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THE HISTORY OF ROME

The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

by

THEODOR MOMMSEN

Translated with the Sanction of the Author

by

William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow

A New Edition Revised throughout and Embodying Recent Additions




Preparer's Note


This work contains many literal citations of and references to foreign
words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages,
including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek.  This
English Gutenberg edition, constrained to the characters of 7-bit
ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:

1) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that
do not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in
the source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single
preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

2) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,
are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus,
--xxxx--.  Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound
form such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--

3) Simple unideographic references to vocalic sounds, single
letters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic
references are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x,
or -xxx.

4) (Especially for the complex discussion of alphabetic evolution
in Ch. XIV: Measuring And Writing).  Ideographic references,
meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather than
to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-.  "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picture
based on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, a
word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.  E.
g.   --"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form
followed by the form in lowercase.  Some such exotic parsing as
this is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single
symbol may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of
languages, or even for a number of sounds in the same language at
different times.  Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to
a Phoenician construct that in appearance resembles the form that
eventually stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to
one of lowercase.  Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates
a symbol that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase
"E", but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

5) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753
B. C.  The preparer of this document, has appended to the end of
each volume a table of conversion between the two systems.




PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR


When the first portion of this translation appeared in 1861, it was
accompanied by a Preface, for which I was indebted to the kindness
of the late Dr. Schmitz, introducing to the English reader the
work of an author whose name and merits, though already known to
scholars, were far less widely familiar than they are now.  After
thirty-three years such an introduction is no longer needed, but
none the less gratefully do I recall how much the book owed at the
outset to Dr. Schmitz's friendly offices.

The following extracts from my own "Prefatory Note" dated "December
1861" state the circumstances under which I undertook the translation,
and give some explanations as to its method and aims:--

"In requesting English scholars to receive with indulgence this first
portion of a translation of Dr. Mommsen's 'Romische Geschichte,'
I am somewhat in the position of Albinus; who, when appealing to
his readers to pardon the imperfections of the Roman History which
he had written in indifferent Greek, was met by Cato with the
rejoinder that he was not compelled to write at all--that, if the
Amphictyonic Council had laid their commands on him, the case would
have been different--but that it was quite out of place to ask the
indulgence of his readers when his task had been self-imposed.  I
may state, however, that I did not undertake this task, until
I had sought to ascertain whether it was likely to be taken up by
any one more qualified to do justice to it.  When Dr. Mommsen's
work accidentally came into my hands some years after its first
appearance, and revived my interest in studies which I had long
laid aside for others more strictly professional, I had little doubt
that its merits would have already attracted sufficient attention
amidst the learned leisure of Oxford to induce some of her great
scholars to clothe it in an English dress.  But it appeared on
inquiry that, while there was a great desire to see it translated,
and the purpose of translating it had been entertained in more
quarters than one, the projects had from various causes miscarried.
Mr. George Robertson published an excellent translation (to which,
so far as it goes, I desire to acknowledge my obligations) of the
introductory chapters on the early inhabitants of Italy; but other
studies and engagements did not permit him to proceed with it.  I
accordingly requested and obtained Dr. Mommsen's permission to
translate his work.

"The translation has been prepared from the third edition of the
original, published in the spring of the present year at Berlin.
The sheets have been transmitted to Dr. Mommsen, who has kindly
communicated to me such suggestions as occurred to him.  I have
thus been enabled, more especially in the first volume, to correct
those passages where I had misapprehended or failed to express the
author's meaning, and to incorporate in the English work various
additions and corrections which do not appear in the original.

"In executing the translation I have endeavoured to follow the original
as closely as is consistent with a due regard to the difference of
idiom.  Many of our translations from the German are so literal as
to reproduce the very order of the German sentence, so that they
are, if not altogether unintelligible to the English reader, at
least far from readable, while others deviate so entirely from the
form of the original as to be no longer translations in the proper
sense of the term.  I have sought to pursue a middle course between
a mere literal translation, which would be repulsive, and a loose
paraphrase, which would be in the case of such a work peculiarly
unsatisfactory.  Those who are most conversant with the difficulties
of such a task will probably be the most willing to show forbearance
towards the shortcomings of my performance, and in particular towards
the too numerous traces of the German idiom, which, on glancing
over the sheets, I find it still to retain.

"The reader may perhaps be startled by the occurrence now and then
of modes of expression more familiar and colloquial than is usually
the case in historical works.  This, however, is a characteristic
feature of the original, to which in fact it owes not a little
of its charm.  Dr. Mommsen often uses expressions that are not
to be found in the dictionary, and he freely takes advantage of
the unlimited facilities afforded by the German language for the
coinage or the combination of words.  I have not unfrequently, in
deference to his wishes, used such combinations as 'Carthagino-Sicilian,'
'Romano-Hellenic,' although less congenial to our English idiom,
for the sake of avoiding longer periphrases.

"In Dr. Mommsen's book, as in every other German work that has
occasion to touch on abstract matters, there occur sentences couched
in a peculiar terminology and not very susceptible of translation.
There are one or two sentences of this sort, more especially in
the chapter on Religion in the 1st volume, and in the critique of
Euripides as to which I am not very confident that I have seized
or succeeded in expressing the meaning.  In these cases I have
translated literally.

"In the spelling of proper names I have generally adopted the Latin
orthography as more familiar to scholars in this country, except
in cases where the spelling adopted by Dr. Mommsen is marked by any
special peculiarity.  At the same time entire uniformity in this
respect has not been aimed at.

"I have ventured in various instances to break up the paragraphs of
the original and to furnish them with additional marginal headings,
and have carried out more fully the notation of the years B.C. on
the margin.

"It is due to Dr. Schmitz, who has kindly encouraged me in
this undertaking, that I should state that I alone am responsible
for the execution of the translation.  Whatever may be thought of
it in other respects, I venture to hope that it may convey to the
English reader a tolerably accurate impression of the contents and
general spirit of the book."

In a new Library edition, which appeared in 1868, I incorporated all
the additions and alterations which were introduced in the fourth
edition of the German, some of which were of considerable importance;
and I took the opportunity of revising the translation, so as to
make the rendering more accurate and consistent.

Since that time no change has been made, except the issue in 1870
of an Index.  But, as Dr. Mommsen was good enough some time ago
to send to me a copy in which he had taken the trouble to mark the
alterations introduced in the more recent editions of the original,
I thought it due to him and to the favour with which the translation
had been received that I should subject it to such a fresh revision
as should bring it into conformity with the last form (eighth
edition) of the German, on which, as I learn from him, he hardly
contemplates further change.  As compared with the first English
edition, the more considerable alterations of addition, omission,
or substitution amount, I should think, to well-nigh a hundred pages.
I have corrected various errors in renderings, names, and dates
(though not without some misgiving that others may have escaped
notice or been incurred afresh); and I have still further broken
up the text into paragraphs and added marginal headings.

The Index, which was not issued for the German book till nine years
after the English translation was published, has now been greatly
enlarged from its more recent German form, and has been, at the
expenditure of no small labour, adapted to the altered paging of
the English.  I have also prepared, as an accompaniment to it, a
collation of pagings, which will materially facilitate the finding of
references made to the original or to the previous English editions.

I have had much reason to be gratified by the favour with which
my translation has been received on the part alike of Dr. Mommsen
himself and of the numerous English scholars who have made it the
basis of their references to his work.(1)  I trust that in the
altered form and new dress, for which the book is indebted to the
printers, it may still further meet the convenience of the reader.

September 1894.




Notes for Preface


1. It has, I believe, been largely in use at Oxford for the last
thirty years; but it has not apparently had the good fortune to
have come to the knowledge of the writer of an article on "Roman
History" published in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1886, which at
least makes no mention of its existence, or yet of Mr. Baring-Gould,
who in his Tragedy of the Caesars (vol. 1. p. 104f.) has presented
Dr. Mommsen's well-known "character" of Caesar in an independent
version.  His rendering is often more spirited than accurate.  While
in several cases important words, clauses, or even sentences, are
omitted, in others the meaning is loosely or imperfectly conveyed--e.g.
in "Hellenistic" for "Hellenic"; "success" for "plenitude of power";
"attempts" or "operations" for "achievements"; "prompt to recover"
for "ready to strike"; "swashbuckler" for "brilliant"; "many" for
"unyielding"; "accessible to all" for "complaisant towards every
one"; "smallest fibre" for "Inmost core"; "ideas" for "ideals";
"unstained with blood" for "as bloodless as possible"; "described"
for "apprehended"; "purity" for "clearness"; "smug" for "plain"
(or homely); "avoid" for "avert"; "taking his dark course" for
"stealing towards his aim by paths of darkness"; "rose" for "transformed
himself"; "checked everything like a praetorian domination" for
"allowed no hierarchy of marshals or government of praetorians
to come into existence"; and in one case the meaning is exactly
reversed, when "never sought to soothe, where he could not cure,
intractable evils" stands for "never disdained at least to mitigate
by palliatives evils that were incurable."




INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY DR. MOMMSEN


The Varronian computation by years of the City is retained in the
text; the figures on the margin indicate the corresponding year
before the birth of Christ.

In calculating the corresponding years, the year 1 of the City has
been assumed as identical with the year 753 B.C., and with Olymp.
6, 4; although, if we take into account the circumstance that the
Roman solar year began with the 1st day of March, and the Greek
with the 1st day of July, the year 1 of the City would, according
to more exact calculation, correspond to the last ten months of 753
and the first two months of 752 B.C., and to the last four months
of Ol. 6, 3 and the first eight of Ol. 6, 4.

The Roman and Greek money has uniformly been commuted on the basis
of assuming the libral as and sestertius, and the denarius and
Attic drachma, respectively as equal, and taking for all sums above
100 denarii the present value in gold, and for all sums under 100
denarii the present value in silver, of the corresponding weight.
The Roman pound (=327.45 grammes) of gold, equal to 4000 sesterces,
has thus, according to the ratio of gold to silver 1:15.5, been
reckoned at 304 1/2 Prussian thalers [about 43 pounds sterling],
and the denarius, according to the value of silver, at 7 Prussian
groschen [about 8d.].(1)

Kiepert's map will give a clearer idea of the military consolidation
of Italy than can be conveyed by any description.

1. I have deemed it, in general, sufficient to give the value of
the Roman money approximately in round numbers, assuming for that
purpose 100 sesterces as equivalent to 1 pound sterling.--TR.




DEDICATIONS



The First Volume of the original bears the inscription:--

To My Friend

MORIZ HAUPT Of Berin

The Second:--

To My Dear Associates

FERDINAND HITZIG Of Zurich

And

KARL LUDWIG Of Vienna 1852, 1853, 1854

And the Third:--

Dedicated With Old And Loyal Affection To

OTTO JAHN Of Bonn




CONTENTS

BOOK I:  The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Introduction

     II. The Earliest Migrations into Italy

    III. The Settlements of the Latins

     IV. The Beginnings of Rome

      V. The Original Constitution of Rome

     VI. The Non-Burgesses and the Reformed Constitution

    VII. The Hegemony of Rome in Latium

   VIII. The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings of the Samnites

     IX. The Etruscans

      X. The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans
         and Carthaginians

     XI. Law and Justice

    XII. Religion

   XIII. Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce

    XIV. Measuring and Writing

     XV. Art





BOOK FIRST

The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy




--Ta palaiotera saphos men eurein dia chronou pleithos adunata
ein ek de tekmeirion on epi makrotaton skopounti moi pisteusai
xumbainei ou megala nomizo genesthai oute kata tous polemous oute
es ta alla.--

Thucydides.




CHAPTER I

Introduction



Ancient History


The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far
into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean,
and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and
expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects
the three divisions of the Old World.  The shores of this inland
sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations belonging in
an ethnographical and philological point of view to different races,
but constituting in their historical aspect one whole.  This historic
whole has been usually, but not very appropriately, entitled the
history of the ancient world.  It is in reality the history of
civilization among the Mediterranean nations; and, as it passes
before us in its successive stages, it presents four great phases
of development--the history of the Coptic or Egyptian stock dwelling
on the southern shore, the history of the Aramaean or Syrian nation
which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of
Asia as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, and the histories of the
twin-peoples, the Hellenes and Italians, who received as their heritage
the countries on the European shore.  Each of these histories was
in its earlier stages connected with other regions and with other
cycles of historical evolution; but each soon entered on its own
distinctive career.  The surrounding nations of alien or even of
kindred extraction--the Berbers and Negroes of Africa, the Arabs,
Persians, and Indians of Asia, the Celts and Germans of Europe--came
into manifold contact with the peoples inhabiting the borders of
the Mediterranean, but they neither imparted unto them nor received
from them any influences exercising decisive effect on their
respective destinies.  So far, therefore, as cycles of culture admit
of demarcation at all, the cycle which has its culminating points
denoted by the names Thebes, Carthage, Athens, and Rome, may be
regarded as an unity.  The four nations represented by these names,
after each of them had attained in a path of its own a peculiar
and noble civilization, mingled with one another in the most varied
relations of reciprocal intercourse, and skilfully elaborated and
richly developed all the elements of human nature.  At length their
cycle was accomplished.  New peoples who hitherto had only laved
the territories of the states of the Mediterranean, as waves lave
the beach, overflowed both its shores, severed the history of its
south coast from that of the north, and transferred the centre of
civilization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.  The
distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no
mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience.
What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new
cycle of culture, connected in several stages of its development
with the perishing or perished civilization of the Mediterranean
states, as this was connected with the primitive civilization of
the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to
traverse an orbit of its own.  It too is destined to experience in
full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods
of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative
effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the
material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps
also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of
contentment with the goal attained.  And yet this goal will only
be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit,
and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which,
just when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever
set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.


Italy


Our aim is to exhibit the last act of this great historical drama,
to relate the ancient history of the central peninsula projecting
from the northern continent into the Mediterranean.  It is formed
by the mountain-system of the Apennines branching off in a southern
direction from the western Alps.  The Apennines take in the first
instance a south-eastern course between the broader gulf of the
Mediterranean on the west, and the narrow one on the east; and in the
close vicinity of the latter they attain their greatest elevation,
which, however, scarce reaches the line of perpetual snow, in
the Abruzzi.  From the Abruzzi the chain continues in a southern
direction, at first undivided and of considerable height; after
a depression which forms a hill-country, it splits into a somewhat
flattened succession of heights towards the south-east and a more
rugged chain towards the south, and in both directions terminates
in the formation of narrow peninsulas.

The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the
Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically,
nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land
of mountain and hill, the Italy whose history is here to engage
our attention.  It was not till the seventh century of the city
that the coast-district from Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the
eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy.
The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but
the Apennines.  This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into
a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and
enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes,
presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of
man.  Still more suitable in this respect are the adjacent slopes
and the coast-districts on the east, south, and west.  On the
east coast the plain of Apulia, shut in towards the north by the
mountain-block of the Abruzzi and only broken by the steep isolated
ridge of Garganus, stretches in a uniform level with but a scanty
development of coast and stream.  On the south coast, between the
two peninsulas in which the Apennines terminate, extensive lowlands,
poorly provided with harbours but well watered and fertile,
adjoin the hill-country of the interior.  The west coast presents
a far-stretching domain intersected by considerable streams, in
particular by the Tiber, and shaped by the action of the waves and
of the once numerous volcanoes into manifold variety of hill and
valley, harbour and island.  Here the regions of Etruria, Latium,
and Campania form the very flower of the land of Italy.  South of
Campania, the land in front of the mountains gradually diminishes,
and the Tyrrhenian Sea almost washes their base.  Moreover, as
the Peloponnesus is attached to Greece, so the island of Sicily is
attached to Italy--the largest and fairest isle of the Mediterranean,
having a mountainous and partly desert interior, but girt, especially
on the east and south, by a broad belt of the finest coast-land,
mainly the result of volcanic action.  Geographically the Sicilian
mountains are a continuation of the Apennines, hardly interrupted
by the narrow "rent" --Pegion--of the straits; and in its historical
relations Sicily was in earlier times quite as decidedly a part of
Italy as the Peloponnesus was of Greece, a field for the struggles
of the same races, and the seat of a similar superior civilization.

The Italian peninsula resembles the Grecian in the temperate climate
and wholesome air that prevail on the hills of moderate height, and
on the whole, also, in the valleys and plains.  In development of
coast it is inferior; it wants, in particular, the island-studded
sea which made the Hellenes a seafaring nation.  Italy on the
other hand excels its neighbour in the rich alluvial plains and
the fertile and grassy mountain-slopes, which are requisite for
agriculture and the rearing of cattle.  Like Greece, it is a noble
land which calls forth and rewards the energies of man, opening
up alike for restless adventure the way to distant lands and for
quiet exertion modes of peaceful gain at home.

But, while the Grecian peninsula is turned towards the east, the
Italian is turned towards the west.  As the coasts of Epirus and
Acarnania had but a subordinate importance in the case of Hellas,
so had the Apulian and Messapian coasts in that of Italy; and, while
the regions on which the historical development of Greece has been
mainly dependent--Attica and Macedonia--look to the east, Etruria,
Latium, and Campania look to the west.  In this way the two peninsulas,
so close neighbours and almost sisters, stand as it were averted
from each other.  Although the naked eye can discern from Otranto
the Acroceraunian mountains, the Italians and Hellenes came into
earlier and closer contact on every other pathway rather than on the
nearest across the Adriatic Sea, In their instance, as has happened
so often, the historical vocation of the nations was prefigured
in the relations of the ground which they occupied; the two great
stocks, on which the civilization of the ancient world grew, threw
their shadow as well as their seed, the one towards the east, the
other towards the west.


Italian History


We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history
of the city of Rome.  Although, in the formal sense of political
law, it was the civic community of Rome which gained the sovereignty
first of Italy and then of the world, such a view cannot be held
to express the higher and real meaning of history.  What has been
called the subjugation of Italy by the Romans appears rather,
when viewed in its true light, as the consolidation into an united
state of the whole Italian stock--a stock of which the Romans were
doubtless the most powerful branch, but still were only a branch.

The history of Italy falls into two main sections: (1) its internal
history down to its union under the leadership of the Latin stock,
and (2) the history of its sovereignty over the world.  Under the
first section, which will occupy the first two books, we shall have
to set forth the settlement of the Italian stock in the peninsula;
the imperilling of its national and political existence, and
its partial subjugation, by nations of other descent and older
civilization, Greeks and Etruscans; the revolt of the Italians
against the strangers, and the annihilation or subjection of the
latter; finally, the struggles between the two chief Italian stocks,
the Latins and the Samnites, for the hegemony of the peninsula, and
the victory of the Latins at the end of the fourth century before
the birth of Christ--or of the fifth century of the city. The second
section opens with the Punic wars; it embraces the rapid extension
of the dominion of Rome up to and beyond the natural boundaries of
Italy, the long status quo of the imperial period, and the collapse
of the mighty empire.  These events will be narrated in the third
and following books.




Notes for Book I Chapter I



1.  The dates as hereafter inserted in the text are years of the
City (A.U.C.); those in the margin give the corresponding years
B.C.




CHAPTER II

The Earliest Migrations into Italy



Primitive Races of Italy


We have no information, not even a tradition, concerning the first
migration of the human race into Italy.  It was the universal
belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as elsewhere, the first
population had sprung from the soil.  We leave it to the province
of the naturalist to decide the question of the origin of different
races, and of the influence of climate in producing their diversities.
In a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of
any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population
of a country were autochthones or immigrants.  But it is incumbent
on the historical inquirer to bring to light the successive strata of
population in the country of which he treats, in order to trace,
from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of
civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races
less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher
standing.

Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and
presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of
civilization.  The results of German archaeological research lead
to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany
and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those
lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps
of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and fishing,
making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves
with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with
agriculture and the use of the metals.  In India, in like manner, the
Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population
less susceptible of culture.  But in Italy we neither meet with
fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the
Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains;
nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto
pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed
skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what
is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity.  Nothing has
hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that
mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of
agriculture and of the smelting of the metals; and if the human
race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of
that primitive stage of culture which we are accustomed to call
the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared.

Individual tribes, or in other words, races or stocks, are the
constituent elements of the earliest history.  Among the stocks which
in later times we meet with in Italy, the immigration of some, of
the Hellenes for instance, and the denationalization of others,
such as the Bruttians and the inhabitants of the Sabine territory,
are historically attested.  Setting aside both these classes, there
remain a number of stocks whose wanderings can no longer be traced
by means of historical testimony, but only by a priori inference,
and whose nationality cannot be shown to have undergone any radical
change from external causes.  To establish the national individuality
of these is the first aim of our inquiry.  In such an inquiry,
had we nothing to fall back upon but the chaotic mass of names of
tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical tradition,
the task might well be abandoned as hopeless.  The conventionally
received tradition, which assumes the name of history, is composed
of a few serviceable notices by civilized travellers, and a mass
of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been combined with
little discrimination of the true character either of legend or
of history.  But there is another source of tradition to which we
may resort, and which yields information fragmentary but authentic;
we mean the indigenous languages of the stocks settled in Italy from
time immemorial.  These languages, which have grown with the growth
of the peoples themselves, have had the stamp of their process
of growth impressed upon them too deeply to be wholly effaced
by subsequent civilization.  One only of the Italian languages is
known to us completely; but the remains which have been preserved
of several of the others are sufficient to afford a basis for
historical inquiry regarding the existence, and the degrees, of
family relationship among the several languages and peoples.

In this way philological research teaches us to distinguish three
primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that
which we shall call the Italian.  The last is divided into two main
branches,--the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the
Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong.


Iapygians


As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information.  At the
south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian
peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language(1) have been
found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect
of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition
also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks.
Statements deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the
conclusion that the same language and the same stock were indigenous
also in Apulia.  What we at present know of this people suffices
to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians,
but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned
to them and to their language in the history of the human race.  The
inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected
that they ever will be, deciphered.  The genitive forms, -aihi- and
-ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek --oio--,
appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic
family.  Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants
and the avoiding of the letters m and t as terminal sounds, show
that this Iapygian dialect was essentially different from the
Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects.
The supposition of an especially close affinity between the Iapygian
nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent
occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions,
and in the surprising facility with which that people became
Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this
respect of the other Italian nations.  Apulia, which in the time
of Timaeus (400) was still described as a barbarous land, had in
the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek,
although no direct colonization from Greece had taken place;
and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various
indications of a similar tendency.  With the recognition of such
a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the
Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means
goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a
rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least
in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result
be attainable.(2)  The lack of information, however, is not much
felt; for this race, already on the decline at the period when
our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and
disappearing.  The character of the Iapygian people, little capable
of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees
well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds
probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical
autochthones of Italy.  There can be no doubt that all the primitive
migrations of nations took place by land; especially such as were
directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea
only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's
time wholly unknown to the Hellenes.  But if the earlier settlers
came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin
of mountains from their stratification, the historical inquirer
may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards
the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy; and it is just
at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the Iapygian
nation.


Italians


The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy
tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the
same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of
being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian
nation.  We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since
upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula.  It is
divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians;
the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and
Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical
times.  The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks
has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic
chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed
an unity is a comparatively late one.  In their system of sounds
there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they
agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic
and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself.
The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout,
and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally
foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of
their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f
or -h.  The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense
with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed.  The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter.  The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the
original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date,
which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome.
Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly
dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding
consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in
the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops
even these.  In connection with this we find that the middle voice
has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs.  While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative.  The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections.  A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.


Relation of the Italians to the Greeks


These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena
suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as
distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family,
and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest
relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and
the Slavonian are their cousins.  The essential unity of all the
Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned
early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations
themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word
of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to
every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous
appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and
Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to
the Iapygians or Etruscans.


Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites


Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands
in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects.  It is true
that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are
in some degree known to us, and these even in a manner extremely
defective and uncertain.  Of the rest some, such as the Marsian
and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable
us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to
classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and
precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception
of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial
Latin, completely disappeared.  A conjoint view, however, of the
facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these
dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian
stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to
Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin.
In the pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian
used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages
otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p
is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic
and Erse.  Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and
in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed,
whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little;
and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman
weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved,--a
modification which does not take place in the kindred group of
languages.  The genitive of words in -a is in this group as among
the Greeks -as, among the Romans in the matured language -ae;
that of words in -us is in the Samnite -eis, in the Umbrian -es,
among the Romans -ei; the locative disappeared more and more from
the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the
other Italian dialects; the dative plural in -bus is extant only
in Latin.  The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in -um is foreign to the
Romans; while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root -es after
the Greek fashion (-her-est- like --leg-so--) has almost, perhaps
altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by
the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from
-fuo-(-amabo-).  In many of these instances, however--in the forms
of the cases, for example--the differences only exist in the two
languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide.  It
thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent
position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it
bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of
the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian
and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between
the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta.

Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation
of an historical event.  With perfect certainty they guide us to
the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages
there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the
Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period,
the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the
western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern
became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans.

When and where these separations took place, language of course
cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope
its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the
earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration
which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines.
On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with
accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree
of culture which the people had reached when these separations took
place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is
nothing but the development of civilization.  For language, especially
in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the
degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of
the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records
the future will not fail to draw information as to those times
regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.


Indo-Germanic Culture


During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now
separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they
attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary
corresponding to it.  This vocabulary the several nations carried
along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common
dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own.  In it
we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions,
perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the
impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but
also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects
their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are
the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot
be explained either on the principle of an uniform development
in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having
subsequently borrowed one from another.  In this way we possess
evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch
in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit
-gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is
the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-,
Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--;
Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode.  On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture
at this period.  Language rather favours the negative view.  Of the
Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single
exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit
-yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt.  It must
indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated
plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in
the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude
the supposition of a common original agriculture.  In the circumstances
of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult
in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice
among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and
Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may
all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage.  On the
other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians
only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks
they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild
in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain.  While,
however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light
is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most
important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly
in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification.
-Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-,
anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is
pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink.  The words are
thus very ancient; but their more definite application to the field
(-ager-), to the grain to be ground (-granum-), to the implement
which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea
(-aratrum-), to the juice of the grape (-vinum-), had not yet taken
place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it
is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came
to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the
corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it
(Gothic -quairinus-, Lithuanian -girnos-,(4)) received their names
from the Sanscrit -kurnu-.  We may accordingly assume it as probable,
that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with
agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but
a very subordinate part in their economy; for had it at that time
held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans,
it would have left a deeper impression upon the language.

On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans
is attested by the Sanscrit -dam(as)-, Latin -domus-, Greek --domos--;
Sanscrit -vesas-, Latin -vicus-, Greek --oikos--; Sanscrit -dvaras-,
Latin -fores-, Greek --thura--; further, the building of oar-boats
by the names of the boat, Sanscrit -naus-, Latin -navis-, Greek
--naus--, and of the oar, Sanscrit -aritram-, Greek --eretmos--,
Latin -remus-, -tri-res-mis-; and the use of waggons and the breaking
in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit -akshas-
(axle and cart), Latin -axis-, Greek --axon--, --am-axa--; Sanscrit
-iugam-, Latin -iugum-, Greek --zugon--.  The words that denote
clothing- Sanscrit -vastra-, Latin -vestis-, Greek --esthes--; as
well as those that denote sewing and spinning-Sanscrit -siv-, Latin
-suo-; Sanscrit -nah-, Latin -neo-, Greek --netho--, are alike
in all Indo-Germanic languages.  This cannot, however, be equally
affirmed of the higher art of weaving.(5)  The knowledge of the
use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a
primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations; and the same may
be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed
as implements or ornaments by man.  At least the names of copper
(-aes-) and silver (-argentum-), perhaps also of gold, are met with
in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely have originated before
man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores; the Sanscrit
-asis-, Latin -ensis-, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic
weapons.

No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental
ideas on which the development of all Indo-Germanic states ultimately
rests; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement
in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the
absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions
of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days
of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon.  On the
other hand the positive organization of the body politic, the decision
of the questions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of
the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble
houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong
altogether to a later age.

Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community
of origin.  The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit
-satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek --e-katon--, Gothic
-hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the
fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-).  The idea of Deity
itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek --theos--), and many
of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism,
belong to the common inheritance of the nations.  The conception,
for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of
being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place
to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths,
the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are
fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman
mythologies.  Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even
in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus
the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater,
Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas.  An unexpected light has
been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology
by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India.  The
hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention;
they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East.
The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the
golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing
rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover
faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed,
becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas,
or Hermeias; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing
of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt connected with the
Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the
meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant
conception of nature.


Graeco-Italian Culture


The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which
the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks
properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world.  It
is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain,
so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian
nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted.  Nor is this
a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which
Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of the national
history.


Agriculture


While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life
and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild
state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Graeco-Italians
were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people.
The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of agriculture
itself common to both, for this does not upon the whole warrant
the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit
it.  An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture
and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be
disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans,
or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture
was certainly still unknown.  The truth is, that the more advanced
races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly
exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation;
and when the annals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture
to the introduction of five species of grain that took place under
a particular king in a particular year, the story undoubtedly depicts
correctly, at least in a general way, the relations subsisting in
the earliest epochs of civilization.  A common knowledge of agriculture,
like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war chariots, of purple,
and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the
inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their
original unity.  But as regards the Greeks and Italians, whose
mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis that
agriculture as well as writing and coinage first came to Italy by
means of the Hellenes may be characterized as wholly inadmissible.
On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection
between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other is
attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions
relating to it; -ager-, --agros--; -aro aratrum-, --aroo arotron--;
-ligo-alongside of --lachaino--; -hortus-, --chortos--; -hordeum-,
--krithei--; -milium-, --melinei--; -rapa-, --raphanis-; -malva-,
--malachei--; -vinum-, --oinos--.  It is likewise attested by
the agreement of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the
plough, which appears of the same shape on the old Attic and the old
Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain,
millet, barley, spelt; in the custom of cutting the ears with the
sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten
threshing-floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain -puls-
--poltos--, -pinso- --ptisso--, -mola- --mulei--; for baking was
of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always
used in the Roman ritual instead of bread.  That the culture of the
vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration,
is shown by the appellation "wine-land" (--Oinotria--), which
appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers.  It
would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture,
or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the
earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians
had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the
Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion.  Moreover,
at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians
appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with
each other, but with other members of the great family; at least,
it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation,
while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic
family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic
as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.(6)

The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and
their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is
still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its
details and gradations.  The investigation of languages with this
view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its
representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language,
but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of
tradition.  For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate
the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in
its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the
Graeco-Italians still lived together.  The task of discriminating
the results of culture which are common to the European members of
this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which
the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the
Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be
accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in
linguistic and historical inquiries.  But there can be no doubt
that, with the Graeco-Italians as with all other nations, agriculture
became and in the mind of the people remained the germ and core of
their national and of their private life.  The house and the fixed
hearth, which the husbandman constructs instead of the light hut
and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the
spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or --Estia--
almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic yet from the first
common to both nations.  One of the oldest legends of the Italian
stock ascribes to king Italus, or, as the Italians must have
pronounced the word, Vitalus or Vitulus, the introduction of the
change from a pastoral to an agricultural life, and shrewdly connects
with it the original Italian legislation.  We have simply another
version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite stock which
makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the
oldest Latin national names which designate the people as reapers
(-Siculi-, perhaps also -Sicani-), or as field-labourers (-Opsci-).
It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the
so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pastoral
and hunting people as founding a city.  Legend and faith, laws and
manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes are throughout
associated with agriculture.(7)

Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement
of it, however rude.  Accordingly, the measures of surface and the
mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on
a  like basis among both peoples.  The Oscan and Umbrian -vorsus-
of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with the Greek
--plethron--.  The principle of marking off boundaries was also
the same.  The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference
to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the first
place two lines, one from north to south, and another from east to
west, his station being at their point of intersection (-templum-,
--temenos-- from --temno--); then he drew at certain fixed distances
lines parallel to these, and by this process produced a series of
rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by
boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-,
usually --oroi--).  This mode of defining boundaries, which is
probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find
among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient
records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have
borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines:
it is an ancient possession common to all.  A peculiar characteristic
of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of
the principle of the square; even where the sea or a river formed
a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their
allocation of the land with the last complete square.


Other Features of Their Economy


It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close
relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; it is unmistakably
manifest also in the other provinces of man's earliest activity.
The Greek house, as described by Homer, differs little from the
model which was always adhered to in Italy.  The essential portion,
which originally formed the whole interior accommodation of the
Latin house, was the -atrium-, that is, the "blackened" chamber,
with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals,
and the hearth; and precisely similar is the Homeric --megaron--,
with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof.  We
cannot say the same of ship-building.  The boat with oars was an
old common possession of the Indo-Germans; but the advance to the
use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken
place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical
terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians except such
as are also general among the Indo-Germanic family.  On the other
hand the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common
midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the
introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the
Cretan Syssitia; and the earliest Romans further agreed with the
Cretans and Laconians in taking their meals not, as was afterwards
the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting
posture.  The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces
of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is
certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the
appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood,
"the rubber" (--trypanon--, -terebra-), and the "under-layer"
(--storeus--, --eschara--, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-,
--tetamai--).  In like manner the dress of the two peoples
is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with
the --chiton--, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller --himation--.
Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change,
the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two
principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,--a fact
which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the
earliest names for warriors (-pilumni--arquites-),(8) and is in
keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly
adapted to a close struggle.  Thus, in the language and manners of
Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations
of human existence may be traced back to the same primary elements;
the oldest problems which the world proposes to man had been
jointly solved by the two peoples at a time when they still formed
one nation.


Difference of the Italian and the Greek Character


It was otherwise in the mental domain.  The great problem of man--how
to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and
with the whole to which he belongs--admits of as many solutions
as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this,
and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display
their divergences of character.  The exciting causes which gave
rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian
period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians
had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character
became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day.
The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and
in Greece respectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly
national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also
the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost
concealed from our view.  That Hellenic character, which sacrificed
the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township,
and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in
the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of
idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying
the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length
produced the internal dissolution of even local authority; which in
its view of religion first invested the gods with human attributes,
and then denied their existence; which allowed full play to the
limbs in the sports of the naked youth, and gave free scope to
thought in all its grandeur and in all its awfulness;--and that
Roman character, which solemnly bound the son to reverence the
father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the
gods; which required nothing and honoured nothing but the useful
act, and compelled every citizen to fill up every moment of his
brief life with unceasing work; which made it a duty even in the
boy modestly to cover the body; which deemed every one a bad citizen
who wished to be different from his fellows; which regarded the
state as all in all, and a desire for the state's extension as the
only aspiration not liable to censure,--who can in thought trace
back these sharply-marked contrasts to that original unity which
embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at
length produced them?  It would be foolish presumption to desire
to lift this veil; we shall only endeavour to indicate in brief
outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections
with an earlier period--to direct the guesses of the discerning
reader rather than to express them.


The Family and the State


All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state rested
in Greece and Italy on the same foundations.  Under this head comes
especially the moral and decorous arrangement of social life,(9)
which enjoined monogamy on the husband and visited with heavy
penalties the infidelity of the wife, and which recognized the
equality of the sexes and the sanctity of marriage in the high
position which it assigned to the mother within the domestic circle.
On the other hand the rigorous development of the marital and still
more of the paternal authority, regardless of the natural rights of
persons as such, was a feature foreign to the Greeks and peculiarly
Italian; it was in Italy alone that moral subjection became
transformed into legal slavery.  In the same way the principle of
the slave being completely destitute of legal rights--a principle
involved in the very nature of slavery--was maintained by the Romans
with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences;
whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early
introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of
slaves, for example, being recognized as a legal relation.

On the household was based the clan, that is, the community of the
descendants of the same progenitor; and out of the clan among the
Greeks as well as the Italians arose the state.  But while under
the weaker political development of Greece the clan-bond maintained
itself as a corporate power in contradistinction to that of
the state far even into historical times, the state in Italy made
its appearance at once complete, in so far as in presence of its
authority the clans were quite neutralized and it exhibited an
association not of clans, but of citizens.  Conversely, again, the
individual attained, in presence of the clan, an inward independence
and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely
in Greece than in Rome--a fact reflected with great clearness in
the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came
to assume very different forms.  In the more ancient Greek names
the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form
to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were
aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later
-praenomen-.  But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early
disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely
among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual
name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate.  It seems as if the small
and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the
Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared
with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks,
were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic
of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote
the free development of personality.  The association in communities
of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to
have prevailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear different
enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic polities; yet
it must have already contained the germs out of which the future
laws of both nations were moulded.  The "laws of king Italus,"
which were still applied in the time of Aristotle, may denote the
institutions essentially common to both.  These laws must have
provided for the maintenance of peace and the execution of justice
within the community, for military organization and martial law
in reference to its external relations, for its government by a
patriarchal chief, for a council of elders, for assemblies of the
freemen capable of bearing arms, and for some sort of constitution.
Judicial procedure (-crimen-, --krinein--, expiation (-poena-,
--poinei--), retaliation (-talio-, --talao--, --tleinai--, are
Graeco-Italian ideas.  The stern law of debt, by which the debtor
was directly responsible with his person for the repayment of what
he had received, is common to the Italians, for example, with
the Tarentine Heracleots.  The fundamental ideas of the Roman
constitution--a king, a senate, and an assembly entitled simply to
ratify or to reject the proposals which the king and senate should
submit to it--are scarcely anywhere expressed so distinctly as
in Aristotle's account of the earlier constitution of Crete.  The
germs of larger state-confederacies in the political fraternizing
or even amalgamation of several previously independent stocks
(symmachy, synoikismos) are in like manner common to both nations.
The more stress is to be laid on this fact of the common foundations
of Hellenic and Italian polity, that it is not found to extend to
the other Indo-Germanic stocks; the organization of the Germanic
community, for example, by no means starts, like that of the Greeks
and Romans, from an elective monarchy.  But how different the
polities were that were constructed on this common basis in Italy
and Greece, and how completely the whole course of their political
development belongs to each as its distinctive property,(10) it
will be the business of the sequel to show.


Religion


It is the same in religion.  In Italy, as in Hellas, there lies
at the foundation of the popular faith the same common treasure
of symbolic and allegorical views of nature: on this rests that
general analogy between the Roman and the Greek world of gods and
of spirits, which was to become of so much importance in later
stages of development.  In many of their particular conceptions
also,--in the already mentioned forms of Zeus-Diovis and Hestia-Vesta,
in the idea of the holy space (--temenos--, -templum-), in various
offerings and ceremonies--the two modes of worship do not by mere
accident coincide.  Yet in Hellas, as in Italy, they assumed a shape
so thoroughly national and peculiar, that but little even of the
ancient common inheritance was preserved in a recognizable form, and
that little was for the most part misunderstood or not understood
at all.  It could not be otherwise; for, just as in the peoples
themselves the great contrasts, which during the Graeco-Italian
period had lain side by side undeveloped, were after their division
distinctly evolved, so in their religion also a separation took
place between the idea and the image, which had hitherto been but
one whole in the soul.  Those old tillers of the ground, when the
clouds were driving along the sky, probably expressed to themselves
the phenomenon by saying that the hound of the gods was driving
together the startled cows of the herd.  The Greek forgot that the
cows were really the clouds, and converted the son of the hound
of the gods--a form devised merely for the particular purposes of
that conception--into the adroit messenger of the gods ready for
every service.  When the thunder rolled among the mountains, he
saw Zeus brandishing his bolts on Olympus; when the blue sky again
smiled upon him, he gazed into the bright eye of Athenaea, the
daughter of Zeus; and so powerful over him was the influence of the
forms which he had thus created, that he soon saw nothing in them
but human beings invested and illumined with the splendour of
nature's power, and freely formed and transformed them according to
the laws of beauty.  It was in another fashion, but not less strongly,
that the deeply implanted religious feeling of the Italian race
manifested itself; it held firmly by the idea and did not suffer
the form to obscure it.  As the Greek, when he sacrificed, raised
his eyes to heaven, so the Roman veiled his head; for the prayer
of the former was contemplation, that of the latter reflection.
Throughout the whole of nature he adored the spiritual and the
universal.  To everything existing, to the man and to the tree, to
the state and to the store-room, was assigned a spirit which came
into being with it and perished along with it, the counterpart of
the natural phenomenon in the spiritual domain; to the man the male
Genius, to the woman the female Juno, to the boundary Terminus,
to the forest Silvanus, to the circling year Vertumnus, and so on
to every object after its kind.  In occupations the very steps of
the process were spiritualized: thus, for example, in the prayer
for the husbandman there was invoked the spirit of fallowing, of
ploughing, of furrowing, sowing, covering-in, harrowing, and so
forth down to that of the in-bringing, up-storing, and opening of
the granaries.  In like manner marriage, birth, and every other
natural event were endowed with a sacred life.  The larger the
sphere embraced in the abstraction, the higher rose the god and the
reverence paid by man.  Thus Jupiter and Juno are the abstractions
of manhood and womanhood; Dea Dia or Ceres, the creative power;
Minerva, the power of memory; Dea Bona, or among the Samnites
Dea Cupra, the good deity.  While to the Greek everything assumed
a concrete and corporeal shape, the Roman could only make use of
abstract, completely transparent formulae; and while the Greek for
the most part threw aside the old legendary treasures of primitive
times, because they embodied the idea in too transparent a form, the
Roman could still less retain them, because the sacred conceptions
seemed to him dimmed even by the lightest veil of allegory.  Not
a trace has been preserved among the Romans even of the oldest and
most generally diffused myths, such as that current among the Indians,
the Greeks, and even the Semites, regarding a great flood and its
survivor, the common ancestor of the present human race.  Their
gods could not marry and beget children, like those of the Hellenes;
they did not walk about unseen among mortals; and they needed no
nectar.  But that they, nevertheless, in their spirituality--which
only appears tame to dull apprehension--gained a powerful hold on
men's minds, a hold more powerful perhaps than that of the gods of
Hellas created after the image of man, would be attested, even if
history were silent on the subject, by the Roman designation of faith
(the word and the idea alike foreign to the Hellenes), -Religlo-,
that is to say, "that which binds." As India and Iran developed from
one and the same inherited store, the former, the richly varied
forms of its sacred epics, the latter, the abstractions of the
Zend-Avesta; so in the Greek mythology the person is predominant,
in the Roman the idea, in the former freedom, in the latter necessity.


Art


Lastly, what holds good of real life is true also of its counterfeit
in jest and play, which everywhere, and especially in the earliest
period of full and simple existence, do not exclude the serious,
but veil it.  The simplest elements of art are in Latium and Hellas
quite the same; the decorous armed dance, the "leap" (-triumpus-,
--thriambos--, --di-thyrambos--); the masquerade of the "full people"
(--satyroi--, -satura-), who, wrapped in the skins of sheep and
goats, wound up the festival with their jokes; lastly, the pipe,
which with suitable strains accompanied and regulated the solemn
as well as the merry dance.  Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
close relationship of the Hellenes and Italians come to light so
clearly as here; and yet in no other direction did the two nations
manifest greater divergence as they became developed.  The training
of youth remained in Latium strictly confined to the narrow limits
of domestic education; in Greece the yearning after a varied
yet harmonious training of mind and body created the sciences of
Gymnastics and Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by
individuals as their highest good.  Latium in the poverty of its
artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized
peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its
religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of
these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of
which history has not again to show.  In Latium no other influences
were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and
strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful
ascendency of beauty, to minister to the fair boy-friend with an
enthusiasm half sensuous, half ideal, and to reanimate their lost
courage with the war-songs of the divine singer.

Thus the two nations in which the civilization of antiquity
culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they
were in origin identical.  The points in which the Hellenes excel
the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more
brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he
was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of
self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own
gods, form the rich treasure of the Italian nation.  Both nations
underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development;
it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the
Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii
and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve
like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes.  It was in fact the
most peculiar and the best feature in the character of the Greek
people, that rendered it impossible for them to advance from national
to political unity without at the same time exchanging their polity
for despotism.  The ideal world of beauty was all in all to the
Greeks, and compensated them to some extent for what they wanted
in reality.  Wherever in Hellas a tendency towards national union
appeared, it was based not on elements directly political, but
on games and art: the contests at Olympia, the poems of Homer,
the tragedies of Euripides, were the only bonds that held Hellas
together.  Resolutely, on the other hand, the Italian surrendered
his own personal will for the sake of freedom, and learned to obey
his father that he might know how to obey the state.  Amidst this
subjection individual development might be marred, and the germs
of fairest promise in man might be arrested in the bud; the Italian
gained in their stead a feeling of fatherland and of patriotism
such as the Greek never knew, and alone among all the civilized
nations of antiquity succeeded in working out national unity in
connection with a constitution based on self-government--a national
unity, which at last placed in his hands the mastery not only over
the divided Hellenic stock, but over the whole known world.




Notes for Book I Chapter II



1.  Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound;
as -theotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino- and -dasiihonas platorrihi
bollihi-.

2.  The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between
the Iapygian language and the modern Albanian; based, however, on
points of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory
in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is
involved.  Should this relationship be confirmed, and should the
Albanians on the other hand--a race also Indo-Germanic and on a par
with the Hellenic and Italian races--be really a remnant of that
Hellene-barbaric nationality traces of which occur throughout all
Greece and especially in the northern provinces, the nation that
preceded the Hellenes would be demonstrated as identical with
that which preceded the Italians.  Still the inference would not
immediately follow that the Iapygian immigration to Italy had taken
place across the Adriatic Sea.

3.  Barley, wheat, and spelt were found growing together in a wild
state on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west from Anah
(Alph.  de Candolle, Geographie botanique raisonnee, ii. p. 934).
The growth of barley and wheat in a wild state in Mesopotamia had
already been mentioned by the Babylonian historian Berosus (ap.
Georg. Syncell.  p. 50 Bonn.).

4.  Scotch -quern-.  Mr. Robertson.

5.  If the Latin -vieo-, -vimen-, belong to the same root as our
weave (German -weben-) and kindred words, the word must still, when
the Greeks and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to
plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably
in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed
that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not
reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted
with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the
preparation of linseed-oil.  Hemp probably became known to the
Italians at a still later period than flax; at least -cannabis-
looks quite like a borrowed word of later date.

6.  Thus -aro-, -aratrum- reappear in the old German -aran-
(to plough, dialectically -eren-), -erida-, in Slavonian -orati-,
-oradlo-, in Lithuanian -arti-, -arimnas-, in Celtic -ar-, -aradar-.
Thus alongside of -ligo- stands our rake (German -rechen-), of
-hortus- our garden (German -garten-), of -mola- our mill (German
-muhle-, Slavonic -mlyn-, Lithuanian -malunas-, Celtic -malin-).

With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was
a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely
pastoral husbandry.  If it was the possession of cattle, and not of
land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard
of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture
was of later introduction, but that it was at first conducted on
the system of joint possession.  Of course a purely agricultural
economy cannot have existed anywhere before the separation of
the stocks; on the contrary, pastoral husbandry was (more or less
according to locality) combined with it to an extent relatively
greater than was the case in later times.

7.  Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection
of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during
the earliest epoch of culture.  Thus the gods in Italy immediately
concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch,
Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301),
in Greece Demeter (Plutarch, Conjug. Praec. init.); in old Greek
formulas the procreation of children is called --arotos--(ii.
The Family and the State, note); indeed the oldest Roman formof
marriage, -confarreatio-, derives its name and its ceremony from
the cultivation of corn.  The use of the plough in the founding of
cities is well known.

8.  Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any
can be shown to be certainly related; -lancea-, although doubtless
connected with -logchei-, is, as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps
borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards.

9.  Even in details this agreement appears; e.g., in the designation of
lawful wedlock as "marriage concluded for the obtaining of lawful
children" (--gauos epi paidon gneision aroto--, -matrimonium
liberorum quaerendorum causa-).

10.  Only we must, of course, not forget that like pre-existing
conditions lead everywhere to like institutions.  For instance,
nothing is more certain than that the Roman plebeians were a growth
originating within the Roman commonwealth, and yet they everywhere
find their counterpart where a body of -metoeci- has arisen alongside
of a body of burgesses.  As a matter of course, chance also plays
in such cases its provoking game.




CHAPTER III

The Settlements of the Latins



Indo-Germanic Migrations


The home of the Indo-Germanic stock lay in the western portion of
central Asia; from this it spread partly in a south-eastern direction
over India, partly in a northwestern over Europe.  It is difficult
to determine the primitive seat of the Indo-Germans more precisely:
it must, however, at any rate have been inland and remote from
the sea, as there is no name for the sea common to the Asiatic and
European branches.  Many indications point more particularly to the
regions of the Euphrates; so that, singularly enough, the primitive
seats of the two most important civilized stocks, --the Indo-Germanic
and the Aramaean,--almost coincide as regards locality.  This
circumstance gives support to the hypothesis that these races also
were originally connected, although, if there was such a connection,
it certainly must have been anterior to all traceable development
of culture and language.  We cannot define more exactly their original
locality, nor are we able to accompany the individual stocks in the
course of their migrations.  The European branch probably lingered
in Persia and Armenia for some considerable time after the departure
of the Indians; for, according to all appearance, that region has
been the cradle of agriculture and of the culture of the vine.
Barley, spelt, and wheat are indigenous in Mesopotamia, and the
vine tothe south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea: there too
the plum, the walnut, and others of the more easily transplanted
fruit trees are native.  It is worthy of notice that the name for
the sea is common to most of the European stocks--Latins, Celts,
Germans, and Slavonians; they must probably therefore before their
separation have reached the coast of the Black Sea or of the Caspian.
By what route from those regions the Italians reached the chain
of the Alps, and where in particular they were settled while still
united with the Hellenes alone, are questions that can only be
answered when the problem is solved by what route--whether from
Asia Minor or from the regions of the Danube--the Hellenes arrived
in Greece.  It may at all events be regarded as certain that the
Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the
north.(1)

The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central
mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can
still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely
historical times.  Less is known regarding the route which the Latin
migration followed.  Probably it proceeded in a similar direction
along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first
Sabellian stocks began to move.  The stream only overflows the heights
when the lower grounds are already occupied; and only through the
supposition that there were Latin stocks already settled on the coast
are we able to explain why  the Sabellians should have contented
themselves with the rougher mountain districts, from which they
afterwards issued and intruded, wherever it was possible, between
the Latin tribes.


Extension of the Latins in Italy


It is well known that a Latin stock inhabited the country from
the left bank of the Tiber to the Volscian mountains; but these
mountains themselves, which appear to have been neglected on occasion
of the first immigration when the plains of Latium and Campania
still lay open to the settlers, were, as the Volscian inscriptions
show, occupied by a stock more nearly related to the Sabellians
than to the Latins.  On the other hand, Latins probably dwelt in
Campania before the Greek and Samnite immigrations; for the Italian
names Novla or Nola (newtown), Campani Capua, Volturnus (from
-volvere-, like -Iuturna- from -iuvare-), Opsci (labourers), are
demonstrably older than the Samnite invasion, and show that, at the
time when Cumae was founded by the Greeks, an Italian and probably
Latin stock, the Ausones, were in possession of Campania.  The
primitive inhabitants of the districts which the Lucani and Bruttii
subsequently occupied, the Itali proper (inhabitants of the land of
oxen), are associated by the best observers not with the Iapygian,
but with the Italian stock; and there is nothing to hinder our regarding
them as belonging to its Latin branch, although the Hellenizing of
these districts which took place even before the commencement of
the political development of Italy, and their subsequent inundation
by Samnite hordes, have in this instance totally obliterated the
traces of the older nationality.  Very ancient legends bring the
similarly extinct stock of the Siculi into relation with Rome.  For
instance, the earliest historian of Italy Antiochus of Syracuse
tells us that a man named Sikelos came a fugitive from Rome to
Morges king of Italia (i. e. the Bruttian peninsula).  Such stories
appear to be founded on the identity of race recognized by the
narrators as subsisting between the Siculi (of whom there were
some still in Italy in the time of Thucydides) and the Latins.  The
striking affinity of certain dialectic peculiarities of Sicilian
Greek with the Latin is probably to be explained rather by the old
commercial connections subsisting between Rome and the Sicilian
Greeks, than by the ancient identity of the languages of the Siculi
and the Romans.  According to all indications, however, not only
Latium, but probably also the Campanian and Lucanian districts,
the Italia proper between the gulfs of Tarentum and Laus, and the
eastern half of Sicily were in primitive times inhabited by different
branches of the Latin nation.

Destinies very dissimilar awaited these different branches.  Those
settled in Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Campania came into contact
with the Greeks at a period when they were unable to offer resistance
to their civilization, and were either completely Hellenized, as in
the case of Sicily, or at any rate so weakened that they succumbed
without marked resistance to the fresh energy of the Sabine tribes.
In this way the Siculi, the Itali and Morgetes, and the Ausonians
never came to play an active part in the history of the peninsula.
It was otherwise with Latium, where no Greek colonies were
founded, and the inhabitants after hard struggles were successful
in maintaining their ground against the Sabines as well as against
their northern neighbours.  Let us cast a glance at this district,
which was destined more than any other to influence the fortunes
of the ancient world.


