The clans were distributed among the several curies; their limits and those of the household were furnished by nature.

That the legislative power interfered in these groups by way of modification, that it subdivided the large clan and counted it as two, or joined several weak ones together, there is no indication at all in Roman tradition; at any rate this took place only in a way so limited that the fundamental character of affinity belonging to the clan was not thereby altered.

We may not therefore conceive the number of the clans, and still less that of the households, as a legally fixed one; if the -curia- had to furnish a hundred men on foot and ten horsemen, it is not affirmed by tradition, nor is it credible, that one horseman was taken from each clan and one foot-soldier from each house.

The only member that discharged functions in the oldest constitutional organization was the -curia-.

Of these there were ten, or, where there were several tribes, ten to each tribe.