No More Learning

Thus in the earliest Rome, as every where, 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, how ever, 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
Inland commerce of the Italians.
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.
Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves. Fairs (men'atus), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly markets (mmdinae) 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 Monte fiascone) 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,
l ‘‘
i
i
I
1
35o
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 800K!
l
can. xm AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
a situation than which none could be found more favour able 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 appear ance there, and the wrongs of which they complained gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.
Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traflic 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
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. 1 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,
1 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 arses (Festus, v. peculatur, p. 237, comp. pp. 34, 144 ; Gell. xi. I ; Plutarch, Paplicola, 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 sub stituted 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 theGermans (English fee).
251
equivalent
Trans marine traffic
of the Italian.
traces of this earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while they still had the peninsula to themselves.
We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued independent. The Sabellian stocks re mained almost wholly unaffected by it. They were in possession of but 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; 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 other wise 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 considerable time before they began to imitate them. We cannot determine how far the develop ment of handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or what progress thereafter made while Italy remained left to its own resources; uncertain how far
252
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK!
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
264) and the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as
it is
it
a
a a
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cnnmxrrr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
the Italian fullers, dyers, tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia or had their own inde pendent 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, ac cordingly, 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 orna ments 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 archi tecture 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 hiero— glyphics impressed upon them, were of Egyptian origin ,1
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 orna ment of all sorts from the East. Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is proved by the early
1 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.
253
perfume-vases
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AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 300K i
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 ()tt'vov, linum; 1rop¢1ipa, purpura ,' o-xfir'rpov, o-ximnv, safio; perhaps also e’ltidxzs, ebur; 9150;, 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 (comp. p. 242), of jugs (tilltbopfljs, amp(l1)0ra, ampulla; Kpqnjp,
of feasting (xwpéfw, mmissari), of a dainty dish
:ratera),
of dough (Fife, massa), and various names of cakes (7kvxoiis, lucuns; 1r)tm<ofig,plaanta; wpo5g, turunda) ; while conversely the Latin names for dishes and for lard_ (arz/ina, (ipflt’Vfl) 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 (o-m’i-ros) to signify among the Latins a shield (scutum; like lorim, from lorum). Finally, we deduce a similar inference from the numerous nautical terms borrowed from the Greek
(dupa'wwv, opsom'um),
(patina, vra'l'a'y'q)
it is remarkable that the chief technical ex pressions in navigation—the terms for the sail, mast, and yard-are pure Latin forms);1 and from the recurrence
1 Velum is certainly of Latin origin; so is malur, especially as that term denotes not merely the mast, but the tree in general: antenna like wise may come from dud. (anlulare, antertari), and tender: = rupertenra. Of Greek origin, on the other hand, are gubernare, to steer (xufiepm'iv) ; ancora, anchor (d-yxupa); prvra, ship's bow (1rpd3pa); aplurtre, ship‘s stern (d¢)\(l0'1‘0I/)I anquina, the rope fastening the yards (dryxowa) ; naurea, sea-sickness (much).
The four chief winds of the ancients-aquilo, the "eagle-wind," the north-easterly Tramontana; vnllumus (of uncertain derivation, perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; aurter the “scorching" south west wind, the Sirocco; fawniur, 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
(although
CHAP- xrrr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter s’fl'ro-'roAfi, epistula), a token (fessera, from réo-aapal), a balance (era-nip,
. rt‘atera), and earnest-money (dppaflév, arraéa, arm) ; and conversely from the adoption of Italian law-terms in Sicilian Greek 201), 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 rrAaxoiivra. ampora oiprpopéa; statera = o-m-n'jpa), constitute the clearest evidence of their great antiquity. The worship of the god of traffic
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.
thus appears that Italy in very ancient times derived its articles of luxury, just as imperial Rome did, from the East, before attempted to manufacture for itself after the models which imported. In exchange 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
(such as eurur, natur). or translations from the Greek (ag. solanur = drrvfiua'rms, Africu: =
This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service of the camp, the fuhfirprcr xa. rd. ¢vhalrhv flpaxéa. -rehéws é'xov-ra. xapam'fipa. (Polyb. vi. 35, the four w'gilirze of the night-service gave name to the tokens generally. The fourfold division of the night for the service of watching
Greek as well as Roman; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised an influence-—possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. r4)—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 the word was taken over.
(Mn'urius)
255
Commerce, in Latium passive, in Etruria active.
is
1
It
7) ;
it it
(p.
it
;
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK r
have already explained why Italian traflic 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 traflic, 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
:56
On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in
(p. 131).
in Capua as in Spina. Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these regions and their power ful commercial position; whereas Latium remained pre
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 sufliced 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 (eg. 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
Populonia,
eminently
can. xm AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
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.