Latium


The plain of Latium must have been in primeval times the scene of
the grandest conflicts of nature, while the slowly formative agency
of water deposited, and the eruptions of mighty volcanoes upheaved,
the successive strata of that soil on which was to be decided the
question to what people the sovereignty of the world should belong.
Latium is bounded on the east by the mountains of the Sabines and
Aequi which form part of the Apennines; and on the south by the
Volscian range rising to the height of 4000 feet, which is separated
from the main chain of the Apennines by the ancient territory of
the Hernici, the tableland of the Sacco (Trerus, a tributary of the
Liris), and stretching in a westerly direction terminates in the
promontory of Terracina.  On the west its boundary is the sea, which
on this part of the coast forms but few and indifferent harbours.
On the north it imperceptibly merges into the broad hill-land
of Etruria.  The region thus enclosed forms a magnificent plain
traversed by the Tiber, the "mountain-stream" which issues from
the Umbrian, and by the Anio, which rises in the Sabine mountains.
Hills here and there emerge, like islands, from the plain; some
of them steep limestone cliffs, such as that of Soracte in the
north-east, and that of the Circeian promontory on the south-west,
as well as the similar though lower height of the Janiculum near
Rome; others volcanic elevations, whose extinct craters had become
converted into lakes which in some cases still exist; the most
important of these is the Alban range, which, free on every side,
stands forth from the plain between the Volscian chain and the
river Tiber.

Here settled the stock which is known to history under the name
of the Latins, or, as they were subsequently called by way of
distinction from the Latin communities beyond the bounds of Latium,
the "Old Latins" (-prisci Latini-).  But the territory occupied
by them, the district of Latium, was only a small portion of the
central plain of Italy.  All the country north of the Tiber was to
the Latins a foreign and even hostile domain, with whose inhabitants
no lasting alliance, no public peace, was possible, and such armistices
as were concluded appear always to have been for a limited period.
The Tiber formed the northern boundary from early times; and neither
in history nor in the more reliable traditions has any reminiscence
been preserved as to the period or occasion of the establishment
of a frontier line so important in its results.  We find, at the
time when our history begins, the flat and marshy tracts to the
south of the Alban range in the hands of Umbro-Sabellian stocks, the
Rutuli and Volsci; Ardea and Velitrae are no longer in the number
of originally Latin towns.  Only the central portion of that region
between the Tiber, the spurs of the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and
the sea--a district of about 700 square miles, not much larger than
the present canton of Zurich--was Latium proper,  the "plain,"(2)
as it appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte
Cavo.  Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously flat.
With the exception of the sea-beach which is sandy and formed in
part by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is everywhere
broken by hills of tufa moderate in height though often somewhat
steep, and by deep fissures of the ground.  These alternating
elevations and depressions of the surface lead to the formation
of lakes in winter; and the exhalations proceeding in the heat of
summer from the putrescent organic substances which they contain
engender that noxious fever-laden atmosphere, which in ancient
times tainted the district as it taints it at the present day.  It
is a mistake to suppose that these miasmata were first occasioned
by the neglect of cultivation, which was the result of the misgovernment
in the last century of the Republic and under the Papacy.  Their
cause lies rather in the want of natural outlets for the water;
and it operates now as it operated thousands of years ago.  It is
true, however, that the malaria may to a certain extent be banished
by thoroughness of tillage--a fact which has not yet received its
full explanation, but may be partly accounted for by the circumstance
that the working of the surface accelerates the drying up of the
stagnant waters.  It must always remain a remarkable phenomenon,
that a dense agricultural population should have arisen in regions
where no healthy population can at present subsist, and where the
traveller is unwilling to tarry even for a single night, such as
the plain of Latium and the lowlands of Sybaris and Metapontum.
We must bear in mind that man in a low stage of civilization
has generally a quicker perception of what nature demands, and a
greater readiness in conforming to her requirements; perhaps, also,
a more elastic physical constitution, which accommodates itself
more readily to the conditions of the soil where he dwells.  In
Sardinia agriculture is prosecuted under physical conditions
precisely similar even at the present day; the pestilential atmosphere
exists, but the peasant avoids its injurious effects by caution in
reference to clothing, food, and the choice of his hours of labour.
In fact, nothing is so certain a protection against the "aria cattiva"
as wearing the fleece of animals and keeping a blazing fire; which
explains why the Roman countryman went constantly clothed in heavy
woollen stuffs, and never allowed the fire on his hearth to be
extinguished.  In other respects the district must have appeared
attractive to an immigrant agricultural people: the soil is easily
laboured with mattock and hoe and is productive even without
being manured, although, tried by an Italian standard, it does not
yield any extraordinary return: wheat yields on an average about
five-fold.(3) Good water is not abundant; the higher and more
sacred on that account was the esteem in which every fresh spring
was held by the inhabitants.


Latin Settlements


No accounts have been preserved of the mode in which the settlements
of the Latins took place in the district which has since borne
their name; and we are left to gather what we can almost exclusively
from a posteriori inference regarding them.  Some knowledge may,
however, in this way be gained, or at any rate some conjectures
that wear an aspect of probability.


Clan-Villages


The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number
of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation
of the earliest "rural wards" (-tribus rusticae-).  Tradition
informs us as to the -tribus Claudia-, that it originated from
the settlement of the Claudian clansmen on the Anio; and that the
other districts of the earliest division originated in a similar
manner is indicated quite as certainly by their names.  These
names are not, like those of the districts added at a later period,
derived from the localities, but are formed without exception from
the names of clans; and the clans who thus gave their names to
the wards of the original Roman territory are, so far as they have
not become entirely extinct (as is the case with the -Camilii-,
-Galerii-, -Lemonii-, -Pollii-, -Pupinii-, -Voltinii-), the very
oldest patrician families of Rome, the -Aemilii-, -Cornelii-, -Fabii-,
-Horatii-, -Menenii-, -Papirii-, -Romilii-, -Sergii-, -Voturii-.
It is worthy of remark, that not one of these clans can be shown to
have taken up its settlement in Rome only at a later epoch.  Every
Italian, and doubtless also every Hellenic, canton must, like the
Roman, have been divided into a number of groups associated at once
by locality and by clanship; such a clan-settlement is the "house"
(--oikia--) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the --komai--
and --demoi-- originated among them, like the tribus in Rome.  The
corresponding Italian terms "house" -vicus-or "district" (-pagus-,
from -pangere-) indicate, in like manner, the joint settlement
of the members of a clan, and thence come by an easily understood
transition to signify in common use hamlet or village.  As each
household had its own portion of land, so the clan-household or
village had a clan-land belonging to it, which, as will afterwards
be shown, was managed up to a comparatively late period after the
analogy of household--land, that is, on the system of joint-possession.
Whether it was in Latium itself that the clan-households became
developed into clan-villages, or whether the Latins were already
associated in clans when they immigrated into Latium, are questions
which we are just as little able to answer as we are to determine
what was the form assumed by the management on joint account,
which such an arrangement required,(4) or how far, in addition to
the original ground of common ancestry, the clan may have been based
on the incorporation or co-ordination from without of individuals
not related to it by blood.


Cantons


These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as
independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political
community (-civitas-, -populus-).  This first presents itself as an
aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language,
and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal
redress and to united action in aggression and defence.  A fixed
local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton
as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in
other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their
villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint
settlement in the strict sense--a town.  It must, on the contrary,
have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of
justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members
of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and
amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves
and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in
the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was
not at all or but scantily inhabited.  Ancient places of refuge,
of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present
day on the tops of several of the hills in the highlands of east
Switzerland.  Such a place was called in Italy "height" (-capitolium-,
like --akra--, the mountain-top), or "stronghold" (-arx-, from
-arcere-); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of
one, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold and were
afterwards surrounded with the "ring" (-urbs-, connected with
-urvus-, -rurvus-, perhaps also with -orbis-).  The stronghold and
town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of
gates, of which the stronghold has as few as possible, and the town
many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three.
Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which
prevailed in Italy anterior to the existence of towns: a constitution,
the nature of which may still be recognized with some degree of
clearness in those provinces of Italy which did not until a late
period reach, and in some cases have not yet fully reached, the
stage of aggregation in towns, such as the land of the Marsi and
the small cantons of the Abruzzi.  The country if the Aequiculi,
who even in the imperial period dwelt not in towns, but in numerous
open hamlets, presents a number of ancient ring-walls, which,
regarded as "deserted towns" with their solitary temples, excited
the astonishment of the Roman as well as of modern archaeologists,
who have fancied that they could find accommodation there, the
former for their "primitive inhabitants" (-aborigines-), the latter
for their Pelasgians.  We shall certainly be nearer the truth in
recognizing these structures not as walled towns, but as places of
refuge for the inhabitants of the district, such as were doubtless
found in more ancient times over all Italy, although constructed
in less artistic style.  It was natural that at the period when the
stocks that had made the transition to urban life were surrounding
their towns with stone walls, those districts whose inhabitants
continued to dwell in open hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts
and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone.  When
peace came to be securely established throughout the land and
such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were
abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations.


Localities of the Oldest Cantons


These cantons accordingly, having their rendezvous in some
stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the
primitive political unities with which Italian history begins.  At
what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium,
cannot be determined with precision; nor is it a matter of special
historical interest The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold
of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the
freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be
first occupied by the new comers.


Alba


Here accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between
the Alban lake (-Lago di Castello-) and the Alban mount (-Monte
Cavo-), extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded
as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of
Rome as well as of all the other Old Latin communities; here, too,
on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium,
Aricia, and Tusculum.  Here are found some of those primitive works
of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization and
seem to stand as a witness to posterity that in reality Pallas
Athena when she does appear, comes into the world full grown.  Such
is the escarpment of the wall of rock below Alba in the direction
of Palazzuola, whereby the place, which is rendered naturally
inaccessible by the steep declivities of Monte Cavo on the south,
is rendered equally unapproachable on the north, and only the two
narrow approaches on the east and west, which are capable of being
easily defended, are left open for traffic.  Such, above all, is
the large subterranean tunnel cut--so that a man can stand upright
within it--through the hard wall of lava, 6000 feet thick, by which
the waters of the lake formed in the old crater of the Alban Mount
were reduced to their present level and a considerable space was
gained for tillage on the mountain itself.

The summits of the last offshoots of the Sabine range form natural
fastnesses of the Latin plain; and the canton-strongholds there
gave rise at a later period to the considerable towns of Tibur and
Praeneste.  Labici too, Gabii, and Nomentum in the plain between the
Alban and Sabine hills and the Tiber, Rome on the Tiber, Laurentum
and Lavinium on the coast, were all more or less ancient centres
of Latin colonization, not to speak of many others less famous and
in some cases almost forgotten.


The Latin League


All these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign,
and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation
of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors.  Nevertheless
the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of
language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself
in an important religious and political institution--the perpetual
league of the collective Latin cantons.  The presidency belonged
originally, according to the universal Italian as well as Hellenic
usage, to that canton within whose bounds lay the meeting-place of
the league; in this case it was the canton of Alba, which, as we
have said, was generally regarded as the oldest and most eminent
of the Latin cantons.  The communities entitled to participate in
the league were in the beginning thirty--a number which we find
occurring with singular frequency as the sum of the constituent
parts of a commonwealth in Greece and Italy.  What cantons originally
made up the number of the thirty old Latin communities or, as with
reference to the metropolitan rights of Alba they are also called,
the thirty Alban colonies, tradition has not recorded, and we can
no longer ascertain.  The rendezvous of this union was, like the
Pamboeotia and the Panionia among the similar confederacies of the
Greeks, the "Latin festival" (-feriae Latinae-), at which, on the
"Mount of Alba" (-Mons Albanus-, -Monte Cavo-), upon a day annually
appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was
offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the "Latin god"
(-Jupiter Latiaris-).  Each community taking part in the ceremony
had to contribute to the sacrificial feast its fixed proportion
of cattle, milk, and cheese, and to receive in return a portion of
the roasted victim.  These usages continued down to a late period,
and are well known: respecting the more important legal bearings
of this association we can do little else than institute conjectures.

From the most ancient times there were held, in connection with
the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assemblies of the
representatives of the several communities at the neighbouring
Latin seat of justice at the source of the Ferentina (near Marino).
Indeed such a confederacy cannot be conceived to exist without
having a certain power of superintendence over the associated body,
and without possessing a system of law binding on all.  Tradition
records, and we may well believe, that the league exercised
jurisdiction in reference to violations of federal law, and that
it could in such cases pronounce even sentence of death.  The later
communion of legal rights and, in some sense, of marriage that
subsisted among the Latin communities may perhaps be regarded as
an integral part of the primitive law of the league, so that any
Latin man could beget lawful children with any Latin woman and
acquire landed property and carry on trade in any part of Latium.
The league may have also provided a federal tribunal of arbitration
for the mutual disputes of the cantons; on the other hand, there
is no proof that the league imposed any limitation on the sovereign
right of each community to make peace or war.  In like manner
there can be no doubt that the constitution of the league implied
the possibility of its waging defensive or even aggressive war
in its own name; in which case, of course, it would be necessary
to have a federal commander-in-chief.  But we have no reason to
suppose that in such an event each community was compelled by law
to furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any
one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even
against a member of the league.  There are, however, indications
that during the Latin festival, just as was the case during the
festivals of the Hellenic leagues, "a truce of God" was observed
throughout all Latium;(5) and probably on that occasion even tribes
at feud granted safe-conducts to each other.

It is still less in our power to define the range of the privileges
of the presiding canton; only we may safely affirm that there is
no reason for recognizing in the Alban presidency a real political
hegemony over Latium, and that possibly, nay probably, it had no
more significance in Latium than the honorary presidency of Elis
had in Greece.(6)  On the whole it is probable that the extent of
this Latin league, and the amount of its jurisdiction, were somewhat
unsettled and fluctuating; yet it remained throughout not an
accidental aggregate of various communities more or less alien to
each other, but the just and necessary expression of the relationship
of the Latin stock.  The Latin league may not have at all times
included all Latin communities, but it never at any rate granted
the privilege of membership to any that were not Latin.  Its
counterpart in Greece was not the Delphic Amphictyony, but the
Boeotian or Aetolian confederacy.

These very general outlines must suffice: any attempt to draw the
lines more sharply would only falsify the picture.  The manifold play
of mutual attraction and repulsion among those earliest political
atoms, the cantons, passed away in Latium without witnesses competent
to tell the tale.  We must now be content to realise the one great
abiding fact that they possessed a common centre, to which they
did not sacrifice their individual independence, but by means of
which they cherished and increased the feeling of their belonging
collectively to the same nation.  By such a common possession the
way was prepared for their advance from that cantonal individuality,
with which the history of every people necessarily begins, to the
national union with which the history of every people ends or at
any rate ought to end.




Notes for Book I Chapter III



1.  I. II. Italians

2.  Like -latus- (side) and --platus-- (flat); it denotes therefore
the flat country in contrast to the Sabine mountain-land, just
as Campania, the "plain," forms the contrast to Samnium.  Latus,
formerly -stlatus-, has no connection with Latium.

3.  A French statist, Dureau de la Malle (-Econ. Pol. des Romains-,
ii. 226), compares with the Roman Campagna the district of Limagne
in Auvergne, which is likewise a wide, much intersected, and uneven
plain, with a superficial soil of decomposed lava and ashes--the
remains of extinct volcanoes.  The population, at least 2500
to the square league, is one of the densest to be found in purely
agricultural districts: property is subdivided to an extraordinary
extent.  Tillage is carried on almost entirely by manual labour,
with spade, hoe, or mattock; only in exceptional cases a light
plough is substituted drawn by two cows, the wife of the peasant
not unfrequently taking the place of one of them in the yoke.  The
team serves at once to furnish milk and to till the land.  They
have two harvests in the year, corn and vegetables; there is no
fallow.  The average yearly rent for an arpent of arable land is
100 francs.  If instead Of such an arrangement this same land were
to be divided among six or seven large landholders, and a system
of management by stewards and day labourers were to supersede the
husbandry of the small proprietors, in a hundred years the Limagne
would doubtless be as waste, forsaken, and miserable as the Campagna
di Roma is at the present day.

4.  In Slavonia, where the patriarchal economy is retained up to
the present day, the whole family, often to the number of fifty
or even a hundred persons, remains together in the same house under
the orders of the house-father (Goszpodar) chosen by the whole
family for life.  The property of the household, which consists
chiefly in cattle, is administered by the house-father; the
surplus is distributed according to the family-branches.  Private
acquisitions by industry and trade remain separate property.
Instances of quitting the household occur, in the case even of men,
e. g. by marrying into a stranger household (Csaplovies, -Slavonien-,
i. 106, 179).  --Under such circumstances, which are probably
not very widely different from the earliest Roman conditions, the
household approximates in character to the community.

5.  The Latin festival is expressly called "armistice" (-indutiae-,
Macrob. Sat. i. 16; --ekecheipiai--, Dionys. iv. 49); and a war
was not allowed to be begun during its continuance (Macrob. l. c.)

6.  The assertion often made in ancient and modern times, that
Alba once ruled over Latium under the forms of a symmachy, nowhere
finds on closer investigation sufficient support.  All history
begins not with the union, but with the disunion of a nation; and
it is very improbable that the problem of the union of Latium, which
Rome finally solved after some centuries of conflict, should have
been already solved at an earlier period by Alba.  It deserves to
be remarked too that Rome never asserted in the capacity of heiress
of Alba any claims of sovereignty proper over the Latin communities,
but contented herself with an honorary presidency; which no doubt,
when it became combined with material power, afforded a handle for
her pretensions of hegemony.  Testimonies, strictly so called, can
scarcely be adduced on such a question; and least of all do such
passages as Festus -v.  praetor-, p. 241, and Dionys. iii. 10,
suffice to stamp Alba as a Latin Athens.




CHAPTER IV

The Beginnings of Rome



Ramnes


About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of
moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the
right, lower on the left bank. With the latter group there has been
closely associated for at least two thousand five hundred years the
name of the Romans. We are unable, of course, to tell how or when
that name arose; this much only is certain, that in the oldest
form of it known to us the inhabitants of the canton are called not
Romans, but Ramnians (Ramnes); and this shifting of sound, which
frequently occurs in the older period of a language, but fell very
early into abeyance in Latin,(1) is an expressive testimony to the
immemorial antiquity of the name. Its derivation cannot be given with
certainty; possibly "Ramnes" may mean "the people on the stream."


Tities, Luceres


But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the bank
of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a
trace has been preserved of the fact that that body arose out of
the amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the
Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth--in other
words, out of such a  --synoikismos-- as that from which Athens
arose in Attica.(2)  The great antiquity of this threefold division
of the community(3) is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the
Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, regularly
used the forms -tribuere- ("to divide into three") and -tribus-
("a third") in the general sense of "to divide" and "a part," and
the latter expression (-tribus-), like our "quarter," early lost
its original signification of number. After the union each of these
three communities--once separate, but now forming subdivisions of
a single community--still possessed its third of the common domain,
and had its proportional representation in the burgess-force and
in the council of the elders.  In ritual also, the number divisible
by three of the members of almost all the oldest colleges--of the
Vestal Virgins, the Salii, the Arval Brethren, the Luperci, the
Augurs-- probably had reference to that three-fold partition. These
three elements into which the primitive body of burgesses in Rome
was divided have had theories of the most extravagant absurdity
engrafted upon them. The irrational opinion that the Roman nation
was a mongrel people finds its support in that division, and its
advocates have striven by various means to represent the three
great Italian races as elements entering into the composition of
the primitive Rome, and to transform a people which has exhibited
in language, polity, and religion, a pure and national development
such as few have equalled, into a confused aggregate of Etruscan
and Sabine, Hellenic and, forsooth! even Pelasgian fragments.

Setting aside self-contradictory and unfounded hypotheses, we may
sum up in a few words all that can be said respecting the nationality
of the component elements of the primitive Roman commonwealth.
That the Ramnians were a Latin stock cannot be doubted, for they
gave their name to the new Roman commonwealth and therefore must have
substantially determined the nationality of the united community.
Respecting the origin of the Luceres nothing can be affirmed, except
that there is no difficulty in the way of our assigning them, like
the Ramnians, to the Latin stock. The second of these communities,
on the other hand, is with one consent derived from Sabina; and
this view can at least be traced to a tradition preserved in the
Titian brotherhood, which represented that priestly college as
having been instituted, on occasion of the Tities being admitted
into the collective community, for the preservation of their
distinctive Sabine ritual. It may be, therefore, that at a period
very remote, when the Latin and Sabellian stocks were beyond question
far less sharply contrasted in language, manners, and customs than
were the Roman and the Samnite of a later age, a Sabellian community
entered into a Latin canton-union; and, as in the older and more
credible traditions without exception the Tities take precedence
of the Ramnians, it is probable that the intruding Tities compelled
the older Ramnians to accept the  --synoikismos--.  A mixture
of different nationalities certainly therefore took place; but
it hardly exercised an influence greater than the migration, for
example, which occurred some centuries afterwards of the Sabine
Attus Clauzus or Appius Claudius and his clansmen and clients to
Rome.  The earlier admission of the Tities among the Ramnians does
not entitle us to class the community among mongrel peoples any
more than does that subsequent reception of the Claudii among the
Romans. With the exception, perhaps, of isolated national institutions
handed down in connection with ritual, the existence of Sabellian
elements can nowhere be pointed out in Rome; and the Latin
language in particular furnishes absolutely no support to any such
hypothesis.(4)  It would in fact be more than surprising, if the
Latin nation should have had its nationality in any sensible degree
affected by the insertion of a single community from a stock so
very closely related to it; and, besides, it must not be forgotten
that at the time when the Tides settled beside the Ramnians, Latin
nationality rested on Latium as its basis, and not on Rome. The new
tripartite Roman commonwealth was, notwithstanding some incidental
elements which were originally Sabellian, just what the community
of the Ramnians had previously been--a portion of the Latin nation.


Rome the Emporium of Latium


Long, in all probability, before an urban settlement arose on the
Tiber, these Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, at first separate,
afterwards united, had their stronghold on the Roman hills, and
tilled their fields from the surrounding villages. The "wolf-festival"
(Lupercalia) which the gens of the Quinctii celebrated on the
Palatine hill, was probably a tradition from these primitive times--a
festival of husbandmen and shepherds, which more than any other
preserved the homely pastimes of patriarchal simplicity, and,
singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the other
heathen festivals in Christian Rome,


Character of Its Site


From these settlements the later Rome arose. The founding of a city
in the strict sense, such as the legend assumes, is of course to
be reckoned altogether out of the question: Rome was not built in
a day.  But the serious consideration of the historian may well be
directed to the inquiry, in what way Rome can have so early attained
the prominent political position which it held in Latium--so
different from what the physical character of the locality would
have led us to anticipate.  The site of Rome is less healthy and
less fertile than that of most of the old Latin towns. Neither the
vine nor the fig succeed well in the immediate environs, and there
is a want of springs yielding a good supply of water; for neither
the otherwise excellent fountain of the Camenae before the Porta
Capena, nor the Capitoline well, afterwards enclosed within the
Tullianum, furnish it in any abundance. Another disadvantage arises
from the frequency with which the river overflows its banks. Its
very slight fall renders it unable to carry off the water, which
during the rainy season descends in large quantities from the
mountains, with sufficient rapidity to the sea, and in consequence
it floods the low-lying lands and the valleys that open between the
hills, and converts them into swamps. For a settler the locality
was anything but attractive. In antiquity itself an opinion was
expressed that the first body of immigrant cultivators could scarce
have spontaneously resorted in search of a suitable settlement to
that unhealthy and unfruitful spot in a region otherwise so highly
favoured, and that it must have been necessity, or rather some
special motive, which led to the establishment of a city there.
Even the legend betrays its sense of the strangeness of the fact:
the story of the foundation of Rome by refugees from Alba under
the leadership of the sons of an Alban prince, Romulus and Remus,
is nothing but a naive attempt of primitive quasi-history to explain
the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so
unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome
with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess
to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very
ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss; but
it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing
the special relations of the locality to propose a positive conjecture
not regarding the way in which the place originated, but regarding
the circumstances which occasioned its rapid and surprising prosperity
and led to its occupying its peculiar position in Latium.


Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory


Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the Roman
territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnae, Fidenae, Caenina,
and Gabii lie in the immediate neighbourhood, some of them not five
miles distant from the Servian ring-wall; and the boundary of the
canton must have been in the close vicinity of the city gates.
On the south we find at a distance of fourteen miles the powerful
communities of Tusculum and Alba; and the Roman territory appears
not to have extended in this direction beyond the -Fossa Cluilia-,
five miles from Rome. In like manner, towards the south-west, the
boundary betwixt Rome and Lavinium was at the sixth milestone.
While in a landward direction the Roman canton was thus everywhere
confined within the narrowest possible limits, from the earliest
times, on the other hand, it extended without hindrance on both
banks of the Tiber towards the sea. Between Rome and the coast there
occurs no locality that is mentioned as an ancient canton-centre,
and no trace of any ancient canton-boundary. The legend indeed,
which has its definite explanation of the origin of everything,
professes to tell us that the Roman possessions on the right bank of
the Tiber, the "seven hamlets" (-septem pagi-), and the important
salt-works at its mouth, were taken by king Romulus from the Veientes,
and that king Ancus fortified on the right bank the -tete de pont-,
the "mount of Janus" (-Janiculum-), and founded on the left the
Roman Peiraeus, the seaport at the river's "mouth" (-Ostia-). But
in fact we have evidence more trustworthy than that of legend, that
the possessions on the Etruscan bank of the Tiber must have belonged
to the original territory of Rome; for in this very quarter, at
the fourth milestone on the later road to the port, lay the grove
of the creative goddess (-Dea Dia-), the primitive chief seat of
the Arval festival and Arval brotherhood of Rome. Indeed from time
immemorial the clan of the Romilii, once the chief probably of all
the Roman clans, was settled in this very quarter; the Janiculum
formed a part of the city itself, and Ostia was a burgess colony
or, in other words, a suburb.


The Tiber and Its Traffic


This cannot have been the result of mere accident. The Tiber was
the natural highway for the traffic of Latium; and its mouth, on
a coast scantily provided with harbours, became necessarily the
anchorage of seafarers. Moreover, the Tiber formed from very ancient
times the frontier defence of the Latin stock against their northern
neighbours.  There was no place better fitted for an emporium of the
Latin river and sea traffic, and for a maritime frontier fortress
of Latium, than Rome. It combined the advantages of a strong position
and of immediate vicinity to the river; it commanded both banks of
the stream down to its mouth; it was so situated as to be equally
convenient for the river navigator descending the Tiber or the
Anio, and for the seafarer with vessels of so moderate a size as
those which were then used; and it afforded greater protection from
pirates than places situated immediately on the coast. That Rome
was indebted, if not for its origin, at any rate for its importance,
to these commercial and strategical advantages of its position,
there are accordingly numerous further indications, which are
of very different weight from the statements of quasi-historical
romances. Thence arose its very ancient relations with Caere, which
was to Etruria what Rome was to Latium, and accordingly became Rome's
most intimate neighbour and commercial ally. Thence arose the unusual
importance of the bridge over the Tiber, and of bridge-building
generally in the Roman commonwealth. Thence came the galley in the
city arms; thence, too, the very ancient Roman port-duties on the
exports and imports of Ostia, which were from the first levied only
on what was to be exposed for sale (-promercale-), not on what was
for the shipper's own use (-usuarium-), and which were therefore
in reality a tax upon commerce.  Thence, to anticipate, the
comparatively early occurrence in Rome of coined money, and of
commercial treaties with transmarine states. In this sense, then,
certainly Rome may have been, as the legend assumes, a creation
rather than a growth, and the youngest rather than the oldest among
the Latin cities. Beyond doubt the country was already in some
degree cultivated, and the Alban range as well as various other
heights of the Campagna were occupied by strongholds, when the Latin
frontier emporium arose on the Tiber. Whether it was a resolution
of the Latin confederacy, or the clear-sighted genius of some
unknown founder, or the natural development of traffic, that called
the city of Rome into being, it is vain even to surmise.


Early Urban Character of Rome


But in connection with this view of the position of Rome as the
emporium of Latium another observation suggests itself. At the time
when history begins to dawn on us, Rome appears, in contradistinction
to the league of the Latin communities, as a compact urban unity.
The Latin habit of dwelling in open villages, and of using the
common stronghold only for festivals and assemblies or in case of
special need, was subjected to restriction at a far earlier period,
probably, in the canton of Rome than anywhere else in Latium. The
Roman did not cease to manage his farm in person, or to regard it
as his proper home; but the unwholesome atmosphere of the Campagna
could not but induce him to take up his abode as much as possible
on the more airy and salubrious city hills; and by the side of the
cultivators of the soil there must have been a numerous non-agricultural
population, partly foreigners, partly native, settled there from
very early times.  This to some extent accounts for the dense
population of the old Roman territory, which may be estimated at
the utmost at 115 square miles, partly of marshy or sandy soil, and
which, even under the earliest constitution of the city, furnished
a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least
10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with
the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and
mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar
in their public and private life, and that the distinction between
them and the other Latins and Italians in general is pre-eminently
the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was
not a mercantile city like Corinth or Carthage; for Latium was an
essentially agricultural region, and Rome was in the first instance,
and continued to be, pre-eminently a Latin city. But the distinction
between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly
be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of
character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was
the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand
how, along with and in addition to Latin husbandry, an urban life
should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus
have laid the foundation for its distinctive career.

It is far more important and more practicable to follow out the
course of this mercantile and strategical growth of the city of
Rome, than to attempt the useless task of chemically analysing the
insignificant and but little diversified communities of primitive
times. This urban development may still be so far recognized
in the traditions regarding the successive circumvallations and
fortifications of Rome, the formation of which necessarily kept
pace with the growth of the Roman commonwealth in importance as a
city.


The Palatine City


The town, which in the course of centuries grew up as Rome, in its
original form embraced according to trustworthy testimony only the
Palatine, or "square Rome" (-Roma quadrata-), as it was called in
later times from the irregularly quadrangular form of the Palatine
hill.  The gates and walls that enclosed this original city remained
visible down to the period of the empire: the sites of two of the
former, the Porta Romana near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta
Mugionis at the Arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the
Palatine ring-wall is described by Tacitus from his own observation
at least on the sides looking towards the Aventine and Caelian.
Many traces indicate that this was the centre and original seat of
the urban settlement. On the Palatine was to be found the sacred
symbol of that settlement, the "outfit-vault" (-mundus-) as it
was called, in which the first settlers deposited a sufficiency
of everything necessary for a household and added a clod of their
dear native earth. There, too, was situated the building in which
all the curies assembled for religious and other purposes, each at
its own hearth (-curiae veteres-). There stood the meetinghouse of
the "Leapers" (-curia Saliorum-) in which also the sacred shields
of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the "Wolves" (-Lupercal-),
and the dwelling of the priest of Jupiter. On and near this hill
the legend of the founding of the city placed the scenes of its
leading incidents, and the straw-covered house of Romulus, the
shepherd's hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree
towards which the cradle with the twins had floated, the cornelian
cherry-tree that sprang from the shaft of the spear which the
founder of the city had hurled from the Aventine over the valley of
the Circus into this enclosure, and other such sacred relics were
pointed out to the believer. Temples in the proper sense of the
term were still at this time unknown, and accordingly the Palatine
has nothing of that sort to show belonging to the primitive age.
The public assemblies of the community were early transferred to
another locality, so that their original site is unknown; only it
may be conjectured that the free space round the -mundus-, afterwards
called the -area Apollinis-, was the primitive place of assembly
for the burgesses and the senate, and the stage erected over the
-mundus- itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community.


The Seven Mounts


The "festival of the Seven Mounts" (-septimontium-), again, has
preserved the memory of the more extended settlement which gradually
formed round the Palatine. Suburbs grew up one after another, each
protected by its own separate though weaker circumvallation and
joined to the original ring-wall of the Palatine, as in fen districts
the outer dikes are joined on to the main dike. The "Seven Rings"
were, the Palatine itself; the Cermalus, the slope of the Palatine
in the direction of the morass that extended between it and the
Capitol towards the river (-velabrum-); the Velia, the ridge which
connected the Palatine with the Esquiline, but in subsequent times
was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the
Fagutal, the Oppius, and the Cispius, the three summits of the
Esquiline; lastly, the Sucusa, or Subura, a fortress constructed
outside of the earthen rampart which protected the new town on the
Carinae, in the depression between the Esquiline and the Quirinal
beneath S. Pietro in Vincoli.  These additions, manifestly the
results of a gradual growth, clearly reveal to a certain extent the
earliest history of the Palatine Rome, especially when we compare
with them the Servian arrangement of districts which was afterwards
formed on the basis of this earliest division.


Oldest Settlements in the Palatine and Suburan Regions


The Palatine was the original seat of the Roman community, the oldest
and originally the only ring-wall. The urban settlement, however,
began at Rome as well as elsewhere not within, but under the
protection of, the stronghold; and the oldest settlements with
which we are acquainted, and which afterwards formed the first and
second regions in the Servian division of the city, lay in a circle
round the Palatine. These included the settlement on the declivity
of the Cermalus with the "street of the Tuscans"--a name in which
there may have been preserved a reminiscence of the commercial
intercourse between the Caerites and Romans already perhaps carried
on with vigour in the Palatine city--and the settlement on the
Velia; both of which subsequently along with the stronghold-hill
itself constituted one region in the Servian city. Further, there
were the component elements of the subsequent second region--the
suburb on the Caelian, which probably embraced only its extreme point
above the Colosseum; that on the Carinae, the spur which projects
from the Esquiline towards the Palatine; and, lastly, the valley
and outwork of the Subura, from which the whole region received
its name. These two regions jointly constituted the incipient city;
and the Suburan district of it, which extended at the base of the
stronghold, nearly from the Arch of Constantine to S. Pietro in
Vincoli, and over the valley beneath, appears to have been more
considerable and perhaps older than the settlements incorporated
by the Servian arrangement in the Palatine district, because in the
order of the regions the former takes precedence of the latter. A
remarkable memorial of the distinction between these two portions
of the city was preserved in one of the oldest sacred customs of
the later Rome, the sacrifice of the October horse yearly offered
in the -Campus Martius-: down to a late period a struggle took
place at this festival for the horse's head between the men of the
Subura and those of the Via Sacra, and according as victory lay
with the former or with the latter, the head was nailed either to
the Mamilian Tower (site unknown) in the Subura, or to the king's
palace under the Palatine. It was the two halves of the old city
that thus competed with each other on equal terms. At that time,
accordingly, the Esquiliae (which name strictly used is exclusive
of the Carinae) were in reality what they were called, the "outer
buildings" (-exquiliae-, like -inquilinus-, from -colere-) or
suburb: this became the third region in the later city division,
and it was always held in inferior consideration as compared with
the Suburan and Palatine regions. Other neighbouring heights also,
such as the Capitol and the Aventine, may probably have been occupied
by the community of the Seven Mounts; the "bridge of piles" in
particular (-pons sublicius-), thrown over the natural pier of the
island in the Tiber, must have existed even then--the pontifical
college alone is sufficient evidence of this--and the  -tete de
pont- on the Etruscan bank, the height of the Janiculum, would not
be left unoccupied; but the community had not as yet brought either
within the circuit of its fortifications. The regulation which
was adhered to as a ritual rule down to the latest times, that the
bridge should be composed simply of wood without iron, manifestly
shows that in its original practical use it was to be merely a
flying bridge, which must be capable of being easily at any time
broken off or burnt. We recognize in this circumstance how insecure
for a long time and liable to interruption was the command of the
passage of the river on the part of the Roman community.

No relation is discoverable between the urban settlements thus
gradually formed and the three communities into which from an
immemorially early period the Roman commonwealth was in political
law divided. As the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres appear to have
been communities originally independent, they must have had their
settlements originally apart; but they certainly did not dwell
in separate circumvallations on the Seven Hills, and all fictions
to this effect in ancient or modern times must be consigned by
the intelligent inquirer to the same fate with the charming tale
of Tarpeia and the battle of the Palatine. On the contrary each
of the three tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres must have been
distributed throughout the two regions of the oldest city, the
Subura and Palatine, and the suburban region as well: with this
may be connected the fact, that afterwards not only in the Suburan
and Palatine, but in each of the regions subsequently added to the
city, there were three pairs of Argean chapels. The Palatine city
of the Seven Mounts may have had a history of its own; no other
tradition of it has survived than simply that of its having once
existed. But as the leaves of the forest make room for the new
growth of spring, although they fall unseen by human eyes, so has
this unknown city of the Seven Mounts made room for the Rome of
history.


The Hill-Romans on the Quirinal


But the Palatine city was not the only one that in ancient times
existed within the circle afterwards enclosed by the Servian walls;
opposite to it, in its immediate vicinity, there lay a second city
on the Quirinal. The "old stronghold" (-Capitolium vetus-) with a
sanctuary of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and a temple of the goddess
of Fidelity in which state treaties were publicly deposited, forms
the evident counterpart of the later Capitol with its temple to
Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and with its shrine of Fides Romana
likewise destined as it were for a repository of international
law, and furnishes a sure proof that the Quirinal also was once
the centre of an independent commonwealth. The same fact may be
inferred from the double worship of Mars on the Palatine and the
Quirinal; for Mars was the type of the warrior and the oldest chief
divinity of the burgess communities of Italy. With this is connected
the further circumstance that his ministers, the two primitive
colleges of the "Leapers" (-Salii-) and of the "Wolves" (-Luperci-)
existed in the later Rome in duplicate: by the side of the Salii
of the Palatine there were also Salii of the Quirinal; by the side
of the Quinctian Luperci of the Palatine there was a Fabian guild
of Luperci, which in all probability had their sanctuary on the
Quirinal.(5)

All these indications, which even in themselves are of great weight,
become more significant when we recollect that the accurately
known circuit of the Palatine city of the Seven Mounts excluded the
Quirinal, and that afterwards in the Servian Rome, while the first
three regions corresponded to the former Palatine city, a fourth
region was formed out of the Quirinal along with the neighbouring
Viminal. Thus, too, we discover an explanation of the reason why
the strong outwork of the Subura was constructed beyond the city
wall in the valley between the Esquiline and Quirinal; it was at
that point, in fact, that the two territories came into contact,
and the Palatine Romans, after having taken possession of the low
ground, were under the necessity of constructing a stronghold for
protection against those of the Quirinal.

Lastly, even the name has not been lost by which the men of the
Quirinal distinguished themselves from their Palatine neighbours.
As the Palatine city took the name of "the Seven Mounts," its
citizens called themselves the "mount-men" (-montani-), and the
term "mount," while applied to the other heights belonging to the
city, was above all associated with the Palatine; so the Quirinal
height--although not lower, but on the contrary somewhat higher,
than the former--as well as the adjacent Viminal never in the strict
use of the language received any other name than "hill" (collis).
In the ritual records, indeed, the Quirinal was not unfrequently
designated as the "hill" without further addition. In like manner
the gate leading out from this height was usually called the
"hill-gate" (-porta collina-); the priests of Mars settled there
were called those "of the hill" (-Salii collini-) in contrast to
those of the Palatium (-Salii Palatini-) and the fourth Servian
region formed out of this district was termed the hill-region
(-tribus collina-)(6) The name of Romans primarily associated with
the locality was probably appropriated by these "Hill-men" as well
as by those of the "Mounts;" and the former perhaps designated
themselves as "Romans of the Hill" (-Romani collini-).  That a
diversity of race may have lain at the foundation of this distinction
between the two neighbouring cities is possible; but evidence
sufficient to warrant our pronouncing a community established on
Latin soil to be of alien lineage is, in the case of the Quirinal
community, totally wanting.(7)


Relations between the Palatine and Quirinal Communities


Thus the site of the Roman commonwealth was still at this period
occupied by the Mount-Romans of the Palatine and the Hill-Romans
of the Quirinal as two separate communities confronting each other
and doubtless in many respects at feud, in some degree resembling
the Montigiani and the Trasteverini in modern Rome. That the
community of the Seven Mounts early attained a great preponderance
over that of the Quirinal may with certainty be inferred both from
the greater extent of its newer portions and suburbs, and from
the position of inferiority in which the former Hill-Romans were
obliged to acquiesce under the later Servian arrangement. But
even within the Palatine city there was hardly a true and complete
amalgamation of the different constituent elements of the settlement.
We have already mentioned how the Subura and the Palatine annually
contended for the horse's head; the several Mounts also, and even
the several curies (there was as yet no common hearth for the
city, but the various hearths of the curies subsisted side by side,
although in the same locality) probably felt themselves to be as
yet more separated than united; and Rome as a whole was probably
rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. It
appears from many indications that the houses of the old and powerful
families were constructed somewhat after the manner of fortresses
and were rendered capable of defence--a precaution, it may be
presumed, not unnecessary. It was the magnificent structure ascribed
to king Servius Tullius that first surrounded not merely those two
cities of the Palatine and Quirinal, but also the heights of the
Capitol and the Aventine which were not comprehended within their
enclosure, with a single great ring-wall, and thereby created
the new Rome--the Rome of history. But ere this mighty work was
undertaken, the relations of Rome to the surrounding country had
beyond doubt undergone a complete revolution. As the period, during
which the husbandman guided his plough on the seven hills of Rome
just as on the other hills of Latium, and the usually unoccupied
places of refuge on particular summits alone presented the germs
of a more permanent settlement, corresponds to the earliest epoch
of the Latin stock without trace of traffic or achievement; as
thereafter the flourishing settlement on the Palatine and in the
"Seven Rings" was coincident with the occupation of the mouths of
the Tiber by the Roman community, and with the progress of the Latins
to a more stirring and freer intercourse, to an urban civilization
in Rome more especially, and perhaps also to a more consolidated
political union in the individual states as well as in the confederacy;
so the Servian wall, which was the foundation of a single great
city, was connected with the epoch at which the city of Rome was
able to contend for, and at length to achieve, the sovereignty of
the Latin league.




Notes for Book I Chapter IV

1.  A similar change of sound is exhibited in the case of the following
formations, all of them of a very ancient kind: -pars--portio-,
-Mars- -Mors-, -farreum- ancient form for -horreum-, -Fabii- -Fovii-,
-Valerius- -Volesus-, -vacuus- -vacivus-.

2.  The --synoikismos-- did not necessarily involve an actual
settlement together at one spot; but while each resided as formerly
on his own land, there was thenceforth only one council-hall and
court-house for the whole (Thucyd. ii. 15; Herodot. i. 170).

3.  We might even, looking to the Attic --trittus-- and the Umbrian
-trifo-, raise the question whether a triple division of the
community was not a fundamental principle of the Graeco-ltalians:
in that case the triple division of the Roman community would not be
referable to the amalgamation of several once independent tribes.
But, in order to the establishment of a hypothesis so much at
variance with tradition, such a threefold division would require to
present itself more generally throughout the Graeco-Italian field
than seems to be the case, and to appear uniformly everywhere as
the ground-scheme.  The Umbrians may possibly have adopted the word
-tribus- only when they came under the influence of Roman rule; it
cannot with certainty be traced in Oscan.

4.  Although the older opinion, that Latin is to be viewed as
a mixed language made up of Greek and non-Greek elements, has been
now abandoned on all sides, judicious inquirers even (e. g. Schwegler,
R. G. i. 184, 193) still seek to discover in Latin a mixture of
two nearly related Italian dialects. But we ask in vain for the
linguistic or historical facts which render such an hypothesis
necessary. When a language presents the appearance of being an
intermediate link between two others, every philologist knows that
the phenomenon may quite as probably depend, and more frequently
does depend, on organic development than on external intermixture.

5.  That the Quinctian Luperci had precedence in rank over the Fabian
is evident from the circumstance that the fabulists attribute the
Quinctii to Romulus, the Fabii to Remus (Ovid, Fast. ii. 373 seq.;
Vict. De Orig. 22). That the Fabii belonged to the Hill-Romans is
shown by the sacrifice of their -gens- on the Quirinal (Liv. v.
46, 52), whether that sacrifice may or may not have been connected
with the Lupercalia.

Moreover, the Lupercus of the former college is called in
inscriptions (Orelli, 2253) -Lupercus Quinctialis vetus-; and the
-praenomen-Kaeso, which was most probably connected with the Lupercal
worship (see Rom. Forschungen, i. 17), is found exclusively among
the Quinctii and Fabii: the form commonly occurring in authors,
-Lupercus Quinctilius- and -Quinctilianus-, is therefore a misnomer,
and the college belonged not to the comparatively recent Quinctilii,
but to the far older Quinctii. When, again, the Quinctii (Liv. i.
30), or Quinctilii (Dion. iii. 29), are named among the Alban clans,
the latter reading is here to be preferred, and the Quinctii are
to be regarded rather as an old Roman -gens-.

6.  Although the name "Hill of Quirinus" was afterwards ordinarily
used to designate the height where the Hill-Romans had their abode,
we need not at all on that account regard the name "Quirites" as
having been originally reserved for the burgesses on the Quirinal.
For, as has been shown, all the earliest indications point,
as regards these, to the name -Collini-; while it is indisputably
certain that the name Quirites denoted from the first, as well as
subsequently, simply the full burgess, and had no connection with
the distinction between montani and collini (comp. chap. v. infra).
The later designation of the Quirinal rests on the circumstance
that, while the -Mars quirinus-, the spear-bearing god of Death, was
originally worshipped as well on the Palatine as on the Quirinal--as
indeed the oldest inscriptions found at what was afterwards called
the Temple of Quirinus designate this divinity simply as Mars,--at
a later period for the sake of distinction the god of the Mount-Romans
more especially was called Mars, the god of the Hill Romans more
especially Quirinus.

When the Quirinal is called -collis agonalis-, "hill of sacrifice,"
it is so designated merely as the centre of the religious rites of
the Hill-Romans.

7.  The evidence alleged for this (comp. e. g. Schwegler, S. G. i.
480) mainly rests on an etymologico-historical hypothesis started
by Varro and as usual unanimously echoed by later writers, that the
Latin -quiris- and -quirinus- are akin to the name of the Sabine
town -Cures-, and that the Quirinal hill accordingly had been peopled
from -Cures-. Even if the linguistic affinity of these words were
more assured, there would be little warrant for deducing from it such
a historical inference. That the old sanctuaries on this eminence
(where, besides, there was also a "Collis Latiaris") were Sabine,
has been asserted, but has not been proved. Mars quirinus, Sol,
Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine,
but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the
epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. If a name like
that of Semo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the
Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of
the Quirinal which afterwards diminished in its importance (comp.
the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed
inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the
high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from
a neighbouring land.  In so speaking we do not mean to deny that
it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated
in producing this state of things; but if such was the case, they
have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views
current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the
constitution of Rome are only fitted seriously to warn us against
such baseless speculations leading to no result.




CHAPTER V

The Original Constitution of Rome



The Roman House


Father and mother, sons and daughters, home and homestead,
servants and chattels--such are the natural elements constituting
the household in all cases, where polygamy has not obliterated the
distinctive position of the mother.  But the nations that have been
most susceptible of culture have diverged widely from each other
in their conception and treatment of the natural distinctions which
the household thus presents.  By some they have been apprehended
and wrought out more profoundly, by others more superficially;
by some more under their moral, by others more under their legal
aspects.  None has equalled the Roman in the simple but inexorable
embodiment in law of the principles pointed out by nature herself.


The House-father and His Household


The family formed an unity.  It consisted of the free man who upon
his father's death had become his own master, and the spouse whom
the priests by the ceremony of the sacred salted cake (-confarreatio-)
had solemnly wedded to share with him water and fire, with their son
and sons' sons and the lawful wives of these, and their unmarried
daughters and sons' daughters, along with all goods and substance
pertaining to any of its members.  The children of daughters on
the other hand were excluded, because, if born in wedlock, they
belonged to the family of the husband; and if begotten out of
wedlock, they had no place in a family at all.  To the Roman citizen
a house of his own and the blessing of children appeared the end
and essence of life.  The death of the individual was not an evil,
for it was a matter of necessity; but the extinction of a household
or of a clan was injurious to the community itself, which in the
earliest times therefore opened up to the childless the means of
avoiding such a fatality by their adopting the children of others
as their own.

The Roman family from the first contained within it the conditions
of a higher culture in the moral adjustment of the mutual relations of
its members.  Man alone could be head of a family.  Woman did not
indeed occupy a position inferior to man in the acquiring of property
and money; on the contrary the daughter inherited an equal share
with her brother, and the mother an equal share with her children.
But woman always and necessarily belonged to the household, not
to the community; and in the household itself she necessarily held
a position of domestic subjection--the daughter to her father,
the wife to her husband,(1) the fatherless unmarried woman to her
nearest male relatives; it was by these, and not by the king, that
in case of need woman was called to account.  Within the house,
however, woman was not servant but mistress.  Exempted from the
tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas
belonged to the menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself in
the main to the superintendence of her maid-servants, and to the
accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the
plough was to man.(2)  In like manner, the moral obligations of
parents towards their children were fully and deeply felt by the
Roman nation; and it was reckoned a heinous offence if a father
neglected or corrupted his child, or if he even squandered his
property to his child's disadvantage.

In a legal point of view, however, the family was absolutely guided
and governed by the single all-powerful will of the "father of
the household" (-pater familias-).  In relation to him all in the
household were destitute of legal rights--the wife and the child
no less than the bullock or the slave.  As the virgin became by the
free choice of her husband his wedded wife, so it rested with his
own free will to rear or not to rear the child which she bore to
him.  This maxim was not suggested by indifference to the possession
of a family; on the contrary, the conviction that the founding of
a house and the begetting of children were a moral necessity and a
public duty had a deep and earnest hold of the Roman mind.  Perhaps
the only instance of support accorded on the part of the community
in Rome is the enactment that aid should be given to the father who
had three children presented to him at a birth; while their ideas
regarding exposure are indicated by the prohibition of it so far
as concerned all the sons--deformed births excepted--and at least
the first daughter.  Injurious, however, to the public weal as
exposure might appear, the prohibition of it soon changed its form
from that of legal punishment into that of religious curse; for
the father was, above all, thoroughly and absolutely master in his
household.  The father of the household not only maintained the
strictest discipline over its members, but he had the right and duty
of exercising judicial authority over them and of punishing them as
he deemed fit in life and limb.  The grown-up son might establish
a separate household or, as the Romans expressed it, maintain his
"own cattle" (-peculium-) assigned to him by his father; but in
law all that the son acquired, whether by his own labour or by gift
from a stranger, whether in his father's household or in his own,
remained the father's property.  So long as the father lived, the
persons legally subject to him could never hold property of their
own, and therefore could not alienate unless by him so empowered,
or yet bequeath.  In this respect wife and child stood quite on
the same level with the slave, who was not unfrequently allowed
to manage a household of his own, and who was likewise entitled to
alienate when commissioned by his master.  Indeed a father might
convey his son as well as his slave in property to a third person:
if the purchaser was a foreigner, the son became his slave; if
he was a Roman, the son, while as a Roman he could not become a
Roman's slave, stood at least to his purchaser in a slave's stead
(-in mancipii causa-).  The paternal and marital power was subject
to a legal restriction, besides the one already mentioned on the
right Of exposure, only in so far as some of the worst abuses were
visited by legal punishment as well as by religious curse.  Thus
these penalties fell upon the man who sold his wife or married
son; and it was a matter of family usage that in the exercise of
domestic jurisdiction the father, and still more the husband, should
not pronounce sentence on child or wife without having previously
consulted the nearest blood-relatives, his wife's as well as his
own.  But the latter arrangement involved no legal diminution of
power, for the blood-relatives called in to the domestic judgment
had not to judge, but simply to advise the father of the household
in judging.

But not only was the power of the master of the house substantially
unlimited and responsible to no one on earth; it was also, as long
as he lived, unchangeable and indestructible.  According to the
Greek as well as Germanic laws the grown-up son, who was practically
independent of his father, was also independent legally; but the
power of the Roman father could not be dissolved during his life
either by age or by insanity, or even by his own free will, excepting
only that the person of the holder of the power might change, for
the child might certainly pass by way of adoption into the power
of another father, and the daughter might pass by a lawful marriage
out of the hand of her father into the hand of her husband and,
leaving her own -gens- and the protection of her own god to enter
into the -gens- of her husband and the protection of his god,
became thenceforth subject to him as she had hitherto been to her
father.  According to Roman law it was made easier for the slave to
obtain release from his master than for the son to obtain release
from his father; the manumission of the former was permitted at an
early period, and by simple forms; the release of the latter was
only rendered possible at a much later date, and by very circuitous
means.  Indeed, if a master sold his slave and a father his son
and the purchaser released both, the slave obtained his freedom,
but the son by the release simply reverted into his father's power
as before.  Thus the inexorable consistency with which the Romans
carried out their conception of the paternal and marital power
converted it into a real right of property.

Closely, however, as the power of the master of the household over
wife and child approximated to his proprietary power over slaves
and cattle, the members of the family were nevertheless separated
by a broad line of distinction, not merely in fact but in law, from
the family property.  The power of the house-master--even apart from
the fact that it appeared in operation only within the house--was
of a transient, and in some degree of a representative, character.
Wife and child did not exist merely for the house-father's sake in
the sense in which property exists only for the proprietor, or in
which the subjects of an absolute state exist only for the king;
they were the objects indeed of a legal right on his part, but they
had at the same time capacities of right of their own; they were
not things, but persons.  Their rights were dormant in respect of
exercise, simply because the unity of the household demanded that
it should be governed by a single representative; but when the
master of the household died, his sons at once came forward as its
masters and now obtained on their own account over the women and
children and property the rights hitherto exercised over these by
the father.  On the other hand the death of the master occasioned
no change in the legal position of the slave.


