Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, page 600

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[10arg] The meaning of proletarii and capite censi; also of adsiduus in the Twelve Tables, and the origin of the word.

ONE day there was a cessation of business in the Forum at Rome, and as the holiday was being joyfully celebrated, it chanced that one of the books of the Annals of Ennius was read in an assembly of very many persons. In this book the following lines occurred: ¹

With shield and savage sword is Proletarius armed
At public cost; they guard our walls, our mart and town.

Then the question was raised there, what proletarius meant. And seeing in that company a man who was skilled in the civil law, a friend of mine, I asked him to explain the word to us; and when he rejoined that he was an expert in civil law and not in grammatical matters, I said: " You in particular ought to explain this, since, as you declare, you are skilled in civil law. For Quintus Ennius took this word from your Twelve Tables, in which, if I remember aright, we have the following: ² 'For a freeholder let the protector ³ be a freeholder. For a proletariate citizen ⁴ let whoso will be protector. “We therefore ask you to consider that not one of the books of Quintus Ennius' Annals, but the Twelve ”

1 Ann. 183 ff.

2 i. 4.

3 The vindex is here one who voluntarily agrees to go before the magistrate as the representative of the defendant, and thereby takes upon himself the action in the stead of the latter (Allen, Remnants of Early Latin, p. 85).

4 The proletarii (cf. proles) were “child-producers,” who made no other contribution to the State; see § 13.

The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.

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Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.

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Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.