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 182) 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 indicated 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
such an intercourse indicated by the coins. The silver pieces of Populonia were struck after the pattern of 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 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
vor. .
257
Etrpsoo
Sicilian commm
1
7I
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by
is
is
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by
258
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE soon I
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 ChalcidicoDoric 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 difl‘erent 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 repro duction 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
CRAP. XIII AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
Cumaeans and Siceliots. Every other trace which has survived from so remote an age leads to the same conclu sion: 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 vii/tos, and the Sicilian measure fuzfva, were transferred with the same meaning to Latium as nummus and llemina, so conversely the Italian designations of weight, libra, m'ens, quadrans, sextans, una'a, 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, )u'rpo, -rptas, Te-rp625, éfik,
m’rym’a.
Indeed, among all the Greek systems of weights
and moneys, the Sicilian alone was brought into a deter
minate 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 (‘girth of the Attic talent, of the Roman pound)
was in very early times struck, especially at Syracuse, as
silver coin ()tt’rpa tip-yvpt’ov, 11e. “copper-pound in silver”).
Accordingly 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 passive commerce, in consequence of which Latin money was drained away thither. Other
of ancient intercourse between Sicily and Italy, especially the adoption in the Sicilian dialect of the Italian expressions for commercial loan, prison, and dish, and the converse reception of Sicilian terms in Italy, have been already mentioned (pp. 201, 255). We meet also with
proofs
259
a
a
,2,
a
a
;
it
a
26o AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 800K I
several, though less definite, traces ofan 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 Am‘ula pius, Latona, Aperta, mac/zr'na. Had their dealings with the originally Ionian cities, such as Cumae (p. 17 5) 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 sui‘ficiently 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. 1
1 If we leave out of view Sarranur, Afar, and other local designations (p. 185), 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 such as arrabo or arra and perhaps also murra, nara’ur, 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 ékétpas 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, a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician article in reality Ila, and not so employed; besides the Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found. The same holds true or the enigmatical word flmaum; whether may have been originally
is is it
it,
is
CHAP. xrrr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 26r
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
in its favour, at least so far as Latium is con cerned. 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 traflic 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 com merce 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 traflic 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 pro duce-—the articles for export. 1 In fact the distinction
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 (p. 230).
1 Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited the 220. senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300 amp/Lara:
(r ampla=nearly 6 gallons): id satir Izabilum ad fructus ex agri: wctandas; guaestus amnirpatribur indecorur virur (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 (quaertur, traffic, fitting-out of vessels, 8m. ) 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 amplwnu; the reason evidently
probabilities
262
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 800! ! !
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
could not have been maintained; but, as the previous representation shows, while there was a com paratively 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.
being, that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article.
certainly
CHAP. XIV MEASURING AND WRITING
:63
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.
Measurement necessarily presupposes the development Italian of the several ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, mm 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 (lillrare) on his hand while he holds his
arm stretched out, or the “weight ” (lz'bra). 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
Decimal system.
of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated by language a2) ; 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.
The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive use oi the decimal system among the Indo Germans is furnished by the well-known agreement of all IndcrGermanic languages in respect to the numerals as far
as a hundred inclusive (p. 22). In the case of Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements: it may be suflicient 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 in
dispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by three signs-I, V or A, X, manifestly imitations of the out stretched 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 tim evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse among the Italians which preceded their transmarine com merce 250). Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed, these signs, can of course no
264
MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK 1
(p.
CHAP- X1V MEASURING AND WRITING
265
longer be ascertained. Other traces of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field; among them are the van-us, the Sabellian measure of surface of 100 square feet 26), and the Roman year of to months.
Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures,
The duo which were not connected with Greek standards and were decimal
lystem. probably developed by the Italians before they came into
contact with the Greeks, there prevailed the partition of the “ whole” (as) into twelve “units” (um'iae). The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of the Salii and Arvales 215), 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” of 120 square feet, combina tion of the decimal and duodecimal systems. 1 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 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 can be referred than 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 system of numbers, the
Originally both the attur, "driving," 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 t‘; the sharp division of the clay especially in Italy by the ploughman's res‘ at noon.
1
a
a
(p.
it
it
a
(p.
Hellenic measures in Italy.
266 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK I
first step towards mathematical thought. The consistent duodecimal development of this idea appears to have be longed to the Italian nation, and to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks.
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 traflic 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 addi tion to its new Roman subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four hand-breadths (palmus) and sixteen finger-breadths (dzlgitus). 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 traflic 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 lz'trae, or half-minae 259). But the most singular and chequered aspect 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 (amp/Zara, moa'ius after ,ué8quvos, congius
from xonig, lzemina, qyat/zus) or by translation
from ééfiflmfiov); while conversely saw]; corruption of rextarius. All the measures are not identical, but those in most common use are so; among liquid measures the :ongr'us or c/zus, the sextarz'us, and the tyatlzus, the two last also for dry goods; the Roman amp/Zora was equalized in water-weight to the Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek metretes in the fixed ratio of 2, and
(azetaéulum
3:
is a
is
(p.
can. xrv MEASURING AND WRITING
267
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 too, out of the signs for the three aspir
ated 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.
