Quirites
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary:
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Qui·ri·tes
n. pl. (kwĭ*rī"tēz)
[L., fr. Cures, a Sabine town.]
(Rom. Antiq.) Roman citizens.
Note: After the Sabines and Romans had united themselves into one community, under Romulus, the name of Quirites was taken in addition to that of Romani, the Romans calling themselves in a civil capacity Quirites, while in a political and military capacity they retained the name of Romani. Andrews.
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Quirītes, name given to the earliest inhabitants of Rome, Latin and Sabine, which survived later in official phraseology to be applied to the Roman people in their civil capacity. It was superseded by the name Romani (Romans) or populus Romanus (Roman people). The term was not applicable to Romans when serving in the army: Caesar is said to have quelled a mutiny of his soldiers by addressing them as ‘Quirites’. The origin of the name is uncertain. The Romans generally believed that it originally signified the inhabitants of the Sabine town of Curēs.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Quirites
Quirites was the earliest name of the burgesses of Ancient Rome. The singular is quiris (meaning "spear"). Sources derive the term from Cures, the capital of the Sabines, who were assimilated by the Romans early on in their traditional ethnogenesis.
Combined in the phrase populus Romanus quirites (or quiritium) it denoted the individual citizen as contrasted with the community. Hence ius quiritium in Roman law is full Roman citizenship. Subsequently the term lost the military associations due to the original conception of the people as a body of warriors, and was applied (sometimes in a deprecatory sense, cf. Tac. Ann. ~. 42) to the Romans in domestic affairs, Romani being reserved for foreign affairs.
In identifying this name as the possible source of the word cry, the Oxford English Dictionary cites Varro.
See also
References
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Quirites". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.- Oxford English Dictionary, “cry.”
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Oxford Companion to Classical Literature
The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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