Family and Clan (-Gens-)


So strongly was the unity of the family realized, that even the
death of the master of the house did not entirely dissolve it.
The descendants, who were rendered by that occurrence independent,
regarded themselves as still in many respects an unity; a principle
which was made use of in arranging the succession of heirs and in
many other relations, but especially  in regulating the position
of the widow and unmarried daughters.  As according to the older
Roman view a woman was not capable of having power either over
others or over herself, the power over her, or, as it was in this
case more mildly expressed, the "guardianship" (-tutela-) remained
with the house to which she belonged, and was now exercised in the
room of the deceased house-master by the whole of the nearest male
members of the family; ordinarily, therefore, by sons over their
mother and by brothers over their sisters.  In this sense the
family, once founded, endured unchanged till the male stock of its
founder died out; only the bond of connection must of course have
become practically more lax from generation to generation, until
at length it became impossible to prove the original unity.  On
this, and on this alone, rested the distinction between family and
clan, or, according to the Roman expression, between -agnati- and
-gentiles-.  Both denoted the male stock; but the family embraced
only those individuals who, mounting up from generation to generation,
were able to set forth the successive steps of their descent from
a common progenitor; the clan (-gens-) on the other hand comprehended
also those who were merely able to lay claim to such descent from
a common ancestor, but could no longer point out fully the intermediate
links so as to establish the degree of their relationship.  This
is very clearly expressed in the Roman names: when they speak
of  "Quintus, son of Quintus, grandson of Quintus and so on,
the Quintian," the family reaches as far as the ascendants are
designated individually, and where the family terminates the clan
is introduced supplementary, indicating derivation from the common
ancestor who has bequeathed to all his descendants the name of the
"children of Quintus."


Dependents of the Household


To these strictly closed unities--the family or household united
under the control of a living master, and the clan which originated
out of the breaking-up of such households--there further belonged
the dependents or "listeners" (-clientes-, from -cluere-).  This
term denoted not the guests, that is, the members of other similar
circles who were temporarily sojourning in another household than
their own, and as little the slaves, who were looked upon in law
as the property of the household and not as members of it, but
those individuals who, while they were not free burgesses of any
commonwealth, yet lived within one in a condition of protected
freedom.  These included refugees who had found a reception with a
foreign protector, and those slaves in respect of whom their master
had for the time being waived the exercise of his rights, and so
conferred on them practical freedom.  This relation had not the
distinctive character of a strict relation -de jure-, like that of
a man to his guest: the client remained a man non-free, in whose
case good faith and use and wont alleviated the condition of
non-freedom.  Hence the "listeners" of the household (-clientes-)
together with the slaves strictly so called formed the "body
of servants" (-familia-) dependent on the will of the "burgess"
(-patronus-, like -patricius-).  Hence according to original right
the burgess was entitled partially or wholly to resume the property
of the client, to reduce him on emergency once more to the state
of slavery, to inflict even capital punishment on him; and it was
simply in virtue of a distinction -de facto-, that these patrimonial
rights were not asserted with the same rigour against the client
as against the actual slave, and that on the other hand the moral
obligation of the master to provide for his own people and to protect
them acquired a greater importance in the case of the client, who
was practically in a more free position, than in the case of the
slave.  Especially must the -de facto- freedom of the client have
approximated to freedom -de jure- in those cases where the relation
had subsisted for several generations: when the  releaser and the
released had themselves died, the -dominium- over the descendants
of the released person could not be without flagrant impiety claimed
by the heirs at law of the releaser; and thus there was gradually
formed within the household itself a class of persons in dependent
freedom, who were different alike from the slaves and from the
members of the -gens- entitled in the eye of the law to full and
equal rights.


The Roman Community


On this Roman household was based the Roman state, as respected
both its constituent elements and its form.  The community of the
Roman people arose out of the junction (in whatever way brought
about) of such ancient clanships as the Romilii, Voltinii, Fabii,
etc.; the Roman domain comprehended the united lands of those
clans.(3) Whoever belonged to one of these clans was a burgess
of Rome.  Every marriage concluded in the usual forms within this
circle was valid as a true Roman marriage, and conferred burgess-rights
on the children begotten of it.  Whoever was begotten in an illegal
marriage, or out of marriage, was excluded from the membership of
the community.  On this account the Roman burgesses assumed the name
of the "father's children" (-patricii-), inasmuch as they alone in
the eye of the law had a father.  The clans with all the families
that they contained were incorporated with the state just as
they stood.  The spheres of the household and the clan continued
to subsist within the state; but the position which a man held in
these did not affect his relations towards the state.  The son was
subject to the father within the household, but in political duties
and rights he stood on a footing of equality.  The position of the
protected dependents was naturally so far changed that the freedmen
and clients of every patron received on his account toleration in
the community at large; they continued indeed to be immediately
dependent on the protection of the family to which they belonged,
but the very nature of the case implied that the clients of members
of the community could not be wholly excluded from its worship and
its festivals, although, of course, they were not capable of the
proper rights or liable to the proper duties of burgesses.  This
remark applies still more to the case of the protected dependents
of the community at large.  The state thus consisted, like the
household, of persons properly belonging to it and of dependents--of
"burgesses" and of "inmates" or --metoeci--.


The King


As the clans resting upon a family basis were the constituent
elements of the state, so the form of the body-politic was modelled
after the family both generally and in detail.  The household was
provided by nature herself with a head in the person of the father
with whom it originated, and with whom it perished.  But in the
community of the people, which was designed to be imperishable,
there was no natural master; not at least in that of Rome, which
was composed of free and equal husbandmen and could not boast of a
nobility by the grace of God.  Accordingly one from its own ranks
became its "leader" (-rex-) and lord in the household of the Roman
community; as indeed at a later period there were to be found in or
near to his dwelling the always blazing hearth and the well-barred
store-chamber of the community, the Roman Vestas and  the Roman
Penates--indications of the visible unity of that supreme household
which included all Rome.  The regal office began at once and by
right, when the position had become vacant and the successor had
been designated; but the community did not owe full obedience to
the king until he had convoked the assembly of freemen capable of
bearing arms and had formally challenged its allegiance.  Then he
possessed in its entireness that power over the community which
belonged to the house-father in his household; and, like him, he
ruled for life.  He held intercourse with the gods of the community,
whom he consulted and appeased (-auspicia publica-), and he nominated
all the priests and priestesses.  The agreements which he concluded
in name of the community with foreigners were binding upon the whole
people; although in other instances no member of the community was
bound by an agreement with a non-member.  His "command" (-imperium-)
was all-powerful in peace and in war, on which account "messengers"
(-lictores-, from -licere-, to summon) preceded him with axes and
rods on all occasions when he appeared officially.  He alone had
the right of publicly addressing the burgesses, and it was he who
kept the keys of the public treasury.  He had the same right as a
father had to exercise discipline and jurisdiction.  He inflicted
penalties for breaches of order, and, in particular, flogging
for military offences.  He sat in judgment in all private and in
all criminal processes, and decided absolutely regarding life and
death as well as regarding freedom; he might hand over one burgess
to fill the place of a slave to another; he might even order
a burgess to be sold into actual slavery or, in other words, into
banishment.  When he had pronounced sentence of death, he was
entitled, but not obliged, to allow an appeal to the people for
pardon.  He called out the people for service in war and commanded
the army; but with these high functions he was no less bound, when
an alarm of fire was raised, to appear in person at the scene of
the burning.

As the house-master was not simply the greatest but the only power
in the house, so the king was not merely the first but the only
holder of power in the state.  He might indeed form colleges of
men of skill composed of those specially conversant with the rules
of sacred or of public law, and call upon them for their advice;
he might, to facilitate his exercise of power, entrust to others
particular functions, such as the making communications to the
burgesses, the command in war, the decision of processes of minor
importance, the inquisition of crimes; he might in particular, if
he was compelled to quit the bounds of the city, leave behind him
a "city-warden" (-praefectus urbi-) with the full powers of an
-alter ego-; but all official power existing by the side of the
king's was derived from the latter, and every official held his
office by the king's appointment and during the king's pleasure.  All
the officials of the earliest period, the extraordinary city-warden
as well as the "leaders of division" (-tribuni-, from -tribus-,
part) of the infantry (-milites-) and of the cavalry (-celeres-)
were merely commissioned by the king, and not magistrates in the
subsequent sense of the term.  The regal power had not and could
not have any external check imposed upon it by law: the master of
the community had no judge of his acts within the community, any
more than the housefather had a judge within his household.  Death
alone terminated his power.  The choice of the new king lay with the
council of elders, to which in case of a vacancy the interim-kingship
(-interregnum-) passed.  A formal cooperation in the election
of king pertained to the burgesses only after his nomination; -de
jure- the kingly office was based on the permanent college of the
Fathers (-patres-), which by means of the interim holder of the
power installed the new king for life.  Thus "the august blessing
of the gods, under which renowned Rome was founded," was transmitted
from its first regal recipient in constant succession to those that
followed him, and the unity of the state was preserved unchanged
notwithstanding the personal change of the holders of power.

This unity of the Roman people, represented in the field of
religion by the Roman Diovis, was in the field of law represented
by the prince, and therefore his costume was the same as that of
the supreme god; the chariot even in the city, where every one else
went on foot, the ivory sceptre with the eagle, the vermilion-painted
face, the chaplet of oaken leaves in gold, belonged alike to the
Roman god and to the Roman king.  It would be a great error, however,
to regard the Roman constitution on that account as a theocracy:
among the Italians the ideas of god and king never faded away into
each other, as they did in Egypt and the East.  The king was not
the god of the people; it were much more correct to designate him as
the proprietor of the state.  Accordingly the Romans knew nothing
of special divine grace granted to a particular family, or of
any other sort of mystical charm by which a king should be made
of different stuff from other men: noble descent and relationship
with earlier rulers were recommendations, but were not necessary
conditions; the office might be lawfully filled by any Roman come
to years of discretion and sound in body and mind.(4)  The king
was thus simply an ordinary burgess, whom merit or fortune, and
the primary necessity of having one as master in every house, had
placed as master over his equals--a husbandman set over husbandmen,
a warrior set over warriors.  As the son absolutely obeyed his father
and yet did not esteem himself inferior, so the burgess submitted
to his ruler without precisely accounting him his better.  This
constituted the moral and practical limitation of the regal power.
The king might, it is true, do much that was inconsistent with equity
without exactly breaking the law of the land: he might diminish his
fellow-combatants' share of the spoil; he might impose exorbitant
task-works or otherwise by his imposts unreasonably encroach upon
the property of the burgess; but if he did so, he forgot that his
plenary power came not from God, but under God's consent from the
people, whose representative he was; and who was there to protect
him, if the people should in return forget the oath of allegiance
which they had sworn? The legal limitation, again, of the king's
power lay in the principle that he was entitled only to execute the
law, not to alterit.  Every deviation from the law had to receive
the previous approval of the assembly of the people and the council
of elders; if it was not so approved, it was a null and tyrannical
act carrying no legal effect.  Thus the power of the king in Rome
was, both morally and legally, at bottom altogether different from
the sovereignty of the present day; and there is no counterpart at
all in modern life either to the Roman household or to the Roman
state.


The Community


The division of the body of burgesses was based on the "wardship,"
-curia- (probably related to -curare- =  -coerare-, --koiranos--);
ten wardships formed the community; every wardship furnished a
hundred men to the infantry (hence  -mil-es-, like -equ-es-, the
thousand-walker), ten horsemen and ten councillors.  When communities
combined, each of course appeared as a part (-tribus-) of the
whole community (-tota-in Umbrian and Oscan), and the original unit
became multiplied by the number of such parts.  This division had
reference primarily to the personal composition of the burgess-body,
but it was applied also to the domain so far as the latter was
apportioned at all.  That the curies had their lands as well as the
tribes, admits of the less doubt, since among the few names of the
Roman curies that have been handed down to us we find along with
some apparently derived from -gentes-, e. g. -Faucia-, others
certainly of local origin, e. g.  -Veliensis-; each one of them
embraced, in this primitive period of joint possession of land, a
number of clan-lands, of which we have already spoken.(5)

We find this constitution under its simplest form(6) in the scheme
of the Latin or burgess communities that subsequently sprang up
under the influence of Rome; these had uniformly the number of a
hundred councillors (-centumviri-).  But the same normal numbers make
their appearance throughout in the earliest tradition regarding the
tripartite Rome, which assigns to it thirty curies, three hundred
horsemen, three hundred senators, three thousand foot-soldiers.

Nothing is more certain than that this earliest constitutional
scheme did not originate in Rome; it was a primitive institution
common to all the Latins, and perhaps reached back to a period
anterior to the separation of the stocks.  The Roman constitutional
tradition quite deserving of credit in such matters, while it
accounts historically for the other divisions of the burgesses,
makes the division into curies alone originate with the origin of
the city; and in entire harmony with that view not only does the
curial constitution present itself in Rome, but in the recently
discovered scheme of the organization of the Latin communities it
appears as an essential part of the Latin municipal system.

The essence of this scheme was, and remained, the distribution
into curies.  The tribes ("parts") cannot have been an element of
essential importance for the simple reason that their occurrence
at all was, not less than their number, the result of accident;
where there were tribes, they certainly had no other significance
than that of preserving the remembrance of an epoch when such
"parts" had themselves been wholes.(7)  There is no tradition that
the individual tribes had special presiding magistrates or special
assemblies of their own; and it is highly probable that in the
interest of the unity of the commonwealth the tribes which had
joined together to form it were never in reality allowed to have
such institutions.  Even in the army, it is true, the infantry had
as many pairs of leaders as there were tribes; but each of these
pairs of military tribunes did not command the contingent of a
tribe; on the contrary each individual war-tribune, as well as all
in conjunction, exercised command over the whole infantry.  The
clans were distributed among the several curies; their limits and
those of the household were furnished by nature.  That the legislative
power interfered in these groups by way of modification, that it
subdivided the large clan and counted it as two, or joined several
weak ones together, there is no indication at all in Roman tradition;
at any rate this took place only in a way so limited that the
fundamental character of affinity belonging to the clan was not
thereby altered.  We may not therefore conceive the number of the
clans, and still less that of the households, as a legally fixed
one; if the -curia- had to furnish a hundred men on foot and ten
horsemen, it is not affirmed by tradition, nor is it credible, that
one horseman was taken from each clan and one foot-soldier from
each house.  The only member that discharged functions in the oldest
constitutional organization was the -curia-.  Of these there were
ten, or, where there were several tribes, ten to each tribe.  Such
a "wardship" was a real corporate unity, the members of which
assembled at least for holding common festivals.  Each wardship was
under the charge of a special warden (-curio-), and had a priest of
its own (-flamen curialis-); beyond doubt also levies and valuations
took place according to curies, and in judicial matters the burgesses
met by curies and voted by curies.  This organization, however,
cannot have been introduced primarily with a view to voting, for in
that case they would certainly have made the number of subdivisions
uneven.


Equality of the Burgesses


Sternly defined as was the contrast between burgess and non-burgess,
the equality of rights within the burgess-body was complete.  No
people has ever perhaps equalled that of Rome in the inexorable
rigour with which it has carried out these principles, the one as
fully as the other.  The strictness of the Roman distinction between
burgesses and non-burgesses is nowhere perhaps brought out with
such clearness as in the treatment of the primitive institution
of honorary citizenship, which was originally designed to mediate
between the two.  When a stranger was, by resolution of the community,
adopted into the circle of the burgesses, he might surrender his
previous citizenship, in which case he passed over wholly into the
new community; but he might also combine his former citizenship with
that which had just been granted to him.  Such was the primitive
custom, and such it always remained in Hellas, where in later
ages the same person not unfrequently held the freedom of several
communities at the same time.  But the greater vividness with which
the conception of the community as such was realized in Latium
could not tolerate the idea that a man might simultaneously belong
in the character of a burgess to two communities; and accordingly,
when the newly-chosen burgess did not intend to surrender his
previous franchise, it attached to the nominal honorary citizenship
no further meaning than that of an obligation to befriend and protect
the guest (-jus hospitii-), such as had always been recognized as
incumbent in reference to foreigners.  But this rigorous retention
of barriers against those that were without was accompanied by an
absolute banishment of all difference of rights among the members
included in the burgess community of Rome.  We have already mentioned
that the distinctions existing in the household, which of course
could not be set aside, were at least ignored in the community; the
son who as such was subject in property to his father might thus,
in the character of a burgess, come to have command over his father
as master.  There were no class-privileges: the fact that the Tities
took precedence of the Ramnes, and both ranked before the Luceres,
did not affect their equality in all legal rights.  The burgess
cavalry, which at this period was used for single combat in front
of the line on horseback or even on foot, and was rather a select
or reserve corps than a special arm of the service, and which
accordingly contained by far the wealthiest, best-armed, and
best-trained men, was naturally held in higher estimation than the
burgess infantry; but this was a distinction purely -de facto-, and
admittance to the cavalry was doubtless conceded to any patrician.
It was simply and solely the constitutional subdivision of the
burgess-body that gave rise to distinctions recognized by the law;
otherwise the legal equality of all the members of the community
was carried out even in their external appearance.  Dress indeed
served to distinguish the president of the community from its members,
the grown-up man under obligation of military service from the boy
not yet capable of enrolment; but otherwise the rich and the noble
as well as the poor and low-born were only allowed to appear in
public in the like simple wrapper (-toga-) of white woollen stuff.
This complete equality of rights among the burgesses had beyond
doubt its original basis in the Indo-Germanic type of constitution;
but in the precision with which it was thus apprehended and
embodied it formed one of the most characteristic and influential
peculiarities of the Latin nation.  And in connection with this we
may recall the fact that in Italy we do not meet with any race of
earlier settlers less capable of culture, that had become subject
to the Latin immigrants.(8)  They had no conquered race to deal
with, and therefore no such condition of things as that which gave
rise to the Indian system of caste, to the nobility of Thessaly
and Sparta and perhaps of Hellas generally, and probably also to
the Germanic distinction of ranks.


Burdens of the Burgesses


The maintenance of the state economy devolved, of course, upon
the burgesses.  The most important function of the burgess was his
service in the army; for the burgesses had the right and duty of
bearing arms.  The burgesses were at the same time the "body of
warriors" (-populus-, related to -populari-, to lay waste): in the
old litanies it is upon the "spear-armed body of warriors" (-pilumnus
poplus-) that the blessing of Mars is invoked; and even the designation
with which the king addresses them, that of Quirites,(9) is taken
as signifying "warrior."  We have already stated how the army of
aggression, the "gathering" (-legio-), was formed.  In the tripartite
Roman community it consisted of three "hundreds" (-centuriae-) of
horsemen (-celeres-, "the swift," or -flexuntes-, "the wheelers")
under the three leaders-of-division of the horsemen (-tribuni
celerum-)(10) and three "thousands" of footmen (-milties-) under
the three leaders-of-division of the infantry (-tribuni militum-),
the latter were probably from the first the flower of the general
levy.  To these there may perhaps have been added a number
of light-armed men, archers especially, fighting outside of the
ranks.(11)  The general was regularly the king himself.  Besides
service in war, other personal burdens might devolve upon the burgesses;
such as the obligation of undertaking the king's commissions in
peace and in war,(12) and the task-work of tilling the king's lands
or of constructing public buildings.  How heavily in particular the
burden of building the walls of the city pressed upon the community,
is evidenced by the fact that the ring-walls retained the name
of "tasks" (-moenia-).  There was no regular direct taxation, nor
was there any direct regular expenditure on the part of the state.
Taxation was not needed for defraying the burdens of the community,
since the state gave no recompense for serving in the army, for
task-work, or for public service generally; so far as there was any
such recompense at all, it was given to the person who performed
the service either by the district primarily concerned in it, or by
the person who could not or would not himself serve.  The victims
needed for the public service of the gods were procured by a tax
on actions at law; the defeated party in an ordinary process paid
down to the state a cattle-fine (-sacramentum-) proportioned to
the value of the object in dispute.  There is no mention of any
regular presents to the king on the part of the burgesses.  On the
other hand there flowed into the royal coffers the port-duties,(13)
as well as the income from the domains--in particular, the pasture
tribute (-scriptura-) from the cattle driven out upon the common
pasture, and the quotas of produce (-vectigalia-) which those
enjoying the use of the lands of the state had to pay instead of
rent.  To this was added the produce of cattle-fines and confiscations
and the gains of war.  In cases of need a contribution (-tributum-)
was imposed, which was looked upon, however, as a forced loan and
was repaid when the times improved; whether it fell upon the burgesses
generally, or only upon the --metoeci--, cannot be determined; the
latter supposition is, however, the more probable.

The king managed the finances.  The property of the state,
however, was not identified with the private property of the king;
which, judging from the statements regarding the extensive landed
possessions of the last Roman royal house, the Tarquins, must have
been considerable.  The ground won by arms, in particular, appears to
have been constantly regarded as property of the state.  Whether and
how far the king was restricted by use and wont in the administration
of the public property, can no longer be ascertained; only the
subsequent course of things shows that the burgesses can never have
been consulted regarding it, whereas it was probably the custom to
consult the senate in the imposition of the -tributum- and in the
distribution of the lands won in war.


Rights of the Burgesses


The Roman burgesses, however, do not merely come into view as
furnishing contributions and rendering service; they also bore a
part in the public government.  For this purpose all the members
of the community (with the exception of the women, and the children
still incapable of bearing arms)--in other words, the "spearmen"
(-quirites-) as in addressing them they were designated--assembled
at the seat of justice, when the king convoked them for the purpose
of making a communication (-conventio-, -contio-) or formally bade
them meet (-comitia-) for the third week (-in trinum noundinum-),
to consult them by curies.  He appointed such formal assemblies
of the community to be held regularly twice a year, on the 24th of
March and the 24th of May, and as often besides as seemed to him
necessary.  The burgesses, however, were always summoned not to
speak, but to hear; not to ask questions, but to answer.  No one
spoke in the assembly but the king, or he to whom the king saw
fit to grant liberty of speech; and the speaking of the burgesses
consisted of a simple answer to the question of the king,
without discussion, without reasons, without conditions, without
breaking up the question even into parts.  Nevertheless the Roman
burgess-community, like the Germanic and not improbably the primitive
Indo-Germanic communities in general, was the real and ultimate
basis of the political idea of sovereignty.  But in the ordinary
course of things this sovereignty was dormant, or only had its
expression in the fact that the burgess-body voluntarily bound
itself to render allegiance to its president.  For that purpose
the king, after he had entered on his office, addressed to the
assembled curies the question whether they would be true and loyal
to him and would according to use and wont acknowledge himself as
well as his messengers (-lictores-); a question, which undoubtedly
might no more be answered in the negative than the parallel homage
in the case of a hereditary monarchy might be refused.

It was in thorough consistency with constitutional principles that
the burgesses, just as being the sovereign power, should not on
ordinary occasions take part in the course of public business.  So
long as public action was confined to the carrying into execution
of the existing legal arrangements, the power which was, properly
speaking, sovereign in the state could not and might not interfere:
the laws governed, not the lawgiver.  But it was different where a
change of the existing legal arrangements or even a mere deviation
from them in a particular case was necessary; and here accordingly, under
the Roman constitution, the burgesses emerge without exception as
actors; so that each act of the sovereign authority is accomplished
by the co-operation of the burgesses and the king or -interrex-.
As the legal relation between ruler and ruled was itself sanctioned
after the manner of a contract by oral question and answer, so
every sovereign act of the community was accomplished by means of
a question (-rogatio-), which the king addressed to the burgesses,
and to which the majority of the curies gave an affirmative answer.
In this case their consent might undoubtedly be refused.  Among
the Romans, therefore, law was not primarily, as we conceive it,
a command addressed by the sovereign to the whole members of the
community, but primarily a contract concluded between the constitutive
powers of the state by address and counter-address.(14)  Such
a legislative contract was -de jure- requisite in all cases which
involved a deviation from the ordinary consistency of the legal
system.  In the ordinary course of law any one might without
restriction give away his property to whom he would, but only
upon condition of its immediate transfer: that the property should
continue for the time being with the owner, and at his death pass
over to another, was a legal impossibility--unless the community
should allow it; a permission which in this case the burgesses
could grant not only when assembled in their curies, but also when
drawn up for battle.  This was the origin of testaments.  In the
ordinary course of law the freeman could not lose or surrender the
inalienable blessing of freedom, and therefore one who was subject
to no housemaster could not subject himself to another in the place
of a son--unless the community should grant him leave to do so.  This
was the -abrogatio-.  In the ordinary course of law burgess-rights
could only be acquired by birth and could never be lost--unless
the community should confer the patriciate or allow its surrender;
neither of which acts, doubtless, could be validly done originally
without a decree of the curies.  In the ordinary course of law
the criminal whose crime deserved death, when once the king or his
deputy had pronounced sentence according to judgment and justice,
was inexorably executed; for the king could only judge, not
pardon--unless the condemned burgess appealed to the mercy of the
community and the judge allowed him the opportunity of pleading
for pardon.  This was the beginning of the -provocatio-, which for
that reason was especially permitted not to the transgressor who
had refused to plead guilty and had been convicted, but to him
who confessed his crime and urged reasons in palliation of it.  In
the ordinary course of law the perpetual treaty concluded with a
neighbouring state might not be broken--unless the burgesses deemed
themselves released from it on account of injuries inflicted on
them.  Hence it was necessary that they should be consulted when an
aggressive war was contemplated, but not on occasion of a defensive
war, where the other state had broken the treaty, nor on the
conclusion of peace; it appears, however, that the question was in
such a case addressed not to the usual assembly of the burgesses,
but to the army.  Thus, in general, it was necessary to consult the
burgesses whenever the king meditated any innovation, any change
of the existing public law; and in so far the right of legislation
was from antiquity not a right of the king, but a right of the king
and the community.  In these and all similar cases the king could
not act with legal effect without the cooperation of the community;
the man whom the king alone declared a patrician remained as before
a non-burgess, and the invalid act could only carry consequences
possibly -de facto-, not -de jure-.  Thus far the assembly of the
community, however restricted and bound at its emergence, was yet
from antiquity a constituent element of the Roman commonwealth,
and was in law superior to, rather than co-ordinate with, the king.


The Senate


But by the side of the king and of the burgess-assembly there
appears in the earliest constitution of the community a third
original power, not destined for acting like the former or for
resolving like the latter, and yet co-ordinate with both and within
its own rightful sphere placed over both.  This was the council
of elders or -senatus-.  Beyond doubt it had its origin in the
clan-constitution: the old tradition that in the original Rome the
senate was composed of all the heads of households is correct in
state-law to this extent, that each of the clans of the later Rome
which had not merely migrated thither at a more recent date referred
its origin to one of those household-fathers of the primitive
city as its ancestor and patriarch.  If, as is probable, there was
once in Rome or at any rate in Latium a time when, like the state
itself, each of its ultimate constituents, that is to say each
clan, had virtually a monarchical organization and was under the
rule of an elder--whether raised to that position by the choice
of the clansmen or of his predecessor, or in virtue of hereditary
succession--the senate of that time was nothing but the collective
body of these clan-elders, and accordingly an institution independent
of the king and of the burgess-assembly; in contradistinction to
the latter, which was directly composed of the whole body of the
burgesses, it was in some measure a representative assembly of
persons acting for the people.  Certainly that stage of independence
when each clan was virtually a state was surmounted in the Latin
stock at an immemorially early period, and the first and perhaps
most difficult step towards developing the community out of
the clan-organization--the setting aside of the clan-elders--had
possibly been taken in Latium long before the foundation of Rome;
the Roman clan, as we know it, is without any visible head, and no
one of the living clansmen is especially called to represent the
common patriarch from whom all the clansmen descend or profess to
descend so that even inheritance and guardianship, when they fall
by death to the clan, devolve on the clan-members as a whole.
Nevertheless the original character of the council of elders
bequeathed many and important legal consequences to the Roman
senate.  To express the matter briefly, the position of the senate
as something other and more than a mere state-council--than an
assemblage of a number of trusty men whose advice the king found
it fitting to obtain--hinged entirely on the fact that it was once
an assembly, like that described by Homer, of the princes and rulers
of the people sitting for deliberation in a circle round the king.
So long as the senate was formed by the aggregate of the heads
of clans, the number of the members cannot have been a fixed one,
since that of the clans was not so; but in the earliest, perhaps
even in pre-Roman, times the number of the members of the council
of elders for the community had been fixed without respect to
the number of the then existing clans at a hundred, so that the
amalgamation of the three primitive communities had in state-law
the necessary consequence of an increase of the seats in the senate
to what was thenceforth the fixed normal number of three hundred.
Moreover the senators were at all times called to sit for life; and
if at a later period the lifelong tenure subsisted more -de facto-
than -de jure-, and the revisions of the senatorial list that
took place from time to time afforded an opportunity to remove the
unworthy or the unacceptable senator, it can be shown that this
arrangement only arose in the course of time.  The selection of
the senators certainly, after there were no longer heads of clans,
lay with the king; but in this selection during the earlier epoch,
so long as the people retained a vivid sense of the individuality
of the clans, it was probably the rule that, when a senator died,
the king should call another experienced and aged man of the same
clanship to fill his place.  It was only, we may surmise, when the
community became more thoroughly amalgamated and inwardly united,
that this usage was departed from and the selection of the senators
was left entirely to the free judgment of the king, so that he was
only regarded as failing in his duty when he omitted to fill up
vacancies.


Prerogatives of the Senate.  The -Interregnum-


The prerogatives of this council of elders were based on the view
that the rule over the community composed of clans rightfully
belonged to the collective clan-elders, although in accordance
with the monarchical principle of the Romans, which already found
so stern an expression in the household, that rule could only be
exercised for the time being by one of these elders, namely the
king.  Every member of the senate accordingly was as such, not in
practice but in prerogative, likewise king of the community; and
therefore his insignia, though inferior to those of the king, were
of a similar character: he wore the red shoe like the king; only
that of the king was higher and more handsome than that of the
senator.  On this ground, moreover, as was already mentioned, the
royal power in the Roman community could never be left vacant When
the king died, the elders at once took his place and exercised the
prerogatives of regal power.  According to the immutable principle
however that only one can be master at a time, even now it was only
one of them that ruled, and such an "interim king" (-interrex-) was
distinguished from the king nominated for life simply in respect
to the duration, not in respect to the plenitude, of his authority.
The duration of the office of -interrex- was fixed for the individual
holders at not more than five days; it circulated accordingly among
the senators on the footing that, until the royal office was again
permanently filled up, the temporary holder at the expiry of that
term nominated a successor to himself, likewise for five days,
agreeably to the order of succession fixed by lot.  There was not,
as may readily be conceived, any declaration of allegiance to the
-interrex- on the part of the community.  Nevertheless the -interrex-
was entitled and bound not merely to perform all the official acts
otherwise pertaining to the king, but even to nominate a king for
life-- with the single exception, that this latter right was not
vested in the first who held the office, presumably because the
first was regarded as defectively appointed inasmuch as he was not
nominated by his predecessor.  Thus this assembly of elders was
the ultimate holder of the ruling power (-imperium-) and the divine
protection (-auspicia-) of the Roman commonwealth, and furnished
the guarantee for the uninterrupted continuance of that commonwealth
and of its monarchical--though not hereditarily monarchical--organization.
If therefore this senate subsequently seemed to the Greeks to be
an assembly of kings, this was only what was to be expected; it
had in fact been such originally.


The Senate and the Resolutions of the Community: -Patrum Auctoritas-


But it was not merely in so far as the idea of a perpetual kingdom
found its living expression in this assembly, that it was an essential
member of the Roman constitution.  The council of elders, indeed,
had no title to interfere with the official functions of the king.
The latter doubtless, in the event of his being unable personally
to lead the army or to decide a legal dispute, took his deputies
at all times from the senate; for which reason subsequently the
highest posts of command were regularly bestowed on senators alone,
and senators were likewise employed by preference as jurymen.  But
the senate, in its collective capacity, was never consulted in
the leading of the army or in the administration of justice; and
therefore there was no right of military command and no jurisdiction
vested in the senate of the later Rome.  On the other hand the
council of elders was held as called to the guardianship of the
existing constitution against encroachments by the king and the
burgesses.  On the senate devolved the duty of examining every
resolution adopted by the burgesses at the suggestion of the king,
and of refusing to confirm it if it seemed to violate existing
rights; or, which was the same thing, in all cases where a resolution
of the community was constitutionally requisite--as on every
alteration of the constitution, on the reception of new burgesses,
on the declaration of an aggressive war--the council of elders had
a right of veto.  This may not indeed be regarded in the light of
legislation pertaining jointly to the burgesses and the senate,
somewhat in the same way as to the two chambers in the constitutional
state of the present day; the senate was not so much law-maker as
law-guardian, and could only cancel a decree when the community
seemed to have exceeded its competence--to have violated by its
decree existing obligations towards the gods or towards foreign
states or organic institutions of the community.  But still it was
a matter of the greatest importance that--to take an example--when
the Roman king had proposed a declaration of war and the burgesses
had converted it into a decree, and when the satisfaction which
the foreign community seemed bound to furnish had been demanded in
vain, the Roman envoy invoked the gods as witnesses of the wrong
and concluded with the words, "But on these matters we shall consult
the elders at home how we may obtain our rights;" it was only when
the council of elders had declared its consent, that the war now
decreed by the burgesses and approved by the senate was formally
declared.  Certainly it was neither the design nor the effect of
this rule to occasion a constant interference of the senate with
the resolutions of the burgesses, and by such guardianship to divest
them of their sovereign power; but, as in the event of a vacancy
in the supreme office the senate secured the continuance of the
constitution, we find it here also as the shield of legal order in
opposition even to the supreme power--the community.


The Senate As State-Council


With this arrangement was probably connected the apparently very
ancient usage, in virtue of which the king previously submitted
to the senate the proposals that were to be brought before the
burgesses, and caused all its members one after another to give their
opinion on the subject.  As the senate had the right of cancelling
the resolution adopted, it was natural for the king to assure
himself beforehand that no opposition was to be apprehended from
that quarter; as indeed in general, on the one hand, it was in
accordance with Roman habits not to decide matters of importance
without having taken counsel with other men, and on the other hand
the senate was called, in virtue of its very composition, to act as
a state-council to the ruler of the community.  It was from this
usage of giving counsel, far more than from the prerogatives which
we have previously described, that the subsequent extensive powers
of the senate were developed; but it was in its origin insignificant
and really amounted only to the prerogative of the senators to
answer, when they were asked a question.  It may have been usual
to ask the previous opinion of the senate in affairs of importance
which were neither judicial nor military, as, for instance--apart
from the proposals to be submitted to the assembly of the people--in
the imposition of task-works and taxes, in the summoning of the
burgesses to war-service, and in the disposal of the conquered
territory; but such a previous consultation, though usual, was not
legally necessary.  The king convoked the senate when he pleased,
and laid before it his questions; no senator might declare his
opinion unasked, still less might the senate meet without being
summoned, except in the single case of its meeting on occasion
of a vacancy to settle the order of succession in the office of
-interrex-.  That the king was moreover at liberty to call in and
consult other men whom he trusted alongside of, and at the same
time with, the senators, is in a high degree probable.  The advice,
accordingly, was not a command; the king might omit to comply with
it, while the senate had no other means for giving practical effect
to its views except the already-mentioned right of cassation, which
was far from being universally applicable.  "I have chosen you,
not that ye may be my guides, but that ye may do my bidding:" these
words, which a later author puts into the mouth of king Romulus,
certainly express with substantial correctness the position of the
senate in this respect.


The Original Constitution of Rome


Let us now sum up the results.  Sovereignty, as conceived by
the Romans, was inherent in the community of burgesses; but the
burgess-body was never entitled to act alone, and was only entitled
to co-operate in action, when there was to be a departure from
existing rules.  By its side stood the assembly of the elders of
the community appointed for life, virtually a college of magistrates
with regal power, called in the event of a vacancy in the royal
office to administer it by means of their own members until it
should be once more definitively filled, and entitled to overturn
the illegal decrees of the community.  The royal power itself was,
as Sallust says, at once absolute and limited by the laws (-imperium
legitimum-); absolute, in so far as the king's command, whether
righteous or not, must in the first instance be unconditionally
obeyed; limited, in so far as a command contravening established
usage and not sanctioned by the true sovereign--the people--carried
no permanent legal consequences.  The oldest constitution of Rome
was thus in some measure constitutional monarchy inverted.  In
that form of government the king is regarded as the possessor and
vehicle of the plenary power of the state, and accordingly acts of
grace, for example, proceed solely from him, while the administration
of the state belongs to the representatives of the people and to
the executive responsible to them.  In the Roman constitution the
community of the people exercised very much the same functions as
belong to the king in England: the right of pardon, which in England
is a prerogative of the crown, was in Rome a prerogative of the
community; while all government was vested in the president of the
state.

If, in conclusion, we inquire as to the relation of the state itself
to its individual members, we find the Roman polity equally remote
from the laxity of a mere defensive combination and from the
modern idea of an absolute omnipotence of the state.  The community
doubtless exercised power over the person of the burgess in the
imposition of public burdens, and in the punishment of offences and
crimes; but any special law inflicting, or threatening to inflict,
punishment on an individual on account of acts not universally
recognized as penal always appeared to the Romans, even when there
was no flaw in point of form, an arbitrary and unjust proceeding.
Far more restricted still was the power of the community in respect
of the rights of property and the rights of family which were
coincident, rather than merely connected, with these; in Rome the
household was not absolutely annihilated and the community aggrandized
at its expense, as was the case in the police organization of
Lycurgus.  It was one of the most undeniable as well as one of the
most remarkable principles of the primitive constitution of Rome,
that the state might imprison or hang the burgess, but might not take
away from him his son or his field or even lay permanent taxation
on him.  In these and similar things the community itself was
restricted from encroaching on the burgess, nor was this restriction
merely ideal; it found its expression and its practical application
in the constitutional veto of the senate, which was certainly entitled
and bound to annul any resolution of the community contravening
such an original right.  No community was so all-powerful within
its own sphere as the Roman; but in no community did the burgess
who conducted himself un-blameably live in an equally absolute
security from the risk of encroachment on the part either of his
fellow-burgesses or of the state itself.

These were the principles on which the community of Rome governed
itself--a free people, understanding the duty of obedience, clearly
disowning all mystical priestly delusion, absolutely equal in the
eye of the law and one with another, bearing the sharply-defined
impress of a nationality of their own, while at the same time (as
will be afterwards shown) they wisely as well as magnanimously
opened their gates wide for intercourse with other lands.  This
constitution was neither manufactured nor borrowed; it grew up
amidst and along with the Roman people.  It was based, of course,
upon the earlier constitutions--the Italian, the Graeco-Italian,
and the Indo-Germanic; but a long succession of phases of political
development must have intervened between such constitutions as the
poems of Homer and the Germania of Tacitus delineate and the oldest
organization of the Roman community.  In the acclamation of the
Hellenic and in the shield-striking of the Germanic assemblies there
was involved an expression of the sovereign power of the community;
but a wide interval separated forms such as these from the organized
jurisdiction and the regulated declaration of opinion of the Latin
assembly of curies.  It is possible, moreover, that as the Roman
kings certainly borrowed the purple mantle and the ivory sceptre
from the Greeks (not from the Etruscans), the twelve lictors also
and various other external arrangements were introduced from abroad.
But that the development of the Roman constitutional law belonged
decidedly to Rome or, at any rate, to Latium, and that the borrowed
elements in it are but small and unimportant, is clearly demonstrated
by the fact that all its ideas are uniformly expressed by words of
Latin coinage.  This constitution practically established for all
time the fundamental conceptions of the Roman state; for, as long
as there existed a Roman community, in spite of changes of form
it was always held that the magistrate had absolute command, that
the council of elders was the highest authority in the state, and
that every exceptional resolution required the sanction of the
sovereign or, in other words, of the community of the people.




Notes for Book I Chapter V



1.  This was not merely the case under the old religious marriage
(-matrimonium confarreatione-); the civil marriage also (-matrimonium
consensu-), although not in itself giving to the husband proprietary
power over his wife, opened up the way for his acquiring this
proprietary power, inasmuch as the legal ideas of "formal delivery"
(-coemptio-), and "prescription" (-usus-), were applied without
ceremony to such a marriage.  Till he acquired it, and in particular
therefore during the period which elapsed before the completion of
the prescription, the wife was (just as in the later marriage by
-causae probatio-, until that took place), not -uxor-, but -pro
uxore-.  Down to the period when Roman jurisprudence became a
completed system the principle maintained its ground, that the wife
who was not in her husband's power was not a married wife, but only
passed as such (-uxor tantummodo habetur-.  Cicero, Top. 3, 14).

2.  The following epitaph, although belonging to a much later period,
is not unworthy to have a place here.  It is the stone that speaks:--

-Hospes, quod deico, paullum est.  Asta ac pellige.  Heic est
sepulcrum haud pulcrum pulcrai feminae, Nomen parentes nominarunt
Claudiam, Suom mareitum corde dilexit sovo, Gnatos duos creavit,
horunc alterum In terra linquit, alium sub terra locat; Sermone
lepido, tum autem incessu commodo, Domum servavit, lanam fecit.
Dixi.  Abei.-

(Corp. Inscr. Lat. 1007.)

Still more characteristic, perhaps, is the introduction of wool-spinning
among purely moral qualities; which is no very unusual occurrence
in Roman epitaphs.  Orelli, 4639: -optima et pulcherrima, lanifica
pia pudica frugi casta domiseda-.  Orelli, 4861: -modestia probitate
pudicitia obsequio lanificio diligentia fide par similisque cetereis
probeis femina fuit-.  Epitaph of Turia, i. 30: domestica bona
pudicitiae, opsequi, comitatis, facilitatis, lanificiis [tuis
adsiduitatis, religionis] sine superstitione, ornatus non conspiciendi,
cultus modici.

3.  I. III. Clan-villages

4.  Dionysius affirms (v. 25) that lameness excluded from the supreme
magistracy.  That Roman citizenship was a condition for the regal
office as well as for the consulate, is so very self-evident as to
make it scarcely worth while to repudiate expressly the fictions
respecting the burgess of Cures.

5.  I. III. Clan-villages

6.  Even in Rome, where the simple constitution of ten curies otherwise
early disappeared, we still discover one practical application of
it, and that singularly enough in the very same formality which we
have other reasons for regarding as the oldest of all those that
are mentioned in our legal traditions, the -confarreatio-.  It seems
scarcely doubtful that the ten witnesses in that ceremony had the
same relation to the constitution of ten curies the thirty lictors
had to the constitution of thirty curies.

7.  This is implied in their very name.  The "part" (-tribus-) is,
as jurists know, simply that which has once been or may hereafter
come to be a whole, and so has no real standing of its own in the
present.

8.  I. II. Primitive Races of Italy

9.  -Quiris-, -quiritis-, or -quirinus- is interpreted by the
ancients as "lance-bearer," from -quiris- or -curis- = lance and
-ire-, and so far in their view agrees with -samnis-, -samnitis-
and -sabinus-, which also among the ancients was derived from
--saunion--, spear.  This etymology, which associates the word
with -arquites-, -milites-, -pedites-, -equites-, -velites- --those
respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on
foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment--may
be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a
burgess.  So too Juno quiritis, (Mars) quirinus, Janus quirinus,
are conceived as divinities that hurl the spear; and, employed in
reference to men, -quiris- is the warrior, that is, the full burgess.
With this view the -usus loquendi- coincides.  Where the locality
was to be referred to, "Quirites" was never used, but always "Rome"
and "Romans" (-urbs Roma-, -populus-, -civis-, -ager Romanus-),
because the term -quiris- had as little of a local meaning as
-civis- or -miles-.  For the same reason these designations could
not be combined; they did not say -civis quiris-, because both
denoted, though from different points of view, the same legal
conception.  On the other hand the solemn announcement of the
funeral of a burgess ran in the words "this warrior has departed
in death" (-ollus quiris leto datus-); and in like manner the king
addressed the assembled community by this name, and, when he sat in
judgment, gave sentence according to the law of the warrior-freemen
(-ex iure quiritium-, quite similar to the later -ex iure civili-).
The phrase -populus Romanus-, -quirites- (-populus Romanus quiritium-is
not sufficiently attested), thus means "the community and the
individual burgesses," and therefore in an old formula (Liv. i.
32) to the -populus Romanus- are opposed the -prisci Latini-, to
the -quirites- the -homines prisci Latini- (Becker, Handb. ii. 20
seq.)

In the face of these facts nothing but ignorance of language and of
history can still adhere to the idea that the Roman community was
once confronted by a Quirite community of a similar kind, and that
after their incorporation the name of the newly received community
supplanted in ritual and legal phraseology that of the receiver.--Comp.
iv. The Hill-Romans On The Quirinal, note.

10.  Among the eight ritual institutions of Numa, Dionysius (ii. 64)
after naming the Curiones and Flamines, specifies as the third the
leaders of the horsemen (--oi eigemones ton Kelerion--).  According to
the Praenestine calendar a festival was celebrated at the Comitium
on the 19th March [adstantibus pon]tificibus et trib(unis) celer(um).
Valerius Antias (in Dionys. i. 13, comp. iii. 41) assigns to
the earliest Roman cavalry a leader, Celer, and three centurions;
whereas in the treatise De viris ill. i, Celer himself is termed
-centurio-.  Moreover Brutus is affirmed to have been -tribunus
celerum- at the expulsion of the kings (Liv. i. 59), and according
to Dionysius (iv.  71) to have even by virtue of this office made the
proposal to banish the Tarquins.  And, lastly, Pomponius (Dig. i.
2, 2, 15, 19) and Lydus in a similar way, partly perhaps borrowing
from him (De Mag.  i. 14, 37), identify the -tribunus celerum- with
the Celer of Antias, the -magister equitum- of the dictator under
the republic, and the -Praefectus praetorio- of the empire.

Of these-the only statements which are extant regarding the -tribuni
celerum- --the last mentioned not only proceeds from late and quite
untrustworthy authorities, but is inconsistent with the meaning of
the term, which can only signify "divisional leaders of horsemen,"
and above all the master of the horse of the republican period, who
was nominated only on extraordinary occasions and was in later times
no longer nominated at all, cannot possibly have been identical with
the magistracy that was required for the annual festival of the
19th March and was consequently a standing office.  Laying aside, as
we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently
arisen solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with
ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result that
the -tribuni celerum- entirely correspond in number and character
to the -tribuni militum-, and that they were the leaders-of-division
of the horsemen, consequently quite distinct from the -magister
equitum-.

11.  This is indicated by the evidently very old forms -velites-and
-arquites-and by the subsequent organization of the legion.

12.  I. V. The King

13.  I. IV. The Tibur and Its Traffic

14.  -Lex- ("that which binds," related to -legare-, "to bind
to something") denotes, as is well known, a contract in general,
along, however, with the connotation of a contract whose terms the
proposer dictates and the other party simply accepts or declines;
as was usually the case, e. g. with public -licitationes-.  In the
-lex publica populi Romani- the proposer was the king, the acceptor
the people; the limited co-operation of the latter was thus
significantly indicated in the very language.




CHAPTER VI

The Non-Burgesses and the Reformed Constitution



Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities


The history of every nation, and of Italy more especially, is a
--synoikismos-- on a great scale.  Rome, in the earliest form in
which we have any knowledge of it, was already triune, and similar
incorporations only ceased when the spirit of Roman vigour had wholly
died away.  Apart from that primitive process of amalgamation of
the Ramnes, Titles, and Luceres, of which hardly anything beyond the
bare fact is known, the earliest act of incorporation of this sort
was that by which the Hill-burgesses became merged in the Palatine
Rome.  The organization of the two communities, when they were
about to be amalgamated, may be conceived to have been substantially
similar; and in solving the problem of union they would have to
choose between the alternatives of retaining duplicate institutions
or of abolishing one set of these and extending the other to the whole
united community.  They adopted the former course with respect to
all sanctuaries and priesthoods.  Thenceforth the Roman community
had its two guilds of Salii and two of Luperci, and as it had
two forms of Mars, it had also two priests for that divinity--the
Palatine priest, who afterwards usually took the designation of
priest of Mars, and the Colline, who was termed priest of Quirinus.
It is likely, although it can no longer be proved, that all the
old Latin priesthoods of Rome--the Augurs, Pontifices, Vestals,
and Fetials--originated in the same way from a combination of the
priestly colleges of the Palatine and Quirinal communities.  In
the division into local regions the town on the Quirinal hill was
added as a fourth region to the three belonging to the Palatine
city, viz. the Suburan, Palatine, and suburban (-Esquiliae-).  In
the case of the original --synoikismos-- the annexed community was
recognized after the union as at least a tribe (part) of the new
burgess-body, and thus had in some sense a continued political
existence; but this course was not followed in the case of the
Hill-Romans or in any of the later processes of annexation.  After
the union the Roman community continued to be divided as formerly
into three tribes, each containing ten wardships (-curiae-); and the
Hill-Romans--whether they were or were not previously distributed
into tribes of their own--must have been inserted into the existing
tribes and wardships.  This insertion was probably so arranged that,
while each tribe and wardship received its assigned proportion of
the new burgesses, the new burgesses in these divisions were not
amalgamated completely with the old; the tribes henceforth presented
two ranks: the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres being respectively
subdivided into first and second (-priores-, -posteriores-).  With
this division was connected in all probability that arrangement
of the organic institutions of the community in pairs, which meets
us everywhere.  The three pairs of Sacred Virgins are expressly
described as representatives of the three tribes with their first
and second ranks; and it may be conjectured that the pair of Lares
worshipped in each street had a similar origin.  This arrangement
is especially apparent in the army: after the union each half-tribe
of the tripartite community furnished a hundred horsemen, and the
Roman burgess cavalry was thus raised to six "hundreds," and the
number of its captains probably from three to six.  There is no
tradition of any corresponding increase to the infantry; but to
this origin we may refer the subsequent custom of calling out the
legions regularly two by two, and this doubling of the levy probably
led to the rule of having not three, as was perhaps originally
the case, but six leaders-of-division to command the legion.  It
is certain that no corresponding increase of seats in the senate
took place: on the contrary, the primitive number of three hundred
senators remained the normal number down to the seventh century;
with which it is quite compatible that a number of the more prominent
men of the newly annexed community may have been received into the
senate of the Palatine city.  The same course was followed with
the magistracies: a single king presided over the united community,
and there was no change as to his principal deputies, particularly
the warden of the city.  It thus appears that the ritual institutions
of the Hill-city were continued, and that the doubled burgess-body
was required to furnish a military force of double the numerical
strength; but in other respects the incorporation of the Quirinal
city into the Palatine was really a subordination of the former to
the latter.  If we have rightly assumed that the contrast between
the Palatine old and the Quirinal new burgesses was identical
with the contrast between the first and second Tities, Ramnes, and
Luceres, it was thus the -gentes-of the Quirinal city that formed
the "second" or the "lesser."  The distinction, however, was
certainly more an honorary than a legal precedence.  At the taking
of the vote in the senate the senators taken from the old clans
were asked before those of the "lesser." In like manner the Colline
region ranked as inferior even to the suburban (Esquiline) region
of the Palatine city; the priest of the Quirinal Mars as inferior
to the priest of the Palatine Mars; the Quirinal Salii and Luperci
as inferior to those of the Palatine.  It thus appears that the
--synoikismos--, by which the Palatine community incorporated that
of the Quirinal, marked an intermediate stage between the earliest
--synoikismos-- by which the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres became
blended, and all those that took place afterwards.  The annexed
community was no longer allowed to form a separate tribe in the new
whole, but it was permitted to furnish at least a distinct portion
of each tribe; and its ritual institutions were not only allowed to
subsist--as was afterwards done in other cases, after the capture
of Alba for example--but were elevated into institutions of the
united community, a course which was not pursued in any subsequent
instance.


Dependents and Guests


This amalgamation of two substantially similar commonwealths
produced rather an increase in the size than a change in the
intrinsic character of the existing community.  A second process
of incorporation, which was carried out far more gradually and had
far deeper effects, may be traced back, so far as the first steps
in it are concerned, to this epoch; we refer to the amalgamation
of the burgesses and the --metoeci--.  At all times there existed
side by side with the burgesses in the Roman community persons who
were protected, the "listeners" (-clientes-), as they were called
from their being dependents on the several burgess-households, or
the "multitude" (-plebes-, from -pleo-, -plenus-), as they were
termed negatively with reference to their want of political rights.(1)
The elements of this intermediate stage between the freeman and
the slave were, as has been shown(2) already in existence in the
Roman household: but in the community this class necessarily acquired
greater importance -de facto- and -de jure-, and that from two
reasons.  In the first place the community might itself possess
half-free clients as well as slaves; especially after the conquest
of a town and the breaking up of its commonwealth it might often
appear to the conquering community advisable not to sell the mass
of the burgesses formally as slaves, but to allow them the continued
possession of freedom -de facto-, so that in the capacity as it
were of freedmen of the community they entered into relations of
clientship whether to the clans, or to the king.  In the second
place by means of the community and its power over the individual
burgesses, there was given the possibility of protecting the clients
against an abusive exercise of the -dominium- still subsisting in
law.  At an immemorially early period there was introduced into
Roman law the principle on which rested the whole legal position
of the --metoeci--, that, when a master on occasion of a public
legal act--such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law,
or in the census--expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-,
neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power
arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the
person of the freedman himself or of his descendants.  The clients
and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess
either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: for to constitute
a burgess a formal bestowal of the privilege was requisite on the
part of the community, while the relation of guest presumed the
holding of burgess-rights in a community which had a treaty with
Rome.  What they did obtain was a legally protected possession of
freedom, while they continued to be -de jure- non-free.  Accordingly
for a lengthened period their relations in all matters of property
seem to have been, like those of slaves, regarded in law as
relations of the patron, so that it was necessary that the latter
should represent them in processes at law; in connection with which
the patron might levy contributions from them in case of need, and
call them to account before him criminally.  By degrees, however,
the body of --metoeci-- outgrew these fetters; they began to
acquire and to alienate in their own name, and to claim and obtain
legal redress from the Roman burgess-tribunals without the formal
intervention of their patron.

In matters of marriage and inheritance, equality of rights with the
burgesses was far sooner conceded to foreigners(3) than to those
who were strictly non-free and belonged to no community; but the
latter could not well be prohibited from contracting marriages in
their own circle and from forming the legal relations arising out
of marriage--those of marital and paternal power, of -agnatio- and
-gentilitas- of heritage and of tutelage--after the model of the
corresponding relations among the burgesses.