In like manner the Roman calendar-and probably that The Italian
of the Italians generally—began with an independent de calendar before the
velopment 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
period of Greek influence in Italy.
268 MEASURING AND WRITING I00! I
being 7%; and by lunar months which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days, the average dura tion 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 opera tion 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
can. xrv MEASURING AND WRITING
269
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 however, have passed into oblivion.
What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of The oldest 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 lunar period of 29% days and solar period of 12% lunar months or 368i,t days, and on the regular alternation of full month or month of thirty days with hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve with year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena arbitrary curtailments and intercala tions. possible that this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into use among the Latins with out 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 the designation and in the measuring off of the individual months. The Roman year
began with the beginning of spring; the first month in and the only one which bears the name of god, was named from Mars (Mart/us), the three following from
a
it
in
It is
a
a
by a a
a
it,
270
MEASURING AND WRITING 8001; |
sprouting (aprilrls), growing (rna1'us), and thriving (ium'us), the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers
sextilis, September, 0:106”, rial/ember, deceml'er), the eleventh from commencing (r'anuarz'us) 213), with reference presumably to the renewal of agricultural opera tions that followed midwinter and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the last, from cleansing
To this series recurring in regular succession there was added the intercalary year nameless “labour month” (mem'a'om'us) 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, 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+
54 383 = 147 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 sometimes of days; 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 began (noundinae). Along with this 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, was henceforth necessary to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new
(Quinc/ill},
(februarius).
it
3 +
it
it +
8
it
+
7,
+
5
in
it
a
(p.
CHAP- xrv MEASURING AND WRITING
271
moon and the first quarter; thence the day of the new moon 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 adquem-designated as “nine-day” (mmae). 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 belief in the salutary
virtue of odd numbers and while in general based on the oldest form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly exhibit the influence of the doctrines of
which were then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon mystic view of numbers. But the consequence was that this Roman calendar, clearly as bears traces of the desire that 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, could only follow the solar seasons means of frequent arbitrary excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly, for 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 the same thing-by years of ten months implies 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
From the same cause all the festival-days are odd. as well those recurring every month (kalendae on the 1st, rumae on the 5th or 7th, idw on the 13111 or 15th), as also, with but two exceptions, those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (p. 207). This 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, :5, that of the Grove-festival (Lucaria) on July 1g, 21. and that of the Ghosts-festival on May 11, and r3.
Pythagoras,
9,
is
it is
1
it
a
”).
is
it
by
it is
a it
a
,1
272
MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK I
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 mouths of arbitrary length, possibly marked ofi‘ by annual festivals-as in the case of the Alban months, which varied between 16 and 36 days. It would appear probable there fore that the Greek triderzt 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.
Introduc tion of Hellenic alphabets into Italy.
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 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 irregular
ity that now prevailed as to the due holding of the census at the right time.
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 development in the Italian numeral signs 264), and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom—formed independently of Hellenic influence-of drawing lots by means of wooden tablets. The difliculty which must have
(p.
a
it,
CHAP. XIV MEASURING AND WRITING
273
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 suflices, 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 inde
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
T6. 157‘: ‘ye M01): (trip/sax’ 6p0u5a'as #6”: 'Arpwva Ital ¢wvoiiv1a, o'vMaBds 1e 0els,
'EEefipow dvfipu’nrowt 'ypdpnar’ ewévar.
