List of Roman tribes

Tribes (Latin tribus) were groupings of citizens in ancient Rome, originally based on location. Voters were eventually organized by tribes, with each tribe having an equal vote in the Tribal Assembly.

Latin tribus perhaps derives from trēs ("three"), since the Romans believed that in the earliest period of Roman history, the legendary time of Romulus, there were only three tribes:

Livy records that, in 495 BC, the number of tribes was increased to 21, and the official number of tribes was set at 35 in 242 BC:

These tribes were named for districts of the city and were the largest and had the least political power. In the later Republic, poorer people living in the city of Rome itself typically belonged to the four urban tribes.

Landowners and aristocracy traditionally belonged to the 31 smaller rural tribes. Many rural tribes derive from prominent Roman gentes, or family names, such as Cornelia or Fabia.

Two of the tribes are unclear; the thirty-fifth tribe has been found listed as both Succusana and Pupinia.

There was an official order of the tribes. Literature and archeological documentation show that the urban tribes are enumerated according to a counter-clockwise circuit of the city. On that basis, Lily Ross Taylor suggested that the same held for the rural tribes.

Archeological findings of tesserae led Michael Crawford to suggest that the tribes were ordered according to the principal roads leading counter-clockwise from Rome (Ostiensis, Appia, Latina, Praenestina, Valeria, Salaria, Flaminia and Clodia).

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