Similar consequences to some extent were produced by the exercise
of the -ius hospitii-, in so far as by virtue of it foreigners settled
permanently in Rome and established a domestic position there.  In
this respect the most liberal principles must have prevailed in
Rome from primitive times.  The Roman law knew no distinctions of
quality in inheritance and no locking up of estates.  It allowed
on the one hand to every man capable of making a disposition the
entirely unlimited disposal of his property during his lifetime; and
on the other hand, so far as we know, to every one who was at all
entitled to have dealings with Roman burgesses, even to the foreigner
and the client, the unlimited right of acquiring moveable, and
(from the time when immoveables could be held as private property
at all) within certain limits also immoveable, estate in Rome.  Rome
was in fact a commercial city, which was indebted for the commencement
of its importance to international commerce, and which with a noble
liberality granted the privilege of settlement to every child of an
unequal marriage, to every manumitted slave, and to every stranger
who surrendering his rights in his native land emigrated to Rome.


Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the Community


At first, therefore, the burgesses were in reality the protectors,
the non-burgesses were the protected; but in Rome as in all communities
which freely admit settlement but do not throw open the rights of
citizenship, it soon became a matter of increasing difficulty to
harmonize this relation -de jure- with the actual state of things.
The flourishing of commerce, the full equality of private rights
guaranteed to all Latins by the Latin league (including even the
acquisition of landed property), the greater frequency of manumissions
as prosperity increased, necessarily occasioned even in peace a
disproportionate increase of the number of --metoeci--.  That number
was further augmented by the greater part of the population of the
neighbouring towns subdued by force of arms and incorporated with
Rome; which, whether it removed to the city or remained in its old
home now reduced to the rank of a village, ordinarily exchanged its
native burgess-rights for those of a Roman --metoikos--.  Moreover
the burdens of war fell exclusively on the old burgesses and were
constantly thinning the ranks of their patrician descendants, while
the --metoeci-- shared in the results of victory without having to
pay for it with their blood.

Under such circumstances the only wonder is that the Roman patriciate
did not disappear much more rapidly than it actually did.  The fact
of its still continuing for a prolonged period a numerous community
can scarcely be accounted for by the bestowal of Roman burgess-rights
on several distinguished foreign clans, which after emigrating
from their homes or after the conquest of their cities received
the Roman franchise--for such grants appear to have occurred but
sparingly from the first, and to have become always the more rare
as the franchise increased in value.  A cause of greater influence,
in all likelihood, was the introduction of the civil marriage,
by which a child begotten of patrician parents living together as
married persons, although without -confarreatio-, acquired full
burgess-rights equally with the child of a -confarreatio- marriage.
It is at least probable that the civil marriage, which already
existed in Rome before the Twelve Tables but was certainly not an
original institution, was introduced for the purpose of preventing
the disappearance of the patriciate.(4)  To this connection
belong also the measures which were already in the earliest times
adopted with a view to maintain a numerous posterity in the several
households.(5)

Nevertheless the number of the --metoeci-- was of necessity
constantly on the increase and liable to no diminution, while that
of the burgesses was at the utmost perhaps not decreasing; and in
consequence the --metoeci-- necessarily acquired by imperceptible
degrees another and a freer position.  The non-burgesses were no
longer merely emancipated slaves or strangers needing protection;
their ranks included the former burgesses of the Latin communities
vanquished in war, and more especially the Latin settlers who lived
in Rome not by the favour of the king or of any other burgess, but
by federal right.  Legally unrestricted in the acquiring of property,
they gained money and estate in their new home, and bequeathed, like
the burgesses, their homesteads to their children and children's
children.  The vexatious relation of dependence on particular
burgess-households became gradually relaxed.  If the liberated slave
or the immigrant stranger still held an entirely isolated position
in the state, such was no longer the case with his children, still
less with his grandchildren, and this very circumstance of itself
rendered their relations to the patron of less moment.  While in
earlier times the client was exclusively left dependent for legal
protection on the intervention of the patron, the more the state
became consolidated and the importance of the clanships and households
in consequence diminished, the more frequently must the individual
client have obtained justice and redress of injury, even without
the intervention of his patron, from the king.  A great number of
the non-burgesses, particularly the members of the dissolved Latin
communities, had, as we have already said, probably from the outset
not any place as clients of the royal or other great clans, and
obeyed the king nearly in the same manner as did the burgesses.  The
king, whose sovereignty over the burgesses was in truth ultimately
dependent on the good-will of those obeying, must have welcomed the
means of forming out of his own -proteges- essentially dependent
on him a body bound to him by closer ties.


Plebs


Thus there grew up by the side of the burgesses a second community
in Rome: out of the clients arose the Plebs.  This change of name
is significant.  In law there was no difference between the client
and the plebeian, the "dependent" and the "man of the multitude;"
but in fact there was a very important one, for the former term
brought into prominence the relation of dependence on a member of
the politically privileged class; the latter suggested merely the
want of political rights.  As the feeling of special dependence
diminished, that of political inferiority forced itself on the
thoughts of the free --metoeci--; and it was only the sovereignty
of the king ruling equally over all that prevented the outbreak of
political conflict between the privileged and the non-privileged
classes.


The Servian Constitution


The first step, however, towards the amalgamation of the two
portions of the people scarcely took place in the revolutionary
way which their antagonism appeared to foreshadow.  The reform of
the constitution, which bears the name of king Servius Tullius, is
indeed, as to its historical origin, involved in the same darkness
with all the events of a period respecting which we learn whatever
we know not by means of historical tradition, but solely by means of
inference from the institutions of later times.  But its character
testifies that it cannot have been a change demanded by the
plebeians, for the new constitution assigned to them duties alone,
and not rights.  It must rather have owed its origin either to the
wisdom of one of the Roman kings, or to the urgency of the burgesses
that they should be delivered from exclusive liability to burdens,
and that the non-burgesses should be made to share on the one hand
in taxation--that is, in the obligation to make advances to the
state (the -tributum-)--and rendering task-work, and on the other
hand in the levy.  Both were comprehended in the Servian constitution,
but they hardly took place at the same time.  The bringing in of
the non-burgesses presumably arose out of the economic burdens;
these were early extended to such as were "possessed of means"
(-locupletes-) or "settled people" (-adsidui-, freeholders), and only
those wholly without means, the "children-producers" (-proletarii-,
-capite censi-) remained free from them.  Thereupon followed the
politically more important step of bringing in the non-burgesses
to military duty.  This was thenceforth laid not upon the burgesses
as such, but upon the possessors of land, the -tribules-, whether
they might be burgesses or mere --metoeci--; service in the army
was changed from a personal burden into a burden on property.  The
details of the arrangement were as follow.


The Five Classes


Every freeholder from the eighteenth to the sixtieth year of his
age, including children in the household of freeholder fathers,
without distinction of birth, was under obligation of service, so
that even the manumitted slave had to serve, if in an exceptional
case he had come into possession of landed  property.  The Latins
also possessing land--others from without were not allowed to acquire
Roman soil--were called in to service, so far as they had, as was
beyond doubt the case with most of them, taken up their abode on
Roman territory.  The body of men liable to serve was distributed,
according to the size of their portions of land, into those bound
to full service or the possessors of a full hide,(6) who were obliged
to appear in complete armour and in so far formed pre-eminently
the war army (-classis-), and the four following ranks of smaller
landholders--the possessors respectively of three fourths, of
a half, of a quarter, or of an eighth of a whole farm--from whom
was required fulfilment of service, but not equipment in complete
armour, and they thus had a position below the full rate (-infra
classem-).  As the land happened to be at that time apportioned,
almost the half of the farms were full hides, while each of the
classes possessing respectively three-fourths, the half, and the
quarter of a hide, amounted to scarcely an eighth of the freeholders,
and those again holding an eighth of a hide amounted to fully an
eighth.  It was accordingly laid down as a rule that in the case
of the infantry the levy should be in the proportion of eighty
holders of a full hide, twenty from each of the three next ranks,
and twenty-eight from the last.


Cavalry


The cavalry was similarly dealt with.  The number of divisions
in it was tripled, and the only difference in this case was that
the six divisions already existing with the old names (-Tities-,
-Ramnes-, -Luceres- -primi- and -secundi-) were left to the
patricians, while the twelve new divisions were formed chiefly from
the non-burgesses.  The reason for this difference is probably to
be sought in the fact that at that period the infantry were formed
anew for each campaign and discharged on their return home, whereas
the cavalry with their horses were on military grounds kept together
also in time of peace, and held their regular drills, which continued
to subsist as festivals of the Roman equites down to the latest
times.(7)  Accordingly the squadrons once constituted were allowed,
even under this reform, to keep their ancient names.  In order to
make the cavalry accessible to every burgess, the unmarried women
and orphans under age, so far as they had possession of land,
were bound instead of personal service to provide the horses for
particular troopers (each trooper had two of them), and to furnish
them with fodder.  On the whole there was one horseman to nine
foot-soldiers; but in actual service the horsemen were used more
sparingly.

The non-freeholders (-adcensi-, people standing at the side of the
list of those owing military service) had to supply the army with
workmen and musicians as well as with a number of substitutes
who marched with the army unarmed (-velati-), and, when vacancies
occurred in the field, took their places in the ranks equipped with
the weapons of the sick or of the fallen.


Levy-Districts


To facilitate the levying of the infantry, the city was distributed
into four "parts" (-tribus-); by which the old triple division was
superseded, at least so far as concerned its local significance.
These were the Palatine, which comprehended the height of that name
along with the Velia; the Suburan, to which the street so named, the
Carinae, and the Caelian belonged; the Esquiline; and the Colline,
formed by the Quirinal and Viminal, the "hills" as contrasted with
the "mounts" of the Capitol and Palatine.  We have already spoken
of the formation of these regions(8) and shown how they originated
out of the ancient double city of the Palatine and the Quirinal.
By what process it came to pass that every freeholder burgess
belonged to one of those city-districts, we cannot tell; but this
was now the case; and that the four regions were nearly on an
equality in point of numbers, is evident from their being equally
drawn upon in the levy.  This division, which had primary reference to
the soil alone and applied only inferentially to those who possessed
it, was merely for administrative purposes, and in particular
never had any religious significance attached to it; for the fact
that in each of the city-districts there were six chapels of the
enigmatical Argei no more confers upon them the character of ritual
districts than the erection of an altar to the Lares in each street
implies such a character in the streets.

Each of these four levy-districts had to furnish approximately the
fourth part not only of the force as a whole, but of each of its
military subdivisions, so that each legion and each century numbered
an equal proportion of conscripts from each region, in order to
merge all distinctions of a gentile and local nature in the one
common levy of the community and, especially through the powerful
levelling influence of the military spirit, to blend the --metoeci--
and the burgesses into one people.


Organization of the Army


In a military point of view, the male population capable of
bearing arms was divided into a first and second levy, the former
of which, the "juniors" from the commencement of the eighteenth to
the completion of the forty-sixth year, were especially employed
for service in the field, while the "seniors" guarded the walls at
home.  The military unit came to be in the infantry the now doubled
legion(9)--a phalanx, arranged and armed completely in the old
Doric style, of 6000 men who, six file deep, formed a front of 1000
heavy-armed soldiers; to which were attached 2400 "unarmed".(10)
The four first ranks of the phalanx, the -classis-, were formed by
the fully-armed hoplites of those possessing a full hide; in the
fifth and sixth were placed the less completely equipped farmers of
the second and third division; the two last divisions were annexed
as rear ranks to the phalanx or fought by its side as light-armed
troops.  Provision was made for readily supplying the accidental
gaps which were so injurious to the phalanx.  Thus there served in
it 84 centuries or 8400 men, of whom 6000 were hoplites, 4000 of
the first division, 1000 from each of the two following, and 2400
light-armed, of whom 1000 belonged to the fourth, and 1200 to the
fifth division; approximately each levy-district furnished to the
phalanx 2100, and to each century 25 men.  This phalanx was the army
destined for the field, while a like force of troops was reckoned
for the seniors who remained behind to defend the city.  In this way
the normal amount of the infantry came to 16,800 men, 80 centuries
of the first division, 20 from each of the three following, and 28
from the last division--not taking into account the two centuries
of substitutes or those of the workmen or the musicians.  To all
these fell to be added the cavalry, which consisted of 1800 horse;
often when the army took the field, however, only the third part
of the whole number was attached to it.  The normal amount of the
Roman army of the first and second levy rose accordingly to close
upon 20,000 men: which number must beyond doubt have corresponded
on the whole to the effective strength of the Roman population
capable of arms, as it stood at the time when this new organization
was introduced.  As the population increased the number of centuries
was not augmented, but the several divisions were strengthened by
persons added, without altogether losing sight, however, of the
fundamental number.  Indeed the Roman corporations in general, closed
as to numbers, very frequently evaded the limit imposed upon them
by admitting supernumerary members.


Census


This new organization of the army was accompanied by a more careful
supervision of landed property on the part of the state.  It was
now either ordained for the first time or, if not, at any rate
defined more carefully, that a land-register should be established,
in which the several proprietors of land should have their fields
with all their appurtenances, servitudes, slaves, beasts of draught
and of burden, duly recorded.  Every act of alienation, which did
not take place publicly and before witnesses, was declared null;
and a revision of the register of landed property, which was at
the same time the levy-roll, was directed to be made every fourth
year.  The -mancipatio- and the -census- thus arose out of the
Servian military organization.


Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization


It is evident at a glance that this whole institution was from the
outset of a military nature.  In the whole detailed scheme we do
not encounter a single feature suggestive of any destination of the
centuries to other than purely military purposes; and this alone
must, with every one accustomed to consider such matters, form
a sufficient reason for pronouncing its application to political
objects a later innovation.  If, as is probable, in the earliest
period every one who had passed his sixtieth year was excluded from
the centuries, this has no meaning, so far as they were intended
from the first to form a representation of the burgess-community
similar to and parallel with the curies.  Although, however, the
organization of the centuries was introduced merely to enlarge
the military resources of the burgesses by the inclusion of
the --metoeci-- and, in so far, there is no greater error than to
exhibit the Servian organization as the introduction of a timocracy
in Rome--yet the new obligation imposed upon the inhabitants to
bear arms exercised in its consequences a material influence on
their political position.  He who is obliged to become a soldier
must also, so long as the state is not rotten, have it in his power
to become an officer; beyond question plebeians also could now be
nominated in Rome as centurions and as military tribunes.  Although,
moreover, the institution of the centuries was not intended
to curtail the political privileges exclusively possessed by the
burgesses as hitherto represented in the curies, yet it was inevitable
that those rights, which the burgesses hitherto had exercised not
as the assembly of curies, but as the burgess-levy, should pass over
to the new centuries of burgesses and --metoeci--.  Henceforward,
accordingly, it was the centuries whose consent the king had
to ask before beginning an aggressive war.(11)  It is important,
on account of the subsequent course of development, to note these
first steps towards the centuries taking part in public affairs;
but the centuries came to acquire such rights at first more in the
way of natural sequence than of direct design, and subsequently
to the Servian reform, as before, the assembly of the curies was
regarded as the proper burgess-community, whose homage bound the
whole people in allegiance to the king.  By the side of these new
landowning full-burgesses stood the domiciled foreigners from the
allied Latium, as participating in the public burdens, tribute and
task-works (hence -municipes-); while the burgesses not domiciled,
who were beyond the pale of the tribes, and had not the right
to serve in war and vote, came into view only as "owing tribute"
(-aerarii-).

In this way, while hitherto there had been distinguished only two
classes of members of the community, burgesses and clients, there
were now established those three political classes, which exercised
a dominant influence over the constitutional law of Rome for many
centuries.


Time and Occasion of the Reform


When and how this new military organization of the Roman community
came into existence, can only be conjectured.  It presupposes the
existence of the four regions; in other words, the Servian wall must
have been erected before the reform took place.  But the territory
of the city must also have considerably exceeded its original limits,
when it could furnish 8000 holders of full hides and as many who
held lesser portions, or sons of such holders.  We are not acquainted
with the superficial extent of the normal Roman farm; but it is
not possible to estimate it as under twenty -jugera-.(12)  If we
reckon as a minimum 10,000 full hides, this would imply a superficies
of 190 square miles of arable land; and on this calculation, if we
make a very moderate allowance for pasture, the space occupied by
houses, and ground not capable of culture, the territory, at the
period when this reform was carried out, must have had at least
an extent of 420 square miles, probably an extent still more
considerable.  If we follow tradition, we must assume a number of
84,000 burgesses who were freeholders and capable of bearing arms;
for such, we are told, were the numbers ascertained by Servius at
the first census.  A glance at the map, however, shows that this
number must be fabulous; it is not even a genuine tradition, but
a conjectural calculation, by which the 16,800 capable of bearing
arms who constituted the normal strength of the infantry appeared
to yield, on an average of five persons to each family, the number
of 84,000 burgesses, and this number was confounded with that
of those capable of bearing arms.  But even according to the more
moderate estimates laid down above, with a territory of some 16,000
hides containing a population of nearly 20,000 capable of bearing
arms and at least three times that number of women, children, and
old men, persons who had no land, and slaves, it is necessary to
assume not merely that the region between the Tiber and Anio had
been acquired, but that the Alban territory had also been conquered,
before the Servian constitution was established; a result with
which tradition agrees.  What were the numerical proportions of
patricians and plebeians originally in the army, cannot be ascertained.

Upon the whole it is plain that this Servian institution did not
originate in a conflict between the orders.  On the contrary, it
bears the stamp of a reforming legislator like the constitutions of
Lycurgus, Solon, and Zaleucus; and it has evidently been produced
under Greek influence.  Particular analogies may be deceptive, such
as the coincidence noticed by the ancients that in Corinth also
widows and orphans were charged with the provision of horses for
the cavalry; but the adoption of the armour and arrangements of
the Greek hoplite system was certainly no accidental coincidence.
Now if we consider the fact that it was in the second century of
the city that the Greek states in Lower Italy advanced from the pure
clan-constitution to a modified one, which placed the preponderance
in the hands of the landholders, we shall recognize in that movement
the impulse which called forth in Rome the Servian reform--a change
of constitution resting in the main on the same fundamental idea,
and only directed into a somewhat different course by the strictly
monarchical form of the Roman state.(13)




Notes for Book I Chapter VI

1.  I. V. Dependents of the Household

2.  -Habuit plebem in clientelas principium descriptam-.  Cicero,
de Rep. ii. 9.

3.  I. III. The Latin League

4.  The enactments of the Twelve Tables respecting -usus- show
clearly that they found the civil marriage already in existence.
In like manner the high antiquity of the civil marriage is clearly
evident from the fact that it, equally with the religious marriage,
necessarily involved the marital power (v. The House-father and
His Household), and only differed from the religious marriage as
respected the manner in which that power was acquired.  The religious
marriage itself was held as the proprietary and legally necessary
form of acquiring a wife; whereas, in the case of civil marriage,
one of the general forms of acquiring property used on other
occasions--delivery on the part of a person entitled to give away,
or prescription--was requisite in order to lay the foundation of
a valid marital power.

5.  I. V. The House-father and His Household.

6.  -Hufe-, hide, as much as can be properly tilled with one plough,
called in Scotland a plough-gate.

7.  For the same reason, when the levy was enlarged after
the admission of the Hill-Romans, the equites were doubled, while
in the infantry force instead of the single "gathering" (-legio-)
two legions were called out (vi. Amalgamation of the Palatine and
Quirinal Cities).

8.  I. IV. Oldest Settlements In the Palatine and Suburan Regions

9.  I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses

10.  -velites-, see v. Burdens of the Burgesses, note

11.  I. V. Rights of the Burgesses

12.  Even about 480, allotments of land of seven -jugera- appeared
to those that received them small (Val. Max. iii. 3, 5; Colum. i,
praef.  14; i. 3, ii; Plin. H. N. xviii. 3, 18: fourteen -jugera-,
Victor, 33; Plutarch, Apophth. Reg. et Imp. p. 235 Dubner, in
accordance with which Plutarch, Crass. 2, is to be corrected).

A comparison of the Germanic proportions gives the same result.
The -jugerum- and the -morgen- [nearly 5/8 of an English acre],
both originally measures rather of labour than of surface, may be
looked upon as originally identical.  As the German hide consisted
ordinarily of 30, but not unfrequently of 20 or 40 -morgen-, and
the homestead frequently, at least among the Anglo-Saxons, amounted
to a tenth of the hide, it will appear, taking into account the
diversity of climate and the size of the Roman -heredium- of 2
-jugera-, that the hypothesis of a Roman hide of 20 -jugera- is not
unsuitable to the circumstances of the case.  It is to be regretted
certainly that on this very point tradition leaves us without
precise information.

13.  The analogy also between the so-called Servian constitution and
the treatment of the Attic --metoeci-- deserves to be particularly
noticed.  Athens, like Rome, opened her gates at a comparatively
early period to the --metoeci--, and afterwards summoned them also
to share the burdens of the state.  We cannot suppose that any
direct connection existed in this instance between Athens and Rome;
but the coincidence serves all the more distinctly to show how the
same causes--urban centralization and urban development--everywhere
and of necessity produce similar effects.




CHAPTER VII

The Hegemony of Rome in Latium



Extension of the Roman Territory


The brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked
feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country
flourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become
gradually changed into war and raids for pillage into conquest,
and political powers must have begun to assume shape.  No Italian
Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest
frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations
is moulded and expressed like the mind of the man in the sports
and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable
us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the
outward development of power and the comparative resources of the
several Latin cantons.  It is only in the case of Rome, at the
utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power
and of its territory.  The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the
united Roman community have been already stated;(1) in the landward
direction they were on an average just about five miles distant
from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast
that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (-Ostia-), at
a distance of somewhat more than fourteen miles from Rome.  "The
new city," says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome,
"was surrounded by larger and smaller tribes, some of whom dwelt
in independent villages and were not subordinate to any national
union."  It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours
of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions
of the Roman territory took place.


Territory on the Anio--Alba


The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and between the
Tiber and the Anio-Antemnae, Crustumerium, Ficulnea, Medullia,
Caenina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia,--were those which pressed
most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited
their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans.
The only community that subsequently appears as independent in this
district was Nomentum; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance
with Rome.  The possession of Fidenae, the -tete de pont- of the
Etruscans on the left bank of the Tiber, was contested between the
Latins and the Etruscans--in other words, between the Romans and
Veientes--with varying results.  The struggle with Gabii, which
held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a
long period equally balanced: down to late times the Gabine dress
was deemed synonymous with that of war, and Gabine ground the
prototype of hostile soil.(2) By these conquests the Roman territory
was probably extended to about 190 square miles.  Another very
early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a
legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness
than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis
of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops.  How the
collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell:
the battle of the three Roman with the three Alban brothers born at
one birth is nothing but a personification of the struggle between
two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at
least was triune.  We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of
the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome.(3)

It is not improbable, although wholly a matter of conjecture, that,
at the same period when Rome was establishing herself on the Anio
and on the Alban hills, Praeneste, which appears at a later date
as mistress of eight neighbouring townships, Tibur, and others of
the Latin communities were similarly occupied in enlarging their
territory and laying the foundations of their subsequent far from
inconsiderable power.


Treatment of the Earliest Acquisitons


We feel the want of accurate information as to the legal character
and legal effects of these early Latin conquests, still more than
we miss the records of the wars in which they were won.  Upon the
whole it is not to be doubted that they were treated in accordance
with the system of incorporation, out of which the tripartite community
of Rome had arisen; excepting that the cantons who were compelled
by arms to enter the combination did not, like the primitive three,
preserve some sort of relative independence as separate regions
in the new united community, but became so entirely merged in the
general whole as to be no longer traced.(4)  However far the power
of a Latin canton might extend, in the earliest times it tolerated
no political centre except the proper capital; and still less
founded independent settlements, such as the Phoenicians and the
Greeks established, thereby creating in their colonies clients
for the time being and future rivals to the mother city.  In this
respect, the treatment which Ostia experienced from Rome deserves
special notice: the Romans could not and did not wish to prevent
the rise -de facto- of a town at that spot, but they allowed the
place no political independence, and accordingly they did not bestow
on those who settled there any local burgess-rights, but merely
allowed them to retain, if they already possessed, the general
burgess-rights of Rome.(5)  This principle also determined the
fate of the weaker cantons, which by force of arms or by voluntary
submission became subject to a stronger.  The stronghold of the canton
was razed, its domain was added to the domain of the conquerors,
and a new home was instituted for the inhabitants as well as for
their gods in the capital of the victorious canton.  This must not
be understood absolutely to imply a formal transportation of the
conquered inhabitants to the new capital, such as was the rule at
the founding of cities in the East.  The towns of Latium at this
time can have been little more than the strongholds and weekly
markets of the husbandmen: it was sufficient in general that the
market and the seat of justice should be transferred to the new
capital.  That even the temples often remained at the old spot
is shown in the instances of Alba and of Caenina, towns which must
still after their destruction have retained some semblance of
existence in connection with religion.  Even where the strength
of the place that was razed rendered it really necessary to remove
the inhabitants, they would be frequently settled, with a view
to the cultivation of the soil, in the open hamlets of their old
domain.  That the conquered, however, were not unfrequently compelled
either as a whole or in part to settle in their new capital,
is proved, more satisfactorily than all the several stories from
the legendary period of Latium could prove it, by the maxim of
Roman state-law, that only he who had extended the boundaries of
the territory was entitled to advance the wall of the city (the
-pomerium-).  Of course the conquered, whether transferred or not,
were ordinarily compelled to occupy the legal position of clients;(6)
but particular individuals or clans occasionally had burgess-rights
or, in other words, the patriciate conferred upon them.  In the
time of the empire there were still recognized Alban clans which
were introduced among the burgesses of Rome after the fall of their
native seat; amongst these were the Julii, Servilii, Quinctilii,
Cloelii, Geganii, Curiatii, Metilii: the memory of their descent was
preserved by their Alban family shrines, among which the sanctuary
of the -gens- of the Julii at Bovillae again rose under the empire
into great repute.

This centralizing process, by which several small communities
became absorbed in a larger one, of course was far from being an
idea specially Roman.  Not only did the development of Latium and
of the Sabellian stocks hinge upon the distinction between national
centralization and cantonal independence; the case was the same
with the development of the Hellenes.  Rome in Latium and Athens
in Attica arose out of a like amalgamation of many cantons into
one state; and the wise Thales suggested a similar fusion to the
hard-pressed league of the Ionic cities as the only means of saving
their nationality.  But Rome adhered to this principle of unity with
more consistency, earnestness, and success than any other Italian
canton; and just as the prominent position of Athens in Hellas
was the effect of her early centralization, so Rome was indebted
for her greatness solely to the same system, in her case far more
energetically applied,


The Hegemony of Rome over Latium--Alba


While the conquests of Rome in Latium may be mainly regarded as
direct extensions of her territory and people presenting the same
general features, a further and special significance attached to
the conquest of Alba.  It was not merely the problematical size and
presumed riches of Alba that led tradition to assign a prominence
so peculiar to its capture.  Alba was regarded as the metropolis
of the Latin confederacy, and had the right of presiding among the
thirty communities that belonged to it.  The destruction of Alba,
of course, no more dissolved the league itself than the destruction
of Thebes dissolved the Boeotian confederacy;(7) but, in entire
consistency with the strict application of the -ius privatum- which
was characteristic of the Latin laws of war, Rome now claimed the
presidency of the league as the heir-at-law of Alba.  What sort
of crises, if any, preceded or followed the acknowledgment of this
claim, we cannot tell.  Upon the whole the hegemony of Rome over
Latium appears to have been speedily and generally recognized,
although particular communities, such as Labici and above all
Gabii, may for a time have declined to own it.  Even at that time
Rome was probably a maritime power in contrast to the Latin "land,"
a city in contrast to the Latin villages, and a single state in
contrast to the Latin confederacy; even at that time it was only in
conjunction with and by means of Rome that the Latins could defend
their coasts against Carthaginians, Hellenes, and Etruscans, and
maintain and extend their landward frontier in opposition to their
restless neighbours of the Sabellian stock.  Whether the accession
to her material resources which Rome obtained by the subjugation
of Alba was greater than the increase of her power obtained by
the capture of Antemnae or Collatia, cannot be ascertained: it is
quite possible that it was not by the conquest of Alba that Rome
was first constituted the most powerful community in Latium; she
may have been so long before; but she did gain in consequence of
that event the presidency at the Latin festival, which became the
basis of the future hegemony of the Roman community over the whole
Latin confederacy.  It is important to indicate as definitely as
possible the nature of a relation so influential.


Relation of Rome to Latium


The form of the Roman hegemony over Latium was, in general, that
of an alliance on equal terms between the Roman community on the
one hand and the Latin confederacy on the other, establishing a
perpetual peace throughout the whole domain and a perpetual league
for offence and defence.  "There shall be peace between the Romans
and all communities of the Latins, as long as heaven and earth
endure; they shall not wage war with each other, nor call enemies
into the land, nor grant passage to enemies: help shall be rendered
by all in concert to any community assailed, and whatever is won
in joint warfare shall be equally distributed." The stipulated
equality of rights in trade and exchange, in commercial credit
and in inheritance, tended, by the manifold relations of business
intercourse to which it led, still further to interweave the
interests of communities already connected by the ties of similar
language and manners, and in this way produced an effect somewhat
similar to that of the abolition of customs-restrictions in our own
day.  Each community certainly retained in form its own law: down
to the time of the Social war Latin law was not necessarily identical
with Roman: we find, for example, that the enforcing of betrothal
by action at law, which was abolished at an early period in Rome,
continued to subsist in the Latin communities.  But the simple and
purely national development of Latin law, and the endeavour to
maintain as far as possible uniformity of rights, led at length
to the result, that the law of private relations was in matter and
form substantially the same throughout all Latium.  This uniformity
of rights comes most distinctly into view in the rules laid down
regarding the loss and recovery of freedom on the part of the
individual burgess.  According to an ancient and venerable maxim
of law among the Latin stock no burgess could become a slave
in the state wherein he had been free, or suffer the loss of his
burgess-rights while he remained within it: if he was to be punished
with the loss of freedom and of burgess-rights (which was the same
thing), it was necessary that he should be expelled from the state
and should enter on the condition of slavery among strangers.  This
maxim of law was now extended to the whole territory of the league;
no member of any of the federal states might live as a slave within
the bounds of the league.  Applications of this principle are seen
in the enactment embodied in the Twelve Tables, that the insolvent
debtor, in the event of his creditor wishing to sell him, must be
sold beyond the boundary of the Tiber, in other words, beyond the
territory of the league; and in the clause of the second treaty
between Rome and Carthage, that an ally of Rome who might be taken
prisoner by the Carthaginians should be free so soon as he entered
a Roman seaport.  Although there did not probably subsist a general
intercommunion of marriage within the league, yet, as has been
already remarked(8) intermarriage between the different communities
frequently occurred.  Each Latin could primarily exercise political
rights only where he was enrolled as a burgess; but on the other
hand it was implied in an equality of private rights, that any Latin
could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds; or,
to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by
side with the special burgess-rights of the individual communities,
a general right of settlement co-extensive with the confederacy;
and, after the plebeian was acknowledged in Rome as a burgess,
this right became converted as regards Rome into full freedom of
settlement.  It is easy to understand how this should have turned
materially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium
offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban
enjoyments; and how the number of --metoeci-- in Rome should have
increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to
live in perpetual peace with Rome.

In constitution and administration the several communities not
only remained independent and sovereign, so far as the federal
obligations did not interfere, but, what was of more importance,
the league of the thirty communities as such retained its autonomy
in contradistinction to Rome.  When we are assured that the position
of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior
to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities
attained autonomy, this may well have been the case, in so far as
Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the
first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the
league than of a member included in it; but, just as the states
of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while
those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba may
have been in reality an honorary right(9) like that of the German
emperors, and the protectorate of Rome from the first a supremacy
like that of Napoleon.  In fact Alba appears to have exercised the
right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the
Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves under the
guidance, as it appears, of a president selected from their own
number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the
federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium,
and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome--the
temple of Diana on the Aventine--so that thenceforth sacrifice was
offered both on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, and on Latin soil
for Latium and Rome.  With equal deference to the interests of
the league the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves
not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community--a
stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions entertained,
doubtless not without reason, by the confederacy with reference to
the powerful community taking the lead.  The position of Rome not
within, but alongside of Latium, is most clearly apparent in the
arrangements for warfare.  The fighting force of the league was
composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly
shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin.  The
supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals; year by
year the Latin contingent had to appear  before the gates of Rome,
and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its
general, after the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council
to take the auspices had thereby assured themselves of the contentment
of the gods with the choice that had been made.  Whatever land or
property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned
among its members according to the judgment of the Romans.  That
the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external
relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained.
The federal agreement did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from
undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war
was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its
own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council
may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well
as in the termination of the war.  Practically indeed Rome must
have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state
and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other,
the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.


Extension of the Roman Territory after the Fall of Alba--Hernici--Rutulli
and Volscii


The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome--now mistress of a
territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading
power in the Latin confederacy--extended still further her direct
and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced.  There was no lack
of feuds with the Etruscans and with the Veientes in particular,
chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenae; but it does not appear
that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over
that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the
river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in dislodging
the Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations.
On the other hand they maintained apparently undisputed possession
of the Janiculum and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber.  As
regards the Sabines and Aequi Rome appears in a more advantageous
position; the connection which afterwards became so intimate with
the more distant Hernici must have had at least its beginning
under the monarchy, and the united Latins and Hernici enclosed on
two sides and held in check their eastern neighbours.  But on the
south frontier the territory of the Rutuli and still more that of
the Volsci were scenes of perpetual war.  The earliest extension
of the Latin land took place in this direction, and it is here that
we first encounter those communities founded by Rome and Latium
on the enemy's soil and constituted as autonomous members of the
Latin confederacy--the Latin colonies, as they were called--the
oldest of which appear to reach back to the regal period.  How
far, however, the territory reduced under the power of the Romans
extended at the close of the monarchy, can by no means be determined.
Of feuds with the neighbouring Latin and Volscian communities the
Roman annals of the regal period recount more than enough; but
only a few detached notices, such as that perhaps of the capture
of Suessa in the Pomptine plain, can be held to contain a nucleus
of historical fact.  That the regal period laid not only the
political foundations of Rome, but the foundations also of her
external power, cannot be doubted; the position of the city of
Rome as contradistinguished from, rather than forming part of, the
league of Latin states is already decidedly marked at the beginning
of the republic, and enables us to perceive that an energetic
development of external power must have taken place in Rome during
the time of the kings.  Certainly great deeds, uncommon achievements
have in this case passed into oblivion; but the splendour of them
lingers over the regal period of Rome, especially over the royal
house of the Tarquins, like a distant evening twilight in which
outlines disappear.


Enlargement of the City of Rome--Servian Wall


While the Latin stock was thus tending towards union under the
leadership of Rome and was at the same time extending its territory
on the east and south, Rome itself, by the favour of fortune and
the energy of its citizens, had been converted from a stirring
commercial and rural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing
country.  The remodelling of the Roman military system and the
political reform of which it contained the germ, known to us by
the name of the Servian constitution, stand in intimate connection
with this internal change in the character of the Roman community.
But externally also the character of the city cannot but have changed
with the influx of ampler resources, with the rising requirements
of its position, and with the extension of its political horizon.
The amalgamation of the adjoining community on the Quirinal with
that on the Palatine must have been already accomplished when the
Servian reform, as it is called, took place; and after this reform
had united and consolidated the military strength of the community,
the burgesses could no longer rest content with entrenching the
several hills, as one after another they were filled with buildings,
and with possibly also keeping the island in the Tiber and the
height on the opposite bank occupied so that they might command
the course of the river.  The capital of Latium required another
and more complete system of defence; they proceeded to construct
the Servian wall.  The new continuous city-wall began at the river
below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been
brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one
on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite
eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications--portions
of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large
square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height--emerging
as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose
buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose
intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence
more lasting even than these.  The ring-wall further embraced the
Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal,
where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a
great scale (1862)--on the outside composed of blocks of peperino
and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge
earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the
present day--supplied the want of natural means of defence.  From
thence it ran to the Capitoline, the steep declivity of which towards
the Campus Martius served as part of the city-wall, and it again
abutted on the river above the island in the Tiber.  The Tiber
island with the bridge of piles and the Janiculum did not belong
strictly to the city, but the latter height was probably a fortified
outwork.  Hitherto the Palatine had been the stronghold, but now
this hill was left open to be built upon by the growing city; and on
the other hand upon the Tarpeian Hill, standing free on every side,
and from its moderate extent easily defensible, there was constructed
the new "stronghold" (-arx-, -capitolium-(10)), containing the
stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (-tullianum-),
the treasury (-aerarium-), the prison, and the most ancient place
of assemblage for the burgesses (-area Capitolina-), where still in
after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon
continued to be made.  Private dwellings of a permanent kind,
on the other hand, were not tolerated in earlier times on the
stronghold-hill;(11) and the space between the two summits of the
hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (-Ve-diovis-), or as it was
termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with
wood and presumably intended for the reception of the husbandmen
and their herds, when inundation or war drove them from the plain.
The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome,
an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city
had fallen: its gate lay probably towards what was afterwards the
Forum.(12)  The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar
style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from
permanent occupation.  With this is connected the fact, that for
purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced
water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants
of the city proper (-montani-), and those of the districts situated
within the general ring-wall, but yet not reckoned as strictly
belonging to the city (-pagani Aventinensis-, -Ianiculenses-,
-collegia Capitolinorum et Mercurialium-).(13)  The space enclosed
by the new city wall thus embraced, in addition to the former
Palatine and Quirinal cities, the two federal strongholds of the
Capitol and the Aventine, and also the Janiculum;(14) the Palatine,
as the oldest and proper city, was enclosed by the other heights
along which the wall was carried, as if encircled with a wreath,
and the two castles occupied the middle.

The work, however, was not complete so long as the ground, protected
by so laborious exertions from outward foes, was not also reclaimed
from the dominion of the water, which permanently occupied the
valley between the Palatine and the Capitol, so that there was
perhaps even a ferry there, and which converted the valleys between
the Capitol and the Velia and between the Palatine and the Aventine
into marshes.  The subterranean drains still existing at the
present day, composed of magnificent square blocks, which excited
the astonishment of posterity as a marvellous work of regal Rome,
must rather be reckoned to belong to the following epoch, for
travertine is the material employed and we have many accounts of
new structures of the kind in the times of the republic; but the
scheme itself belongs beyond doubt to the regal period, although
presumably to a later epoch than the designing of the Servian wall
and the Capitoline stronghold.  The spots thus drained or dried
supplied large open spaces such as were needed by the new enlarged
city.  The assembling-place of the community, which had hitherto been
the Area Capitolina at the stronghold itself, was now transferred to
the flat space, where the ground fell from the stronghold towards
the city (-comitium-), and which stretched thence between the
Palatine and the Carinae, in the direction of the Velia.  At that
side of the -comitium- which adjoined the stronghold, and upon the
stronghold-wall which arose above the -comitium- in the fashion
of a balcony, the members of the senate and the guests of the city
had the place of honour assigned to them on occasion of festivals
and assemblies of the people; and at the place of assembly itself
was erected the senate-house, which afterwards bore the name of the
Curia Hostilia.  The platform for the judgment-seat (-tribunal-),
and the stage whence the burgesses were addressed (the later rostra),
were likewise erected on the -comitium- itself.  Its prolongation in
the direction of the Velia became the new market (-forum Romanum-).
At the end of the latter, beneath the Palatine, rose the
community-house, which included the official dwelling of the king
(-regia-) and the common hearth of the city, the rotunda forming
the temple of Vesta; at no great distance, on the south side of the
Forum, there was erected a second round building connected with the
former, the store-room of the community or temple of the Penates,
which still stands at the present day as the porch of the church
Santi Cosma e Damiano.  It is a feature significant of the new city
now united in a way very different from the settlement of the "seven
mounts," that, over and above the hearths of the thirty curies
which the Palatine Rome had been content with associating in one
building, the Servian Rome presented this general and single hearth
for the city at large.(15)  Along the two longer sides of the Forum
butchers' shops and other traders' stalls were arranged.  In the
valley between the Palatine and Aventine a "ring" was staked off
for races; this became the Circus.  The cattle-market was laid out
immediately adjoining the river, and this soon became one of the
most densely peopled quarters of Rome.  Temples and sanctuaries
arose on all the summits, above all the federal sanctuary of Diana on
the Aventine,(16) and on the summit of the stronghold the far-seen
temple of Father Diovis, who had given to his people all this glory,
and who now, when the Romans were triumphing over the surrounding
nations, triumphed along with them over the subject gods of the
vanquished.

The names of the men, at whose bidding these great buildings of
the city arose, are almost as completely lost in oblivion as those
of the leaders in the earliest battles and victories of Rome.
Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings--the
senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden
bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the
temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and
the ring-wall to Servius Tullius.  Some of these statements may
perhaps be correct; and it is apparently not the result of accident
that the building of the new ring-wall is associated both as to date
and author with the new organization of the army, which in fact bore
special reference to the regular defence of the city walls.  But
upon the whole we must be content to learn from this tradition--what
is indeed evident of itself--that this second creation of Rome stood
in intimate connection with the commencement of her hegemony over
Latium and with the remodelling of her burgess-army, and that, while
it originated in one and the same great conception, its execution
was not the work either of a single man or of a single generation.
It is impossible to doubt that Hellenic influences exercised
a powerful effect on this remodelling of the Roman community, but
it is equally impossible to demonstrate the mode or the degree of
their operation.  It has already been observed that the Servian
military constitution is essentially of an Hellenic type;(17)
and it will be afterwards shown that the games of the Circus were
organized on an Hellenic model.  The new -regia-with the city hearth
was quite a Greek --prytaneion--, and the round temple of Vesta,
looking towards the east and not so much as consecrated by the
augurs, was constructed in no respect according to Italian, but
wholly in accordance with Hellenic, ritual.  With these facts before
us, the statement of tradition appears not at all incredible that
the Ionian confederacy in Asia Minor to some extent served as a model
for the Romano-Latin league, and that the new federal sanctuary on
the Aventine was for that reason constructed in imitation of the
Artemision at Ephesus.




Notes for Book I Chapter VII



1.  I. IV. Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory

2.  The formulae of accursing for Gabii and Fidenae are quite
as characteristic (Macrob. Sat. iii. 9).  It cannot, however, be
proved and is extremely improbable that, as respects these towns,
there was an actual historical accursing of the ground on which
they were built, such as really took place at Veii, Carthage, and
Fregellae.  It may be conjectured that old accursing formularies
were applied to those two hated towns, and were considered by later
antiquaries as historical documents.

3.  But there seems to be no good ground for the doubt recently
expressed in a quarter deserving of respect as to the destruction
of Alba having really been the act of Rome.  It is true, indeed,
that the account of the destruction of Alba is in its details a
series of improbabilities and impossibilities; but that is true of
every historical fact inwoven into legend.  To the question as to
the attitude of the rest of Latium towards the struggle between
Rome and Alba, we are unable to give an answer; but the question
itself rests on a false assumption, for it is not proved that the
constitution of the Latin league absolutely prohibited a separate
war between two Latin communities (I. III. The Latin League).  Still
less is the fact that a number of Alban families were received
into the burgess-union of Rome inconsistent with the destruction
of Alba by the Romans.  Why may there not have been a Roman party
in Alba just as there was in Capua? The circumstance, however,
of Rome claiming to be in a religious and political point of view
the heir-at-law of Alba may be regarded as decisive of the matter;
for such a claim could not be based on the migration of individual
clans to Rome, but could only be based, as it actually was, on the
conquest of the town.

4.  I. VI.  Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities

5.  Hence was developed the conception, in political law, of the
maritime colony or colony of burgesses (-colonia civium Romanorum-),
that is, of a community separate in fact, but not independent or
possessing a will of its own in law; a community which merged in
the capital as the -peculium- of the son merged in the property
of the father, and which as a standing garrison was exempt from
serving in the legion.

6.  To this the enactment of the Twelve Tables undoubtedly has
reference: -Nex[i mancipiique] forti sanatique idem ius esto-,
that is, in dealings of private law the "sound" and the "recovered"
shall be on a footing of equality.  The Latin allies cannot be here
referred to, because their legal position was defined by federal
treaties, and the law of the Twelve Tables treated only of the law
of Rome.  The -sanates- were the -Latini prisci cives Romani-, or
in other words, the communities of Latium compelled by the Romans
to enter the plebeiate.

7.  The community of Bovillae appears even to have been formed out
of part of the Alban domain, and to have been admitted in room of
Alba among the autonomous Latin towns.  Its Alban origin is attested
by its having been the seat of worship for the Julian gens and by
the name -Albani Longani Bovillenses- (Orelli-Henzen, 119, 2252,
6019); its autonomy by Dionysius, v. 61, and Cicero, pro Plancio,
9, 23.

8.  I. III. The Latin League

9.  I. III. The Latin League

10.  Both names, although afterwards employed as local names
(-capitolium- being applied to the summit of the stronghold-hill
that lay next to the river, -arx- to that next to the Quirinal),
were originally appellatives, corresponding exactly to the Greek
--akra-- and --koruphei-- every Latin town had its -capitolium-as
well as Rome.  The local name of the Roman stronghold-hill was
-mons Tarpeius-.

11.  The enactment -ne quis patricius in arce aut capitolio
habitaret-probably prohibited only the conversion of the ground into
private property, not the construction of dwelling-houses.  Comp.
Becker, Top. p. 386.

12.  For the chief thoroughfare, the -Via Sacra-, led from that
quarter to the stronghold; and the bending in towards the gate may
still be clearly recognized in the turn which this makes to the
left at the arch of Severus.  The gate itself must have disappeared
under the huge structures which were raised in after ages on the
Clivus.  The so-called gate at the steepest part of the Capitoline
Mount, which is known by the name of Janualis or Saturnia, or the
"open," and which had to stand always open in times of war, evidently
had merely a religious significance, and never was a real gate.

13.  Four such guilds are mentioned (1) the -Capitolini- (Cicero,
ad Q. fr. ii. 5, 2), with -magistri- of their own (Henzen, 6010,
6011), and annual games (Liv. v. 50; comp.  Corp. Inscr. Lat. i. n.
805); (2) the -Mercuriales- (Liv. ii. 27; Cicero, l. c.; Preller,
Myth.  p. 597) likewise with -magistri- (Henzen, 6010), the guild
from the valley of the Circus, where the temple of Mercury stood;
(3) the -pagani Aventinenses- likewise with -magistri- (Henzen,
6010); and (4) the -pagani pagi Ianiculensis- likewise with -magistri-
(C. I. L.  i. n. 801, 802).  It is certainly not accidental that
these four guilds, the only ones of the sort that occur in Rome,
belong to the very two hills excluded from the four local tribes
but enclosed by the Servian wall, the Capitol and the Aventine, and
the Janiculum belonging to the same fortification; and connected
with this is the further fact that the expression -montani paganive-
is employed as a designation of the whole inhabitants in connection
with the city (comp. besides the well-known passage, Cic. de Domo,
28, 74, especially the law as to the city aqueducts in Festus, v.
sifus, p. 340; [-mon]tani paganive si[fis aquam dividunto-]).  The
-montani-, properly the inhabitants of the three regions of the
Palatine town (iv. The Hill-Romans On the Quirinal), appear to be
here put -a potiori- for the whole population of the four regions
of the city proper.  The -pagani- are, undoubtedly, the residents
of the Aventine and Janiculum not included in the tribes, and the
analogous -collegia- of the Capitol and the Circus valley.

14.  The "Seven-hill-city" in the proper and religious sense was
and continued to be the narrower Old-Rome of the Palatine (iv. The
Palatine City).  Certainly the Servian Rome also regarded itself,
at least as early as the time of Cicero (comp. e. g. Cic. ad Att.
vi. 5, 2; Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69), as "Seven-hill-city," probably
because the festival of the Septimontium, which was celebrated
with great zeal even under the Empire, began to be regarded as a
festival for the city generally; but there was hardly any definite
agreement reached as to which of the heights embraced by the
Servian ring-wall belonged to the "seven." The enumeration of the
Seven Mounts familiar to us, viz. Palatine, Aventine, Caelian,
Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is not given by any
ancient author.  It is put together from the traditional narrative
of the gradual rise of the city (Jordan, Topographie, ii. 206 seq.),
and the Janiculum is passed over in it, simply because otherwise
the number would come out as eight.  The earliest authority that
enumerates the Seven Mounts (-montes-) of Rome is the description
of the city from the age of Constantine the Great.  It names as
such the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican,
and Janiculum,--where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as
-colles-, omitted, and in their stead two "-montes-" are introduced
from the right bank of the Tiber, including even the Vatican which
lay outside of the Servian wall.  Other still later lists are
given by Servius (ad Aen. vi. 783), the Berne Scholia to Virgil's
Georgics (ii. 535), and Lydus (de Mens.  p. 118, Bekker).

15.  Both the situation of the two temples, and the express testimony
of Dionysius, ii. 65, that the temple of Vesta lay outside of the
Roma quadrata, prove that these structures were connected with the
foundation not of the Palatine, but of the second (Servian) city.
Posterity reckoned this -regia- with the temple of Vesta as a scheme
of Numa; but the cause which gave rise to that hypothesis is too
manifest to allow of our attaching any weight to it.

16.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

17.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform




CHAPTER VIII

The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings of the Samnites



Umbro-Sabellian Migration


The migration of the Umbrian stocks appears to have begun at
a period later than that of the Latins.  Like the Latin, it moved
in a southerly direction, but it kept more in the centre of the
peninsula and towards the east coast.  It is painful to speak of
it; for our information regarding it comes to us like the sound
of bells from a town that has been sunk in the sea.  The Umbrian
people extended according to Herodotus as far as the Alps, and
it is not improbable that in very ancient times they occupied the
whole of Northern Italy, to the point where the settlements of the
Illyrian stocks began on the east, and those of the Ligurians on
the west.  As to the latter, there are traditions of their conflicts
with the Umbrians, and we may perhaps draw an inference regarding
their extension in very early times towards the south from isolated
names, such as that of the island of Ilva (Elba) compared with the
Ligurian Ilvates.  To this period of Umbrian greatness the evidently
Italian names of the most ancient settlements in the valley of the
Po, Atria (black-town), and Spina (thorn-town), probably owe their
origin, as well as the numerous traces of Umbrians in southern
Etruria (such as the river Umbro, Camars the old name of Clusium,
Castrum Amerinum).  Such indications of an Italian population
having preceded the Etruscan especially occur in the most southern
portion of Etruria, the district between the Ciminian Forest (below
Viterbo) and the Tiber.  In Falerii, the town of Etruria nearest
to the frontier of Umbria and the Sabine country, according to
the testimony of Strabo a language was spoken different from the
Etruscan, and inscriptions bearing out that statement have recently
been brought to light there, the alphabet and language of which,
while presenting points of contact with the Etruscan, exhibit
a general resemblance to the Latin.(1)  The local worship also
presents traces of a Sabellian character; and a similar inference
is suggested by the primitive relations subsisting in sacred as
well as other matters between Caere and Rome.  It is probable that
the Etruscans wrested those southern districts from the Umbrians
at a period considerably subsequent to their occupation of the
country on the north of the Ciminian Forest, and that an Umbrian
population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest.
In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of
the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria
became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the
Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman
conquest.  That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven
back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country
between the two arms of the Apennines which they subsequently
held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical
position, just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons
and that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar
fate that has befallen them.  Tradition also has to report that the
Tuscans wrested from the Umbrians three hundred towns; and, what
is of more importance as evidence, in the national prayers of the
Umbrian Iguvini, which we still possess, along with other stocks
the Tuscans especially are cursed as public foes.

In consequence, as may be presumed, of this pressure exerted upon
them from the north, the Umbrians advanced towards the south,
keeping in general upon the heights, because they found the plains
already occupied by Latin stocks, but beyond doubt frequently
making inroads and encroachments on the territory of the kindred
race, and intermingling with them the more readily, that the
distinction in language and habits could not have been at all so
marked then as we find it afterwards.  To the class of such inroads
belongs the tradition of the irruption of the Reatini and Sabines
into Latium and their conflicts with the Romans; similar phenomena
were probably repeated all along the west coast.  Upon the whole
the Sabines maintained their footing in the mountains, as in the
district bordering on Latium which has since been called by their
name, and so too in the Volscian land, presumably because the Latin
population did not extend thither or was there less dense; while
on the other hand the well-peopled plains were better able to offer
resistance to the invaders, although they were not in all cases
able or desirous to prevent isolated bands from gaining a footing,
such as the Tities and afterwards the Claudii in Rome.(2)  In this
way the stocks here became variously mingled, a state of things
which serves to explain the numerous relations that subsisted
between the Volscians and Latins, and how it happened that their
district, as well as Sabina, afterwards became so early and speedily
Latinized.


