8.  I. II.  Primitive Races of Italy

9. -Quiris-, -quiritis-, or -quirinus- is interpreted by the ancients as “lance-bearer,” from -quiris- or -curis- = lance and -ire-, and so far in their view agrees with -samnis-, -samnitis-and -sabinus-, which also among the ancients was derived from —­saunion—­, spear.  This etymology, which associates the word with -arquites-, -milites-, -pedites-, -equites-, -velites- —­those respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment—­may be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a burgess.  So too Juno quiritis, (Mars) quirinus, Janus quirinus, are conceived as divinities that hurl the spear; and, employed in reference to men, -quiris- is the warrior, that is, the full burgess.  With this view the -usus loquendi- coincides.  Where the locality was to be referred to, “Quirites” was never used, but always “Rome” and “Romans” (-urbs Roma-, -populus-, -civis-, -ager Romanus-), because the term -quiris- had as little of a local meaning as -civis- or -miles-.  For the same reason these designations could not be combined; they did not say -civis quiris-, because both denoted, though from different points of view, the same legal conception.  On the other hand the solemn announcement of the funeral of a burgess ran in the words “this warrior has departed in death” (-ollus quiris leto datus-); and in like manner the king addressed the assembled community by this name, and, when he sat in judgment, gave sentence according to the law of the warrior-freemen (-ex iure quiritium-, quite similar to the later -ex iure civili-).  The phrase -populus Romanus-, -quirites- (-populus Romanus quiritium-is not sufficiently attested), thus means “the community and the individual burgesses,” and therefore in an old formula (Liv. i. 32) to the -populus Romanus- are opposed the -prisci Latini-, to the -quirites- the -homines prisci Latini- (Becker, Handb. ii. 20 seq.)

In the face of these facts nothing but ignorance of language and of history can still adhere to the idea that the Roman community was once confronted by a Quirite community of a similar kind, and that after their incorporation the name of the newly received community supplanted in ritual and legal phraseology that of the receiver.—­Comp. iv.  The Hill-Romans On The Quirinal, note.

10.  Among the eight ritual institutions of Numa, Dionysius (ii. 64) after naming the Curiones and Flamines, specifies as the third the leaders of the horsemen (—­oi eigemones ton Kelerion—­).  According to the Praenestine calendar a festival was celebrated at the Comitium on the 19th March [adstantibus pon]tificibus et trib(unis) celer(um).  Valerius Antias (in Dionys. i. 13, comp. iii. 41) assigns to the earliest Roman cavalry a leader, Celer, and three centurions; whereas in the treatise De viris ill. i, Celer himself is termed -centurio-.  Moreover Brutus is affirmed to have been -tribunus celerum-