"Vestigium vetus creandi equites seu milites."

We find that some of the nobles are described as milites, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed with the inferior orders of tenantry.

We find that some of the nobles are described as milites, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed with the inferior orders of tenantry.

[Exeunt milites.

On the first day he received and entertained at his lodgings all the poor of the town, on the next day all the doctors of the different faculties and such of their pupils as were of fame and note, on the third day the rest of the scholars with the milites, townsmen, and many burgesses.

Nauticae Artis Patronus Maximus Speculam hanc in utriusque commodum fecit Anno D'ni MDCLXXVI Regni sui XXVIII curante Iona Moore milite RTSG.

Explicit itinerarium à terra Angliæ, in partes Hierosolimitanas, et in vlteriores transmarinas, editum primò in lingua Gallicana, à Domino Ioanne Mandeuille milite, suo authore, Anno incarnationis Domini 1355.

A writer of the third century, a period from which the Romans naturally looked back upon everything connected with their own early habits, and with the same kind of interest as we extend to our Alfred, (separated from us as Romulus from them by just a thousand years,) in speaking of prandium, says, "Quod dictum est parandium, ab eo quod milites ad bellum paret."

vita Marcelli, Nec sensit urbem captam, nec milites in domum irruentes, adeo intentus studiis, &c. 1996.

Oculi ut milites in insidiis semper recubant, et subito ad visum sagittas emittunt, &c. 4965.

Plautus de milite.

Alea est ludus tabulae inventa a Graecis, in otio Trojani belli, a quodam milite, nomine ALEA, a quo et ars nomen accepit.

Cum milite isto præsens, absens ut sies: Dies, noctesque me ames: me desideres: Me somnies: me exspectes: de me cogites: Me speres: me te oblectes: mecum tola sis: Meus fac sis postremo animus, quando ego sum tuus.

These were known as samurai, meaning literally, like the old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards or attendantsresembling in character the soldurii whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the comitati, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his time; or, to take a still later parallel, the milites medii that one reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe.

Hence when these crude forms of social life began to crystallize into the carefully marked ranks of the feudal system, the "milites" formed the order of gentlemen, the smaller feudatories, who gave land in fief to their vassalsgenerally the old inhabitantswhile holding their own nominally from the "duces," or dukes, the representatives of their former leaders in war, who held their tenure direct from the king or chief.

" [2:] With the growth of society and the increase of population, the milites gain added power, and become the "catanei," the barons of the period, or as some are pleased to call them, the "rural counts.

Licet decurione more romano non sint addicti præcise quindecim milites quos regat, centurionique centum viginti octo, centuriones tamen ultro citroque centenarium numerum, et ultro citroque denum, decurionem est consilium appellare; nec enim hos servant ordines hispani ex amussim, cogimurque nomine rebus et magistratibus dare.