Samnites


The chief branch, however, of the Umbrian stock threw itself eastward
from Sabina into the mountains of the Abruzzi, and the adjacent
hill-country to the south of them.  Here, as on the west coast,
they occupied the mountainous districts, whose thinly scattered
population gave way before the immigrants or submitted to their
yoke; while in the plain along the Apulian coast the ancient native
population, the Iapygians, upon the whole maintained their ground,
although involved in constant feuds, especially on the northern
frontier about Luceria and Arpi.  When these migrations took place,
cannot of course be determined; but it was presumably about the
time when kings ruled in Rome.  Tradition reports that the Sabines,
pressed by the Umbrians, vowed a -ver sacrum-, that is, swore
that they would give up and send beyond their bounds the sons and
daughters born in the year of war, so soon as these should reach
maturity, that the gods might at their pleasure destroy them
or bestow upon them new abodes in other lands.  One band was led
by the ox of Mars; these were the Safini or Samnites, who in the
first instance established themselves on the mountains adjoining
the river Sagrus, and at a later period proceeded to occupy the
beautiful plain on the east of the Matese chain, near the sources
of the Tifernus.  Both in their old and in their new territory
they named their place of public assembly--which in the one case
was situated near Agnone, in the other near Bojano--from the ox
which led them Bovianum.  A second band was led by the woodpecker
of Mars; these were the Picentes, "the woodpecker-people," who
took possession of what is now the March of Ancona.  A third band
was led by the wolf (-hirpus-) into the region of Beneventum;
these were the Hirpini.  In a similar manner the other small tribes
branched off from the common stock--the Praetuttii near Teramo; the
Vestini on the Gran Sasso; the Marrucini near Chieti; the Frentani
on the frontier of Apulia; the Paeligni on the Majella mountains;
and lastly the Marsi on the Fucine lake, coming in contact with
the Volscians and Latins.  All of these tribes retained, as these
legends clearly show, a vivid sense of their relationship and of
their having come forth from the Sabine land.  While the Umbrians
succumbed in the unequal struggle and the western offshoots of the
same stock became amalgamated with the Latin or Hellenic population,
the Sabellian tribes prospered in the seclusion of their distant
mountain land, equally remote from collision with the Etruscans,
the Latins, and the Greeks.  There was little or no development
of an urban life amongst them; their geographical position almost
wholly precluded them from engaging in commercial intercourse, and
the mountain-tops and strongholds sufficed for the necessities of
defence, while the husbandmen continued to dwell in open hamlets
or wherever each found the well-spring and the forest or pasture
that he desired.  In such circumstances their constitution remained
stationary; like the similarly situated Arcadians in Greece, their
communities never became incorporated into a single state; at the
utmost they only formed confederacies more or less loosely connected.
In the Abruzzi especially, the strict seclusion of the mountain
valleys seems to have debarred the several cantons from intercourse
either with each other or with the outer world.  They maintained but
little connection with each other and continued to live in complete
isolation from the rest of Italy; and in consequence, notwithstanding
the bravery of their inhabitants, they exercised less influence
than any other portion of the Italian nation on the development of
the history of the peninsula.


Their Political Development


On the other hand the Samnite people decidedly exhibited the highest
political development among the eastern Italian stock, as the Latin
nation did among the western.  From an early period, perhaps from
its first immigration, a comparatively strong political bond held
together the Samnite nation, and gave to it the strength which
subsequently enabled it to contend with Rome on equal terms for the
first place in Italy.  We are as ignorant of the time and manner of
the formation of the bond, as we are of its federal constitution;
but it is clear that in Samnium no single community was preponderant,
and still less was there any town to serve as a central rallying
point and bond of union for the Samnite stock, such as Rome was
for the Latins.  The strength of the land lay in its -communes-
of husbandmen, and authority was vested in the assembly formed of
their representatives; it was this assembly which in case of need
nominated a federal commander-in-chief.  In consequence of its
constitution the policy of this confederacy was not aggressive like
the Roman, but was limited to the defence of its own bounds; only
where the state forms a unity is power so concentrated and passion
so strong, that the extension of territory can be systematically
pursued.  Accordingly the whole history of the two nations is
prefigured in their diametrically opposite systems of colonization.
Whatever the Romans gained, was a gain to the state: the conquests
of the Samnites were achieved by bands of volunteers who went
forth in search of plunder and, whether they prospered or were
unfortunate, were left to their own resources by their native home.
The conquests, however, which the Samnites made on the coasts of
the Tyrrhenian and Ionic seas, belong to a later age; during the
regal period in Rome they seem to have been only gaining possession
of the settlements in which we afterwards find them.  As a single
incident in the series of movements among the neighbouring peoples
caused by this Samnite settlement may be mentioned the surprise of
Cumae by Tyrrhenians from the Upper Sea, Umbrians, and Daunians in
the year 230.  If we may give credit to the accounts of the matter
which present certainly a considerable colouring of romance, it
would appear that in this instance, as was often the case in such
expeditions, the intruders and those whom they supplanted combined
to form one army, the Etruscans joining with their Umbrian enemies,
and these again joined by the Iapygians whom the Umbrian settlers
had driven towards the south.  Nevertheless the undertaking proved
a failure: on this occasion at least the Hellenic superiority in
the art of war, and the bravery of the tyrant Aristodemus, succeeded
in repelling the barbarian assault on the beautiful seaport.




Notes for Book I Chapter VIII



1.  In the alphabet the -"id:r" especially deserves notice, being
of the Latin (-"id:R") and not of the Etruscan form (-"id:D"),
and also the -"id:z" (--"id:XI"); it can only be derived from
the primitive Latin, and must very faithfully represent it.  The
language likewise has close affinity with the oldest Latin; -Marci
Acarcelini he cupa-, that is, -Marcius Acarcelinius heic cubat-:
-Menerva A. Cotena La.  f...zenatuo sentem..dedet cuando..cuncaptum-,
that is, -Minervae A(ulus?) Cotena La(rtis) f(ilius) de senatus
sententia dedit quando (perhaps=olim) conceptum-.  At the same
time with these and similar inscriptions there have been found some
others in a different character and language, undoubtedly Etruscan.

2.  I. IV. Tities, Luceres




CHAPTER IX

The Etruscans



Etruscan Nationality


The Etruscan people, or Ras,(1) as they called themselves, present
a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well
as to the Greeks.  They were distinguished from these nations by
their very bodily structure: instead of the slender and symmetrical
proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans
exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms.
Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with
them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian
stocks.  The religion of the Tuscans in particular, presenting a
gloomy fantastic character and delighting in the mystical handling
of numbers and in wild and horrible speculations and practices,
is equally remote from the clear rationalism of the Romans and the
genial image-worship of the Hellenes.  The conclusion which these
facts suggest is confirmed by the most important and authoritative
evidence of nationality, the evidence of language.  The remains
of the Etruscan tongue which have reached us, numerous as they are
and presenting as they do various data to aid in deciphering it,
occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no
one hitherto succeeded in interpreting these remains, but no one
has been able even to determine precisely the place of Etruscan in
the classification of languages.  Two periods in the development
of the language may be clearly distinguished.  In the older period
the vocalization of the language was completely carried out,
and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception
avoided.(2)  By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations,
and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this soft and
melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became
intolerably harsh and rugged.(3)  They changed for example -ramu*af-
into -ram*a-, Tarquinius into -Tarchnaf-, Minerva into -Menrva-,
Menelaos, Polydeukes, Alexandros, into -Menle-, -Pultuke-, -Elchsentre-.
The indistinct and rugged nature of their pronunciation is shown
most clearly by the fact that at a very early period the Etruscans
made no distinction of -o from -u, -b from -p, -c from -g, -d
from -t.  At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the
more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial
syllable.  The aspirate consonants were treated in a similar
fashion; while the Italians rejected them with the exception of
the aspirated -b or the -f, and the Greeks, reversing the case,
rejected this sound and retained the others --theta, --phi, --chi,
the Etruscans allowed the softest and most pleasing of them, the
--phi, to drop entirely except in words borrowed from other languages,
but made use of the other three to an extraordinary extent, even
where they had no proper place; Thetis for example became -Thethis-,
Telephus -Thelaphe-, Odysseus -Utuze- or -Uthuze-.  Of the few
terminations and words, whose meaning has been ascertained, the
greater part are far remote from all Graeco-Italian analogies; such
as, all the numerals; the termination -al employed as a designation
of descent, frequently of descent from the mother, e. g.  -Cania-,
which on a bilingual inscription of Chiusi is translated by -Cainnia
natus-; and the termination -sa in the names of women, used to
indicate the clan into which they have married, e. g.  -Lecnesa-
denoting the spouse of a -Licinius-.  So -cela- or -clan- with the
inflection -clensi- means son; -se(--chi)- daughter; -ril- year;
the god Hermes becomes -Turms-, Aphrodite -Turan-, Hephaestos
-Sethlans-, Bakchos -Fufluns-.  Alongside of these strange forms and
sounds there certainly occur isolated analogies between the Etruscan
and the Italian languages.  Proper names are formed, substantially,
after the general Italian system.  The frequent gentile termination
-enas or -ena(4) recurs in the termination -enus which is likewise
of frequent occurrence in Italian, especially in Sabellian clan-names;
thus the Etruscan names -Maecenas- and -Spurinna- correspond
closely to the Roman -Maecius-and -Spurius-.  A number of names
of divinities, which occur as Etruscan on Etruscan monuments or
in authors, have in their roots, and to some extent even in their
terminations, a form so thoroughly Latin, that, if these names
were really originally Etruscan, the two languages must have been
closely related; such as -Usil- (sun and dawn, connected with
-ausum-, -aurum-, -aurora-, -sol-), -Minerva-(-menervare-) -Lasa-
(-lascivus-), -Neptunus-, -Voltumna-.  As these analogies, however,
may have had their origin only in the subsequent political and
religious relations between the Etruscans and Latins, and in the
accommodations and borrowings to which these relations gave rise,
they do not invalidate the conclusion to which we are led by the
other observed phenomena, that the Tuscan language differed at least
as widely from all the Graeco-Italian dialects as did the language
of the Celts or of the Slavonians.  So at least it sounded to the
Roman ear; "Tuscan and Gallic" were the languages of barbarians,
"Oscan and Volscian" were but rustic dialects.

But, while the Etruscans differed thus widely from the Graeco-Italian
family of languages, no one has yet succeeded in connecting them
with any other known race.  All sorts of dialects have been examined
with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple
interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in
vain.  The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally
suggest it for comparison; but even in the Basque language no
analogies of a decisive character have been brought forward.  As
little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have
reached our time, consisting of local and personal names, indicate
any connection with the Tuscans.  Even the extinct nation which has
constructed those enigmatical sepulchral towers, called -Nuraghe-,
by thousands in the islands of the Tuscan Sea, especially in
Sardinia, cannot well be connected with the Etruscans, for not a
single structure of the same character is to be met with in Etruscan
territory.  The utmost we can say is that several traces, that seem
tolerably trustworthy, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans
may be on the whole numbered with the Indo-Germans.  Thus -mi- in the
beginning of many of the older inscriptions is certainly --emi--,
--eimi--, and the genitive form of consonantal stems veneruf -rafuvuf-is
exactly reproduced in old Latin, corresponding to the old Sanscrit
termination -as.  In like manner the name of the Etruscan Zeus,
-Tina-or -Tinia-, is probably connected with the Sanscrit -dina-,
meaning day, as --Zan-- is connected with the synonymous -diwan-.
But, even granting this, the Etruscan people appears withal scarcely
less isolated "The Etruscans," Dionysius said long ago, "are like
no other nation in language and manners;" and we have nothing to
add to his statement.


Home of the Etruscans


It is equally difficult to determine from what quarter the Etruscans
migrated into Italy; nor is much lost through our inability to
answer the question, for this migration belonged at any rate to
the infancy of the people, and their historical development began
and ended in Italy.  No question, however, has been handled with
greater zeal than this, in accordance with the principle which induces
antiquaries especially to inquire into what is neither capable of
being known nor worth the knowing--to inquire "who was Hecuba's
mother," as the emperor Tiberius professed to do.  As the oldest
and most important Etruscan towns lay far inland--in fact we find
not a single Etruscan town of any note immediately on the coast
except Populonia, which we know for certain was not one of the old
twelve cities-- and the movement of the Etruscans in historical
times was from north to south, it seems probable that they migrated
into the peninsula by land.  Indeed the low stage of civilization,
in which we find them at first, would ill accord with the hypothesis
of immigration by sea.  Nations even in the earliest times crossed
a strait as they would a stream; but to land on the west coast of
Italy was a very different matter.  We must therefore seek for the
earlier home of the Etruscans to the west or north of Italy.  It is
not wholly improbable that the Etruscans may have come into Italy
over the Raetian Alps; for the oldest traceable settlers in the
Grisons and Tyrol, the Raeti, spoke Etruscan down to historical
times, and their name sounds similar to that of the Ras.  These
may no doubt have been a remnant of the Etruscan settlements on
the Po; but it is at least quite as likely that they may have been
a portion of the people which remained behind in its earlier abode.


Story of Their Lydian Origin


In glaring contradiction to this simple and natural view stands
the story that the Etruscans were Lydians who had emigrated from
Asia.  It is very ancient: it occurs even in Herodotus; and it
reappears in later writers with innumerable changes and additions,
although several intelligent inquirers, such as Dionysius, emphatically
declared their disbelief in it, and pointed to the fact that there
was not the slightest apparent similarity between the Lydians and
Etruscans in religion, laws, manners, or language.  It is possible
that an isolated band of pirates from Asia Minor may have reached
Etruria, and that their adventure may have given rise to such tales;
but more probably the whole story rests on a mere verbal mistake.
The Italian Etruscans or the -Turs-ennae- (for this appears to
be the original form and the basis of the Greek --Turs-einnoi--,
--Turreinoi--, of the Umbrian -Turs-ci-, and of the two Roman forms
-Tusci-, -Etrusci-) nearly coincide in name with the Lydian people
of the --Torreiboi-- or perhaps also --Turr-einoi--, so named from
the town --Turra--, This manifestly accidental resemblance in name
seems to be in reality the only foundation for that hypothesis--not
rendered more trustworthy by its great antiquity--and for all the
pile of crude historical speculations that has been reared upon
it.  By connecting the ancient maritime commerce of the Etruscans
with the piracy of the Lydians, and then by confounding (Thucydides
is the first who has demonstrably done so) the Torrhebian pirates,
whether rightly or wrongly, with the bucaneering Pelasgians who
roamed and plundered on every sea, there has been produced one of
the most mischievous complications of historical tradition.  The
term Tyrrhenians denotes sometimes the Lydian Torrhebi--as is the
case in the earliest sources, such as the Homeric hymns; sometimes
under the form Tyrrheno-Pelasgians or simply that of Tyrrhenians,
the Pelasgian nation; sometimes, in fine, the Italian Etruscans,
although the latter never came into lasting contact with the
Pelasgians or Torrhebians, or were at all connected with them by
common descent.


Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy


It is, on the other hand, a matter of historical interest to
determine what were the oldest traceable abodes of the Etruscans,
and what were their further movements when they issued thence.
Various circumstances attest that before the great Celtic invasion
they dwelt in the district to the north of the Po, being conterminous
on the east along the Adige with the Veneti of Illyrian (Albanian?)
descent, on the west with the Ligurians.  This is proved in particular
by the already-mentioned rugged Etruscan dialect, which was still
spoken in the time of Livy by the inhabitants of the Raetian Alps,
and by the fact that Mantua remained Tuscan down to a late period.
To the south of the Po and at the mouths of that river Etruscans
and Umbrians were mingled, the former as the dominant, the latter
as the older race, which had founded the old commercial towns of
Atria and Spina, while the Tuscans appear to have been the founders
of Felsina (Bologna) and Ravenna.  A long time elapsed ere the
Celts crossed the Po; hence the Etruscans and Umbrians left deeper
traces of their existence on the right bank of the river than they
had done on the left, which they had to abandon at an early period.
All the regions, however, to the north of the Apennines passed too
rapidly out of the hands of one nation into those of another to
permit the formation of any continuous national development there.


Etruria


Far more important in an historical point of view was the great
settlement of the Tuscans in the land which still bears their name.
Although Ligurians or Umbrians were probably at one time(5) settled
there, the traces of them have been almost wholly effaced by the
Etruscan occupation and civilization.  In this region, which extends
along the coast from Pisae to Tarquinii and is shut in on the east
by the Apennines, the Etruscan nationality found its permanent abode
and maintained itself with great tenacity down to the time of the
empire.  The northern boundary of the proper Tuscan territory was
formed by the Arnus; the region north from the Arnus as far as the
mouth of the Macra and the Apennines was a debateable border land
in the possession sometimes of Ligurians, sometimes of Etruscans,
and for this reason larger settlements were not successful there.
The southern boundary was probably formed at first by the Ciminian
Forest, a chain of hills south of Viterbo, and at a later period by
the Tiber.  We have already(6) noticed the fact that the territory
between the Ciminian range and the Tiber with the towns of Sutrium,
Nepete, Falerii, Veii, and Caere appears not to have been taken
possession of by the Etruscans till a period considerably later
than the more northern districts, possibly not earlier than in the
second century of Rome, and that the original Italian population must
have maintained its ground in this region, especially in Falerii,
although in a relation of dependence.


Relations of the Etruscans to Latium


From the time at which the river Tiber became the line of demarcation
between Etruria on the one side and Umbria and Latium on the other,
peaceful relations probably upon the whole prevailed in that quarter,
and no essential change seems to have taken place in the boundary
line, at least so far as concerned the Latin frontier.  Vividly
as the Romans were impressed by the feeling that the Etruscan was
a foreigner, while the Latin was their countryman, they yet seem
to have stood in much less fear of attack or of danger from the
right bank of the river than, for example, from their kinsmen in
Gabii and Alba; and this was natural, for they were protected in
that direction not merely by the broad stream which formed a natural
boundary, but also by the circumstance, so momentous in its bearing
on the mercantile and political development of Rome, that none of
the more powerful Etruscan towns lay immediately on the river, as
did Rome on the Latin bank.  The Veientes were the nearest to the
Tiber, and it was with them that Rome and Latium came most frequently
into serious conflict, especially for the possession of Fidenae,
which served the Veientes as a sort of -tete de pont- on the left
bank just as the Janiculum served the Romans on the right, and
which was sometimes in the hands of the Latins, sometimes in those
of the Etruscans.  The relations of Rome with the somewhat more
distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than
those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early
times.  There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times
of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere;
Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have
obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon
them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which
attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to
an especially close connection between the two ancient centres of
commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria.  Sure
traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land,
are altogether wanting.  It is true that Etruscans are named
in the first ranks of the great barbarian host, which Aristodemus
annihilated in 230 under the walls of Cumae;(7) but, even if
we regard this account as deserving credit in all its details, it
only shows that the Etruscans had taken part in a great plundering
expedition.  It is far more important to observe that south of the
Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its
origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication whatever
is discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the
Latin nation.  The possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of
the mouth of the Tiber remained, so far as we can see, undisputed
in the hands of the Romans.  As to the migrations of bodies of
Etruscans to Rome, we find an isolated statement drawn from Tuscan
annals, that a Tuscan band, led by Caelius Vivenna of Volsinii and
after his death by his faithful companion Mastarna, was conducted
by the latter to Rome.  This may be trustworthy, although the
derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is
evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this
Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is
certainly nothing but an improbable conjecture of the archaeologists
who busied themselves with legendary parallels.  The name of the
"Tuscan quarter" at the foot of the Palatine(8) points further to
Etruscan settlements in Rome.


The Tarquins


It can hardly, moreover, be doubted that the last regal family which
ruled over Rome, that of the Tarquins, was of Etruscan origin,
whether it belonged to Tarquinii, as the legend asserts, or
to Caere, where the family tomb of the Tarchnas has recently been
discovered.  The female name Tanaquil or Tanchvil interwoven with
the legend, while it is not Latin, is common in Etruria.  But
the traditional story--according to which Tarquin was the son of
a Greek who had migrated from Corinth to Tarquinii, and came to
settle in Rome as a --metoikos-- is neither history nor legend,
and the historical chain of events is manifestly in this instance
not confused merely, but completely torn asunder.  If anything more
can be deduced from this tradition beyond the bare and at bottom
indifferent fact that at last a family of Tuscan descent swayed the
regal sceptre in Rome, it can only be held as implying that this
dominion of a man of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either
as a dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community over
Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria.
There is, in fact, no sufficient ground either for the one hypothesis
or for the other.  The history of the Tarquins had its arena in
Latium, not in Etruria; and Etruria, so far as we can see, during
the whole regal period exercised no influence of any essential
moment on either the language or customs of Rome, and did not at
all interrupt the regular development of the Roman state or of the
Latin league.

The cause of this comparatively passive attitude of Etruria towards
the neighbouring land of Latium is probably to be sought partly
in the struggles of the Etruscans with the Celts on the Po, which
presumably the Celts did not cross until after the expulsion of the
kings from Rome, and partly in the tendency of the Etruscan people
towards seafaring and the acquisition of supremacy on the sea and
seaboard--a tendency decidedly exhibited in their settlements in
Campania, and of which we shall speak more fully in the next chapter.


The Etruscan Constitution


The Tuscan constitution, like the Greek and Latin, was based on the
gradual transition of the community to an urban life.  The early
direction of the national energies towards navigation, trade, and
manufactures appears to have called into existence urban commonwealths,
in the strict sense of the term, earlier in Etruria than elsewhere
in Italy.  Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is
mentioned in Greek records.  On the other hand we find that the
Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the disposition
for war than the Romans and Sabellians: the un-Italian custom of
employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among the Etruscans at
a very early period.  The oldest constitution of the communities
must in its general outlines have resembled that of Rome.  Kings or
Lucumones ruled, possessing similar insignia and probably therefore
a similar plenitude of power with the Roman kings.  A strict line
of demarcation separated the nobles from the common people.  The
resemblance in the clan-organization is attested by the analogy
of the system of names; only, among the Etruscans, descent on the
mother's side received much more consideration than in Roman law.
The constitution of their league appears to have been very lax.  It
did not embrace the whole nation; the northern and the Campanian
Etruscans were associated in confederacies of their own, just
in the same way as the communities of Etruria proper.  Each of
these leagues consisted of twelve communities, which recognized a
metropolis, especially for purposes of worship, and a federal head
or rather a high priest, but appear to have been substantially equal
in respect of rights; while some of them at least were so powerful
that neither could a hegemony establish itself, nor could the
central authority attain consolidation.  In Etruria proper Volsinii
was the metropolis; of the rest of its twelve towns we know by
trustworthy tradition only Perusia, Vetulonium, Volci, and Tarquinii.
It was, however, quite as unusual for the Etruscans really to act
in concert, as it was for the Latin confederacy to do otherwise.
Wars were ordinarily carried on by a single community, which
endeavoured to interest in its cause such of its neighbours as
it could; and when an exceptional case occurred in which war was
resolved on by the league, individual towns very frequently kept
aloof from it.  The Etruscan confederations appear to have been
from the first--still more than the other Italian leagues formed
on a similar basis of national affinity--deficient in a firm and
paramount central authority.




Notes for Book I Chapter IX



1.  -Ras-ennac-, with the gentile termination mentioned below.

2.  To this period belong e. g. inscriptions on the clay vases of




umaramlisia(--"id:theta")ipurenaie(--"id:theta")eeraisieepanamine
(--"id:theta")unastavhelefu- or -mi ramu(--"id:theta")af kaiufinaia-.

3.  We may form some idea of the sound which the language now had
from the commencement of the great inscription of Perusia; -eulat
tanna laresul ameva(--"id:chi")r lautn vel(--"id:theta")inase
stlaafunas slele(--"id:theta")caru-.

4.  Such as Maecenas, Porsena, Vivenna, Caecina, Spurinna.  The
vowel in the penult is originally long, but in consequence of the
throwing back of the accent upon the initial syllable is frequently
shortened and even rejected.  Thus we find Porse(n)na as well as
Porsena, and Ceicne as well as Caecina.

5.  I. VIII. Umbro-Sabellian Migration

6.  I. VIII. Their Political Development

7.  I. VIII. Their Political Development

8.  I. IV. Oldest Settlements in the Palatine and Suburan Regions




CHAPTER X

The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans and
Carthaginians



Relations of Italy with Other Lands


In the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered
in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east.  While
the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of
morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had
already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed
civilization.  It falls to the lot of most nations in the early
stages of their development to be taught and trained by some rival
sister-nation; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the
lot of the peoples of Italy.  The circumstances of its geographical
position, however, prevented this influence from being brought to
bear upon the peninsula by land.  No trace is to be found of any
resort in early times to the difficult route by land between Italy
and Greece.  There were in all probability from time immemorial
tracks for purposes of traffic, leading from Italy to the lands
beyond the Alps; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic
joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po--on which account
the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the home of amber--and
this route was joined by another leading across the peninsula
over the Apennines to Pisae; but from these regions no elements
of civilization could come to the Italians.  It was the seafaring
nations of the east that brought to Italy whatever foreign culture
reached it in early times.


Phoenicians in Italy


The oldest civilized nation on the shores of the Mediterranean, the
Egyptians, were not a seafaring people, and therefore exercised no
influence on Italy.  But the same may be with almost equal truth
affirmed of the Phoenicians.  It is true that, issuing from their
narrow home on the extreme eastern verge of the Mediterranean,
they were the first of all known races to venture forth in floating
houses on the bosom of the deep, at first for the purpose of
fishing and dredging, but soon also for the prosecution of trade.
They were the first to open up maritime commerce; and at an incredibly
early period they traversed the Mediterranean even to its furthest
extremity in the west.  Maritime stations of the Phoenicians appear
on almost all its coasts earlier than those of the Hellenes: in
Hellas itself, in Crete and Cyprus, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and
likewise on the western Italian main.  Thucydides tells us that all
around Sicily, before the Greeks came thither or at least before
they had established themselves there in any considerable numbers,
the Phoenicians had set up their factories on the headlands
and islets, not with a view to gain territory, but for the sake
of trading with the natives.  But it was otherwise in the case of
continental Italy.  No sure proof has hitherto been given of the
existence of any Phoenician settlement there excepting one, a Punic
factory at Caere, the memory of which has been preserved partly by
the appellation -Punicum- given to a little village on the Caerite
coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself,
-Agylla-, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of Pelasgic origin,
but is a Phoenician word signifying the "round town"--precisely
the appearance which Caere presents when seen from the sea.  That
this station and any similar establishments which may have elsewhere
existed on the coasts of Italy were neither of much importance nor
of long standing, is evident from their having disappeared almost
without leaving a trace.  We have not the smallest reason to think
them older than the Hellenic settlements of a similar kind on the
same coasts.  An evidence of no slight weight that Latium at least
first became acquainted with the men of Canaan through the medium
of the Hellenes is furnished by the Latin appellation "Poeni," which
is borrowed from the Greek.  All the oldest relations, indeed, of
the Italians to the civilization of the east point decidedly towards
Greece; and the rise of the Phoenician factory at Caere may be very
well explained, without resorting to the pre-Hellenic period, by
the subsequent well-known relations between the commercial state
of Caere and Carthage.  In fact, when we recall the circumstance
that the earliest navigation was and continued to be essentially
of a coasting character, it is plain that scarcely any country on
the Mediterranean lay so remote from the Phoenicians as the Italian
mainland.  They could only reach it either from the west coast
of Greece or from Sicily; and it may well be believed that the
seamanship of the Hellenes became developed early enough to anticipate
the Phoenicians in braving the dangers of the Adriatic and of the
Tyrrhene seas.  There is no ground therefore for the assumption that
any direct influence was originally exercised by the Phoenicians over
the Italians.  To the subsequent relations between the Phoenicians
holding the supremacy of the western Mediterranean and the Italians
inhabiting the shores of the Tyrrhene sea our narrative will return
in the sequel.


Greeks in Italy--Home of the Greek Immigrants


To all appearance, therefore, the Hellenic mariners were the first
among the inhabitants of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to
navigate the coasts of Italy.  Of the important questions however
as to the region from which, and as to the period at which, the Greek
seafarers came thither, only the former admits of being answered
with some degree of precision and fulness.  The Aeolian and Ionian
coast of Asia Minor was the region where Hellenic maritime traffic
first became developed on a large scale, and whence issued the
Greeks who explored the interior of the Black Sea on the one hand
and the coasts of Italy on the other.  The name of the Ionian Sea,
which was retained by the waters intervening between Epirus and
Sicily, and that of the Ionian gulf, the term by which the Greeks
in earlier times designated the Adriatic Sea, are memorials of
the fact that the southern and eastern coasts of Italy were once
discovered by seafarers from Ionia.  The oldest Greek settlement in
Italy, Kyme, was, as its name and legend tell, founded by the town
of the same name on the Anatolian coast.  According to trustworthy
Hellenic tradition, the Phocaeans of Asia Minor were the first of
the Hellenes to traverse the more remote western sea.  Other Greeks
soon followed in the paths which those of Asia Minor had opened up;
lonians from Naxos and from Chalcis in Euboea, Achaeans, Locrians,
Rhodians, Corinthians, Megarians, Messenians, Spartans.  After the
discovery of America the civilized nations of Europe vied with one
another in sending out expeditions and forming settlements there;
and the new settlers when located amidst barbarians recognized their
common character and common interests as civilized Europeans more
strongly than they had done in their former home.  So it was with
the new discovery of the Greeks.  The privilege of navigating the
western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive
property of a single Greek province or of a single Greek stock,
but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation; and, just as in
the formation of the new North American world, English and French,
Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Greek Sicily
and "Great Greece" became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of
Hellenic races often so amalgamated as to be no longer distinguishable.
Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated
position--such as that of the Locrians with its offsets Hipponium
and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocaeans which was not founded
till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea)--we may
distinguish in a general view three leading groups.  The original
Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns,
included in Italy Cumae with the other Greek settlements at Vesuvius
and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos,
Catana, Leontini, and Himera.  The Achaean group embraced Sybaris
and the greater part of the cities of Magna Graecia.  The Dorian
group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority
of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it
but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea.  On the whole the
preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more
ancient Hellenic influx, that of the lonians and the stocks settled
in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration.  Among the Dorians
only the communities with a mixed population, such as Corinth and
Megara, took a special part, whereas the purely Doric provinces had
but a subordinate share in the movement.  This result was naturally
to be expected, for the lonians were from ancient times a trading
and sea-faring people, while it was only at a comparatively late
period that the Dorian stocks descended from their inland mountains
to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce.
The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable,
especially by their monetary standards.  The Phocaean settlers coined
according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia.  The
Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in
other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European
Greece, and more especially the modification of it which is found
occurring in Euboea.  The Achaean communities coined by the Corinthian
standard; and lastly the Doric colonies followed that which Solon
introduced in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception
of Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces adopted
rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the
Dorians in Sicily.


Time of the Greek Immigration


The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will probably always
remain enveloped in darkness.  We may still, however, distinctly
recognize a certain order of sequence.  In the oldest Greek document,
which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the west, to
the lonians of Asia Minor--the Homeric poems--the horizon scarcely
extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.  Sailors
driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia
Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly
also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire: but in
the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy
information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land
which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west;
and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of
contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the
west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in
the air.  In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily
appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native
names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy
is still regarded as a group of islands.  On the other hand, in
all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole
coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the
Hellenes.  The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in
like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision.  Thucydides
evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the
west; and certainly he was not mistaken.  It is true that many a
landing-place lay nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none
were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island
of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated; and that
such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement,
is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected
for it on the mainland--the steep but well-protected cliff, which
still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian
mother-city.  Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of
the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as
in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west,
full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the
fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they
believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and
the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world.  On the supposition,
moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the
neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name
of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae,
the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries
afterwards to designate the Italians collectively.  There is a
further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed
between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration
into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this immigration Ionians
from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead.  Naxos in Sicily is said
to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict
colonization in Italy or Sicily; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations
followed, but not until a later period.

It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of
this series of events with even approximate accuracy.  The founding
of the Achaean city of Sybaris in 33, and that of the Dorian city
Tarentum in 46, are probably the most ancient dates in Italian
history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness,
of which may be looked upon as established.  But how far beyond
that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached
back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the
poems of Hesiod or even of Homer.  If Herodotus is correct in the
period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted
with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome.  The date thus
assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric
age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference; and any one who
carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as
the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with
the Greek people before the name "Hellenes" had emerged for the
race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes
from the stock of the -Grai- or -Graeci- that early fell into
abeyance in Hellas,(1) will be inclined to carry back the earliest
intercourse of the Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably
mere remote.


Character of the Greek Immigration


The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of
the history of Italy; the Hellenic colonists of the west always
retained the closest connection with their original home and
participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes.
But it is of importance even as bearing on Italy, that we should
indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek
settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features
which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an
influence on Italy.


The League of the Achaen Cities


Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly
its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from
without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the
Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus
or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton,
Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus.  These colonists, taken as a
whole, belonged to a Greek stock which steadfastly adhered to its
own peculiar dialect, having closest affinity with the Doric, and
for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic
mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which
had elsewhere come into general use; and which preserved its own
nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other
Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution.  The language
of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may
be applied also to these Italian Achaeans; "Not only did they live
in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws,
like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates,
councillors, and judges."

This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization.  The
cities had no harbours--Croton alone had a paltry roadstead--and
they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on
growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians
and Etruscans bought and sold for him.  These Achaean Greeks,
however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the
coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine" and "of
oxen" (--Oinotria--, --Italia--) or the "great Hellas;" the native
agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to
pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs.
Sybaris--in its time the largest city in Italy--exercised dominion
over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was
able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea.  The exceedingly
fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant
produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines--it was there perhaps
that grain was first cultivated for exportation.  The height of
prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained
is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of
these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful
workmanship--the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy
which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to
be coined in 174.  These coins show that the Achaeans of the west
did not simply participate in the noble development of plastic art
that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were
even superior in technical skill.  For, while the silver pieces
which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the
Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only on one side, and
in general without inscription, the Italian Achaeans with great
and independent skill struck from two similar dies partly cut in
relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with
inscriptions, and displaying the advanced organization of a civilized
state in the mode of impression, by which they were carefully
protected from the process of counterfeiting usual in that age--the
plating of inferior metal with thin silver-foil.

Nevertheless this rapid bloom bore no fruit.  Even Greeks speedily
lost all elasticity of body and of mind in a life of indolence, in
which their energies were never tried either by vigorous resistance
on the part of the natives or by hard labour of their own.  None
of the brilliant names in Greek art or literature shed glory on the
Italian Achaeans, while Sicily could claim ever so many of them,
and even in Italy the Chalcidian Rhegium could produce its Ibycus
and the Doric Tarentum its Archytas.  With this people, among whom
the spit was for ever turning on the hearth, nothing flourished from
the outset but boxing.  The rigid aristocracy which early gained
the helm in the several communities, and which found in case of need
a sure reserve of support in the federal power, prevented the rise
of tyrants; but the danger to be apprehended was that the government
of the best might be converted into a government of the few,
especially if the privileged families in the different communities
should combine to assist each other in carrying out their designs.
Such was the predominant aim in the combination of mutually
pledged "friends" which bore the name of Pythagoras.  It enjoined
the principle that the ruling class should be "honoured like gods,"
and that the subject class should be "held in subservience like
beasts," and by such theory and practice provoked a formidable
reaction, which terminated in the annihilation of the Pythagorean
"friends" and the renewal of the ancient federal constitution.  But
frantic party feuds, insurrections en masse of the slaves, social
abuses of all sorts, attempts to supply in practice an impracticable
state-philosophy, in short, all the evils of demoralized civilization
never ceased to rage in the Achaean communities, till under the
accumulated pressure their political power utterly broke down.

It is no matter of wonder therefore that the Achaeans settled in
Italy exercised less influence on its civilization than the other
Greek settlements.  An agricultural people, they had less occasion
than those engaged in commerce to extend their influence beyond
their political bounds.  Within their own dominions they enslaved
the native population and crushed the germs of their national
development as Italians, while they refused to open up to them
by means of complete Hellenization a new career.  In this way the
Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous
vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared
more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris
and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region;
and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times
out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more
recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real
prosperity.  This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time
to the succeeding period.


Iono-Dorian Towns


The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different character,
and exercised a very different effect upon Italy.  They by no means
despised agriculture and the acquisition of territory; it was not
the wont of the Hellenes, at least when they had reached their full
vigour, to rest content after the manner of the Phoenicians with a
fortified factory in the midst of a barbarian land.  But all their
cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade,
and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achaeans,
they were uniformly established beside the best harbours and
lading-places.  These cities were very various in their origin and
in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but
there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common
use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet,(2)
and in the very Dorism of their language, which made its way at an
early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example,(3)
originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect.  These settlements were
of very various degrees of importance in their bearing on the
development of Italy: it is sufficient at present to mention those
which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the
Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae.


Tarentum


Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined
to play the most brilliant part.  The excellent harbour, the only
good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural
emporium for the traffic of the south of Italy, and for some portion
even of the commerce of the Adriatic.  The rich fisheries of its
gulf, the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and
the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine -murex-,
which rivalled that of Tyre--both branches of industry introduced
there from Miletus in Asia Minor--employed thousands of hands, and
added to the carrying trade a traffic of export.  The coins struck
at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian
Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a
significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce
of the Tarentines.  At this epoch, when Tarentum was still contending
with Sybaris for the first place among the Greek cities of Lower
Italy, its extensive commercial connections must have been already
forming; but the Tarentines seem never to have steadily and
successfully directed their efforts to a substantial extension of
their territory after the manner of the Achaean cities.


Greek Cities Near Vesuvius


While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy thus rapidly
rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to the north, in the
neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity.
There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria
(Ischia) to the mainland, and had built a second home on a hill
close by the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia
(afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the "new city" Neapolis.  They
lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily,
in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100)
had established, under a constitution democratic but modified by
a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council
of members selected from the wealthiest men--a constitution which
proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from
the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob.  We know little as to
the external relations of these Campanian Greeks.  They remained,
whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of
even narrower limits than the Tarentines; and issuing from it not
for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of
peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives, they created the
means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time
took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization
in Italy.


Relations of the Adriatic Regions to the Greeks


While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the whole southern
coast of the mainland and its western coast as far as Vesuvius,
and on the other the larger eastern half of the island of Sicily,
were Greek territory, the west coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius
and the whole of the east coast were in a position essentially
different.  No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of
the Adriatic; and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively
small number and subordinate importance of the Greek colonies
planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the numerous adjacent
islands.  Two considerable mercantile towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium
(now Durazzo, 127), and Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were
founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during
the regal period of Rome; but no old Greek colony can be pointed
out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the
insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?).  No
adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization
developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent.  Nature
herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from
the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region
from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu)
founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its
emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated
at the mouth of the Po.  The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable
character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of
the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain
this fact.  But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous
consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which
came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern
provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those
that lay to the west.  The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth
and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of
Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus
(Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of
the Adriatic.  Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth
of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention
along the whole east coast--the rise of Ancona belongs to a far
later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium--it may well
be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently
discharged their cargoes at Tarentum.  The Tarentines had also much
intercourse with Apulia by land; all the Greek civilization to be
met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them.
That civilization, however, was during the present period only in
its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of
Apulia was developed.


Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks


It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west coast
of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very early times
by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic factories on its
promontories and islands.  Probably the earliest evidence of such
voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the coasts
of the Tyrrhene Sea.(4)  When men discovered the isles of Aeolus
in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape
the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens,
at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the
steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial-mound of Elpenor,
when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and
Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is
the "wild," and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in
the "inmost recess of the holy islands," or, according to a more
recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe,
and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso--we recognize in these
legends ancient sailors' tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who
thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea.
The same noble vividness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem
of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization
of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions
frequented by the Cumaean mariners.

Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the
Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to
have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by
Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria;
and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near
S.  Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is
indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names,
but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which
differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere
and the Etruscan cities generally.  Aethalia, the "fire-island,"
with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably
sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood
the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traffic
with the natives; the more especially as they could not have found
the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded
island without intercourse with the mainland.  The silver mines
of Populonia also on the headland opposite to Elba were perhaps
already known to the Greeks and wrought by them.

If, as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times
intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when
opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to
carry them off as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the
right of retaliation; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated
with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in
the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that
effect, but by the actual results.  In these regions the Italians
succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any
rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile
cities and mercantile ports, but also of their own sea.  The same
Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of
the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central
Italy--very much indeed against the will of their instructors--towards
navigation and the founding of towns.  It must have been in this
quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for
the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks.  Here too we first
encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern
Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their
Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance
from the sea, were--like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the
south--certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations.  It is not
in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical
course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against
foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was
of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development
of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and
in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly
Tuscan and adjoining provinces.


Hellenes and Latins


Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with
the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the
Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci.  This cannot mean
that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of
Central Italy, but not permitted in others.  Northward of Vesuvius
there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical
times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted,
before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of
the Italians or in other words of the Caerites.  But in southern
Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse
with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such
was not the case elsewhere.  The position of Caere was especially
remarkable.  "The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much repute
among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because,
powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery."  It is
not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of
Caere must have indulged like every other.  But Caere was a sort
of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks.  We have already
mentioned the Phoenician station--subsequently called Punicum--and
the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.(5)  It was these
ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond
doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed
but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood,
early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to
the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the
cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths
of the Tiber and Po.  The cities we have just named are those which
appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece.  The
first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was
the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum.  Spina and
Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic
Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the
shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle,
is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome.
These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried
on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became preeminently
wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic
merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.


Hellenes and Etruscans--Etruscan Maritime Power


Matters stood on a different footing with the "wild Tyrrhenians."
The same causes, which in the province of Latium, and in the districts
on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the
Po that were perhaps rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than
strictly Etruscan, had led to the emancipation of the natives
from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to
the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in consequence
possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people
to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which
we are not acquainted.  The Etruscans were not content with dislodging
the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader
was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers
roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the
Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks.  It was not without reason that
the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called
the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans.  The rapidity
with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their
proceedings in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly
shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts.
The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and
the Greeks at Vesuvius; but between them and by their side the
Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum.  The Volscians became
clients of the Etruscans; their forests contributed the keels for
the Etruscan galleys; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was
only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand
why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners
the name of the Laestrygones.  The high promontory of Sorrento with
the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute
of any harbour--a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the
watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays
of Naples and Salerno--was early occupied by the Etruscans.  They are
affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their
own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in
its inland districts in times quite historical.  These settlements
were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of
the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the
Cumaeans at Vesuvius.


Etruscan Commerce


The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves to robbery
and pillage.  The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek
towns is attested by the gold and silver coins which, at least from
the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular
by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard.  The
circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon
those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even
Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in
which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks.  For commerce
they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more
advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium.  Inhabiting
the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free
ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice
of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from
ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the
Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains
of Capua and Nola.  They were the holders of the most important
Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper
of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the
amber which was brought to them from the Baltic.(6)  Under the
protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude
navigation act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish.
It need not surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian merchants
competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to
learn that the combination of privateering and commerce on a great
scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the
vigour of Etruria early wasted away.


Rivalry between the Phoenicians and Hellenes


While in Italy the Etruscans and, although in a lesser degree, the
Latins thus stood opposed to the Hellenes, warding them off and
partly treating them as enemies, this antagonism to some extent
necessarily affected the rivalry which then above all dominated the
commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean--the rivalry between
the Phoenicians and Hellenes.  This is not the place to set forth
in detail how, during the regal period of Rome, these two great nations
contended for supremacy on all the shores of the Mediterranean, in
Greece even and Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus, on the African,
Spanish, and Celtic coasts.  This struggle did not take place directly
on Italian soil, but its effects were deeply and permanently felt
in Italy.  The fresh energies and more universal endowments of
the younger competitor had at first the advantage everywhere.  Not
only did the Hellenes rid themselves of the Phoenician factories
in their own European and Asiatic homes, but they dislodged the
Phoenicians also from Crete and Cyprus, gained a footing in Egypt
and Cyrene, and possessed themselves of Lower Italy and the larger
eastern half of the island of Sicily.  On all hands the small trading
stations of the Phoenicians gave way before the more energetic
colonization of the Greeks.  Selinus (126) and Agrigentum (174)
were founded in western Sicily; the more remote western sea was
traversed, Massilia was built on the Celtic coast (about 150), and
the shores of Spain were explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia
Minor.  But about the middle of the second century the progress of
Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested; and there is no doubt
that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of
Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya--a
rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression
threatened the whole Phoenician race.  If the nation which had
opened up maritime commerce on the Mediterranean had been already
dislodged by its younger rival from the sole command of the western
half, from the possession of both lines of communication between
the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and from the
monopoly of the carrying trade between east and west, the sovereignty
at least of the seas to the west of Sardinia and Sicily might
still be saved for the Orientals; and to its maintenance Carthage
applied all the tenacious and circumspect energy peculiar to the
Aramaean race.  Phoenician colonization and Phoenician resistance
assumed an entirely different character.  The earlier Phoenician
settlements, such as those in Sicily described by Thucydides, were
mercantile factories: Carthage subdued extensive territories with
numerous subjects and powerful fortresses.  Hitherto the Phoenician
settlements had stood isolated in opposition to the Greeks; now
the powerful Libyan city centralized within its sphere the whole
warlike resources of those akin to it in race with a vigour to
which the history of the Greeks can produce nothing parallel.


Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes


Perhaps the element in this reaction which exercised the most
momentous influence in the sequel was the close relation into which
the weaker Phoenicians entered with the natives of Sicily and Italy
in order to resist the Hellenes.  When the Cnidians and Rhodians
made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the
centre of the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled
by the natives--the Elymi of Segeste--in concert with the Phoenicians.
When the Phocaeans settled about 217 at Alalia (Aleria) in Corsica
opposite to Caere, there appeared for the purpose of expelling
them a combined fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians, numbering
a hundred and twenty sail; and although in the naval battle that
ensued--one of the earliest known in history-the fleet of the
Phocaeans, which was only half as strong, claimed the victory, the
Carthaginians and Etruscans gained the object which they had in
view in the attack; the Phocaeans abandoned Corsica, and preferred
to settle at Hyde (Velia) on the less exposed coast of Lucania.  A
treaty between Etruria and Carthage not only established regulations
regarding the import of goods and the giving due effect to rights,
but included also an alliance-in-arms (--summachia--), the serious
import of which is shown by that very battle of Alalia.  It is a
significant indication of the position of the Caerites, that they
stoned the Phocaean captives in the market at Caere and then sent
an embassy to the Delphic Apollo to atone for the crime.

Latium did not join in these hostilities against the Hellenes; on
the contrary, we find friendly relations subsisting in very ancient
times between the Romans and the Phocaeans in Velia as well as in
Massilia, and the Ardeates are even said to have founded in concert
with the Zacynthians a colony in Spain, the later Saguntum.  Much
less, however, did the Latins range themselves on the side of
the Hellenes: the neutrality of their position in this respect is
attested by the close relations maintained between Caere and Rome,
as well as by the traces of ancient intercourse between the Latins
and the Carthaginians.  It was through the medium of the Hellenes
that the Cannanite race became known to the Romans, for, as we have
already seen,(7) they always designated it by its Greek name; but
the fact that they did not borrow from the Greeks either the name
for the city of Carthage(8) or the national name of the -Afri-,(9)
and the circumstance that among the earlier Romans Tyrian wares were
designated by the adjective -Sarranus-,(10) which in like manner
precludes the idea of Greek intervention, demonstrate--what the
treaties of a later period concur in proving--the direct commercial
intercourse anciently subsisting between Latium and Carthage.

The combined power of the Italians and Phoenicians actually succeeded
in substantially retaining the western half of the Mediterranean
in their hands.  The northwestern portion of Sicily, with the
important ports of Soluntum and Panormus on the north coast, and
Motya at the point which looks towards Africa, remained in the
direct or indirect possession of the Carthaginians.  About the
age of Cyrus and Croesus, just when the wise Bias was endeavouring
to induce the Ionians to emigrate in a body from Asia Minor and
settle in Sardinia (about 200), the Carthaginian general Malchus
anticipated them, and subdued a considerable portion of that important
island by force of arms; half a century later, the whole coast of
Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian
community.  Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia
and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these
tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey.
In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians
ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia.  The
Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle.  Those Rhodians and
Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, established themselves
on the islands between Sicily and Italy and founded there the town
of Lipara (175).  Massilia flourished in spite of its isolation, and
soon monopolized the trade of the region from Nice to the Pyrenees.
At the Pyrenees themselves Rhoda (now Rosas) was established as an
offset from Lipara, and it is affirmed that Zacynthians settled in
Saguntum, and even that Greek dynasts ruled at Tingis (Tangiers)
in Mauretania.  But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after
the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any
important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western
sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well
as from the Atlantic Ocean.  Every year the Liparaeans had their
conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with
the Massiliots, the Cyrenaeans, and above all with the Sicilian
Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side
achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries
was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the -status quo-.

Thus Italy was--if but indirectly--indebted to the Phoenicians for
the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from
colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime
power there, especially in Etruria.  But there are not wanting
indications that the Phoenicians already found it worth while
to manifest that jealousy which is usually associated with naval
domination, if not in reference to their Latin allies, at any rate
in reference to their Etruscan confederates, whose naval power was
greater.  The statement as to the Carthaginians having prohibited
the sending forth of an Etruscan colony to the Canary islands, whether
true or false, reveals the existence of a rivalry of interests in
the matter.




Notes for Book I Chapter X



1.  Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the
interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather
to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may
be left an open question; it must at a remote period have belonged
to a prominent stock or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and
have passed over from these to the nation as a whole.  In the Eoai
of Hesiod it appears as the older collective name for the nation,
although it is manifest that it is intentionally thrust aside and
subordinated to that of Hellenes.  The latter does not occur in
Homer, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is found in Archilochus about
the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably
earlier (Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt. iii. 18, 556).  Already before this
period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the
Greeks that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas,
was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation,
even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation.
It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to
an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic
stocks belonged to one race than the latter themselves, and that
hence the collective designation should have become more definitely
fixed among the former than with the latter--not the less, that it
was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the
nearest to them.  It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with
this fact the statement that a century before the foundation of
Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
We shall speak of the alphabet below; its history yields entirely
similar results.  It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step
to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer
on the strength of such considerations; but is there no rashness
in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of
this kind?

2.  Thus the three old Oriental forms of the --"id:i" (--"id:S"),
--"id:l" (--"id:/\") and --"id:r" (--"id:P"), for which as apt to
be confounded with the forms of the --"id:s", --"id:g", and --"id:p"
the signs --"id:I") --"id:L" --"id:R") were early proposed to be
substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant
use among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy
and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at any
rate chiefly the more recent forms.

3.  E. g. the inscription on an earthen vase of Cumae runs thus:----Tataies
emi lequthos Fos d' an me  klephsei thuphlos estai--.

4.  Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its
earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more
recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly
before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his
materials), and the writer known as Scylax.  The first of these
sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the
Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old;
so that the origin of these legends may, on the whole, be confidently
placed in the regal period of Rome.

5.  I. X. Phoenicians in Italy, I. X. Relations of the Western
Italians to the Greeks

6.  I. X. Relations of Italy with Other Lands

7.  I. X. Phoenicians in Italy

8.  The Phoenician name was Karthada; the Greek, Karchedon; the
Roman, Cartago.

9.  The name -Afri-, already current in the days of Ennius and Cato
(comp. -Scipio Africanus-), is certainly not Greek, and is most
probably cognate with that of the Hebrews.

10.  The adjective -Sarranus- was from early times applied by the
Romans to the Tyrian purple and the Tyrian flute; and -Sarranus-was
in use also as a surname, at least from the time of the war with
Hannibal.  -Sarra-, which occurs in Ennius and Plautus as the name
of the city, was perhaps formed from -Sarranus-, not directly from
the native name -Sor-.  The Greek form, -Tyrus-, -Tyrius-, seems
not to occur in any Roman author anterior to Afranius (ap. Fest.
p. 355 M.).  Compare Movers, Phon. ii. x, 174.




CHAPTER XI

Law and Justice



Modern Character of Italian Culture


History, as such, cannot reproduce the life of a people in the
infinite variety of its details; it must be content with exhibiting
the development of that life as a whole.  The doings and dealings,
the thoughts and imaginings of the individual, however strongly
they may reflect the characteristics of the national mind, form
no part of history.  Nevertheless it seems necessary to make some
attempt to indicate--only in the most general outlines--the features
of individual life in the case of those earlier ages which are,
so far as history is concerned, all but lost in oblivion; for it
is in this field of research alone that we acquire some idea of
the breadth of the gulf which separates our modes of thinking and
feeling from those of the civilized nations of antiquity.  Tradition,
with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends,
resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to
have once been green.  Instead of threading that dreary maze and
attempting to classify those shreds of humanity, the Chones and
Oenotrians, the Siculi and the Pelasgi, it will be more to the
purpose to inquire how the real life of the people in ancient Italy
expressed itself in their law, and their ideal life in religion;
how they farmed and how they traded; and whence the several nations
derived the art of writing and other elements of culture.  Scanty
as our knowledge in this respect is in reference to the Roman people
and still more so in reference to the Sabellians and Etruscans,
even the slight and very defective information which is attainable
will enable the mind to associate with these names some more or
less clear glimpse of the once living reality.  The chief result of
such a view (as we may here mention by way of anticipation) may be
summed up in saying that fewer traces comparatively of the primitive
state of things have been preserved in the case of the Italians,
and of the Romans in particular, than in the case of any other
Indo-Germanic race.  The bow and arrow, the war-chariot, the incapacity
of women to hold property, the acquiring of wives by purchase,
the primitive form of burial, blood-revenge, the clan-constitution
conflicting with the authority of the community, a vivid natural
symbolism --all these, and numerous phenomena of a kindred character,
must be presumed to have lain at the foundation of civilization in
Italy as well as elsewhere; but at the epoch when that civilization
comes clearly into view they have already wholly disappeared, and
only the comparison of kindred races informs us that such things
once existed.  In this respect Italian history begins at a far
later stage of civilization than e.g. the Greek or the Germanic,
and from the first it exhibits a comparatively modern character.

