Equites, The, a celebrated equestrian order in ancient Rome, supposed to have been instituted by Romulus; at first purely military, it was at length invested with the judicial functions of the Senate, and the power of farming out the public revenues; gradually lost these privileges and became defunct.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Equinoxes * Erasmus, Desiderius