Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Principes

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

PRIN'CIPES. A body of heavy-armed infantry soldiers, who formed the second of the three classes into which the Roman legion was originally divided. It is supposed, from the name they bore, that in the earliest time the principes were placed in the first line of the battle array; but subsequently they were drawn up in the second line, between the hastati and the triarii, and they continued to occupy this position until the latter end of the republic, when the custom was introduced of arraying the army by cohorts, which did away with the primitive distinctions between the hastati, principes, and triarii, and reduced them all to uniformity in rank and accoutrements. Liv. viii. 8. Compare HASTATI and the illustration there given.