The laws of most of the Italian stocks are lost in oblivion.  Some
information regarding the law of the Latin land alone has survived
in Roman tradition.


Jurisdiction


All jurisdiction was vested in the community or, in other words,
in the king, who administered justice or "command" (-ius-) on
the "days of utterance" (-dies fasti-) at the "judgment platform"
(-tribunal-) in the place of public assembly, sitting on the
"chariot-seat" (-sella curulis-);(1) by his side stood his "messengers"
(-lictores-), and before him the person accused or the "parties"
(-rei-).  No doubt in the case of slaves the decision lay primarily
with the master, and in the case of women with the father, husband,
or nearest male relative;(2) but slaves and women were not primarily
reckoned as members of the community.  Over sons and grandsons who
were -in potestate- the power of the -pater familias- subsisted
concurrently with the royal jurisdiction; that power, however,
was not a jurisdiction in the proper sense of the term, but simply
a consequence of the father's inherent right of property in his
children.  We find no traces of any jurisdiction appertaining to
the clans as such, or of any judicature at all that did not derive
its authority from the king.  As regards the right of self-redress
and in particular the avenging of blood, we still find perhaps in
legends an echo of the original principle that a murderer, or any
one who should illegally protect a murderer, might justifiably be
slain by the kinsmen of the person murdered; but these very legends
characterize this principle as objectionable,(3) and from their
statements blood-revenge would appear to have been very early
suppressed in Rome through the energetic assertion of the authority
of the community.  In like manner we perceive in the earliest Roman
law no trace of that influence which under the oldest Germanic
institutions the comrades of the accused and the people present
were entitled to exercise over the pronouncing of judgment; nor
do we find in the former any evidence of the usage so frequent in
the latter, by which the mere will and power to maintain a claim
with arms in hand were treated as judicially necessary or at any
rate admissible.


Crimes


Judicial procedure took the form of a public or a private process,
according as the king interposed of his own motion or only when
appealed to by the injured party.  The former course was taken
only in cases which involved a breach of the public peace.  First
of all, therefore, it was applicable in the case of public treason
or communion with the public enemy (-proditio-), and in that of
violent rebellion against the magistracy (-perduellio-).  But the
public peace was also broken by the foul murderer (-parricida-),
the sodomite, the violator of a maiden's or matron's chastity, the
incendiary, the false witness, by those, moreover, who with evil
spells conjured away the harvest, or who without due title cut
the corn by night in the field entrusted to the protection of the
gods and of the people; all of these were therefore dealt with as
though they had been guilty of high treason.  The king opened and
conducted the process, and pronounced sentence after conferring with
the senators whom he had called in to advise with him.  He was at
liberty, however, after he had initiated the process, to commit
the further handling and the adjudication of the matter to deputies
who were, as a rule, taken from the senate.  The later extraordinary
deputies, the two men for adjudicating on rebellion (-duoviri
perduellionis-) and the later standing deputies the "trackers of
murder" (-quaestores parricidii-) whose primary duty was to search
out and arrest murderers, and who therefore exercised in some
measure police functions, do not belong to the regal period, but may
probably have sprung out of, or been suggested by, certain of its
institutions.  Imprisonment while the case was undergoing investigation
was the rule; the accused might, however, be released on bail.
Torture to compel confession was only applied to slaves.  Every one
convicted of having broken the public peace expiated his offence with
his life.  The modes of inflicting capital punishment were various:
the false witness, for example, was hurled from the stronghold-rock;
the harvest-thief was hanged; the incendiary was burnt.  The king
could not grant pardon, for that power was vested in the community
alone; but the king might grant or refuse to the condemned permission
to appeal for mercy (-provocatio-).  In addition to this, the law
recognized an intervention of the gods in favour of the condemned
criminal.  He who had made a genuflection before the priest of
Jupiter might not be scourged on the same day; any one under fetters
who set foot in his house had to be released from his bonds; and
the life of a criminal was spared, if on his way to execution he
accidentally met one of the sacred virgins of Vesta.


Punishment of Offenses against Order


The king inflicted at his discretion fines payable to the state for
trespasses against order and for police offences; they consisted
in a definite number (hence the name -multa-) of cattle or sheep.
It was in his power also to pronounce sentence of scourging.


Law of Private Offenses


In all other cases, where the individual alone was injured and
not the public peace, the state only interposed upon the appeal of
the party injured, who caused his opponent, or in case of need by
laying violent hands on him compelled him, to appear personally along
with himself before the king.  When both parties had appeared and
the plaintiff had orally stated his demand, while the defendant had
in similar fashion refused to comply with it, the king might either
investigate the cause himself or have it disposed of by a deputy
acting in his name.  The regular form of satisfaction for such an
injury was a compromise arranged between the injurer and the injured;
the state only interfered supplementarily, when the aggressor did
not satisfy the party aggrieved by an adequate expiation (-poena-),
when any one had his property detained or his just demand was not
fulfilled.


Theft


Under what circumstances during this epoch theft was regarded as
at all expiable, and what in such an event the person injured was
entitled to demand from the thief, cannot be ascertained.  But
the injured party with reason demanded heavier compensation from
a thief caught in the very act than from one detected afterwards,
since the feeling of exasperation which had to be appeased was more
vehement in the case of the former than in that of the latter.  If
the theft appeared incapable of expiation, or if the thief was not
in a position to pay the value demanded by the injured party and
approved by the judge, he was by the judge assigned as a bondsman
to the person from whom he had stolen.


Injuries


In cases of damage (-iniuria-) to person or to property, where the
injury was not of a very serious description, the aggrieved party
was probably obliged unconditionally to accept compensation; if,
on the other hand, any member was lost in consequence of it, the
maimed person could demand eye for eye and tooth for tooth.


Property


Since the arable land among the Romans was long cultivated upon
the system of joint possession and was not distributed until a
comparatively late age, the idea of property was primarily associated
not with immoveable estate, but with "estate in slaves and cattle"
(-familia pecuniaque-).  It was not the right of the stronger that
was regarded as the foundation of a title to it; on the contrary,
all property was considered as conferred by the community upon the
individual burgess for his exclusive possession and use; and therefore
it was only the burgess, and such as the community accounted in
this respect as equal to burgesses, that were capable of holding
property.  All property passed freely from hand to hand.  The Roman
law made no substantial distinction between moveable and immoveable
estate  (from the time that the latter was regarded as private
property at all), and recognized no absolute vested interest of
children or other relatives in the paternal or family property.
Nevertheless it was not in the power of the father arbitrarily
to deprive his children of their right of inheritance, because he
could neither dissolve the paternal power nor execute a testament
except with consent of the whole community, which might be, and
certainly under such circumstances often was, refused.  In his
lifetime no doubt the father might make dispositions disadvantageous
to his children; for the law was sparing of personal restrictions
on the proprietor and allowed, upon the whole, every grown-up
man freely to dispose of his property.  The regulation, however,
under which he who alienated his hereditary property and deprived
his children of it was placed by order of the magistrate under
guardianship like a lunatic, was probably as ancient as the period
when the arable land was first divided and thereby private property
generally acquired greater importance for the commonwealth.  In
this way the two antagonistic principles--the unlimited right of
the owner to dispose of his own, and the preservation of the family
property unbroken--were as far as possible harmonized in the Roman
law.  Permanent restrictions on property were in no case allowed,
with the exception of servitudes such as those indispensable in
husbandry.  Heritable leases and ground-rents charged upon property
could not legally exist.  The law as little recognized mortgaging;
but the same purpose was served by the immediate delivery of the
property in pledge to the creditor as if he were its purchaser,
who thereupon gave his word of honour (-fiducia-) that he would not
alienate the object pledged until the payment fell due, and would
restore it to his debtor when the sum advanced had been repaid.


Contracts


Contracts concluded between the state and a burgess, particularly
the obligation given by those who became sureties for a payment
to the state (-praevides-, -praedes-), were valid without further
formality.  On the other hand, contracts between private persons
under ordinary circumstances gave no claim for legal aid on the
part of the state.  The only protection of the creditor was the
debtor's word of honour which was held in high esteem after the
wont of merchants, and possibly also, in those frequent cases where
an oath had been added, the fear of the gods who avenged perjury.
The only contracts legally actionable were those of betrothal (the
effect of which was that the father, in the event of his failing
to give the promised bride, had to furnish satisfaction and
compensation), of purchase (-mancipatio-), and of loan (-nexum-).
A purchase was held to be legally concluded when the seller delivered
the article purchased into the hand of the buyer (-mancipare-) and
the buyer at the same time paid to the seller the stipulated price
in presence of witnesses.  This was done, after copper superseded
sheep and cattle as the regular standard of value, by weighing out
the stipulated quantity of copper in a balance adjusted by a neutral
person.(4)  These conditions having been complied with, the seller
had to answer for his being the owner, and in addition seller and
purchaser had to fulfil every stipulation specially agreed on; the
party failing to do so made reparation to the other, just as if he
had deprived him of the article in question.  But a purchase only
founded an action in the event of its being a transaction for
ready money: a purchase on credit neither gave nor took away the
right of property, and constituted no ground of action.  A loan
was negotiated in a similar way; the creditor weighed over to the
debtor in presence of witnesses the stipulated quantity of copper
under the obligation (-nexum-) of repayment.  In addition to
the capital the debtor had to pay interest, which under ordinary
circumstances probably amounted to ten per cent per annum.(5) The
repayment of the loan took place, when the time came, with similar
forms.


Private Process


If a debtor to the state did not fulfil his obligations, he was
without further ceremony sold with all that he had; the simple
demand on the part of the state was sufficient to establish the
debt.  If on the other hand a private person informed the king of
any violation of his property (-vindiciae-) or if repayment of the
loan received did not duly take place, the procedure depended on
whether the facts relating to the cause needed to be established,
which was ordinarily the case with actions as to property, or were
already clearly apparent, which in the case of actions as to loans
could easily be accomplished according to the current rules of law
by means of the witnesses.  The establishment of the facts assumed
the form of a wager, in which each party made a deposit (-sacramentum-)
against the contingency of his being worsted; in important causes
when the value involved was greater than ten oxen, a deposit of
five oxen, in causes of less amount, a deposit of five sheep.  The
judge then decided who had gained the wager, whereupon the deposit
of the losing party fell to the priests for behoof of the public
sacrifices.  The party who lost the wager and allowed thirty days
to elapse without giving due satisfaction to his opponent, and the
party whose obligation to pay was established from the first--consequently,
as a rule, the debtor who had got a loan and had not witnesses to
attest its repayment--became liable to proceedings in execution
"by laying on of hands" (-manus iniectio-); the plaintiff seized
him wherever he found him, and brought him to the bar of the judge
simply to satisfy the acknowledged debt.  The party seized was not
allowed to defend himself; a third person might indeed intercede for
him and represent this act of violence as unwarranted (-vindex-),
in which case the proceedings were stayed; but such an intercession
rendered the intercessor personally responsible, for which reason
the proletarian could not be intercessor for the tribute-paying
burgess.  If neither satisfaction nor intercession took place, the
king adjudged the party seized to his creditor, so that the latter
could lead him away and keep him like a slave.  After the expiry
of sixty days during which the debtor had been three times exposed
in the market-place and proclamation had been made to ascertain
whether any one would have compassion upon him, if these steps were
without effect, his creditors had the right to put him to death
and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his
effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home in a slave's
stead; for such an one could not by the Roman law, so long as he
remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become completely
a slave.(6)  Thus the Roman community protected every man's estate
and effects with unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and
the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent
debtor.


Guardianship


Protection was in like manner provided for the estate of persons
not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting
their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all
for that of women; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to
undertake the guardianship.


Law of Inheritance


After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs: in the
division all who were equal in proximity of relationship--women
included--shared alike, and the widow along with her children was
admitted to her proportional share.  A dispensation from the legal
order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the
people; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be
obtained on account of the ritual obligations attaching to succession.
Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early
period very frequent.  In the event of a dispensation not being
procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by
means of the completely free control which every one had over his
property during his lifetime.  His whole property was transferred
to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes
of the deceased.


Manumission


Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times.  The owner
might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but
this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave
coming under mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave
to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest
or of a burgess.  Accordingly manumission must have been at first
simply -de facto-, not -de jure-; and the master cannot have been
debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the
freedman as a slave.  But there was a departure from this principle
in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards
the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession
of freedom.  There was no special legal form, however, for thus
binding the master--the best proof that there was at first no
such thing as a manumission,--but those methods were employed for
this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action,
or census.  If the master had either declared his slave free when
executing his last will in the assembly of the people, or had allowed
his slave to claim freedom in his own presence before a judge or
to get his name inscribed in the valuation-roll, the freedman was
regarded not indeed as a burgess, but as personally free in relation
to his former master and his heirs, and was accordingly looked upon
at first as a client, and in later times as a plebeian.(7)

The emancipation of a son encountered greater difficulties than
that of a slave; for while the relation of master to slave was
accidental and therefore capable of being dissolved at will, the
father could never cease to be father.  Accordingly in later times
the son was obliged, in order to get free from the father, first
to enter into slavery and then to be set free out of this latter
state; but in the period now before us no emancipation of sons can
have as yet existed.


Clients and Foreigners


Such were the laws under which burgesses and clients lived in Rome.
Between these two classes, so far as we can see, there subsisted from
the beginning complete equality of private rights.  The foreigner
on the other hand, if he had not submitted to a Roman patron and thus
lived as a client, was beyond the pale of the law both in person
and in property.  Whatever the Roman burgess took from him was
as rightfully acquired as was the shellfish, belonging to nobody,
which was picked up by the sea-shore; but in the case of ground
lying beyond the Roman bounds, while the Roman burgess might take
practical possession, he could not be regarded as in a legal sense
its proprietor; for the individual burgess was not entitled to
advance the bounds of the community.  The case was different in
war: whatever the soldier who was fighting in the ranks of the levy
gained, whether moveable or immoveable property, fell not to him,
but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the
state whether it would advance or contract its bounds.

Exceptions from these general rules were created by special
state-treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of
foreign communities within the Roman state.  In particular, the
perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts
between Romans and Latins to be valid in law, and at the same time
instituted in their case an accelerated civil process before sworn
"recoverers" (-reciperatores-).  As, contrary to Roman usage,
which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge,
these always sat in plural number and that number uneven, they are
probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial
dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire.
They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered
into, and were obliged to have the process terminated at latest
in ten days.  The forms, under which the dealings between Romans
and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which
regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians; for
the -mancipatio- and the -nexum- were originally not at all formal
acts, but the significant expression of legal ideas which held a
sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language.

Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a
different fashion and by means of other forms.  In very early times
treaties as to commerce and legal redress must have been entered
into with the Caerites and other friendly peoples, and must have
formed the basis of the international private law (-ius gentium-),
which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of
the land.  An indication of the formation of such a law is found
in the remarkable -mutuum-, "the exchange" (from -mutare- like
-dividuus-)--a form of loan, which was not based like the -nexum-
upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before
witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand
to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with
foreigners as the -nexum- in business dealings at home.  It is
accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian
Greek as --moiton--; and with this is to be connected the reappearance
of the Latin -carcer- in the Sicilian --karkaron--.  Since it is
philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their
occurrence in the local dialect of Sicily becomes an important
testimony to the frequency of the dealings of Latin traders in
the island, which led to their borrowing money there and becoming
liable to that imprisonment for debt, which was everywhere in the
earlier systems of law the consequence of the non-repayment of a
loan.  Conversely, the name of the Syracusan prison, "stone-quarries"
or --latomiai--, was transferred at an early period to the enlarged
Roman state-prison, the -lautumiae-.


Character of the Roman Law


We have derived our outline of these institutions mainly from
the earliest record of the Roman common law prepared about half a
century after the abolition of the monarchy; and their existence in
the regal period, while doubtful perhaps as to particular points of
detail, cannot be doubted in the main.  Surveying them as a whole,
we recognize the law of a far-advanced agricultural and mercantile
city, marked alike by its liberality and its consistency.  In
its case the conventional language of symbols, such as e. g. the
Germanic laws exhibit, has already quite disappeared.  There is no
doubt that such a symbolic language must have existed at one time
among the Italians.  Remarkable instances of it are to be found in
the form of searching a house, wherein the searcher must, according
to the Roman as well as the Germanic custom, appear without upper
garment merely in his shirt; and especially in the primitive
Latin formula for declaring war, in which we meet with two symbols
occurring at least also among the Celts and the Germans--the "pure
herb" (-herba pura-, Franconian -chrene chruda-) as a symbol of
the native soil, and the singed bloody staff as a sign of commencing
war.  But with a few exceptions, in which reasons of religion
protected the ancient usages--to which class the -confarreatio-
as well as the declaration of war by the college of Fetiales
belonged--the Roman law, as we know it, uniformly and on principle
rejects the symbol, and requires in all cases neither more nor
less than the full and pure expression of will.  The delivery of an
article, the summons to bear witness, the conclusion of marriage,
were complete as soon as the parties had in an intelligible manner
declared their purpose; it was usual, indeed, to deliver the article
into the hand of the new owner, to pull the person summoned as
a witness by the ear, to veil the bride's head and to lead her in
solemn procession to her husband's house; but all these primitive
practices were already, under the oldest national law of the
Romans, customs legally worthless.  In a way entirely analogous to
the setting aside of allegory and along with it of personification
in religion, every sort of symbolism was on principle expelled from
their law.  In like manner that earliest state of things presented
to us by the Hellenic as well as the Germanic institutions, wherein
the power of the community still contends with the authority of
the smaller associations of clans or cantons that are merged in
it, is in Roman law wholly superseded; there is no alliance for the
vindication of rights within the state, to supplement the state's
imperfect aid, by mutual offence and defence; nor is there any
serious trace of vengeance for bloodshed, or of the family property
restricting the individual's power of disposal.  Such institutions
must probably at one time have existed among the Italians; traces
of them may perhaps be found in particular institutions of ritual,
e. g. in the expiatory goat, which the involuntary homicide was
obliged to give to the nearest of kin to the slain; but even at the
earliest period of Rome which we can conceive this stage had long
been transcended.  The clan and the family doubtless were not
annihilated in the Roman community; but the theoretical as well
as the practical omnipotence of the state in its own sphere was no
more limited by them than by the freedom which the state granted
and guaranteed to the burgess.  The ultimate foundation of law was
in all cases the state; freedom was simply another expression for
the right of citizenship in its widest sense; all property was
based on express or tacit transference by the community to the
individual; a contract was valid only so far as the community by
its representatives attested it, a testament only so far as the
community confirmed it.  The provinces of public and private law were
definitely and clearly discriminated: the former having reference
to crimes against the state, which immediately called for the
judgment of the state and always involved capital punishment; the
latter having reference to offences against a fellow-burgess or a
guest, which were mainly disposed of in the way of compromise by
expiation or satisfaction made to the party injured, and were never
punished with the forfeit of life, but, at most, with the loss of
freedom.  The greatest liberality in the permission of commerce and
the most rigorous procedure in execution went hand in hand; just
as in commercial states at the present day the universal right to
draw bills of exchange appears in conjunction with a strict procedure
in regard to them.  The burgess and the client stood in their
dealings on a footing of entire equality; state-treaties conceded
a comprehensive equality of rights also to the guest; women were
placed completely on a level in point of legal capacity with men,
although restricted in action; the boy had scarcely grown up when
he received at once the most comprehensive powers in the disposal
of his estate, and every one who could dispose at all was as
sovereign in his own sphere as was the state in public affairs.  A
feature eminently characteristic was the system of credit.  There
did not exist any credit on landed security, but instead of a debt
on mortgage the step which constitutes at present the final stage
in mortgage-procedure --the delivery of the property from the debtor
to the creditor--took place at once.  On the other hand personal
credit was guaranteed in the most summary, not to say extravagant
fashion; for the lawgiver entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent
debtor like a thief, and granted to him in entire legislative earnest
what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy,
guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to the cutting off
too much more carefully than did the Jew.  The law could not have
more clearly expressed its design, which was to establish at once
an independent agriculture free of debt and a mercantile credit,
and to suppress with stringent energy all merely nominal ownership
and all breaches of fidelity.  If we further take into consideration
the right of settlement recognized at an early date as belonging
to all the Latins,(8) and the validity which was likewise early
pronounced to belong to civil marriage,(9) we shall perceive that
this state, which made the highest demands on its burgesses and
carried the idea of subordinating the individual to the interest of
the whole further than any state before or since has done, only did
and only could do so by itself removing the barriers to intercourse
and unshackling liberty quite as much as it subjected it to
restriction.  In permission or in prohibition the law was always
absolute.  As the foreigner who had none to intercede for him was
like the hunted deer, so the guest was on a footing of equality
with the burgess.  A contract did not ordinarily furnish a ground
of action, but where the right of the creditor was acknowledged,
it was so all-powerful that there was no deliverance for the poor
debtor, and no humane or equitable consideration was shown towards
him.  It seemed as if the law found a pleasure in presenting on all
sides its sharpest spikes, in drawing the most extreme consequences,
in forcibly obtruding on the bluntest understanding the tyrannic
nature of the idea of right.  The poetical form and the genial
symbolism, which so pleasingly prevail in the Germanic legal
ordinances, were foreign to the Roman; in his law all was clear and
precise; no symbol was employed, no institution was superfluous.
It was not cruel; everything necessary was performed without much
ceremony, even the punishment of death; that a free man could not
be tortured was a primitive maxim of Roman law, to obtain which
other peoples have had to struggle for thousands of years.  Yet this
law was frightful in its inexorable severity, which we cannot suppose
to have been very greatly mitigated by humanity in practice, for
it was really the law of the people; more terrible than Venetian
-piombi- and chambers of torture was that series of living entombments
which the poor man saw yawning before him in the debtors' towers
of the rich.  But the greatness of Rome was involved in, and was
based upon, the fact that the Roman people ordained for itself and
endured a system of law, in which the eternal principles of freedom
and of subordination, of property and of legal redress, reigned
and still at the present day reign unadulterated and unmodified.




Notes for Book I Chapter XI



1.  This "chariot-seat"--philologically no other explanation can
well be given (comp. Servius ad Aen. i. 16)--is most simply explained
by supposing that the king alone was entitled to ride in a chariot
within the city (v. The King)--whence originated the privilege
subsequently accorded to the chief magistrate on solemn occasions--and
that originally, so long as there was no elevated tribunal, he
gave judgment, at the comitium or wherever else he wished, from
the chariot-seat.

2.  I. V. The Housefather and His Household

3.  The story of the death of king Tatius, as given by Plutarch
(Rom.  23, 24), viz. that kinsmen of Tatius had killed envoys from
Laurentum; that Tatius had refused the complaint of the kinsmen
of the slain for redress; that they then put Tatius to death; that
Romulus acquitted the murderers of Tatius, on the ground that murder
had been expiated by murder; but that, in consequence of the penal
judgments of the gods that simultaneously fell upon Rome and
Laurentum, the perpetrators of both murders were in the sequel
subjected to righteous punishment--this story looks quite like a
historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge, just as the
introduction of the -provocatio- lies at the foundation of the myth
of the Horatii. The versions of the same story that occur elsewhere
certainly present considerable variations, but they seem to be
confused or dressed up.

4.  The -mancipatio- in its developed form must have been more recent
than the Servian reform, as the selection of mancipable objects,
which had for its aim the fixing of agricultural property, shows,
and as even tradition must have assumed, for it makes Servius the
inventor of the balance. But in its origin the -mancipatio- must
be far more ancient; for it primarily applies only to objects which
are acquired by grasping with the hand, and must therefore in its
earliest form have belonged to the epoch when property consisted
essentially in slaves and cattle (-familia pecuniaque-). The enumeration
of those objects which had to be acquired by -mancipatio-, falls
accordingly to be ranked as a Servian innovation; the -mancipatio-
itself, and consequently the use also of the balance and of copper,
are older.  Beyond doubt -mancipatio- was originally the universal
form of purchase, and occurred in the case of all articles even
after the Servian reform; it was only a misunderstanding of later
ages which put upon the rule, that certain articles had to be
transferred by -mancipatio-, the construction that these articles
only and no others could be so transferred.

5.  Viz. for the year of ten months one twelfth part of the capital
(-uncia-), which amounts to 8 1/3 per cent for the year of ten,
and 10 per cent for the fear of twelve, months.

6.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

7.  I. VI. Dependents and Guests.

8.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

9.  I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community




CHAPTER XII

Religion



Roman Religion


The Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated,(1) was a
higher counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in
which the little and the great were alike repeated with painstaking
exactness.  The state and the clan, the individual phenomenon of
nature as well as the individual mental operation, every man, every
place and object, every act even falling within the sphere of Roman
law, reappeared in the Roman world of gods; and, as earthly things
come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent
a corresponding fluctuation.  The tutelary spirit, which presided
over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself: the
tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man;
and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in
so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore
spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh.
As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman community, so every foreign
community was presided over by its own gods; but sharp as was the
distinction between the burgess and non-burgess, between the Roman
and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could
be admitted by resolution of the community to the freedom of Rome,
and when the citizens of a conquered city were transported to Rome,
the gods of that city were also invited to take up their new abode
there.


Oldest Table of Roman Festivals


We obtain information regarding the original cycle of the gods, as
it stood in Rome previous to any contact with the Greeks, from the
list of the public and duly named festival-days (-feriae publicae-)
of the Roman community, which is preserved in its calendar and is
beyond all question the oldest document which has reached us from
Roman antiquity.  The first place in it is occupied by the gods
Jupiter and Mars along with the duplicate of the latter, Quirinus.
To Jupiter all the days of full moon (-idus-) are sacred, besides
all the wine-festivals and various other days to be mentioned
afterwards; the 21st May (-agonalia-) is dedicated to his counterpart,
the "bad Jovis" (-Ve-diovis-).  To Mars belongs the new-year of the
1st March, and generally the great warrior-festival in this month
which derived its very name from the god; this festival, introduced
by the horse-racing (-equirria-) on the 27th February, had during
March its principal solemnities on the days of the shield-forging
(-equirria- or -Mamuralia-, March 14), of the armed dance at the
Comitium (-quinquatrus-, March 19), and of the consecration of
trumpets (-tubilustrium-, March 23).  As, when a war was to be waged,
it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign
in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of
the consecration of arms (-armilustrium-, October 19).  Lastly,
to the second Mars, Quirinus, the 17th February was appropriated
(-Quirinalia-).  Among the other festivals those which related to
the culture of corn and wine hold the first place, while the pastoral
feasts play a subordinate part.  To this class belongs especially
the great series of spring-festivals in April, in the course of
which sacrifices were offered on the 15th to Tellus, the nourishing
earth (-fordicidia-, sacrifice of the pregnant cow), on the 19th
to Ceres, the goddess of germination and growth (-Cerialia-) on the
21st to Pales, the fecundating goddess of the flocks (-Parilia-),
on the 23rd to Jupiter, as the protector of the vines and of the
vats of the previous year's vintage which were first opened on this
day (-Vinalia-), and on the 25th to the bad enemy of the crops, rust
(-Robigus-: -Robigalia-).  So after the completion of the work of
the fields and the fortunate ingathering of their produce double
festivals were celebrated in honour of the god and goddess of
inbringing and harvest, Census (from -condere-) and Ops; the first,
immediately after the completion of cutting (August 21, -Consualia-;
August 25, -Opiconsiva-); and the second, in the middle of winter,
when the blessings of the granary are especially manifest (December
15, -Consualia-; December 19, -Opalia-); between these two latter
days the thoughtfulness of the old arrangers of the festivals inserted
that of seed-sowing (Saturnalia from -Saeturnus- or -Saturnus-,
December 17).  In like manner the festival of must or of healing
(-meditrinalia-, October 11), so called because a healing virtue
was attributed to the fresh must, was dedicated to Jovis as the
wine-god after the completion of the vintage; the original reference
of the third wine-feast (-Vinalia-, August 19) is not clear.  To
these festivals were added at the close of the year the wolf-festival
(-Lupercalia-, February 17) of the shepherds in honour of the
good god, Faunus, and the boundary-stone festival (-Terminalia-,
February 23) of the husbandmen, as also the summer grove-festival
of two days (-Lucaria-, July 19, 21) which may have had reference
to the forest-gods (-Silvani-), the fountain-festival (-Fontinalia-,
October 13), and the festival of the shortest day, which brings in
the new sun (-An-geronalia-, -Divalia-, December 21).

Of not less importance--as was to be expected in the case of the
port of Latium--were the mariner-festivals of the divinities of the
sea (-Neptunalia-, July 23), of the harbour (-Portunalia-, August
17), and of the Tiber stream (-Volturnalia-, August 27).

Handicraft and art, on the other hand, are represented in this cycle
of the gods only by the god of fire and of smith's work, Vulcanus,
to whom besides the day named after him (-Volcanalia-, August 23)
the second festival of the consecration of trumpets was dedicated
(-tubilustrium-, May 23), and eventually also by the festival of
Carmentis (-Carmentalia- January 11, 15), who probably was adored
originally as the goddess of spells and of song and only inferentially
as protectress of births.

Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival
of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber,
Vesta and the Penates (-Vestalia-, June 9); the festival of the
goddess of birth(2) (-Matralia-, June 11); the festival of the
blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (-Liberalia-,
March 17), the festival of departed spirits (-Feralia-, February
21), and the three days' ghost-celebration (-Lemuria- May 9,
11, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the
two--otherwise to us somewhat obscure--festivals of the king's
flight (-Regifugium-, February 24) and of the people's flight
(-Poplifugia-, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted
to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (-Agonia- or
-Septimontium-, December 11).  A special day (-agonia-, January
9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning.  The real
nature of some other days--that of Furrina (July 25), and that
of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a
feast of the Lares (December 23)--is no longer known.

This table is  complete  for the immoveable  public festivals;
and--although by the side of these standing festal days there
certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional
festivals--this document, in what it says as well as in what it
omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise
almost wholly lost to us.  The union of the Old Roman community and
the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of
festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars;
but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple
was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent; nor was
the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine; nor was any notion of
worship borrowed from the Greeks.


Mars and Jupiter


The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally
in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the
peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars,
the killing god,(3) preeminently regarded as the divine champion
of the burgesses, hurling the spear, protecting the flock,
and overthrowing the foe.  Each community of course possessed its
own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all;
and accordingly every "-ver sacrum-" setting out to found a new
community marched under the protection of its own Mars.  To Mars
was dedicated the first month not only in the Roman calendar of
the months, which in no other instance takes notice of the gods,
but also probably in all the other Latin and Sabellian calendars:
among the Roman proper names, which in like manner contain no allusion
to any gods, Marcus, Mamercus, and Mamurius appear in prevailing
use from very early times; with Mars and his sacred woodpecker was
connected the oldest Italian prophecy; the wolf, the animal sacred
to Mars, was the badge of the Roman burgesses, and such sacred
national legends as the Roman imagination was able to produce
referred exclusively to the god Mars and to his duplicate Quirinus.
In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis--a purer and
more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman
community--occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest
of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war;
but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and
it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals
was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda
by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman
community still really centred at this time in the martial god of
death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer"
afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who
was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.


Nature of the Roman Gods


It is no part of our present task to consider the Roman deities in
detail; but it is important, even in an historical point of view,
to call attention to the peculiar character at once of shallowness
and of fervour that marked the Roman faith.  Abstraction
and personification lay at the root of the Roman as well as of
the Hellenic mythology: the Hellenic as well as the Roman god was
originally suggested by some natural phenomenon or some mental
conception, and to the Roman just as to the Greek every divinity
appeared a person.  This is evident from their apprehending the
individual gods as male or female; from their style of appeal to
an unknown deity,--"Be thou god or goddess, man or woman;" and from
the deeply cherished belief that the name of the proper tutelary
spirit of the community ought to remain for ever unpronounced, lest
an enemy should come to learn it and calling the god by his name
should entice him beyond the bounds.  A remnant of this strongly
sensuous mode of apprehension clung to Mars in particular, the
oldest and most national form of divinity in Italy.  But while
abstraction, which lies at the foundation of every religion, elsewhere
endeavoured to rise to wider and more enlarged conceptions and to
penetrate ever more deeply into the essence of things, the forms
of the Roman faith remained at, or sank to, a singularly low level
of conception and of insight.  While in the case of the Greek
every influential motive speedily expanded into a group of forms
and gathered around it a circle of legends and ideas, in the case
of the Roman the fundamental thought remained stationary in its
original naked rigidity.  The religion of Rome had nothing of its
own presenting even a remote resemblance to the religion of Apollo
investing earthly morality with a halo of glory, to the divine
intoxication of Dionysus, or to the Chthonian and mystical worships
with their profound and hidden meanings.  It had indeed its "bad
god" (-Ve-diovis-), its apparitions and ghosts (-lemures-), and
afterwards its deities of foul air, of fever, of diseases, perhaps even
of theft (-laverna-); but it was unable to excite that mysterious
awe after which the human heart has always a longing, or thoroughly
to embody the incomprehensible and even the malignant elements
in nature and in man, which must not be wanting in religion if it
would reflect man as a whole.  In the religion of Rome there was
hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of
the city, the Penates; the real character, moreover, even of these
gods was manifest to every one.

The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct
conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them
in its terminology, and to classify them systematically--in the
first instance, according to that division of persons and things
which also formed the basis of private law--that it might thus be
able in due fashion to invoke the gods individually or by classes,
and to point out (-indigitare-) to the multitude the modes of
appropriate invocation.  Of such notions, the products of outward
abstraction--of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable,
sometimes ridiculous--Roman theology was in substance made up.
Conceptions such as sowing (-saeturnus-) and field-labour (-ops-)
ground (-tellus-) and boundary-stone (-terminus-), were among
the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities.  Perhaps the most
peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only
one for whose worship there was devised an effigy peculiarly Italian,
was the double-headed lanus; and yet it was simply suggestive of the
idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion,
that at the commencement of every act the "spirit of opening" should
first be invoked, while it above all betokened the deep conviction
that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as
it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should
stand singly and apart.(4)  Of all the worships of Rome that which
perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits
that presided in and over the household and the storechamber: these
were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship
the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods
of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom
their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before
whom it was, even in the time of Cato the Elder, the first duty
of the father of the household on returning home to perform his
devotions.  In the ranking of the gods, however, these spirits
of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the
highest place; it was--and it could not be otherwise with a religion
which renounced all attempts to idealize--not the broadest and
most general, but the simplest and most individual abstraction, in
which the pious heart found most nourishment.

This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was
accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly
enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already
explained.  Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry
and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce--this
was what the Roman desired from his gods; and it very well accords
with this view, that the god of good faith (-deus fidius-), the
goddess of chance and good luck (-fors fortuna-), and the god of
traffic (-mercurius-), all originating out of their daily dealings,
although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear
very early as adored far and near by the Romans.  Strict frugality
and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too
deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart.


Spirits


Respecting the world of spirits little can be said.  The departed
souls of mortal men, the "good" (-manes-) continued to exist as
shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (-dii inferi-), and
received meat and drink from the survivors.  But they dwelt in the
depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower
world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above.
The hero-worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans,
and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the
foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation
of king Romulus into the god Quirinus.  Numa, the oldest and most
venerable name in Roman tradition, never received the honours of
a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens.


Priests


The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore reference to
Mars; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated
for life, "the kindler of Mars" (-flamen Martialis-) as he was
designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve "leapers"
(-salii-), a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance
in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song.  We have already
explained(5) how the amalgamation of the Hill-community with that
of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication of the Roman Mars,
and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars--the
-flamen Quirinalis- --and a second guild of dancers--the -salii
collini-.

To these were added other public worships (some of which probably
had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either
single priests were appointed--as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus,
of the god of the harbour and the river--or the celebration of
which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the
people.  Such a college was probably that of the twelve "field-brethren"
(-fratres arvales-) who invoked the "creative goddess" (-dea dia-) in
May to bless the growth of the seed; although it is very doubtful
whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration
which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the
empire.  These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which
had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive -cultus- of the
Roman Sabines,(6) and by the thirty "curial kindlers" (-flamines
curiales-), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies.  The
"wolf festival" (-lupercalia-) already mentioned was celebrated for
the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the "favourable
god" (-faunus-) by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were
associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in
the month of February--a genuine shepherds' carnival, in which the
"Wolves" (-luperci-) jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin,
and whipped with thongs those whom they met.  In like manner the
community may be conceived as represented and participating in the
case of other gentile worships.

To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were
gradually added.  The most important of these worships had reference
to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the
construction of the great wall and stronghold.  In it the highest
and best lovis of the Capitol--that is, the genius of the Roman
people--was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and
his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed
in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad
of high-priests.  Contemporaneously began the -cultus- of the new
single city-hearth--Vesta--and the kindred -cultus- of the Penates
of the community.(7)  Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of
the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service,
and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always
blazing as an example(8) and an omen to the burgesses.  This
worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in
Rome, and it accordingly was the latest of all the heathen worships
there to give way before the ban of Christianity.  The Aventine,
moreover, was assigned to Diana as the representative of the Latin
confederacy,(9) but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood
was appointed for her; and the community gradually became accustomed
to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions
by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods
specially destined for their service; in particular instances--such
as those of the goddess of flowers (-Flora-) and of fruits (-Pomona-)--it
appointed also special -flamines-, so that the number of these was
at length fifteen.  But among them they carefully distinguished
those three "great kindlers" (-flamines maiores-), who down to the
latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses,
just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal -Salii-
always asserted precedence over all the other colleges of priests.
Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the
community were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges
or regular ministers; and the expense of sacrifices, which was
presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation
of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines.(10)

It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin,
and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially
similar in character.  At any rate it can be shown that the Flamines,
Salii, Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome,
but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges
appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently
of the Roman model.

Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods,
so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual
sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also
consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities.


Colleges of Sacred Lore


There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome.  Those,
however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not
to the priest.  Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself
directly to the divinity--the community of course by the king as its
mouthpiece, just as the -curia- by the -curio- and the -equites-by
their colonels; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal
or to obscure this original and simple relation.  But it was no
easy matter to hold converse with a god.  The god had his own way
of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted
with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how
to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even
in case of need to overreach or to constrain him.  It was natural,
therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult
such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose
the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious
lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far
more important influence on political development than the individual
priests and priesthoods.  These colleges have been often, but
erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods.  The priesthoods
were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled
colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of
traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances,
the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge
and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should
provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge.  These
close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from
the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of
skilled arts and sciences.


Augurs--Pontifices


Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in
general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the
augurs and that of the Pontifices.(11)

The six "bird-carriers" (-augures-) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was
prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific
system.  The six "bridge-builders" (-Pontifices-) derived their
name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important,
of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the
Tiber.  They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery
of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the
duty of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the
people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and
of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place
on the right day.  As they had thus an especial supervision of all
religious observances, it was to them in case of need--on occasion
of marriage, testament, and -adrogatio- --that the preliminary
question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in
any respect offend against divine law; and it was they who fixed
and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which
were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired
(although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition
of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of
whatever was connected with it--and what was there that was not so
connected?  They themselves described the sum of their knowledge
as "the science of things divine and human."  In fact the rudiments
of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical
recording proceeded from this college.  For all writing of history
was associated with the calendar and the book of annals; and, as
from the organization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could
originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the
knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally
preserved in the college of the Pontifices, which alone was competent
to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious
law.


Fetiales


By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corporations of men
versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college
of the twenty state-heralds (-fetiales-, of uncertain derivation),
destined as a living repository to preserve traditionally the
remembrance of the treaties concluded with neighbouring communities,
to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of
treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or
declare war.  They had precisely the same position with reference
to international, as the Pontifices had with reference to religious,
law; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out
the law, although not to administer it.

But in however high repute these colleges were, and important and
comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never
forgotten--least of all in the case of those which held the highest
position--that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled
advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to
explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer.  Thus the highest
of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but
might not even give advice to him unasked.  It was the province of
the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation
of birds; the "bird-seer" simply stood beside him and interpreted
to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven.
In like manner the Fetialis and the Pontifex could not interfere in
matters of international or common law except when those concerned
therewith desired it.  The Romans, notwithstanding all their zeal
for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle
that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state
and--excluded from all command-- ought like any other burgess to
render obedience to the humblest magistrate.


Character of the -Cultus-


The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man's enjoyment of
earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate degree on his fear
of the wild forces of nature; it consisted pre-eminently therefore
in expressions of joy, in lays and songs, in games and dances, and
above all in banquets.  In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural
tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter
of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a
pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it
was the usual roast for a feast.  But all extravagance of expense
as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid
character of the Romans.  Frugality in relation to the gods was
one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship;
and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity
by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained.  In
consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which
grow out of unrestrained indulgence.  At the very core of the Latin
religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to
bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the
world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the
gods, and the latter as its expiation.  The execution of the criminal
condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to
the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief
who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to
Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and
the good spirits on the field of battle.  The profound and fearful
idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the
community were angry and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely
guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself
up (-devovere se-); noxious chasms in the ground were closed,
and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave
burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or
upon the foe.  The "sacred spring" was based on a similar view;
all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified
period were presented to the gods.  If acts of this nature are to
be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the
essence of the Latin faith; but we are bound to add that, far back
as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life
was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted
before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose
to die.  Human sacrifices of a different description run counter
to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they
occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later
degeneracy and barbarism.  They never gained admission among the
Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair
induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary
deliverance through means so revolting.  Of belief in ghosts, fear
of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, comparatively slight
traces are to be found among the Romans.  Oracles and prophecy never
acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece,
and never were able to exercise a serious control over private or
public life.  But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into
an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled
into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies.  The god of the
Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument
for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims;
this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his
tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly
apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy.
The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor;
each of them had a duly acquired right to certain performances and
payments; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number
of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance
of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident,
it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of
a man's religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled
in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements--the
-Pontifices- --could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence.
The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with
the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly
obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had
done so on his part.  Man even dealt in speculation with his god;
a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god
and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain
service to be rendered a certain equivalent return; and the Roman
legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was
not the least important of the reasons on account of which all
priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns
of man in Latium.  Nay, as the Roman merchant was entitled, without
injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely
in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the teaching
of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received
instead of the object itself.  They presented to the lord of the sky
heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at
these rather than at the heads of men.  In payment of the offering
annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes
were annually thrown into the stream.(12)  The ideas of divine mercy
and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with
a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable
a master by means of a sham satisfaction.  The Roman fear of the
gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the
multitude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence
of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the
foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively;
on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely
different in any material respect from the trembling with which the
Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful
creditor.  It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to
stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views.  When the
Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human
flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became
the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that
universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics
of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all
religions that aspire to rule the world.  Through such means the
simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a
cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle
of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion
was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical
views--the whole ideal development of the nation--and to expand
in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until
imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had
nursed them.  But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of
deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity
for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion
always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art As the
god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualizattion
of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterpart naturally
formed his place of abode (-templum-) and his image; walls and
effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to
embarrass the spiritual conception.  Accordingly the original Roman
worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them;
and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium,
probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and
had a little chapel (-aedicula-) built for him, such a figurative
representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was
generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation.  The Roman
religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the
exception, perhaps, of the double-headed Ianus; and Varro even
in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and
effigies.  The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion
was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always
marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.

The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain
of its practical use.  The practical gain which accrued to the Roman
community from their religion was a code of moral law gradually
developed by the priests, and the -Pontifices- in particular,
which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations
at a time when the state was still far from providing any direct
police-guardianship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought
to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach
of moral obligations.  To the regulations of the former class
belonged the religious inculcation of a due observance of holidays
and of a cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the
rules of good husbandry--which we shall have occasion to notice
more fully in the sequel--as well as the worship of the heath or
of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary
police,(13) and above all the practice of burning the bodies of
the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period,
far earlier than among the Greeks--a practice implying a rational
conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive
times and is even foreign to ourselves at the present day.  It must
be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the
Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements.  But
the civilizing effect of this law was still more important.  If
a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a
child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in-law;
if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest
or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or
the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common
good faith; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth
on the head of the offender.  Not that the person thus accursed
(-sacer-) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its
nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence--an
aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels
between the orders.  It was not the province of the individual
burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into
effect such a divine curse.  Primarily the person thus accursed
became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice;
and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must
have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked.  But the
banning was not confined to this; the king was in reality entitled
and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on
which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious
conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were,
as a victim offered up to the injured deity (-supplicium-), and thus
to purify the community from the crime of the individual.  If the
crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there
was substituted a ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial
victim or of similar gifts.  Thus the whole criminal law rested as
to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation.

But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance
of civil order and morality by such means as these.  In this field
Hellas had an unspeakable advantage over Latium; it owed to its
religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also
its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all;
the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the
Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all
that was great in Hellenic life and all in it that was the common
heritage of the nation.  And yet even here Latium had, as compared
with Hellas, its own advantages.  The Latin religion, reduced
as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely
intelligible to every one and accessible in common to all; and
therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens,
while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest
thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing
and curse of an aristocracy of intellect.  The Latin religion like
every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the
infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to
the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent
spirit-world can appear to be shallow.  This fervid faith disappeared
with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning
disappears  before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came
subsequently to wither; but the Latins  preserved their simplicity
of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the
Greeks.  As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim
it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the
destroyers of faith; and, much as this process at once of development
and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of
nature certain results have been reserved to the epoch of early
simplicity--results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours
to attain.  The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes,
which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect
as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible
for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed
thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self-devotion, the
power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such
union.  It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of
history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the
expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the
Greeks; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose,
so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest
organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth
that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with
their respective defects.  The deepest and ultimate reason of the
diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that
Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth
come into contact with the East.  No people on earth was great
enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic
or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history
has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of
Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil.  But if for
this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not
less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it
is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from
both.


Foreign Worships


Such was the nature and such the influence of the Roman religion
in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly national development.  Its
national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the
earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from
abroad; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on
individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state.  An exchange
of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must
have been a matter of course; the transplantation to Rome of gods
and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable.
Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we
have already spoken.(14)  Whether any conceptions of the gods were
borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful: for the Lases, the older
designation of the genii (from -lascivus-), and Minerva the goddess
of memory (-mens-, -menervare-), which it is customary to describe
as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological
grounds, indigenous to Latium.  It is at any rate certain, and in
keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman intercourse that
the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention
in Rome than any other of foreign origin.  The Greek oracles
furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction.  The language
of the Roman gods was on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at
the most to the making their will known by the method of casting
lots, which appears in its origin Italian;(15) while from very ancient
times--although not apparently until the impulse was received from
the East--the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual
utterances of prophecy.  The Romans made efforts, even at an early
period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of
the soothsaying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly
a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from
Campania.  For the reading and interpretation of the fortune-telling
book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and
Pontifices, was instituted in early times, consisting of two men
of lore (-duoviri sacris faciundis-), who were furnished at the
expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek
language.  To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in
cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid
some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or
with what rites it was to be performed.  But Romans in search of
advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself.
Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already
mentioned,(16) it is attested partly by the reception of the word
-thesaurus- so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all
the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by
the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, -Aperta-, the "opener,"
an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of
which is betrayed by its very barbarism.  The Greek Herakles was
naturalized in Italy as Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early
period and under a peculiar conception of his character, apparently
in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any
extraordinary increase of wealth; for which reason the general was
wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and
the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to
Hercules at the chief altar (-ara maxima-) in the cattle-market.
Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally,
which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and
confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin
god of good faith (-deus fidius-).  The worship of Hercules was
from an early date among the most widely diffused; he was, to use
the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy,
and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the
cities and along the country roads.  The gods also of the mariner,
Castor and Polydeukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traffic
Hermes--the Roman Mercurius--and the god of healing, Asklapios or
Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public
worship only began at a later period.  The name of the festival
of the "good goddess" (-bona dea-) -damium-, corresponding to the
Greek --damion-- or --deimion--, may likewise reach back as far as
this epoch.  It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that
the old -Liber pater- of the Romans was afterwards conceived as
"father deliverer" and identified with the wine-god of the Greeks,
the "releaser" (-Lyaeos-), and that the Roman god of the lower
regions was called the "dispenser of riches" (-Pluto- - -Dis pater-),
while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of
the initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman
Proserpina, that is, "germinatrix."  Even the goddess of the
Romano-Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been
copied from the federal goddess of the lonians of Asia Minor, the
Ephesian Artemis; at least her carved image in the Roman temple
was formed after the Ephesian type.(17) It was in this way alone,
through the myths of Apollo, Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis,
which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic
religion exercised at this period a remote and indirect influence
on Italy.  We clearly perceive from these facts that the introduction
of the Greek religion was especially due to commercial intercourse,
and that it was traders and mariners who primarily brought the
Greek gods to Italy.

These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but
of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism
of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may
perhaps be a specimen,(18) had virtually disappeared.  In all its
leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the
people among whom we find it.


Religion of the Sabellians


The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the little we know
of it, rested upon quite the same fundamental views as the Latin
with local variations of colour and form.  That it was different
from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding
of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine
rites;(19) but that very fact affords an instructive illustration
of the nature of the difference.  Observation of the flight of
birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods;
but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs.
Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity
of comparing them.  Both stocks in common regarded the gods as
abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature; they
differed in expression and ritual.  It was natural that these
diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those
days; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic
distinction, if any really existed.


Religion of the Etruscans


But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have
reached us are marked by a different spirit.  Their prevailing
characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing
the changes on numbers, soothsaying, and that solemn enthroning of
pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees.
We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness
and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable--indeed
it cannot well be doubted--that several of its features were only
imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that
the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the
Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to
us by tradition.  But enough still remains to show that the mysticism
and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential
character of the Etruscan people.

With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic
contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and
the Italian; but it is clear that the most prominent among the
Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed
their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice
of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and
at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners.  Instead of a tranquil world of
departed "good spirits" ruling peacefully in the realms beneath,
such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented
a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured
by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the
conductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man
with wings and a large hammer--a figure which afterwards served in
the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the
man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena.  So fixed
was the association of torture with this condition of the shades,
that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain
mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of
the gods above.  It is remarkable that, in order to people their
lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their
gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon,
which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.

But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation
of signs and portents.  The Romans heard the voice of the gods
in nature; but their bird-seer understood only the signs in their
simplicity, and knew only in general whether the occurrence boded
good or ill.  Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were
regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in
hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed
the comitia; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for
example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death
as speedily as possible.  But beyond the Tiber matters were carried
much further.  The profound Etruscan read off to the believer his
future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails
of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language
of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more
confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by
which it was possible to avert the mischief.  Thus arose the lore
of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation
of prodigies--all of them, and the science of lightning especially,
devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the
mind in pursuit of absurdities.  A dwarf called Tages with the
figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up
by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii--we might almost fancy that
practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present
in this figure a caricature of themselves--betrayed the secret of
this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died.  His disciples
and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the
lightning; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by
its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether
the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event;
and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed,
or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed:
how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel
the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts
of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no
small desire of pocketing fees.  How deeply repugnant this jugglery
was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when
people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome,
no attempt was made to naturalize it; during our present period
the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with
the Greek oracles.

The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the Roman, in
so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly
wanting among the Romans--a speculation veiled under religious
forms.  Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods
(-Dii involuti-), consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that
world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was
it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time,
whose sections were the -saecula-.  Respecting the intellectual
value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and
philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however
to have been from the very first characterized by a dull fatalism
and an insipid play upon number.




Notes for Book I Chapter XII



1.  I. II.  Religion

2.  This was, to all appearance, the original nature of the
"morning-mother" or -Mater matuta-; in connection with which we may
recall the circumstance that, as the names Lucius and especially
-Manius- show, the morning hour was reckoned as lucky for birth.
-Mater matuta-probably became a goddess of sea and harbour only
at a later epoch under the influence of the myth of Leucothea; the
fact that the goddess was chiefly worshipped by women tells against
the view that she was originally a harbour-goddess.

3.  From -Maurs-, which is the oldest form handed down by tradition,
there have been developed by different treatment of the -u -Mars-,
-Mavors-, -Mors-; the transition to -o (similar to -Paula-, -Pola-,
and the like) appears also in the double form Mar-Mor (comp.
-Ma-murius-) alongside of -Mar-Mor- and -Ma-Mers-.

4.  The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (-ianus
matutinus-) were sacred to Ianus, and that he was always invoked
before any other god and was even represented in the series of
coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that
he was the abstraction of opening and beginning.  The double-head
looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways.
To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable,
because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh,
not the first; that month seems rather to have derived its name
from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the
middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh.
It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year
should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after
Ianuarius came to be placed at its head.

5.  I. IV.  Tities and Luceres

6.  I. VI.  Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities

7.  I. VII.  Servian Wall

8.  I. III.  Latium

9.  I. VII.  Relation of Rome to Latium

10.  I. V.  Burdens of the Burgesses, I. XI.  Crimes

11.  The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the
communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and Pontifices
occur everywhere (e. g. Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous
inscriptions), as does likewise the -pater patratus- of the Fetiales
in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but the other colleges do not.  The
former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of
ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and Luperci, as very ancient
heirlooms of the Latin stock; whereas the Duoviri -sacris faciundis-,
and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes
and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to,
Rome.  But in the case of the second college--the pontifices--the
influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name
into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier--perhaps
more than one--designation; or--a hypothesis which philologically
has much in its favour-- -pons- originally signified not "bridge,"
but "way" generally, and -pontifex- therefore meant "constructor
of ways."

