named. In the ancient world gold was worth only about twelve time its weight in silver.
