The king managed the finances.  The property of the state, however, was not identified with the private property of the king; which, judging from the statements regarding the extensive landed possessions of the last Roman royal house, the Tarquins, must have been considerable.  The ground won by arms, in particular, appears to have been constantly regarded as property of the state.  Whether and how far the king was restricted by use and wont in the administration of the public property, can no longer be ascertained; only the subsequent course of things shows that the burgesses can never have been consulted regarding it, whereas it was probably the custom to consult the senate in the imposition of the -tributum- and in the distribution of the lands won in war.

Rights of the Burgesses

The Roman burgesses, however, do not merely come into view as furnishing contributions and rendering service; they also bore a part in the public government.  For this purpose all the members of the community (with the exception of the women, and the children still incapable of bearing arms)—­in other words, the “spearmen” (-quirites-) as in addressing them they were designated—­assembled at the seat of justice, when the king convoked them for the purpose of making a communication (-conventio-, -contio-) or formally bade them meet (-comitia-) for the third week (-in trinum noundinum-), to consult them by curies.  He appointed such formal assemblies of the community to be held regularly twice a year, on the 24th of March and the 24th of May, and as often besides as seemed to him necessary.  The burgesses, however, were always summoned not to speak, but to hear; not to ask questions, but to answer.  No one spoke in the assembly but the king, or he to whom the king saw fit to grant liberty of speech; and the speaking of the burgesses consisted of a simple answer to the question of the king, without discussion, without reasons, without conditions, without breaking up the question even into parts.  Nevertheless the Roman burgess-community, like the Germanic and not improbably the primitive Indo-Germanic communities in general, was the real and ultimate basis of the political idea of sovereignty.  But in the ordinary course of things this sovereignty was dormant, or only had its expression in the fact that the burgess-body voluntarily bound itself to render allegiance to its president.  For that purpose the king, after he had entered on his office, addressed to the assembled curies the question whether they would be true and loyal to him and would according to use and wont acknowledge himself as well as his messengers (-lictores-); a question, which undoubtedly might no more be answered in the negative than the parallel homage in the case of a hereditary monarchy might be refused.