The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in
particular vary.  The view that it was necessary for the number to
be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96); and
Livy (x. 6) does not say so, but only states that the number of
Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had
an odd number as its basis.  According to Livy (l. c.) the number
was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same is virtually
affirmed by Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14) when he represents Romulus
as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls.  On the number
of the pontifices comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 20.

12.  It is only an unreflecting misconception  that can discover
in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.

13.  I. XII.  Nature of the Roman Gods

14.  I. XII.  Priests

15.  -Sors- from -serere-, to place in row.  The -sortes- were
probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when
thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts
one in mind of the Runic characters.

16.  I. X.  Hellenes and Latins

17.  I. VII.  Servian Wall

18.  I. II.  Indo-Germanic Culture

19.  I. IV.  Tities and Luceres




CHAPTER XIII

Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce



Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the
constitution and the external history of states, that the former
must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter.
We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which
we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and
particularly of Roman economics.


Agriculture


It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral
to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians
into the peninsula.  Agriculture continued to be the main support
of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans
no less than of the Latins.  There were no purely pastoral tribes
in Italy during historical times, although of course the various
races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less
extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation
of the soil.  The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of
new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of
the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that
every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture.  In the case of
Rome in particular--and it is only in its case that we can speak of
agrarian relations with any sort of certainty--the Servian reform
shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally
preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made
permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the
pith and marrow of the community.  When in the course of time a
large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the
hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses
were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed
constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the
perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently,
by treating the members of the community without reference to their
political position once for all according to their freeholding,
and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders--a
step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed
by the concession of public rights.  The whole policy of Roman war
and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of
the freehold system; as the freeholder alone was of value in the
state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold
members.  The vanquished community was either compelled to
merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to
this extremity, it was required, not to pay a war-contribution or
a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, usually a third part, of
its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms.
Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans
did; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground
he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by
the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance.  That which is
gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it
is not so with the conquests made by the plough; while the Romans
lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making peace ceded Roman
soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with
which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads.  The strength
of man and of the state lies in their dominion over the soil; the
greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate
mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of
the body which thus acquired so firm a hold.


System of Joint Cultivation


We have already indicated(2) that in the earliest times the arable
land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each
clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce
among the several households belonging to it.  There exists indeed
an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the
clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence
and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case
of co-proprietors.(3)  Even the traditions of Roman law furnish
the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the
usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land
came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special
property.(4) Better evidence that such was the case is afforded
by the earliest designation of wealth as "cattle-stock" or
"slave-and-cattle-stock" (-pecunia-, -familia pecuniaque-), and of
the separate possessions of the children of the household and of
slaves as "small cattle" (-peculium-) also by the earliest form
of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the hand
(-mancipatio-), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable
articles;(5) and above all by the earliest measure of "land of one's
own" (-heredium-, from -herus-lord), consisting of two -jugera-
(about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to
garden-ground, and not to the hide.(6)  When and how the distribution
of the arable land took place, can no longer be ascertained.  This
much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was
based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute
for it, whereas the Servian constitution presupposes the distribution
of the land.  It is evident from the same constitution that the
great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms,
which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of
the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of
the plough.  The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not
been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already
been shown,(7) be estimated at less than twenty -jugera-(12 1/2
acres nearly).


Culture of Grain


Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals.
The usual grain was spelt (-far-);(8) but different kinds of pulse,
roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated.


Culture of the Vine


That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the first time
into Italy by Greek settlers,(9) is shown by the list of the festivals
of the Roman community which reaches back to a time preceding the
Greeks, and which presents three wine-festivals to be celebrated in
honour of "father Jovis," not in honour of the wine-god of more
recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the "father deliverer."
The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as
levying a wine-tax from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various
versions of the widely-spread Italian story which affirms that the
Celts were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their coming
to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the
grape and of wine, are indications of the pride of the Latins in
their glorious vine, the envy of all their neighbours.  A careful
system of vine-husbandry was early and generally inculcated by the
Latin priests.  In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme
priest of the community, the -flamen- of Jupiter, had granted
permission for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a
Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new wine, until the priest
had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks.  The early
prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not
only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial
ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated
as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the
gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes; just as, to introduce
the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the
offering of grain undried.


Culture of the Olive


The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and certainly
was first brought to Italy by the Greeks.(10)  The olive is said to
have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean
towards the close of the second century of the city; and this view
accords with the fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy
in the Roman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the
vine.  The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans
is shown by the vine and the olive-tree which were planted in the
middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake.


The Fig


The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was
probably a native of Italy.  The legend of the origin of Rome wove
its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which
stood near to and in the Roman Forum.(11)


Management of the Farm


It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed
generally the labours of husbandry: it is not probable that slaves
or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of
the ordinary farm.  The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow;
horses, asses, and mules served as beasts of burden.  The rearing
of cattle for the sake of meat or of milk did not exist at all as
a distinct branch of husbandry, or was prosecuted only to a very
limited extent, at least on the land which remained the property of
the clan; but, in addition to the smaller cattle which were driven
out together to the common pasture, swine and poultry, particularly
geese, were kept at the farm-yard.  As a general rule, there was no
end of ploughing and re-ploughing: a field was reckoned imperfectly
tilled, in which the furrows were not drawn so close that harrowing
could be dispensed with; but the management was more earnest than
intelligent, and no improvement took place in the defective plough
or in the imperfect processes of reaping and of threshing.  This
result is probably attributable rather to the scanty development
of rational mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers
to use and wont; for mere kindly attachment to the system of tillage
transmitted with the patrimonial soil was far from influencing the
practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such
as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows,
may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently
developed--Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion
of the theory of agriculture.  Welcome rest followed diligent and
judicious labour; and here too religion asserted her right to soothe
the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and
for freer human movement and intercourse.  Every eighth day (-nonae-),
and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went
to town to buy and sell and transact his other business.  But rest
from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several
festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion
of the winter sowing (-feriae sementivae-): during these set times
the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only,
but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.

Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was
cultivated in the earliest times.  The next heirs had no protection
against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift
who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he
were a lunatic.(12)  Women moreover were in substance divested of
their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member
of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to
retain the estate within the clan.  The law sought to check the
overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in
the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference
of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the
creditor, partly, in the case of a simple loan, by the rigour of the
proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy;
the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its
object but very imperfectly.  No restriction was imposed by law on
the free divisibility of property.  Desirable as it might be that
co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage,
even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving
such a partnership open at any time to any partner; it was good that
brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do
so was foreign to the liberal spirit of Roman law.  The Servian
constitution moreover shows that even in the regal period of Rome
there were not wanting cottagers and garden-proprietors, with whom
the mattock took the place of the plough.  It was left to custom and
the sound sense of the population to prevent excessive subdivision
of the soil; and that their confidence in this respect was not
misplaced and the landed estates ordinarily remained entire, is
proved by the universal Roman custom of designating them by permanent
individual names.  The community exercised only an indirect influence
in the matter by the sending forth of colonies, which regularly led
to the establishment of a number of new full hides, and frequently
doubtless also to the suppression of a number of cottage holdings,
the small landholders being sent forth as colonists.


Landed Proprietors


It is far more difficult to perceive how matters stood with landed
property on a larger scale.  The fact that such larger properties
existed to no inconsiderable extent, cannot be doubted from the
early development of the -equites-, and may be easily explained
partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself
could not but call into existence a class of larger landowners
in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of
the persons belonging to the several clans and participating in
the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile
capital to Rome.  But farming on a large scale in the proper
sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we
afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed
during this period.  On the contrary, to this period we must refer
the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called
fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common
people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner
must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable
to farm in person, or even his whole estate, into little parcels
among his dependents to be cultivated by them, as is the general
practice in Italy at the present day.  The recipient might be the
house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his
position was that which subsequently went by the name of "occupancy
on sufferance" (-precarium-).  The recipient retained his occupancy
during the pleasure of the granter, and had no legal means of
protecting himself in possession against him; on the contrary, the
granter could eject him at any time when he pleased.  The relation
did not necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person
who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor; but such
a payment beyond doubt frequently took place and may, as a rule,
have consisted in the delivery of a portion of the produce.  The
relation in this case approximated to the lease of subsequent times,
but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of
a fixed term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character
on either side and the legal protection of the claim for rent depending
entirely on the lessor's right of ejection.  It is plain that it
was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could
not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom
consecrated by religion; and this was not wanting.  The institution
of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond
doubt rested fundamentally on this assignation of the profits of
the soil.  Nor was the introduction of such an assignation dependent
on the abolition of the system of common tillage; for, just as
after this abolition the individual, so previous to it the clan
might grant to dependents a joint use of its lands; and beyond
doubt with this very state of things was connected the fact that
the Roman clientship was not personal, but that from the outset
the client along with his clan entrusted himself for protection
and fealty to the patron and his clan.  This earliest form of Roman
landholding serves to explain how there sprang from the great
landlords in Rome a landed, and not an urban, nobility.  As the
pernicious institution of middlemen remained foreign to the Romans,
the Roman landlord found himself not much less chained to his land
than was the tenant and the farmer; he inspected and took part in
everything himself, and the wealthy Roman esteemed it his highest
praise to be reckoned a good landlord.  His house was in the country;
in the city he had only a lodging for the purpose of attending to
his business there, and perhaps of breathing the purer air that
prevailed there during the hot season.  Above all, however, these
arrangements furnished a moral basis for the relation between the
upper class and the common people, and so materially lessened its
dangers.  The free tenants-on-sufferance, sprung from families of
decayed farmers, dependents, and freedmen, formed the great bulk
of the proletariate,(13) and were not much more dependent on the
landlord than the petty leaseholder inevitably is with reference to
the great proprietor.  The slaves tilling the fields for a master
were beyond doubt far less numerous than the free tenants.  In all
cases where an immigrant nation has not at once reduced to slavery
a population -en masse-, slaves seem to have existed at first only
to a very limited amount, and consequently free labourers seem to
have played a very different part in the state from that in which
they subsequently appear.  In Greece "day-labourers" (--theites--)
in various instances during the earlier period occupy the place
of the slaves of a later age, and in some communities, among the
Locrians for instance, there was no slavery down to historical times.
Even the slave, moreover, was ordinarily of Italian descent; the
Volscian, Sabine, or Etruscan war-captive must have stood in a
different relation towards his master from the Syrian and the Celt
of later times.  Besides as a tenant he had in fact, though not
in law, land and cattle, wife and child, as the landlord had, and
after manumission was introduced(14) there was a possibility, not
remote, of working out his freedom.  If such then was the footing
on which landholding on a large scale stood in the earliest times,
it was far from being an open sore in the commonwealth; on the
contrary, it was of most material service to it.  Not only did it
provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many
families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties;
but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and
free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and
rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance
furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization,
without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state
may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who
knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield
the plough.


Pastoral Husbandry


Ground under pasture was not affected by the distribution of the
land.  The state, and not the clanship, was regarded as the owner
of the common pastures.  It made use of them in part for its
own flocks and herds, which were intended for sacrifice and other
purposes and were always kept up by means of the cattle-fines; and
it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them
out upon the common pasture for a moderate payment (-scriptura-).
The right of pasturage on the public domains may have originally
borne some relation -de facto- to the possession of land, but no
connection -de jure- can ever have subsisted in Rome between the
particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the
common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the
--metoikos--, but the right to use the common pasture was only
granted exceptionally to the --metoikos-- by the royal favour.
At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but
a subordinate place in the national economy generally, for the
original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the
conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed
immediately as arable land among the clans or at a later period
among individuals.


Handicrafts


While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted
occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to
accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of
urban life in that emporium of the Latins.  In fact eight guilds of
craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of king Numa, that
is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time
immemorial.  These were the flute-blowers, the goldsmiths, the
coppersmiths, the carpenters, the fullers, the dyers, the potters,
and the shoemakers--a list which would substantially exhaust the
class of tradesmen working to order on account of others in the very
early times, when the baking of bread and the professional art of
healing were not yet known and wool was spun into clothing by the
women of the household themselves.  It is remarkable that there
appears no special guild of workers in iron.  This affords a
fresh confirmation of the fact that the manufacture of iron was of
comparatively late introduction in Latium; and on this account in
matters of ritual down to the latest times copper alone might be
used, e.g.  for the sacred plough and the shear-knife of the priests.
These bodies of craftsmen must have been of great importance in
early times for the urban life of Rome and for its position towards
the Latin land--an importance not to be measured by the depressed
condition of Roman handicraft in later times, when it was injuriously
affected by the multitude of artisan-slaves working for their
master or on his account, and by the increased import of articles
of luxury.  The oldest lays of Rome celebrated not only the mighty
war-god Mamers, but also the skilled armourer Mamurius, who understood
the art of forging for his fellow-burgesses shields similar to the
divine model shield that had fallen from heaven; Volcanus the god
of fire and of the forge already appears in the primitive list of
Roman festivals.(15)  Thus in the earliest Rome, as everywhere,
the arts of forging and of wielding the ploughshare and the sword
went hand in hand, and there was nothing of that arrogant contempt
for handicrafts which we afterwards meet with there.  After the
Servian organization, however, imposed the duty of serving in the
army exclusively on the freeholders, the industrial classes were
excluded not by any law, but practically in consequence of their
general want of a freehold qualification, from the privilege of
bearing arms, except in the case of special subdivisions chosen
from the carpenters, coppersmiths, and certain classes of musicians
and attached with a military organization to the army; and this may
perhaps have been the origin of the subsequent habit of depreciating
the manual arts and of the position of political inferiority assigned
to them.  The institution of guilds doubtless had the same object
as the colleges of priests that resembled them in name; the men of
skill associated themselves in order more permanently and securely
to preserve the tradition of their art.  That there was some mode
of excluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be
met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protective steps
against inferior manufactures.  There is no aspect, however, of
the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is
so scanty as that of the Roman trades.


Inland Commerce of the Italians


Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the
earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves.
Fairs (-mercatus-), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly
markets (-nundinae-) were of great antiquity in Latium.  Probably
they were at first associated with international gatherings and
festivals, and so perhaps were connected in Rome with the festival
at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this
purpose to Rome every year on the 13th August, may have embraced
at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business
in Rome and of purchasing what they needed there.  A similar and
perhaps still greater importance belonged in the case of Etruria
to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps
near Montefiascone) in the territory of Volsinii; it served at the
same time as a fair and was regularly frequented by Roman traders.
But the most important of all the Italian fairs was that which was
held at Soracte in the grove of Feronia, a situation than which
none could be found more favourable for the exchange of commodities
among the three great nations.  That high isolated mountain, which
appears to have been set down by nature herself in the midst of the
plain of the Tiber as a goal for the traveller, lay on the boundary
which separated the Etruscan and Sabine lands (to the latter
of which it appears mostly to have belonged), and it was likewise
easily accessible from Latium and Umbria.  Roman merchants regularly
made their appearance there, and the wrongs of which they complained
gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.

Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traffic were carried on at these
fairs long before the first Greek or Phoenician vessel entered the
western sea.  When bad harvests had occurred, different districts
supplied each other at these fairs with grain; there, too, they
exchanged cattle, slaves, metals, and whatever other articles were
deemed needful or desirable in those primitive times.  Oxen and
sheep formed the oldest medium of exchange, ten sheep being reckoned
equivalent to one ox.  The recognition of these objects as universal
legal representatives of value or in other words as money, as well
as the scale of proportion between the large and smaller cattle,
may be traced back--as the recurrence of both especially among the
Germans shows--not merely to the Graeco-Italian period, but beyond
this even to the epoch of a purely pastoral economy.(16)  In
Italy, where metal in considerable quantity was everywhere required
especially for agricultural purposes and for armour, but few of its
provinces themselves produced the requisite metals, copper (-aes-)
very early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second
medium of exchange; and so the Latins, who were poor in copper,
designated valuation itself as "coppering" (-aestimatio-).  This
establishment of copper as a general equivalent recognized throughout
the whole peninsula, as well as the simplest numeral signs of
Italian invention to be mentioned more particularly below(17) and
the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as traces of this
earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while
they still had the peninsula to themselves.


Transmarine Traffic of the Italians


We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence
exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued
independent.  The Sabellian stocks remained almost wholly unaffected
by it.  They were in possession of but a small and inhospitable
belt of coast, and received whatever reached them from foreign
nations--the alphabet for instance--only through the medium of the
Tuscans or Latins; a circumstance which accounts for their want of
urban development.  The intercourse of Tarentum with the Apulians
and Messapians appears to have been at this epoch still unimportant.
It was otherwise along the west coast.  In Campania the Greeks and
Italians dwelt peacefully side by side, and in Latium, and still
more in Etruria, an extensive and regular exchange of commodities
took place.  What were the earliest articles of import, may
be inferred partly from the objects found in the primitive tombs,
particularly those at Caere, partly from indications preserved in
the language and institutions of the Romans, partly and chiefly from
the stimulus given to Italian industry; for of course they bought
foreign manufactures for a considerable time before they began
to imitate them.  We cannot determine how far the development of
handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or
what progress it thereafter made while Italy remained left to its
own resources; it is uncertain how far the Italian fullers, dyers,
tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia
or had their own independent development But certainly the trade
of the goldsmiths, which existed in Rome from time immemorial, can
only have arisen after transmarine commerce had begun and ornaments
of gold had to some extent found sale among the inhabitants of the
peninsula.  We find, accordingly, in the oldest sepulchral chambers
of Caere and Vulci in Etruria and of Praeneste in Latium, plates
of gold with winged lions stamped upon them, and similar ornaments
of Babylonian manufacture.  It may be a question in reference to
the particular object found, whether it has been introduced from
abroad or is a native imitation; but on the whole it admits of
no doubt that all the west coast of Italy in early times imported
metallic wares from the East.  It will be shown still more clearly
in the sequel, when we come to speak of the exercise of art, that
architecture and modelling in clay and metal received a powerful
stimulus in very early times through Greek influence, or, in
other words, that the oldest tools and the oldest models came from
Greece.  In the sepulchral chambers just mentioned, besides the
gold ornaments, there were deposited vessels of bluish enamel or
greenish clay, which, judging from the materials and style as well
as from the hieroglyphics impressed upon them, were of Egyptian
origin;(18) perfume-vases of Oriental alabaster, several of them
in the form of Isis; ostrich-eggs with painted or carved sphinxes
and griffins; beads of glass and amber.  These last may have come
by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the
import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the
East.  Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is
proved by the early use of linen fillets, of the purple dress and
ivory sceptre for the king, and of frankincense in sacrifice, as
well as by the very ancient borrowed names for them (--linon--,
-linum-; --porphura--, -purpura-; --skeiptron--, --skipon--, -scipio-;
perhaps also --elephas--, -ebur-; --thuos--, -thus-).  Of similar
significance is the derivation of a number of words relating to
articles used in eating and drinking, particularly the names of
oil,(19) of jugs (--amphoreus--, -amp(h)ora-, -ampulla-, --krateir--,
-cratera-), of feasting (--komazo--, -comissari-), of a dainty dish
(--opsonion--, -opsonium-) of dough (--maza--, -massa-), and various
names of cakes (--glukons--, -lucuns-; --plakons--, -placenta-;
--turons--, -turunda-); while conversely the Latin names for dishes
(-patina-, --patanei--) and for lard (-arvina-, --arbinei--) have
found admission into Sicilian Greek.  The later custom of placing
in the tomb beside the dead Attic, Corcyrean, and Campanian vases
proves, what these testimonies from language likewise show, the
early market for Greek pottery in Italy.  That Greek leather-work
made its way into Latium at least in the shape of armour is apparent
from the application of the Greek word for leather --skutos-- to
signify among the Latins a shield (-scutum-; like -lorica-, from
-lorum-).  Finally, we deduce a similar inference from the numerous
nautical terms borrowed from the Greek (although it is remarkable
that the chief technical expressions in navigation--the terms
for the sail, mast, and yard--are pure Latin forms);(20) and from
the recurrence in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter
(--epistolei--, -epistula-), a token (-tessera-, from --tessara--(21)),
a balance (--stateir--, -statera-), and earnest-money (--arrabon--,
-arrabo-, -arra-); and conversely from the adoption of Italian
law-terms in Sicilian Greek,(22) as well as from the exchange of
the proportions and names of coins, weights, and measures, which
we shall notice in the sequel.  The character of barbarism which
all these borrowed terms obviously present, and especially the
characteristic formation of the nominative from the accusative
(-placenta- = --plakounta--; -ampora- = --amphorea--; -statera-=
--stateira--), constitute the clearest evidence of their great
antiquity.  The worship of the god of traffic (-Mercurius-) also
appears to have been from the first influenced by Greek conceptions;
and his annual festival seems even to have been fixed on the ides
of May, because the Hellenic poets celebrated him as the son of
the beautiful Maia.


Commerce, in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active


It thus appears that Italy in very ancient times derived
its articles of luxury, just as imperial Rome did, from the East,
before it attempted to manufacture for itself after the models which
it imported.  In exchange it had nothing to offer except its raw
produce, consisting especially of its copper, silver, and iron,
but including also slaves and timber for shipbuilding, amber from
the Baltic, and, in the event of bad harvests occurring abroad, its
grain.  From this state of things as to the commodities in demand
and the equivalents to be offered in return, we have already
explained why Italian traffic assumed in Latium a form so differing
from that which it presented in Etruria.  The Latins, who were
deficient in all the chief articles of export, could carry on only
a passive traffic, and were obliged even in the earliest times to
procure the copper of which they had need from the Etruscans in
exchange for cattle or slaves--we have already mentioned the very
ancient practice of selling the latter on the right bank of the
Tiber.(23)  On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must
have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in Populonia, in Capua
as in Spina.  Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these
regions and their powerful commercial position; whereas Latium
remained preeminently an agricultural country.  The same contrast
recurs in all their individual relations.  The oldest tombs constructed
and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which
the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the
exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar
position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii
and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments
for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury
proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians
a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead.  The
most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna
Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during
the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by
weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances
are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g.  one of Posidonia)
have been found there.  In architecture, plastic art, and embossing,
the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only
in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to
bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with
growing technical skill.  The commodities were upon the whole the
same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in
Etruria; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern
neighbours in the energy with which its commerce was plied.  The
contrast between them in this respect is shown in the fact that
the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria
found a market in Latium, particularly at Praeneste, and even in
Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the
kind.


Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce


A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins
and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or
lines of traffic.  As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans
in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture
that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra.
We have already mentioned(24) that the western Etruscans ventured
boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily,
but also with Greece proper.  An ancient intercourse with Attica
is indicated by the Attic clay vases, which are so numerous in the
more recent Etruscan tombs, and had been perhaps even at this time
introduced for other purposes than the already-mentioned decoration
of tombs, while conversely Tyrrhenian bronze candlesticks and gold
cups were articles early in request in Attica.  Still more definitely
is such an intercourse indicated by the coins.  The silver pieces
of Populonia were struck after the pattern of a very old silver
piece stamped on one side with the Gorgoneion, on the other merely
presenting an incuse square, which has been found at Athens and
on the old amber-route in the district of Posen, and which was in
all probability the very coin struck by order of Solon in Athens.
We have mentioned already that the Etruscans had also dealings, and
perhaps after the development of the Etrusco-Carthaginian maritime
alliance their principal dealings, with the Carthaginians.  It is
a remarkable circumstance that in the oldest tombs of Caere, besides
native vessels of bronze and silver, there have been found chiefly
Oriental articles, which may certainly have come from Greek merchants,
but more probably were introduced by Phoenician traders.  We must
not, however, attribute too great importance to this Phoenician trade,
and in particular we must not overlook the fact that the alphabet,
as well as the other influences that stimulated and matured native
culture, were brought to Etruria by the Greeks, and not by the
Phoenicians.

Latin commerce assumed a different direction.  Rarely as we have
opportunity of instituting comparisons between the Romans and the
Etruscans as regards the reception of Hellenic elements, the cases
in which such comparisons can be instituted exhibit the two nations
as completely independent of each other.  This is most clearly
apparent in the case of the alphabet.  The Greek alphabet brought
to the Etruscans from the Chalcidico-Doric colonies in Sicily or
Campania varies not immaterially from that which the Latins derived
from the same quarter, so that, although both peoples have drawn
from the same source, they have done so at different times and
different places.  The same phenomenon appears in particular words:
the Roman Pollux and the Tuscan Pultuke are independent corruptions
of the Greek Polydeukes; the Tuscan Utuze or Uthuze is formed from
Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes is an exact reproduction of the form of
the name usual in Sicily; in like manner the Tuscan Aivas corresponds
to the old Greek form of this name, the Roman Aiax to a secondary
form that was probably also Sicilian; the Roman Aperta or Apello
and the Samnite Appellun have sprung from the Doric Apellon, the
Tuscan Apulu from Apollon.  Thus the language and writing of Latium
indicate that the direction of Latin commerce was exclusively towards
the Cumaeans and Siceliots.  Every other trace which has survived
from so remote an age leads to the same conclusion: such as, the
coin of Posidonia found in Latium; the purchase of grain, when
a failure of the harvest occurred in Rome, from the Volscians,
Cumaeans, and Siceliots (and, as was natural, from the Etruscans
as well); above all, the relations subsisting between the Latin
and Sicilian monetary systems.  As the local Dorico-Chalcidian
designation of silver coin --nomos--, and the Sicilian measure
--eimina--, were transferred with the same meaning to Latium as
-nummus- and -hemina-, so conversely the Italian designations of
weight, -libra-, -triens-, -quadrans-, -sextans-, -uncia-, which
arose in Latium for the measurement of the copper which was used
by weight instead of money, had found their way into the common
speech of Sicily in the third century of the city under the corrupt
and hybrid forms, --litra--, --trias--, --tetras--, --exas--,
--ougkia--.  Indeed, among all the Greek systems of weights and
moneys, the Sicilian alone was brought into a determinate relation
to the Italian copper-system; not only was the value of silver set
down conventionally and perhaps legally as two hundred and fifty
times that of copper, but the equivalent on this computation of a
Sicilian pound of copper (1/120th of the Attic talent, 2/3 of the
Roman pound) was in very early times struck, especially at Syracuse,
as a silver coin (--litra argurion--, i.e.  "copper-pound in
silver").  Accordingly it cannot be doubted that Italian bars of
copper circulated also in Sicily instead of money; and this exactly
harmonizes with the hypothesis that the commerce of the Latins
with Sicily was a passive commerce, in consequence of which Latin
money was drained away thither.  Other proofs of ancient intercourse
between Sicily and Italy, especially the adoption in the Sicilian
dialect of the Italian expressions for a commercial loan, a prison,
and a dish, and the converse reception of Sicilian terms in Italy,
have been already mentioned.(25)  We meet also with several, though
less definite, traces of an ancient intercourse of the Latins with
the Chalcidian cities in Lower Italy, Cumae and Neapolis, and with
the Phocaeans in Velia and Massilia.  That it was however far less
active than that with the Siceliots is shown by the well-known
fact that all the Greek words which made their way in earlier times
to Latium exhibit Doric forms--we need only recall -Aesculapius-,
-Latona-, -Aperta-, -machina-.  Had their dealings with the originally
Ionian cities, such as Cumae(26) and the Phocaean settlements,
been even merely on a similar scale with those which they had with
the Sicilian Dorians, Ionic forms would at least have made their
appearance along with the others; although certainly Dorism early
penetrated even into these Ionic colonies themselves, and their
dialect varied greatly.  While all the facts thus combine to attest
the stirring traffic of the Latins with the Greeks of the western
main generally, and especially with the Sicilians, there hardly
occurred any immediate intercourse with the Asiatic Phoenicians,
and the intercourse with those of Africa, which is sufficiently
attested by statements of authors and by articles found, can only
have occupied a secondary position as affecting the state of culture
in Latium; in particular it is significant that--if we leave out of
account some local names--there is an utter absence of any evidence
from language as to ancient intercourse between the Latins and the
nations speaking the Aramaic tongue.(27)

If we further inquire how this traffic was mainly carried on, whether
by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign merchants in Italy, the
former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at
least so far as Latium is concerned.  It is scarcely conceivable
that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the
commercial loan could have found their way into general use in the
language of the inhabitants of Sicily through the mere resort of
Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their receipt of copper in exchange
for ornaments.  Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes
by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior
class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of
landed proprietors developed itself in Rome.  The reason of this
surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale commerce of Latium was
from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors--a
hypothesis which is not so singular as it seems.  It was natural
that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great
landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in
kind, should come at an early period to possess barks; and there is
evidence that such was the case.  The transmarine traffic conducted
on the trader's own account must therefore have fallen into the
hands of the great landholder, seeing that he alone possessed the
vessels for it and--in his produce--the articles for export.(28)
In fact the distinction between a landed and a moneyed aristocracy
was unknown to the Romans of earlier times; the great landholders
were at the same time the speculators and the capitalists.  In
the case of a very energetic commerce such a combination certainly
could not have been maintained; but, as the previous representation
shows, while there was a comparatively vigorous traffic in Rome in
consequence of the trade of the Latin land being there concentrated,
Rome was by no means essentially a commercial city like Caere or
Tarentum, but was and continued to be the centre of an agricultural
community.




Notes for Book I Chapter XIII



1.  I. II. Agriculture

2.  I. III. Clan Villages, I. V. The Community

3.  The system which we meet with in the case of the Germanic joint
tillage, combining a partition of the land in property among the
clansmen with its joint cultivation by the clan, can hardly ever
have existed in Italy.  Had each clansman been regarded in Italy,
as among the Germans, in the light of proprietor of a particular
spot in each portion of the collective domain that was marked off
for tillage, the separate husbandry of later times would probably
have set out from a minute subdivision of hides.  But the very
opposite was the case; the individual names of the Roman hides
(-fundus Cornelianus-) show clearly that the Roman proprietor owned
from the beginning a possession not broken up but united.

4.  Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14, comp. Plutarch, Q. Rom. 15) states:
-Tum (in the time of Romulus) erat res in pecore et locorum
possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletes vocabantur--(Numa)
primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus-.
In like manner Dionysius represents Romulus as dividing the land into
thirty curial districts, and Numa as establishing boundary-stones
and introducing the festival of the Terminalia (i. 7, ii. 74; and
thence Plutarch, -Numa-, 16).

5.  I. XI. Contracts

6.  Since this assertion still continues to be disputed, we
shall let the numbers speak for themselves.  The Roman writers on
agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on
an average five -modii- of wheat as sufficient to sow a -jugerum-, and
the produce as fivefold.  The produce of a -heredium- accordingly
(even when, without taking into view the space occupied by
the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as entirely arable
land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or
deducting the seed forty, modii.  For an adult hard-working slave
Cato (c. 56) reckons fifty-one -modii-of wheat as the annual
consumption.  These data enable any one to answer for himself the
question whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the
produce of a -heredium-.  The attempted proof to the contrary is
based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more
exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and
that the assumption of a fivefold return is one too low for this
earlier epoch; both assumptions are probably correct, but for both
there is a limit.  Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by
the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs,
vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and
zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially
to be taken into account for the older period; but the older Roman
pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate
importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always
notoriously grain.  We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness
of the earlier cultivation obtain a very considerable increase,
especially of the gross produce--and beyond doubt the farmers of
this period drew a larger produce from their lands than the great
landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained (iii.
Latium); but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates,
because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode
of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital.
The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be
the utmost limit, and yet it is far from sufficing.  In no case
can the enormous deficit, which is left even according to those
estimates between the produce of the -heredium- and the requirements
of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation.
In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when
it shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural
economics, according to which among a population chiefly subsisting
on vegetables the produce of a piece of land of an acre and a quarter
proves sufficient on an average for the subsistence of a family.

It is indeed asserted that instances occur even in historical times
of colonies founded with allotments of two -jugera-; but the only
instance of the kind (Liv. iv. 47) is that of the colony of Labici
in the year 336--an instance, which will certainly not be reckoned
(by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the
class of traditions that are trustworthy in their historical details,
and which is beset by other very serious difficulties (see book
ii. ch. 5, note).  It is no doubt true that in the non-colonial
assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (-adsignatio
viritana-) sometimes only a few -jugera- were granted (as e. g.
Liv. viii. ii, 21).  In these cases however it was the intention
not to create new farms with the allotments, but rather, as a rule,
to add to the existing farms new parcels from the conquered lands
(comp. C. I. L. i. p. 88).  At any rate, any supposition is better
than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as it were in
a miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman household.
The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than
their historiographers; they themselves conceived that they could
not subsist even on allotments of seven -jugera- or a produce of
one hundred and forty -modii-.

7.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

8.  Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt
to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two
-jugera- of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro
(de R. R. i. 44, i) reckons the seed requisite for the -jugerum-
at five -modii- of wheat but ten -modii- of spelt, and estimates
the produce as corresponding to this, whence it is inferred that
the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, if not double, at least
considerably higher than that of wheat.  But the converse is more
correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped is simply
to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the
wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H.
N.  xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the
fruit by threshing.  For the same reason spelt is at the present
day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as
great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks.  According
to Wurtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average
produce of the Wurtemberg -morgen- is reckoned in the case of
wheat (with a sowing of 1/4 to 1/2 -scheffel-) at 3 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 275 Ibs. (= 825 Ibs.); in the case of spelt
(with a sowing of 1/2 to 1 1/2 -scheffel-) at least 7 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 150 lbs.  ( = 1050 Ibs.), which are reduced
by shelling to about 4 -scheffel-.  Thus spelt compared with wheat
yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps
triple the crop, but--by specific weight--before the shelling not
much above, after shelling (as "kernel") less than, the half.  It
was not by mistake, as has been asserted, but because it was fitting
in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like
nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was
based on wheat; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt,
it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than
rises.  Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed
to fewer risks than wheat; but the latter yields on the whole,
especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses
of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in
the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the -malter- of wheat
stands at 11 -gulden- 3 krz., the -malter- of spelt at 4 -gulden-30
krz.), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing
of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation
comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of
Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was
undeniably a progress.

9.  I. II. Agriculture

10.  -Oleum- and -oliva- are derived from --elaion--, --elaia--,
and -amurca- (oil-less) from --amorgei--.

11.  But there is no proper authority for the statement that the
fig-tree which stood in front of the temple of Saturn was cut down
in the year 260 (Plin. H. N. xv. 18, 77); the date CCLX. is wanting
in all good manuscripts, and has been interpolated, probably with
reference to Liv. ii. 21.

12.  I. XI. Property

13.  I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community

14.  I. XI. Guardianship

15.  I. XII. Oldest Table of Roman Festivals

16.  The comparative legal value of sheep and oxen, as is well known,
is proved by the fact that, when the cattle-fines were converted
into money-fines, the sheep was rated at ten, and the ox at a
hundred asses (Festus, v. -peculatus-, p. 237, comp. pp. 34, 144;
Gell. xi. i; Plutarch, Poplicola, ii).  By a similar adjustment the
Icelandic law makes twelve rams equivalent to a cow; only in this
as in other instances the Germanic law has substituted the duodecimal
for the older decimal system.

It is well known that the term denoting cattle was transferred to
denote money both among the Latins (-pecunia-) and among the Germans
(English fee).

17.  I. XIV. Decimal System

18.  There has lately been found at Praeneste a silver mixing-jug,
with a Phoenician and a hieroglyphic inscription (Mon. dell Inst.
x.  plate 32), which directly proves that such Egyptian wares as
come to light in Italy have found their way thither through the
medium of the Phoenicians.

19.  comp. I. XIII. Culture of the Olive

20.  -Velum- is certainly of Latin origin; so is -malus-, especially
as that term denotes not merely the mast, but the tree in general:
-antenna- likewise may come from --ana-- (-anhelare-, -antestari-),
and -tendere- = -supertensa-.  Of Greek origin, on the other
hand, are -gubenare-, to steer (--kubernan--); -ancora-, anchor
(--agkura--); -prora-, ship's bow (--prora--); -aplustre-,
ship's stern (--aphlaston--); -anquina-, the rope fastening the
yards (--agkoina--); -nausea-, sea-sickness (--nausia--).  The
four chief winds of the ancients- -aquilo-, the "eagle-wind," the
north-easterly Tramontana; -voltumus- (of uncertain derivation,
perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; -auster- the
"scorching" southwest wind, the Sirocco; -favonius-, the "favourable"
north-west wind blowing from the Tyrrhene Sea--have indigenous
names bearing no reference to navigation; but all the other Latin
names for winds are Greek (such as -eurus-, -notus-), or translations
from the Greek (e.g. -solanus- = --apelioteis--, -Africus- =
--lips--).

21.  This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service
of the camp, the --xuleiphia kata phulakein brachea teleos echonta
charakteira-- (Polyb. vi. 35, 7); the four -vigiliae- of the
night-service gave name to the tokens generally.  The fourfold
division of the night for the service of watching is Greek as well
as Roman; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised
an influence--possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. 14)--in the
organization of the measures for security in the Roman camp.  The
employment of the non-Doric form speaks for the comparatively late
date at which theword was taken over.

22.  I. XI. Character of the Roman Law

23.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

24.  I. X. Etruscan Commerce

25.  I. XI. Clients and Foreigners, I. XIII. Commerce, in Latium
Passive, in Etruria Active

26.  I. X. Greek Cities Near Vesuvius

27.  If we leave out of view -Sarranus-, -Afer-, and other local
designations (I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the
Hellenes), the Latin language appears not to possess a single word
immediately derived in early times from the Phoenician.  The very
few words from Phoenician roots which occur in it, such as -arrabo-
or -arra- and perhaps also -murra-, -nardus-, and the like, are
plainly borrowed proximately from the Greek, which has a considerable
number of such words of Oriental extraction as indications of its
primitive intercourse with the Aramaeans.  That --elephas-- and
-ebur- should have come from the same Phoenician original with or
without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed
independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician
article is in reality -ha-, and is not so employed; besides the
Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found.  The same holds
true of the enigmatical word -thesaurus-; whether it may have been
originally Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician
or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the
Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (xii. Foreign
Worships).

28.  Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited
the senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300
-amphorae- (1 amph. = nearly 6 gallons): -id satis habitum ad fructus
ex agris vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus- (Liv.
xxi. 63).  It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted,
that the senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport
of the produce of their estates: on the other hand, transmarine
mercantile speculation (-quaestus-, traffic, fitting-out of vessels,
&c.) on their part was prohibited.  It is a curious fact that the
ancient Greeks as well as the Romans expressed the tonnage of their
sea-going ships constantly in amphorae; the reason evidently being,
that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early
period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article.




CHAPTER XIV

Measuring and Writing



The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man;
the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along
with himself; together they make man--what nature has not made
him--all-powerful and eternal.  It is the privilege and duty of
history to trace the course of national progress along these paths
also.


Italian Measures


Measurement necessarily presupposes the development of the several
ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, and of a whole
consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of
a numeral system.  The most obvious bases presented by nature for
this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of
the sun and moon, or the day and the month; in reference to space,
the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in
measuring than the arm; in reference to gravity, the burden which
a man is able to poise (-librare-) on his hand while he holds
his arm stretched out, or the "weight" (-libra-).  As a basis for
the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily
suggests itself as the hand with its five, or the hands with their
ten, fingers; upon this rests the decimal system.  We have already
observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring
reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin
stocks, but even to the most remote primeval times.  The antiquity
in particular of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated
by language;(1) even the mode of reckoning the days that elapse
between the several phases of the moon, not forward from the phase
on which it had entered last, but backward from that which was
next to be expected, is at least older than the separation of the
Greeks and Latins.


Decimal System


The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive
use of the decimal system among the Indo-Germans is furnished by
the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect
to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive.(2)  In the case of
Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements: it
may be sufficient to recall the number ten so usual in the case of
witnesses, securities, envoys, and magistrates, the legal equivalence
of one ox and ten sheep, the partition of the canton into ten curies
and the pervading application generally of the decurial system, the
-limitatio-, the tenth in offerings and in agriculture, decimation,
and the praenomen -Decimus-.  Among the applications of this most
ancient decimal system in the sphere of measuring and of writing,
the remarkable Italian ciphers claim a primary place.  When the Greeks
and Italians separated, there were still evidently no conventional
signs of number.  On the other hand we find the three oldest and
most indispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by
three signs--I, V or /\, X, manifestly imitations of the outstretched
finger, and the open hand single and double--which were not derived
either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to
the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans.  They were the first steps
towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same
time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse
among the Italians which preceded their transmarine commerce.(3)
Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed,
these signs, can of course no longer be ascertained.  Other traces
of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field;
among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of
100 square feet,(4) and the Roman year of 10 months.


The Duodecimal System


Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures, which
were not connected with Greek standards and were probably developed
by the Italians before they came into contact with the Greeks, there
prevailed the partition of the "whole" (-as-) into twelve "units"
(-unciae-).  The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of
the Salii and Arvales,(5) as well as the leagues of the Etruscan
cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve.  The
same number predominated in the Roman system of weights and in the
measures of length, where the pound (-libra-) and the foot (-pes-)
were usually subdivided into twelve parts; the unit of the Roman
measures of surface was the "driving" (-actus-) of 120 square feet,
a combination of the decimal and duodecimal systems.(6)  Similar
arrangements as to the measures of capacity may have passed into
oblivion.

If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider
how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should
have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series
of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to
which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar
periods.  Still more than the double hand of ten fingers did the
solar cycle of nearly twelve lunar periods first suggest to man
the profound conception of an unit composed of equal units, and
thereby originate the idea of a system of numbers, the first step
towards mathematical thought.  The consistent duodecimal development
of this idea appears to have belonged to the Italian nation, and
to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks.


Hellenic Measures in Italy


But when at length the Hellenic trader had opened up the route to
the west coast of Italy, the measures of surface remained unaffected,
but the measures of length, of weight, and above all of capacity--in
other words those definite standards without which barter and traffic
are impossible--experienced the effects of the new international
intercourse.  The oldest Roman foot has disappeared; that which we
know, and which was in use at a very early period among the Romans,
was borrowed from Greece, and was, in addition to its new Roman
subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four
hand-breadths (-palmus-) and sixteen finger-breadths (-digitus-).
Further, the Roman weights were brought into a fixed proportional
relation to the Attic system, which prevailed throughout Sicily
but not in Cumae--another significant proof that the Latin traffic
was chiefly directed to the island; four Roman pounds were assumed as
equal to three Attic -minae-, or rather the Roman pound was assumed
as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian -litrae- or half-minae.(7)
But the most singular and chequered aspect is presented by the
Roman measures of capacity, as regards both their names and their
proportions.  Their names have come from the Greek terms either by
corruption (-amphora-, -modius- after --medimnos--, -congius- from
--choeus--, -hemina-, -cyathus-) or by translation (-acetabulum-from
--ozubaphon--); while conversely --zesteis-- is a corruption of
-sextarius-.  All the measures are not identical, but those in most
common use are so; among liquid measures the -congius- or -chus-,
the -sextarius-, and the -cyathus-, the two last also for dry
goods; the Roman -amphora- was equalized in water-weight to the
Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek --metretes--
in the fixed ratio of 3:2, and to the Greek --medimnos-- of 2:1.  To
one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names
and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance
of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins.  The Greek
numeral signs were not adopted; but the Roman probably availed
himself of the Greek alphabet, when it reached him, to form ciphers
for 50 and 1000, perhaps also for 100, out of the signs for the
three aspirated letters which he had no use for.  In Etruria the
sign for 100 at least appears to have been obtained in a similar
way.  Afterwards, as usually happens, the systems of notation among
the two neighbouring nations became assimilated by the adoption in
substance of the Roman system in Etruria.


The Italian Calendar before the Period of Greek Influence in Italy


In like manner the Roman calendar--and probably that of the Italians
generally--began with an independent development of its own, but
subsequently came under the influence of the Greeks.  In the division
of time the returns of sunrise and sunset, and of the new and full
moon, most directly arrest the attention of man; and accordingly
the day and the month, determined not by cyclic calculation but
by direct observation, were long the exclusive measures of time.
Down to a late age sunrise and sunset were proclaimed in the Roman
market-place by the public crier, and in like manner it may be
presumed that in earlier times, at each of the four phases of the
moon, the number of days that would elapse from that phase until
the next was proclaimed by the priests.  The mode of reckoning
therefore in Latium--and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in
use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans--was
by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward
from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which
was next expected; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between
7 and 8 days, the average length being 7 3/8; and by lunar months
which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days,
the average duration of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours
44 minutes.  For some time the day continued to be among the Italians
the smallest, and the month the largest, division of time.  It was
not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night
respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when
they began to employ the division into hours; which explains why
even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of
fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight,
the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon.  No calendar of the year
had, at least when the Greeks separated from the Italians, as yet
been organized, for the names for the year and its divisions in the
two languages have been formed quite independently of each other.
Nevertheless the Italians appear to have already in the pre-Hellenic
period advanced, if not to the arrangement of a fixed calendar,
at any rate to the institution of two larger units of time.  The
simplifying of the reckoning according to lunar months by the
application of the decimal system, which was usual among the Romans,
and the designation of a term of ten months as a "ring" (-annus-)
or complete year, bear in them all the traces of a high antiquity.
Later, but still at a period very early and undoubtedly previous
to the operation of Greek influences, the duodecimal system (as
we have already stated) was developed in Italy, and, as it derived
its very origin from the observation of the fact that the solar
period was equal to twelve lunar periods, it was certainly applied
in the first instance to the reckoning of time.  This view accords
with the fact that the individual names of the months--which can
only have originated after the month was viewed as part of a solar
year--particularly those of March and of May, were similar among
the different branches of the Italian stock, while there was
no similarity between the Italian names and the Greek.  It is not
improbable therefore that the problem of laying down a practical
calendar which should correspond at once to the moon and the sun--a
problem which may be compared in some sense to the quadrature of the
circle, and the solution of which was only recognized as impossible
and abandoned after the lapse of many centuries--had already employed
the minds of men in Italy before the epoch at which their contact
with the Greeks began; these purely national attempts to solve it,
however, have passed into oblivion.


The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar


What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of some other Latin
cities--as to the Sabellian and Etruscan measurement of time we
have no traditional information--is decidedly based on the oldest
Greek arrangement of the year, which was intended to answer both
to the phases of the moon and to the seasons of the solar year,
constructed on the assumption of a lunar period of 29 1/2 days and
a solar period of 12 1/2 lunar months or 368 3/4 days, and on the
regular alternation of a full month or month of thirty days with a
hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve
with a year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained
in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena by
arbitrary curtailments and intercalations.  It is possible that
this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into
use among the Latins without undergoing any alteration; but the
oldest form of the Roman year which can be historically recognized
varied from its model, not indeed in the cyclical result nor yet in
the alternation of years of twelve with years of thirteen months,
but materially in the designation and in the measuring off of the
individual months.  The Roman year began with the beginning of
spring; the first month in it and the only one which bears the name
of a god, was named from Mars (-Martius-), the three following from
sprouting (-aprilis-) growing (-maius-), and thriving (-iunius-),
the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers (-quinctilis-,
-sextilis-, -september-, -october-, -november-, -december), the
eleventh from commencing (-ianuarius-),(8) with reference presumably
to the renewal of agricultural operations that followed midwinter
and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the
last, from cleansing (-februarius-).  To this series recurring
in regular succession there was added in the intercalary year a
nameless "labour-month" (-mercedonius-) at the close of the year,
viz. after February.  And, as the Roman calendar was independent
as respected the names of the months which were probably taken from
the old national ones, it was also independent as regarded their
duration.  Instead of the four years of the Greek cycle, each
composed of six months of 30 and six of 29 days and an intercalary
month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354 +
384 + 354 + 383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four
years, each containing four months--the first, third, fifth, and
eighth--of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28
days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary
month of 27 days inserted every second year (355 + 383 + 355 +
382 = 1475 days).  In like manner this calendar departed from the
original division of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7,
sometimes of 8 days; it made the eight-day-week run on through the
years without regard to the other relations of the calendar, as our
Sundays do, and placed the weekly market on the day with which it
began (-noundinae-).  Along with this it once for all fixed the
first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those
of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the
fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day.  As the course of
the months was thus permanently arranged, it was henceforth necessary
to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new moon and
the first quarter; thence the day of the newmoon received the name
of "proclamation-day" (-kalendae-).  The first day of the second
section of the month, uniformly of 8 days, was--in conformity with
the Roman custom of reckoning, which included the -terminus ad
quem- --designated as "nine-day" (-nonae-).  The day of the full
moon retained the old name of -idus- (perhaps "dividing-day").
The motive lying at the bottom of this strange remodelling of the
calendar seems chiefly to have been a belief in the salutary virtue
of odd numbers;(9) and while in general it is based on the oldest
form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly
exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were
then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a
mystic view of numbers.  But the consequence was that this Roman
calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should
harmonize with the course both of sun and moon, in reality by
no means so corresponded with the lunar course as did at least on
the whole its Greek model, while, like the oldest Greek cycle, it
could only follow the solar seasons by means of frequent arbitrary
excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly,
for it is scarcely likely that the calendar would be handled with
greater skill than was manifested in its original arrangement.
The retention moreover of the reckoning by months or--which is the
same thing--by years of ten months implies a tacit, but not to be
misunderstood, confession of the irregularity and untrustworthiness
of the oldest Roman solar year.  This Roman calendar may be regarded,
at least in its essential features, as that generally current
among the Latins.  When we consider how generally the beginning of
the year and the names of the months are liable to change, minor
variations in the numbering and designations are quite compatible
with the hypothesis of a common basis; and with such a calendar-system,
which practically was irrespective of the lunar course, the Latins
might easily come to have their months of arbitrary length, possibly
marked off by annual festivals--as in the case of the Alban months,
which varied between 16 and 36 days.  It would appear probable
therefore that the Greek --trieteris-- had early been introduced
from Lower Italy at least into Latium and perhaps also among the
other Italian stocks, and had thereafter been subjected in the
calendars of the several cities to further subordinate alterations.

For the measuring of periods of more than one year the regnal years
of the kings might have been employed: but it is doubtful whether
that method of dating, which was in use in the East, occurred in Greece
or Italy during earlier times.  On the other hand the intercalary
period recurring every four years, and the census and lustration
of the community connected with it, appear to have suggested
a reckoning by -lustra- similar in plan to the Greek reckoning by
Olympiads--a method, however, which early lost its chronological
significance in consequence of the irregularity that now prevailed
as to the due holding of the census at the right time.


Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy


The art of expressing sounds by written signs was of later origin
than the art of measurement.  The Italians did not any more than
the Hellenes develop such an art of themselves, although we may
discover attempts at such a development in the Italian numeral
signs,(10) and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom--formed
independently of Hellenic influence--of drawing lots by means
of wooden tablets.  The difficulty which must have attended the
first individualizing of sounds--occurring as they do in so great
a variety of combinations--is best demonstrated by the fact that a
single alphabet propagated from people to people and from generation
to generation has sufficed, and still suffices, for the whole of
Aramaic, Indian, Graeco-Roman, and modern civilization; and this
most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation
of the Aramaeans and the Indo-Germans.  The Semitic family of
languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never
can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing
of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that
the first alphabet--in which the vowels were still wanting--was
invented.  It was the Indians and Greeks who first independently
of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the
Aramaean consonantal writing brought to them by commerce, a complete
alphabet by the addition of the vowels--which was effected by the
application of four letters, which the Greeks did not use as consonantal
signs, for the four vowels -a -e -i -o, and by the formation of a
new sign for -u --in other words by the introduction of the syllable
into writing instead of the mere consonant, or, as Palamedes says
in Euripides,

--Ta teis ge leitheis pharmak orthosas monos
Aphona kai phonounta, sullabas te theis,
Ezeupon anthropoisi grammat eidenai.--

This Aramaeo-Hellenic alphabet was accordingly brought to the
Italians through the medium, doubtless, of the Italian Hellenes;
not, however, through the agricultural colonies of Magna Graecia,
but through the merchants possibly of Cumae or Tarentum, by whom it
would be brought in the first instance to the very ancient emporia
of international traffic in Latium and Etruria--to Rome and Caere.
The alphabet received by the Italians was by no means the oldest
Hellenic one; it had already experienced several modifications,
particularly the addition of the three letters --"id:xi", --"id:phi",
--"id:chi" and the alteration of the signs for --"id:iota",
--"id:gamma", --"id:lambda".(11)  We have already observed(12) that
the Etruscan and Latin alphabets were not derived the one from the
other, but both directly from the Greek; in fact the Greek alphabet
came to Etruria in a form materially different from that which
reached Latium.  The Etruscan alphabet has a double sign -s (sigma
-"id:s" and san -"id:sh") and only a single -k,(13) and of the
-r only the older form -"id:P"; the Latin has, so far as we know,
only a single -s, but a double sign for -k (kappa -"id:k" and koppa
-"id:q") and of the -r almost solely the more recent form -"id:R".
The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds
like the coiling of a snake; the more recent employs parallel
broken-off lines from right to left: the Latin writing, as far as
our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel
lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left
to right or from right to left, but subsequently ran among the Romans
in the former, and among the Faliscans in the latter direction.
The model alphabet brought to Etruria must notwithstanding its
comparatively remodelled character reach back to an epoch very ancient,
though not positively to be determined; for, as the two sibilants
sigma and san were always used by the Etruscans as different
sounds side by side, the Greek alphabet which came to Etruria must
doubtless still have possessed both of them in this way as living
signs of sound; but among all the monuments of the Greek language
known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use.

