Niebuhr, who was the first to gain a true conception of the institutions of the Romans in this period, who recognized the fact that the people were sovereign, that the so-called kings exercised a delegated power, and that the senate was based on the principle of representation, each gens having a senator, became at variance with the facts before him in stating in connection with this graduated scale, that "such numerical proportions are an irrefragible proof that the Roman houses [gentes][332] were not more ancient than the constitution; but corporations formed by a legislator in harmony with the rest of his scheme."[333] That a small foreign element was forced into the curiæ of the second and third tribes, and particularly into the third, is undeniable; but that a gens was changed in its composition or reconstructed or made, was simply impossible. A legislator could not make a gens; neither could he make a curia, except by combining existing gentes around a nucleus of related gentes; but he might increase or decrease by constraint the number of gentes in a curia, and increase or decrease the number of curiæ in a tribe. Niebuhr has also shown that the gens was an ancient and universal organization among the Greeks and Romans, which renders his preceding declaration the more incomprehensible. Moreover it appears that the phratry was universal, at least among the Ionian Greeks, leaving it probable that the curia, perhaps under another name, was equally ancient among the Latin tribes. The numerical proportions referred to were no doubt the result of legislative procurement in the time of Romulus, and we have abundant evidence of the sources from which the new gentes were obtained with which these proportions might have been produced.
The members of the ten gentes united in a curia were called _curiales_ among themselves. They elected a priest, _curio_, who was the chief officer of the fraternity. Each curia had its sacred rites, in the observance of which the brotherhood participated; its _sacellum_ as a place of worship, and its place of assembly where they met for the transaction of business. Besides the _curio_, who had the principal charge of their religious affairs, the _curiales_ also elected an assistant priest, _flamen curialis_, who had the immediate charge of these observances. The curia gave its name to the assembly of the gentes, the _comitia curiata_ which was the sovereign power in Rome to a greater degree than the senate under the gentile system. Such, in general terms, was the organization of the Roman curia or phratry.[334]
