Census point
Citizens
Patricians - Plebeians
The equestrian order
Nobiles - Homines novi
Gens and domus, families
The 19 tribes
The 23 centuries
The 5 classes
Census points
Assidui - Capite censi
Taxes
Census points are service points or merit points given for serving the res publica of Nova Roma in elected or appointed offices and for length of citizenship. The role of these points is to determine the social status of each citizen in the Nova Roman society.
In ancient Rome, this role was assigned to money and wealth as Rome was a plutocracy, and social status was determined by wealth. The Roman expression for the citizen's wealth that determined the social status was census ("account"), and censum habere ("having the census of..." followed by the amount of money owned by the citizen), whence the term "census point" comes. In Nova Roma, social status is determined by public service and activity, by contribution to the society. This makes Nova Roma a "meritocracy".
How it works
The more census points a citizen has, the higher the class he is located in. There are 5 classes, the 1st class being the highest, and each class is further subdivided into centuries, which are voting blocks of the comitia centuriata, where each century casts one vote collectively; individual citizen votes are not counted. Citizens are thus first assigned to classes determined by the amount of their census points, and within the class each citizen is placed in a voting century. Being placed in a higher class century gives the citizen more voting weight, because higher class centuries contain less citizens, therefore each citizen's vote carries greater weight. Besides this, higher classes contain more centuries, therefore higher classes cast more votes collectively. This means that census points are a very important factor in Nova Roman civic life.
The number of census points awarded for holding certain public offices is determined by the lex Cornelia de punctis censualibus.
Previously called "century point"
The previous term used for the census points was "century point". Some parts of the website, especially the Album Civium still uses this older term. The older regulation of census point awarding was described in the lex Fabia centuriata.