The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know it, bears on the whole
a more recent character; and it is not improbable that the Latins
did not simply receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case
in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with
their Greek neighbours kept pace for a considerable period with
the alphabet in use among these, and followed its variations.  We
find, for instance, that the forms -"id:/\/\/", -"id:P",(14) and
-"id:SIGMA" were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded
in common use by the later forms -"id:/\/\", -"id:R", and -"id:S"
--a circumstance which can only be explained by supposing that
the Latins employed for a considerable period the Greek alphabet
as such in writing either their mother-tongue or Greek.  It is
dangerous therefore to draw from the more recent character of the
Greek alphabet which we meet with in Rome, as compared with the
older character of that brought to Etruria, the inference that
writing was practised earlier in Etruria than in Rome.

The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure
of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which
they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are
illustrated by a remarkable vase from a sepulchral chamber of Caere
built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old
Greek model alphabet as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan
syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that
of Palamedes--evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and
acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.


Development of Alphabets in Italy


Not less important for history than the derivation of the alphabet
is the further course of its development on Italian soil: perhaps
it is even of more importance; for by means of it a gleam of light
is thrown upon the inland commerce of Italy, which is involved
in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its
coasts.  In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet
was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its
use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and
in what is now Tuscany.  In course of time this alphabet, manifestly
diffusing itself from Atria and Spina, reached southward along
the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and
subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, among, and indeed
beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the
Tyrol and Styria.  The more recent epoch starts with a reform of
the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of
writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the -"id:o", which
was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the -"id:u", and
the introduction of a new letter -"id:f" for which the alphabet as
received by them had no corresponding sign.  This reform evidently
arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find
reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the
Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians.  In its further
course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with
the several stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the
Umbrians and the Samnites; frequently the mediae were entirely or
partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants
were developed.  But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet
was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it was
considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found
probably in one of these tombs already presents the reformed
alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape; and, as
the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with
the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back
to the time when that alphabet came to Italy.  While the Etruscans
thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the
north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet on
the other hand was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground,
upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters
-"id:gamma" -"id:kappa" and -"id:zeta" -"id:sigma" gradually
became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in
each case one of the homophonous signs (-"id:kappa" -"id:zeta")
disappeared from writing.  In Rome it can be shown that these were
already laid aside before the end of the fourth century of the
city,(15) and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has
reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception.(16)  Now
when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction
between -"id:gamma" -"id:c" and -"id:kappa" -"id:k" is still
regularly maintained;(17) that the period, accordingly, when the
sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again
the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond
the beginning of the Samnite wars; and lastly, that a considerable
interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction
of writing and the establishment of a conventional system of
abbreviation; we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry
back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which
more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Egyptian
Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to
the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in
Greece.(18)  The high antiquity of the art of writing in Rome is
evinced otherwise by numerous and plain indications.  The existence
of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such
was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded
by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name,
and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the
occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal,
which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration
of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius
concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet
in the temple of Diana on the Aventine.  What he saw, however, was
probably a copy restored after the fire with the help of a Latin
exemplar, for it was not likely that engraving on metal was practised
as early as the time of the kings.  The charters of foundation of
the imperial period still refer to the charter founding this temple
as the oldest document of the kind in Rome and the common model for
all.  But even then they scratched (-exarare-, -scribere-, akin to
-scrobes- (19)) or painted (-linere-, thence -littera-) on leaves
(-folium-), inner bark (-liber-), or wooden tablets (-tabula-,
-album-), afterwards also on leather and linen.  The sacred records
of the Samnites as well as of the priesthood of Anagnia were
inscribed on linen rolls, and so were the oldest lists of the Roman
magistrates preserved in the temple of the goddess of recollection
(-Iuno moneta-) on the Capitol.  It is scarcely necessary to recall
further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle
(-scriptura-), in the mode of addressing the senate, "fathers and
enrolled" (-patres conscripti-), and in the great antiquity of
the books of oracles, the clan-registers, and the Alban and Roman
calendars.  When Roman tradition speaks of halls in the Forum,
where the boys and girls of quality were taught to read and write,
already in the earliest times of the republic, the statement may
be, but is not necessarily to be deemed, an invention.  We have
been deprived of information as to the early Roman history, not in
consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps
of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of
the historians of the succeeding age, which was called to investigate
the history, to work out the materials furnished by the archives,
and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest
epoch a delineation of motives and of characters, accounts of
battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing
these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have
refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer.


Results


The history of Italian writing thus furnishes in the first place
a confirmation of the weak and indirect influence exercised by the
Hellenic character over the Sabellians as compared with the more
western peoples.  The fact that the former received their alphabet
from the Etruscans and not from the Romans is probably to be
explained by supposing that they already possessed it before they
entered upon their migration along the ridge of the Apennines, and
that therefore the Sabines as well as Samnites carried it along
with them from the mother-land to their new abodes.  On the other
hand this history of writing contains a salutary warning against the
adoption of the hypothesis, originated by the later Roman culture
in its devotedness to Etruscan mysticism and antiquarian trifling,
and patiently repeated by modern and even very recent inquirers,
that Roman civilization derived its germ and its pith from Etruria.
If this were the truth, some trace of it ought to be more especially
apparent in this field; but on the contrary the germ of the Latin
art of writing was Greek, and its development was so national,
that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for
-"id:f".(20)  Indeed, where there is an appearance of borrowing,
as in the numeral signs, it is on the part of the Etruscans, who
took over from the Romans at least the sign for 50.


Corruption of Language and Writing


Lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian stocks
the development of the Greek alphabet primarily consisted in a
process of corruption.  Thus the -mediae- disappeared in the whole
of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost -"id:gamma" and
-"id:d", the Samnites -"id:d", and the Romans -"id:gamma"; and among
the latter -"id:d" also threatened to amalgamate with -"id:r".
In like manner among the Etruscans -"id:o" and -"id:u" early
coalesced, and even among the Latins we meet with a tendency to
the same corruption.  Nearly the converse occurred in the case of
the sibilants; for while the Etruscan retained the three signs
-"id:z", -"id:s", -"id:sh", and the Umbrian rejected the last but
developed two new sibilants in its room, the Samnite and the Faliscan
confined themselves like the Greek to -"id:s" and -"id:z", and the
Roman of later times even to -"id:s" alone.  It is plain that the
more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers
of the alphabet, men of culture and masters of two languages;
but after the national writing Became wholly detached from the
Hellenic mother-alphabet, the -mediae- and their -tenues- gradually
came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into
disorder--transpositions or rather destructions of sound, of which
the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek.  The
destruction of the forms of flexion and derivation went hand in
hand with this corruption of sounds.  The cause of this barbarization
was thus, upon the whole, simply the necessary process of
corruption which is continuously eating away every language, where
its progress is not stemmed by literature and reason; only in this
case indications of what has elsewhere passed away without leaving a
trace have been preserved in the writing of sounds.  The circumstance
that this barbarizing process affected the Etruscans more strongly
than any other of the Italian stocks adds to the numerous proofs
of their inferior capacity for culture.  The fact on the other hand
that, among the Italians, the Umbrians apparently were the most
affected by a similar corruption of language, the Romans less so,
the southern Sabellians least of all, probably finds its explanation,
at least in part, in the more lively intercourse maintained by the
former with the Etruscans, and by the latter with the Greeks.




Notes for Book I Chapter XIV



1.  I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

2.  I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

3.  I. XII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

4.  I. II. Agriculture

5.  I. XII. Priests

6.  Originally both the -actus-, "riving," and its still more
frequently occurring duplicate, the -jugerum-, "yoking," were,
like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of
labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's
work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially
in Italy by the ploughman's rest at noon.

7.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

8.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

9.  From the same cause all the festival-days are odd, as well those
recurring every month (-kalendae- on the 1st.  -nonae- on the 5th
or 7th, -idus- on the 13th or 15th), as also, with but two exceptions,
those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (xii. Oldest Table
Of Roman Festivals).  This is carried so far, that in the case of
festivals of several days the intervening even days were dropped
out, and so, for example, that of Carmentis was celebrated on Jan.
11, 15, that of the Grove-festival (-Lucaria-) on July 19, 21, and
that of the Ghosts-festival on May 9, 11, and 13.

10.  I. XIV. Decimal System

11.  The history of the alphabet among the Hellenes turns essentially
on the fact that--assuming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters,
that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by
the addition of the -"id:u" --proposals of very various kinds were
made to supplement and improve it, and each of these proposals has
a history of its own.  The most important of these, which it is
interesting to keep in view as bearing on the history of Italian
writing, are the following:--I. The introduction of special signs
for the sounds --"id:xi" --"id:phi" --"id:chi".  This proposal
is so old that all the Greek alphabets--with the single exception
of that of the islands Thera, Melos, and Crete--and all alphabets
derived from the Greek without exception, exhibit its influence.
At first probably the aim was to append the signs --"id:CHI"
= --"id:xi iota", --"id:PHI" = --"id:phi iota", and --"id:PSI"=
--"id:chi iota" to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it
was adopted on the mainland of Hellas--with the exception of Athens
and Corinth--and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks.  The
Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of
the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear,
when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the
sound --"id:xi iota" the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet
--"id:XI" (Samech); accordingly of the three new signs they adopted
the --"id:PHI" for --"id:phi iota", but employed the --"id:CHI"
not for --"id:xi iota", but for --"id:chi iota".  The third sign
originally invented for --"id:chi iota" was probably allowed in
most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was
retained, but received the value of --"id:psi iota".  The mode of
writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in
its case not merely the --"id:psi iota", but the --"id:xi iota" also,
was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to
be written as before.--II.  Equally early, if not still earlier,
an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily
occur between the forms for --"id:iota S" and for --"id:s E"; for
all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to
distinguish them otherwise and more precisely.  Already in very
early times two such proposals of change must have been made,
each of which found a field for its diffusion.  In the one case
they employed for the sibilant--for which the Phoenician alphabet
furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( --"id:/\/\") for --"id:sh" and
the eighteenth (--"id:E") for --"id:s" --not the latter, which was
in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier
times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and
Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans.  In the other case they
substituted for the sign of --"id:i" the simple stroke --"id:I",
which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became
at least so far general that the broken --"id:iota S" everywhere
disappeared, although individual communities retained the --"id:s"
in the form --"id:/\/\" alongside of the --"I".--III.  Of later
date is the substitution of --"id:\/" for --"id:/\" (--"id:lambda")
which might readily be confounded with --"id:GAMMA gamma".  This we
meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities
dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving
to the --"id:gamma" the semicircular form --"id:C" instead of the
hook-shape.--IV.  The forms for --"id:p" --"id:P (with broken-loop)"
and --"id:r" --"id:P", likewise very liable to be confounded, were
distinguished by transforming the latter into --"id:R"; which more
recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans,
the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other
hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna
Graecia and Sicily.  Still the older form of the --"id:r" --"id:P"
did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older
form of the --"id:l"; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to
be placed later.--V.  The differentiating of the long and short -e
and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined
to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.

All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a
historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them
arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter
took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development.
The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte
des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on
the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has
also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the
Hellenes and Italians--establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly
the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet--is affected
by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too
great stress on a single one of these proposals.  If systems are
here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into
two classes according to the value of the --"id:X" as --"id:zeta"
or as --"id:chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet
of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this
latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the
later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier
times.  In dealing, however, with the different proposals for
the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed
an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and
another there; and it is just in this respect that the history of
the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular
groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft
and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity.  As to Italy
in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable
contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic
and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian
Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained,
in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which
coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such
as the --"id:C" --"id:gamma" alongside of the --"id:\/" --"id:l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly
from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the
Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their
alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the
Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of
the --"id:r".  For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet
above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth
was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried
out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the
differentiation of --"id:p" and --"id:r" had not yet taken place
when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun
when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do
not at all know the form -"id:R" for -"id:r", whereas among the
Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel
vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.

12.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

13.  That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems
not doubtful; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with
elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi
vase.  The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the
latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does
only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards
in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong;
moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position
have any other value than that of the -f, which was in fact the last
letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in
a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its
model.  It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent
from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise
so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this
may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet
first reached Etruria.  Caprice and accident have at all times had
a share in determining whether a sign becoming superfluous shall
be retained or dropped from the alphabet; thus the Attic alphabet
lost the eighteenth Phoenician sign, but retained the others which
had disappeared from the -u.

14.  The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light
(Mitth. der rom. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible
monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older
form of the -"id:m"; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal
(published by Dressel in the Annali dell Instituto, 1880) shows
the older form of the -"id:r".

15.  At this period we shall have to place that recorded form of the
Twelve Tables, which subsequently lay before the Roman philologues,
and of which we possess fragments.  Beyond doubt the code was
at its very origin committed to writing; but that those scholars
themselves referred their text not to the original exemplar, but to
an official document written down after the Gallic conflagration,
is proved by the story of the Tables having undergone reproduction
at that time.  This enables us easily to explain how their text by
no means exhibited the oldest orthography, which was not unknown to
them; even apart from the consideration that in the case of such
a written document, employed, moreover, for the purpose of being
committed to memory by the young, a philologically exact transmission
cannot possibly be assumed.

16.  This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which
has been mentioned at xiv, note 14.  On the other hand even on the
Ficoroni cista -"id:C" has the later form of -"id:K".

17.  Thus -"id:C" represents -Gaius-; -"id:CN" -Gnaeus-; while
-"id:K" stands for -Kaeso-.  With the more recent abbreviations of
course this is not the case; in these -"id:gamma" is represented
not by -"id:C", but by -"id:G" (-GAL- -Galeria-), --"id:kappa", as
a rule, by -"id:C" (-C- -centum- -COS- -consul; -COL -Collina-), or
before -"id:a" by -"id:K" (-KAR- -karmetalia-; -MERK- -merkatus-).
For they expressed for a time the sound --k before the vowels -e
-i -o and before all consonants by -"id:C", before -a on the other
hand by -"id:K", before -u by the old sign of the koppa -"id:Q".

18.  If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though
of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have
them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns
for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction
of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of
intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the
post-Homeric period.

19.  Just as the old Saxon -writan- signifies properly to tear,
thence to write.

20.  The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign
corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been
solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv. Developments Of Alphabets
in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the
same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian
colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed.  For in a Boeotian
inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word
-fhekadamoe-(Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.)
the same combination of sound, and an aspirated v might certainly
approximate in sound to the Latin -f.

20.  -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21.  When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him.  Comp, above, XIV.  Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

23.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

24.  I. XII. Pontifices




Chapter XV

Art



Artistic Endowment of the Italians


Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody.  While
in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations
have received a pre-eminent endowment of poetic gifts.  The Italian
nation, however, was not and is not one of these.  The Italian is
deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize
what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which
form the very essence of poetic art.  His acuteness of perception
and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in
the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio,
in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented
in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in
the lower comedy and in farce.  Italian soil gave birth in ancient
times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock-heroic
poetry.  In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other nation
equalled or equals the Italians.  But in the more perfect kinds of
art they have hardly advanced beyond dexterity of execution, and
no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine
drama.  The very highest literary works that have been successfully
produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and historical
treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and
Colletta, are pervaded by a passion more rhetorical than spontaneous.
Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, really creative
talent has been far less conspicuous than the accomplishment which
speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and enthrones in
the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering
idol.  The field of the inward in art--so far as we may in the case
of art distinguish an inward and an outward at all--is not that
which has fallen to the Italian as his special province; the power
of beauty, to have its full effect upon him, must be placed not
ideally before his mind, but sensuously before his eyes.  Accordingly
he is thoroughly at home in architecture, painting, and sculpture;
in these he was during the epoch of ancient culture the best disciple
of the Hellenes, and in modern times he has become the master of
all nations.


Dance, Music, and Song in Latium


From the defectiveness of our traditional information it is
not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas among the
several groups of nations in Italy; and in particular we are no
longer in a position to speak of the poetry of Italy; we can only
speak of that of Latium.  Latin poetry, like that of every other
nation, began in the lyrical form, or, to speak more correctly,
sprang out of those primitive festal rejoicings, in which dance,
music, and song were still inseparably blended.  It is remarkable,
however, that in the most ancient religious usages dancing, and
next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than
song.  In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of
victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods
and the champions, was assigned to the dancers grave and merry.
The grave dancers were arranged in three groups of men, youths,
and boys, all clad in red tunics with copper belts, with swords
and short lances, the men being moreover furnished with helmets,
and generally in full armed attire.  The merry dancers were divided
into two companies--"the sheep" in sheep-skins with a party-coloured
over-garment, and "the goats" naked down to the waist, with a buck's
skin thrown over them.  In like manner the "leapers" (-salii-)
were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods,(1)
and dancers (-ludii-, -ludiones-) were indispensable in all public
processions, and particularly at funeral solemnities; so that
dancing became even in ancient times a common trade.  But, wherever
the dancers made their appearance, there appeared also the musicians
or--which was in the earliest times the same thing--the pipers.
They too were never wanting at a sacrifice, at a marriage, or at
a funeral; and by the side of the primitive public priesthood of
the "leapers" there was ranged, of equal antiquity although of far
inferior rank, the guild of the "pipers" (-collegium tibicinum-(2)),
whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their
ancient privilege--maintained even in spite of the strictness
of Roman police--of wandering through the streets at their annual
festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine.  While dancing thus
presents itself as an honourable function and music as one subordinate
but still necessary, so that public corporations were instituted
for both of them, poetry appears more as a matter incidental and,
in some measure, indifferent, whether it may have come into existence
on its own account or to serve as an accompaniment to the movements
of the dancers.


Religious Chants


The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the
leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest.  The
whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (-faunus-, from
-favere-) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had
the gift of listening to him, in rhythmically measured language
(-casmen-, afterwards -carmen-, from -canere-).  Of a kindred nature
to these soothsaying songs of inspired men and women (-vates-) were
the incantations properly so called, the formulae for conjuring
away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they
prevented rain and called down lightning or even enticed the seed
from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from
the outset, formulae of mere sounds appear side by side with formulae
of words.(3)  More firmly rooted in tradition and equally ancient
were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii
and other priesthoods; the only one of which that has come down to
us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars probably
composed to be sung in alternate parts, deserves a place here.

-Enos, Lases, iuvate!
Ne velue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores!
Satur fu, fere Mars! limen sali! sta! berber!
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos!
Enos, Marmar, iuvato!
Triumpe!-

Which may be thus interpreted:

To the gods:
-Nos, Lares, iuvate!
Ne veluem (= malam luem) ruem (= ruinam), Mamers,
   sinas incurrere in plures!
Satur esto, fere Mars!

To the individual brethren:
In limen insili! sta! verbera (limen?)!

To all the brethren:
Semones alterni advocate cunctos!

To the god:
Nos, Mamers, iuvato!

To the individual brethren:
Tripudia!-(4)

The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian
songs, which were regarded even by the philologues of the Augustan
age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related
to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the
Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps
compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and
contents, with the Indian Vedas.


Panegyrics and Lampoons


Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later epoch.  We might
infer from the national character of the Italians that satirical
songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their
prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of
police directed against them.  But the panegyrical chants became
of more importance.  When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier
was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accompanied by a
piper, sang his dirge (-nenia-).  In like manner at banquets boys,
who according to the fashion of those days attended their fathers
even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in
praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply
reciting them without accompaniment (-assa voce canere-).  The custom
of men singing in succession at banquets was presumably borrowed
from the Greeks, and that not till a later age.  We know no further
particulars of these ancestral lays; but it is self-evident that
they must have attempted description and narration and thus have
developed, along with and out of the lyrical element, the features
of epic poetry.


The Masked Farce


Other elements of poetry were called into action in the primitive
popular carnival, the comic dance or -satura-,(5) which beyond
doubt reached back to a period anterior to the separation of the
stocks.  On such occasions song would never be wanting; and the
circumstances under which such pastimes were exhibited, chiefly
at public festivals and marriages, as well as the mainly practical
shape which they certainly assumed, naturally suggested that several
dancers, or sets of dancers, should take up reciprocal parts;
so that the singing thus came to be associated with a species of
acting, which of course was chiefly of a comical and often of a
licentious character.  In this way there arose not merely alternative
chants, such as afterwards went by the name of Fescennine songs, but
also the elements of a popular comedy--which were in this instance
planted in a soil admirably adapted for their growth, as an acute
sense of the outward and the comic, and a delight in gesticulation
and masquerade have ever been leading traits of Italian character.

No remains have been preserved of these -incunabula- of the Roman
epos and drama.  That the ancestral lays were traditional is
self-evident, and is abundantly demonstrated by the fact that they
were regularly recited by children; but even in the time of Cato
the Elder they had completely passed into oblivion.  The comedies
again, if it be allowable so to name them, were at this period and
long afterwards altogether improvised.  Consequently nothing of
this popular poetry and popular melody could be handed down but
the measure, the accompaniment of music and choral dancing, and
perhaps the masks.


Metre


Whether what we call metre existed in the earlier times is doubtful;
the litany of the Arval Brethren scarcely accommodates itself to
an outwardly fixed metrical system, and presents to us rather the
appearance of an animated recitation.  On the other hand we find in
subsequent times a very ancient rhythm, the so-called Saturnian(6)
or Faunian metre, which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be
conjectured to have arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin
popular poetry.  The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a
far later age, may give an idea of it:--


Quod re sua difeidens--aspere afleicta

Parens timens heic vovit--voto hoc soluto
___
Decuma facta poloucta--leibereis lubentis
                 ____          _____
Donu danunt__hercolei--maxsume--mereto
      _____
Semol te orant se voti--crebro con__demnes.

__--'__--'__--'__^/ __--'__--'__--'_^


That which, misfortune dreading--sharply to afflict him, An anxious
parent vowed here,--when his wish was granted, A sacred tenth for
banquet--gladly give his children to Hercules a tribute--most of
all deserving; And now they thee beseech, that--often thou wouldst
hear them.

Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly
sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in
such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly
marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took
up the verse at this point.  The Saturnian measure is, like every
other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity;
but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly
elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the
greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the
same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and
trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted
to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the
higher poetry.


Melody


The fundamental elements of the national music and choral dancing
in Latium, which must likewise have been established during this
period, are buried for us in oblivion; except that the Latin pipe
is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided
with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out
of the light thighbone of some animal.


Masks


Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters
of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called:
Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and
the wise Dossennus--masks which have been cleverly and strikingly
compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in
the Italian comedy of Pulcinello--already belonged to the earliest
Latin popular art.  That they did so cannot of course be strictly
proved; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case
of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek
drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first
establishment, as, moreover, those Atellane masks were of decidedly
Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as
the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart
from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper
position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with
the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting
those rudiments themselves.


Earliest Hellenic Influences


If our information respecting the earliest indigenous culture and
art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our
knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses
imparted in this respect to the Romans from without.  In a certain
sense we may include under this head their becoming acquainted with
foreign languages, particularly the Greek.  To this latter language, of
course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their
enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles;(7) but an acquaintance
with it must have been not at all uncommon in the case of merchants.
The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing,
closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek.(8)  The
culture of the ancient world, however, was not based either
on the knowledge of foreign languages or on elementary technical
accomplishments.  An influence more important than any thus imparted
was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the
fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the
Hellenes.  For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phoenicians
or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised an influence on
the Italians.  We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus of
the fine arts which can be referred to Carthage or Caere, and the
Phoenician and Etruscan forms of civilization may be in general
perhaps classed with those that are hybrid, and for that reason
not further productive.(9)  But the influence of Greece did not
fail to bear fruit.  The Greek seven-stringed lyre, the "strings"
(-fides-, from --sphidei--, gut; also -barbitus-, --barbitos--),
was not like the pipe indigenous in Latium, and was always regarded
there as an instrument of foreign origin; but the early period at
which it gained a footing is demonstrated partly by the barbarous
mutilation of its Greek name, partly by its being employed even in
ritual.(10)  That some of the legendary stores of the Greeks during
this period found their way into Latium, is shown by the ready
reception of Greek works of sculpture with their representations
based so thoroughly upon the poetical treasures of the nation; and
the old Latin barbarous conversions of Persephone into Prosepna,
Bellerophontes into Melerpanta, Kyklops into Cocles, Laomedon into
Alumentus, Ganymedes into Catamitus, Neilos into Melus, Semele into
Stimula, enable us to perceive at how remote a period such stories
had been heard and repeated by the Latins.  Lastly and especially,
the Roman chief festival or festival of the city (-ludi maximi-,
-Romani-) must in all probability have owed, if not its origin,
at any rate its later arrangements to Greek influence.  It was an
extraordinary thanksgiving festival celebrated in honour of the
Capitoline Jupiter and the gods dwelling along with him, ordinarily
in pursuance of a vow made by the general before battle, and
therefore usually observed on the return home of the burgess-force
in autumn.  A festal procession proceeded toward the Circus staked
off between the Palatine and Aventine, and furnished with an arena
and places for spectators; in front the whole boys of Rome, arranged
according to the divisions of the burgess-force, on horseback and
on foot; then the champions and the groups of dancers which we have
described above, each with their own music; thereafter the servants
of the gods with vessels of frankincense and other sacred utensils;
lastly the biers with the images of the gods themselves.  The
spectacle itself was the counterpart of war as it was waged in
primitive times, a contest on chariots, on horseback, and on foot.
First there ran the war-chariots, each of which carried in Homeric
fashion a charioteer and a combatant; then the combatants who had
leaped off; then the horsemen, each of whom appeared after the Roman
style of fighting with a horse which he rode and another led by the
hand (-desultor-); lastly, the champions on foot, naked to the girdle
round their loins, measured their powers in racing, wrestling, and
boxing.  In each species of contest there was but one competition,
and that between not more than two competitors.  A chaplet rewarded
the victor, and the honour in which the simple branch which formed
the wreath was held is shown by the law permitting it to be laid
on the bier of the victor when he died.  The festival thus lasted
only one day, and the competitions probably still left sufficient
time on that day for the carnival proper, at which the groups of
dancers may have displayed their art and above all exhibited their
farces; and doubtless other representations also, such as competitions
in juvenile horsemanship, found a place.(11)  The honours won in
real war also played their part in this festival; the brave warrior
exhibited on this day the equipments of the antagonist whom he had
slain, and was decorated with a chaplet by the grateful community
just as was the victor in the competition.

Such was the nature of the Roman festival of victory or city-festival;
and the other public festivities of Rome may be conceived to
have been of a similar character, although less ample in point of
resources.  At the celebration of a public funeral dancers regularly
bore a part, and along with them, if there was to be any further
exhibition, horse-racers; in that case the burgesses were specially
invited beforehand to the funeral by the public crier.

But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners
and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the
Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental
idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike
sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the
Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from
the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing
the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which
in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet,
and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the
charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing
the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with
the general national festival.  This agreement cannot have been
accidental, but must have been either a remnant of the primitive
connection between the peoples, or a result of the earliest
international intercourse; and the probabilities preponderate in
favour of the latter hypothesis.  The city-festival, in the form
in which we are acquainted with it, was not one of the oldest
institutions of Rome, for the Circus itself was only laid out in the
later regal period;(12) and just as the reform of the constitution
then took place under Greek influence,(13) the city-festival may
have been at the same time so far transformed as to combine Greek
races with, and eventually to a certain extent to substitute them
for, an older mode of amusement--the "leap" (-triumpus-,(14)), and
possibly swinging, which was a primitive Italian custom and long
continued in use at the festival on the Alban mount.  Moreover,
while there is some trace of the use of the war-chariot in actual
warfare in Hellas, no such trace exists in Latium.  Lastly, the
Greek term --stadion-- (Doric --spadion--) was at a very early period
transferred to the Latin language, retaining its signification,
as -spatium-; and there exists even an express statement that the
Romans derived their horse and chariot races from the people of
Thurii, although, it is true, another account derives them from
Etruria.  It thus appears that, in addition to the impulses imparted
by the Hellenes in music and poetry, the Romans were indebted to
them for the fruitful idea of gymnastic competitions.


Character of Poetry and of Education in Latium


Thus there not only existed in Latium the same fundamental elements
out of which Hellenic culture and art grew, but Hellenic culture
and art themselves exercised a powerful influence over Latium in
very early times.  Not only did the Latins possess the elements
of gymnastic training, in so far as the Roman boy learned like
every farmer's son to manage horses and waggon and to handle the
hunting-spear, and as in Rome every burgess was at the same time
a soldier; but the art of dancing was from the first an object
of public care, and a powerful impulse was further given to such
culture at an early period by the introduction of the Hellenic
games.  The lyrical poetry and tragedy of Hellas grew out of songs
similar to the festal lays of Rome; the ancestral lay contained the
germs of epos, the masked farce the germs of comedy; and in this
field also Grecian influences were not wanting.

In such circumstances it is the more remarkable that these germs
either did not spring up at all, or were soon arrested in their
growth.  The bodily training of the Latin youth continued to be
solid and substantial, but far removed from the idea of artistic
culture for the body, such as was the aim of Hellenic gymnastics.
The public games of the Hellenes when introduced into Italy, changed
not so much their formal rules as their essential character.  While
they were intended to be competitions of burgesses and beyond doubt
were so at first in Rome, they became contests of professional
riders and professional boxers, and, while the proof of free and
Hellenic descent formed the first condition for participating in
the Greek festal games, those of Rome soon passed into the hands
of freedmen and foreigners and even of persons not free at all.
Consequently the circle of fellow-competitors became converted into
a public of spectators, and the chaplet of the victorious champion,
which has been with justice called the badge of Hellas, was afterwards
hardly ever mentioned in Latium.

A similar fate befel poetry and her sisters.  The Greeks and Germans
alone possess a fountain of song that wells up spontaneously; from
the golden vase of the Muses only a few drops have fallen on the
green soil of Italy.  There was no formation of legend in the strict
sense there.  The Italian gods were abstractions and remained such;
they never became elevated into or, as some may prefer to say,
obscured under, a true personal shape.  In like manner men, even the
greatest and noblest, remained in the view of the Italian without
exception mortal, and were not, as in the longing recollection
and affectionately cherished tradition of Greece, elevated in the
conception of the multitude into god-like heroes.  But above all
no development of national poetry took place in Latium.  It is
the deepest and noblest effect of the fine arts and above all of
poetry, that they break down the barriers of civil communities and
create out of tribes a nation and out of the nations a world.  As
in the present day by means of our cosmopolitan literature the
distinctions of civilized nations are done away, so Greek poetic
art transformed the narrow and egoistic sense of tribal relationship
into the consciousness of Hellenic nationality, and this again
into the consciousness of a common humanity.  But in Latium nothing
similar occurred.  There might be poets in Alba and in Rome, but there
arose no Latin epos, nor even--what were still more conceivable--a
catechism for the Latin farmer of a kind similar to the "Works and
Days" of Hesiod.  The Latin federal festival might well have become
a national festival of the fine arts, like the Olympian and Isthmian
games of the Greeks.  A cycle of legends might well have gathered
around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of
Ilion, and every community and every noble clan of Latium might
have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own
origin.  But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained
without national poetry or art.

The inference which of necessity follows from these facts, that the
development of the fine arts in Latium was rather a shrivelling up
than an expanding into bloom, is confirmed in a manner even now not
to be mistaken by tradition.  The beginnings of poetry everywhere,
perhaps, belong rather to women than to men; the spell of incantation
and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former,
and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae
and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived
as feminine.  But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved
the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses.
In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin
language had no designation for the poet.(15)  The power of song
emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly
arrested in its growth.  The exercise of the fine arts was there
early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated
or unincorporated tradesmen.  We have already mentioned that funeral
chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys; the religious
litanies also were chiefly executed by children.  The musicians formed
an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (-praeficae-)
unincorporated, trades.  While dancing, music, and singing remained
constantly in Greece--as they were originally also in Latium--reputable
employments redounding to the honour of the burgess and of the
community to which he belonged, in Latium the better portion of the
burgesses drew more and more aloof from these vain arts, and that
the more decidedly, in proportion as art came to be more publicly
exhibited and more thoroughly penetrated by the quickening impulses
derived from other lands.  The use of the native pipe was sanctioned,
but the lyre remained despised; and while the national amusement of
masks was allowed, the foreign amusements of the -palaestra- were
not only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful.  While
the fine arts in Greece became more and more the common property of
the Hellenes individually and collectively and thereby became the
means of developing a universal culture, they gradually disappeared
in Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people; and, as
they degenerated into utterly insignificant handicrafts, the idea
of a general national culture to be communicated to youth never
suggested itself at all.  The education of youth remained entirely
confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity.  The boy
never left his father's side, and accompanied him not only to the
field with the plough and the sickle, but also to the house of
a friend or to the council-hall, when his father was invited as a
guest or summoned to the senate.  This domestic education was well
adapted to preserve man wholly for the household and wholly for
the state.  The permanent intercommunion of life between father
and son, and the mutual reverence felt by adolescence for ripened
manhood and by the mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the
root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political traditions,
of the closeness of the family bond, and in general of the grave
earnestness (-gravitas-) and character of moral worth in Roman life.
This mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions
of homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are as simple as
they are profound.  But amidst the admiration which it awakens we
may not overlook the fact that it could only be carried out, and
was only carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture
and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous
gifts of the Muses.


Dance, Music, and Song among the Sabellians and Etruscans


Regarding the development of the fine arts among the Etruscans
and Sabellians our knowledge is little better than none.(16)  We
can only notice the fact that in Etruria the dancers (-histri-,
-histriones-) and the pipe-players (-subulones-) early made a trade
of their art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited
themselves in public not only at home, but also in Rome for small
remuneration and less honour.  It is a circumstance more remarkable
that at the Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which
the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal priest, games
were given like those of the Roman city-festival; we are, however,
no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests,
how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in
attaining a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual
communities.  On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in
Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation of learned
lumber, particularly of a theological and astrological nature, by
virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian
dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans divided with the Jews,
Chaldeans, and Egyptians the honour of being admired as primitive
sources of divine wisdom.  We know still less, if possible, of
Sabellian art; but that of course by no means warrants the inference
that it was inferior to that of the neighbouring stocks.  On the
contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of
the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic
gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the
Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation
of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted
and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius,
Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas
Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except
the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart-withered
and affected(17) court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true
ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry-smitten, youth.


Earliest Italian Architecture


The elements of architecture were, as has been already indicated,
a primitive common possession of the stocks.  The dwelling-house
constitutes the first attempt of structural art; and it was the
same among Greeks and Italians.  Built of wood, and covered with a
pointed roof of straw or shingles it formed a square dwelling-chamber,
which let out the smoke and let in the light by an opening in the
roof corresponding with a hole for carrying off the rain in the
ground (-cavum aedium-).  Under this "black roof" (-atrium-) the
meals were prepared and consumed; there the household gods were
worshipped, and the marriage bed and the bier were set out; there
the husband received his guests, and the wife sat spinning amid the
circle of her maidens.  The house had no porch, unless we take as
such the uncovered space between the house door and the street,
which obtained its name -vestibulum-, i. e.  dressing-place, from
the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about
within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around
them when they went abroad.  There was, moreover, no division of
apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided
around the dwelling-room; and still less were there stairs, or
stories placed one above another.


Earliest Hellenic Influence


Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose
o ut of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this
field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very
powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts
as possibly had preceded it.  The very oldest Italian architecture
with which we are acquainted is not much less under the influence
of that of Greece than the architecture of the Augustan age.  The
primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the oldest one
also of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly
like the --thesauroi--of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with
courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping,
and closed by a large stone cover.  A very ancient building at
the city wall of Tusculum was roofed in the same way, and so was
originally the well-house (-tullianum-) at the foot of the Capitol,
till the top was pulled down to make room for another building.
The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in
Arpinum and in Mycenae.  The tunnel which drains the Alban lake(18)
presents the greatest resemblance to that of lake Copais.  What are
called Cyclopean ring-walls frequently occur in Italy, especially
in Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and Sabina, and decidedly belong in
point of design to the most ancient buildings of Italy, although
the greater portion of those now extant were probably not executed
till a much later age, several of them certainly not till the
seventh century of the city.  They are, just like those of Greece,
sometimes quite roughly formed of large unwrought blocks of rock
with smaller stones inserted between them, sometimes disposed
in square horizontal courses,(19) sometimes composed of polygonal
dressed blocks fitting into each other.  The selection of one or
other of these systems was doubtless ordinarily determined by the
material, and accordingly the polygonal masonry does not occur in
Rome, where in the most ancient times tufo alone was employed for
building.  The resemblance in the case of the two former and simpler
styles may perhaps be traceable to the similarity of the materials
employed and of the object in view in building; but it can hardly
be deemed accidental that the artistic polygonal wall-masonry, and
the gate with the path leading up to it universally bending to the
left and so exposing the unshielded right side of the assailant to
the defenders, belong to the Italian fortresses as well as to the
Greek.  The facts are significant that in that portion of Italy
which was not reduced to subjection by the Hellenes but yet was
in lively intercourse with them, the true polygonal masonry was at
home, and it is found in Etruria only at Pyrgi and at the towns,
not very far distant from it, of Cosa and Saturnia; as the design
of the walls of Pyrgi, especially when we take into account the
significant name ("towers"), may just as certainly be ascribed to
the Greeks as that of the walls of Tiryns, in them most probably
there still stands before our eyes one of the models from which
the Italians learned how to build their walls.  The temple in fine,
which in the period of the empire was called the Tuscanic and was
regarded as a kind of style co-ordinate with the various Greek
temple-structures, not only generally resembled the Greek temple
in being an enclosed space (-cello-) usually quadrangular, over
which walls and columns raised aloft a sloping roof, but was also
in details, especially in the column itself and its architectural
features, thoroughly dependent on the Greek system.  It is in accordance
with all these facts probable, as it is credible of itself, that
Italian architecture previous to its contact with the Hellenes was
confined to wooden huts, abattis, and mounds of earth and stones,
and that construction in stone was only adopted in consequence of
the example and the better tools of the Greeks.  It is scarcely
to be doubted that the Italians first learned from them the use of
iron, and derived from them the preparation of mortar (-cal[e]x-,
-calecare-, from --chaliz--), the machine (-machina-, --meichanei--),
the measuring-rod (-groma-, a corruption from --gnomon--, --gnoma--),
and the artificial latticework (-clathri-, --kleithron--).  Accordingly
we can scarcely speak of an architecture peculiarly Italian.  Yet
in the woodwork of the Italian dwelling-house--alongside of
alterations produced by Greek influence--various peculiarities may
have been retained or even for the first time developed, and these
again may have exercised a reflex influence on the building of
the Italian temples.  The architectural development of the house
proceeded in Italy from the Etruscans.  The Latin and even the
Sabellian still adhered to the hereditary wooden hut and to the
good old custom of assigning to the god or spirit not a consecrated
dwelling, but only a consecrated space, while the Etruscan had
already begun artistically to transform his dwelling-house, and to
erect after the model of the dwelling-house of man a temple also
for the god and a sepulchral chamber for the spirit.  That the
advance to such luxurious structures in Latium first took place
under Etruscan influence, is proved by the designation of the
oldest style of temple architecture and of the oldest style of house
architecture respectively as Tuscanic.(20) As concerns the character
of this transference, the Grecian temple probably imitated the
general outlines of the tent or dwelling-house; but it was essentially
built of hewn stone and covered with tiles, and the nature of the
stone and the baked clay suggested to the Greek the laws of necessity
and beauty.  The Etruscan on the other hand remained a stranger to
the strict Greek distinction between the dwelling of man necessarily
erected of wood and the dwelling of the gods necessarily formed
of stone.  The peculiar characteristics of the Tuscan temple--the
outline approaching nearer to a square, the higher gable, the
greater breadth of the intervals between the columns, above all,
the increased inclination of the roof and the singular projection
of the roof-corbels beyond the supporting columns--all arose out
of the greater approximation of the temple to the dwelling-house,
and out of the peculiarities of wooden architecture.


Plastic Art in Italy


The plastic and delineative arts are more recent than architecture;
the house must be built before any attempt is made to decorate
gable and walls.  It is not probable that these arts really gained
a place in Italy during the regal period of Rome; it was only
in Etruria, where commerce and piracy early gave rise to a great
concentration of riches, that art or handicraft--if the term be
preferred--obtained a footing in the earliest times.  Greek art,
when it acted on Etruria, was still, as its copy shows, at a very
primitive stage, and the Etruscans may have learned from the Greeks
the art of working in clay and metal at a period not much later than
that at which they borrowed from them the alphabet.  The silver
coins of Populonia, almost the only works that can be with any
precision assigned to this period, give no very high idea of Etruscan
artistic skill as it then stood; yet the best of the Etruscan works
in bronze, to which the later critics of art assigned so high a
place, may have belonged to this primitive age; and the Etruscan
terra-cottas also cannot have been altogether despicable, for the
oldest works in baked clay placed in the Roman temples--the statue
of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the four-horse chariot on the roof
of his temple--were executed in Veii, and the large ornaments of a
similar kind placed on the roofs of temples passed generally among
the later Romans under the name of "Tuscanic works."

On the other hand, among the Italians--not among the Sabellian
stocks merely, but even among the Latins--native sculpture and
design were at this period only coming into existence.  The most
considerable works of art appear to have been executed abroad.
We have just mentioned the statues of clay alleged to have been
executed in Veii; and very recent excavations have shown that works
in bronze made in Etruria, and furnished with Etruscan inscriptions,
circulated in Praeneste at least, if not generally throughout
Latium.  The statue of Diana in the Romano-Latin federal temple on
the Aventine, which was considered the oldest statue of a divinity
in Rome,(21) exactly resembled the Massiliot statue of the Ephesian
Artemis, and was perhaps manufactured in Velia or Massilia.  The
guilds, which from ancient times existed in Rome, of potters,
coppersmiths, and goldsmiths,(22) are almost the only proofs of
the existence of native sculpture and design there; respecting the
position of their art it is no longer possible to gain any clear
idea.

Artistic Relations and Endowments of the Etruscans and Italians

If we endeavour to obtain historical results from the archives of
the tradition and practice of primitive art, it is in the first place
manifest that Italian art, like the Italian measures and Italian
writing, developed itself not under Phoenician, but exclusively
under Hellenic influence.  There is not a single one of the aspects
of Italian art which has not found its definite model in the art
of ancient Greece; and, so far, the legend is fully warranted which
traces the manufacture of painted clay figures, beyond doubt the
most ancient form of art in Italy, to the three Greek artists,
the "moulder," "fitter," and "draughtsman," Eucheir, Diopos, and
Eugrammos, although it is more than doubtful whether this art came
directly from Corinth or came directly to Tarquinii.  There is
as little trace of any immediate imitation of oriental models as
there is of an independently-developed form of art.  The Etruscan
lapidaries adhered to the form of the beetle or -scarabaeus-, which
was originally Egyptian; but --scarabaei-- were also used as models
for carving in Greece in very early times (e. g. such a beetle-stone,
with a very ancient Greek inscription, has been found in Aegina),
and therefore they may very well have come to the Etruscans through
the Greeks.  The Italians may have bought from the Phoenician; they
learned only from the Greek.

To the further question, from what Greek stock the Etruscans in
the first instance received their art-models, a categorical answer
cannot be given; yet relations of a remarkable kind subsist between
the Etruscan and the oldest Attic art.  The three forms of art, which
were practised in Etruria at least in after times very extensively,
but in Greece only to an extent very limited, tomb-painting,
mirror-designing, and graving on stone, have been hitherto met with
on Grecian soil only in Athens and Aegina.  The Tuscan temple does
not correspond exactly either to the Doric or to the Ionic; but in
the more important points of distinction, in the course of columns
carried round the -cella-, as well as in the placing of a separate
pedestal under each particular column, the Etruscan style follows
the more recent Ionic; and it is this same Iono-Attic style of
building still pervaded by a Doric element, which in its general
design stands nearest of all the Greek styles to the Tuscan.  In
the case of Latium there is an almost total absence of any certain
traces of intercourse bearing on the history of art.  If it was--as
is indeed almost self-evident--the general relations of traffic
and intercourse that determined also the introduction of models
in art, it may be assumed with certainty that the Campanian and
Sicilian Hellenes were the instructors of Latium in art, as in
the alphabet; and the analogy between the Aventine Diana and the
Ephesian Artemis is at least not inconsistent with such an hypothesis.
Of course the older Etruscan art also served as a model for Latium.
As to the Sabellian tribes, if Greek architectural and plastic art
reached them at all, it must, like the Greek alphabet, have come
to them only through the medium of the more western Italian stocks.

If, in conclusion, we are to form a judgment respecting the artistic
endowments of the different Italian nations, we already at this
stage perceive--what becomes indeed far more obvious in the later
stages of the history of art--that while the Etruscans attained to
the practice of art at an earlier period and produced more massive
and rich workmanship, their works are inferior to those of the
Latins and Sabellians in appropriateness and utility no less than
in spirit and beauty.  This certainly is apparent, in the case of
our present epoch, only in architecture.  The polygonal wall-masonry,
as appropriate to its object as it was beautiful, was frequent in
Latium and in the inland country behind it; while in Etruria it was
rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal
blocks.  Even in the religious prominence--remarkable also as
respects the history of art--assigned to the arch(23) and to the
bridge(24) in Latium, we may be allowed to perceive, as it were,
an anticipation of the future aqueducts and consular highways of
Rome.  On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same
time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks: for
while they transferred the laws established for building in stone
to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of
adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals
between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language
of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy
appearance."  The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek art
but very little that was congenial to their thoroughly realistic
tastes; but what they did adopt they appropriated truly and
heartily as their own, and in the development of the polygonal
wall-architecture perhaps excelled their instructors.  Etruscan art
is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired
and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an
evidence even of genial receptivity.  As scholars have long since
desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the
Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their
minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place
in the history of Italian art.




Notes for Book I Chapter XV



1.  I. XII.  Priests

2.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

3.  Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160) gives as potent against sprains
the formula: -hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodannaustra-,
which was presumably quite as obscure to its inventor as it is to
us.  Of course, along with these there were also formulae of words;
e. g.  it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some
other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching
the earth at the same time and spitting:--"I think of thee, mend
my feet.  Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell"
(-terra pestem teneto, salus hie maneto-.  Varro de R. R. i. 2,
27).

4.  Each of the first five lines was repeated thrice, and the call
at the close five times.  Various  points in the interpretation are
uncertain, particularly as respects the third line.  --The three
inscriptions of the clay vase from the Quirinal (p. 277, note)
run thus: -iove sat deiuosqoi med mitat nei ted endo gosmis uirgo
sied--asted noisi ope toilesiai pakariuois--duenos med faked
(=bonus me fecit) enmanom einom dze noine (probably=die noni) med
malo statod.-Only individual words admit of being understood with
certainty; it is especially noteworthy that forms, which we have
hitherto known only as Umbrian and Oscan, like the adjective -pacer-
and the particle -einom with the value of -et, here probably meet
us withal as old-Latin.

5.  I. II. Art

6.  The name  probably  denotes  nothing but "the chant-measure,"
inasmuch as the -satura- was originally the chant sung at the
carnival (II. Art).  The god of sowing, -Saeturnus- or -Saiturnus-,
afterwards -Saturnus-, received his name from the same root; his
feast, the Saturnalia, was certainly a sort of carnival, and it is
possible that the farces were originally exhibited chiefly at this
feast.  But there are no proofs of a relation between the Satura
and the Saturnalia, and it may be presumed that the immediate
association of the -versus saturnius- with the god Saturn, and the
lengthening of the first syllable in connection with that view,
belong only to later times.

7.  I. XII. Foreign Worships

8.  I. XIV. Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy

9.  The statement that "formerly the Roman boys were trained in
Etruscan culture, as they were in later times in Greek" (Liv. ix.
36), is quite irreconcilable with the original character of the
Roman training of youth, and it is not easy to see what the Roman
boys could have learned in Etruria.  Even the most zealous modern
partizans of Tages-worship will not maintain that the study of the
Etruscan language played such a part in Rome then as the learning
of French does now with us; that a non-Etruscan should understand
anything of the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- was considered,
even by those who availed themselves of that art, to be a disgrace
or rather an impossibility (Muller, Etr. ii. 4).  Perhaps the
statement was concocted by the Etruscizing antiquaries of the last
age of the republic out of stories of the older annals, aiming
at a causal explanation of facts, such as that which makes Mucius
Scaevola learn Etruscan when a child for the sake of his conversation
with Porsena (Dionysius, v. 28; Plutarch, Poplicola, 17; comp.
Dionysius, iii. 70).  But there was at any rate an epoch when the
dominion of Rome over Italy demanded a certain knowledge of the
language of the country on the part of Romans of rank.

10.  The employment of the lyre in ritual is attested by Cicero
de Orat. iii. 51, 197; Tusc. iv. 2, 4; Dionysius, vii. 72; Appian,
Pun.  66; and the inscription in Orelli, 2448, comp. 1803.  It
was likewise used at the -neniae- (Varro ap. Nonium, v. -nenia-
and -praeficae-).  But playing on the lyre remained none the less
unbecoming (Scipio ap.  Macrob. Sat. ii. 10, et al.).  The prohibition
of music in 639 exempted only the "Latin player on the pipe along
with the singer," not the player on the lyre, and the guests at meals
sang only to the pipe (Cato in Cic. Tusc. i. 2, 3; iv. 2, 3; Varro
ap. Nonium, v. -assa voce-; Horace, Carm. iv. 15, 30).  Quintilian,
who asserts the reverse (Inst. i. 10, 20), has inaccurately
transferred to private banquets what Cicero (de Orat. iii. 51)
states in reference to the feasts of the gods.

11.  The city festival can have only lasted at first for a single
day, for in the sixth century it still consisted of four days of
scenic and one day of Circensian sports (Ritschl, Parerga, i. 313)
and it is well known that the scenic amusements were only a subsequent
addition.  That in each kind of contest there was originally
only one competition, follows from Livy, xliv. 9; the running
of five-and-twenty pairs of chariots in succession on one day was
a subsequent innovation (Varro ap. Serv. Georg. iii. 18).  That
only two chariots--and likewise beyond doubt only two horsemen
and two wrestlers--strove for the prize, may be inferred from the
circumstance, that at all periods in the Roman chariot-races only
as many chariots competed as there were so-called factions; and of
these there were originally only two, the white and the red.  The
horsemanship-competition of patrician youths which belonged to
the Circensian games, the so-called Troia, was, as is well known,
revived by Caesar; beyond doubt it was connected with the cavalcade
of the boy-militia, which Dionysius mentions (vii. 72).

12.  I. VII. Servian Wall

13.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

14.  I. II. Religion

15.  -Vates- probably denoted in the first instance the "leader of
the singing" (for so the -vates- of the Salii must be understood)
and thereafter in its older usage approximated to the Greek
--propheiteis--; it was a word be longing to religious ritual,
and even when subsequently used of the poet, always retained the
accessory idea of a divinely-inspired singer--the priest of the
Muses.

16.  We shall show in due time that the Atellanae and Fescenninae
belonged not to Campanian and Etruscan, but to Latin art.

17.  Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the -calamistri
Maecenatis-.

18.  I. III. Alba

19.  Of this character were the Servian walls.  They consisted
partly of a strengthening of the hill-slopes by facing them with
lining-walls as much as 4 metres thick, partly--in the intervals,
above all on the Viminal and Quirinal, where from the Esquiline
to the Colline gate there was an absence of natural defence--of an
earthen mound, which was finished off on the outside by a similar
lining-wall.  On these lining-walls rested the breastwork.  A trench,
according to trustworthy statements of the ancients 30 feet deep
and 100 feet broad, stretched along in front of the wall, for
which the earth was taken from this same trench.--The breastwork
has nowhere been preserved; of the lining-walls extensive remains
have recently been brought to light.  The blocks of tufo composing
them are hewn in longish rectangles, on an average of 60 centimetres
(= 2 Roman feet) in height and breadth, while the length varies
from 70 centimetres to 3 metres, and they are, without application
of mortar, laid together in several rows, alternately with the long
and with the narrow side outermost.

The portion of the Servian wall near the Viminal gate, discovered in
the year 1862 at the Villa Negroni, rests on a foundation of huge
blocks of tufo of 3 to 4 metres in height and breadth, on which was
then raised the outer wall from blocks of the same material and of
the same size as those elsewhere employed in the wall.  The earthen
rampart piled up behind appears to have had on the upper surface
a breadth extending about 13 metres or fully 40 Roman feet, and
the whole wall-defence, including the outer wall of freestone, to
have had a breadth of as much as 15 metres or 50 Roman feet.  The
portions formed of peperino blocks, which are bound with iron
clamps, have only been added in connection with subsequent labours
of repair.--Essentially similar to the Servian walls are those
discovered in the Vigna Nussiner, on the slope of the Palatine
towards the side of the Capitol, and at other points of the Palatine,
which have been declared by Jordan (Topographic, ii. 173), probably
with reason, to be remnants of the citadel-wall of the Palatine
Rome,

20.  -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21.  When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him.  Comp, above, XIV.  Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

23.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

24.  I. XII. Pontifices



End of Book I






TABLE OF CALENDAR EQUIVALENTS--A. U. C vs. B. C.

A.U.C.*         B.C.            B.C.            A.U.C.
-----------------------------------------------------------
000             753             753              000
025             728             750              003
050             703             725              028
075             678             700              053
100             653             675              078
125             628             650              103
150             603             625              128
175             578             600              153
200             553             575              178
225             528             550              203
250             503             525              228
275             478             500              253
300             453             475              278
325             428             450              303
350             303             425              328
375             378             400              353
400             353             375              378
425             328             350              403
450             303             325              428
475             278             300              453
500             253             275              478
525             228             250              503
550             203             225              528
575             178             200              553
600             153             175              578
625             128             150              603
650             103             125              628
675             078             100              653
700      053             075              678
725             028             050              703
750             003             025              728
753             000             000              753

*A. U. C.--Ab Urbe Condi (from the founding of the City of Rome)