This Aramaeo-Hellenic alphabet was
brought to the Italians through the medium, doubtless, of the Italian Hellenes ; not, however, through the agricul tural colonies of Magna Graecia, but through the merchants
of Cumae or Tarentum, by whom it would be brought in the first instance to the very ancient emporia of international traflic 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
VOL. I 18
pendently
possibly
i o, and by the formation of a
signs, for the four vowels a e
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,
accordingly
274
MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK 1
several modifications, particularly the addition of the three letters if 4> x and the alteration of the signs for t 7 L1 We have already observed 258) that the Etruscan and Latin
1 The history of the alphabet among the Hellenes turns essentially on the fact that—assu. ming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters, that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by the addition of the 14 proposals of very various kinds were made to supplement and improve
and each of these proposals has a history of its own. The most import out of these, which interesting to keep in view as hearing on the history of Italian writing, are the following :-—I. The introduction of special signs for the sounds x. This proposal 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 X=£i‘, <I>=¢i‘, and \II=XZ' to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape 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 E? the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet (Samech) accordingly of the three new signs they adopted the for 452, but employed the X not for ET, but for xi‘. The third sign originally invented for xi‘ was probably allowed in most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor was retained, but received the value of #12‘. The mode of writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in its case not merely the i/li', but the also, was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to be written as before. —II. Equally early, not still earlier, an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily occur between the forms for and for 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 field for its difl'usion. In the one case they employed for the sibilant-for which the Phoenician alphabet furnished two signs, the fourteenth (M) for sk and the eighteenth (E) for 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 the simple stroke which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became at least so far general that the broken everywhere disappeared, although individual communities retained the in the form M alongside of the l. —IIl. Of later date the substitution of for (h) which might readily be confounded with 7. This we meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities dependent on Corinth
attained the same object by giving to the the semicircular form instead of the hook-shape. —lV. The forms for and r likewise very liable to be confounded, were distinguished by transforming the latter into 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
R;
if
it
it
7 p
rSi Si E
I‘ is
5 ¢
I,
P\I i
. r ;
is
[l P,
; a
i C
it,
ff
Q
it is
can. XIV MEASURING AND WRITING
:75
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
Magna Graecia and Sicily. Still the older form of the r P did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older form of the I; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to be placed later. —V. The differen tiating of the long and short a and the long and short 0 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 sur Gerchiclzte des grieclzirclzen 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 afi'ected 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 X as E or as x. 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 (p. 173) ; 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 C 'y alongside of the \I I. 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 1'. 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 difi'erentiation ofp and 9' 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 R for r, whereas among the Faliscans
and the Latins. with the single exception of the Dressel vase (p. 277, note), the younger form is met with exclusively.
:76
MEASURING AND WRITING sooK 1
double sign s (sigma s and san s11) and only a single k, 1 and of the r only the older form P; the Latin has, so far as we know, only a single s, but a double sign for k (kappa k and koppa and of the r almost solely the more recent form R. The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds like the coiling of snake; the more recent employs parallel broken-0E 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 monu ments of the Greek language known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use.
The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know bears on
That the Etruscans always were without the koppa. seems not doubt ful for not only no sure trace of to be met with elsewhere, but is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi vase. The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the latter 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 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 certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when 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 dis appeared from the u
;
;
is
q),
it
is
f,
it is
;
;1
it
it,
;
:
a
CHAP. xiv MEASURING AND WRITING
271
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 /W P1 and 2 were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded in common use by the later forms M R and 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 syllabarlum formed from which may be compared to that of Palamedes--—evidently sacred relic of the introduction and acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.
Not less important for history than the derivation of the Develop alphabet the further course of its development on Italian 33228:“ soil: perhaps even of more importance; for by means in Italy. of gleam of light thrown upon the inland commerce
The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light (Mitik. der "For. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older form of the m; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal (published by Dressel in the Annah' dell‘ Institute, 1880) shows the older form of the r.
1
a
it
is
it is
it, a
is
278
MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK 1
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 intro duction of writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the 0, which was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the u, and the introduction of a new letter j: 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 media were entirely or partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants were developed. But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet was not merelyas 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.
can. xiv MEASURING AND WRITING
279
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 con fined to Latium, and maintained its ground, upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters 7 K and {a gradually became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in each case one of the homophonous signs (x Q 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,1 and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception. 2 Now when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction between 7 c and x k is still regularly maintained ; a 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 consider able interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction of writing and the establishment of a conven
1 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 conflag'ration, 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.
2 This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which has been mentioned at p. 277, note. On the other hand even on the Ficoroni cista C has the later form of K.
3 Thus C represents Gaiur; CN Gnaeur; while K stands for Kaeso. With the more recent abbreviations of course this is not the case ; in these 7 is represented not by C, but by G (GAL Galeria), x, as a rule, by C (C centum COS consul; COL Collina), or before a by K (KAR karma-Malia; MERK merkaiur). For they expressed for a time the sound x before the
i o and before all consonants by C, before a on the other hand
vowels e
by K, before u by the old sign of the koppa Q.
280 MEASURING AND WRITING 3001: r
tional 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 r 321 no, than to the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in Greece. 1 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 sufliciently 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 conflagra tion 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, scrikers, akin to strobes 2) or painted (linen, thence
on leaves (falium), 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 priest
1 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 flourish
850. ing 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.
a Just as the old Saxon writan signifies properly to tear, thence to write.
littera)
CHAP. XIV MEASURING AND WRITING 281
hood 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 (Juno manela) on the Capitol. It is scarcely necessary to recall further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle (szrr'flura), in the mode of addressing the senate, “fathers and enrolled” (patres consm'ptz'), 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 inves tigate 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 char acters, 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.
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
Results.
383 MEASURING AND WRITING 300K I
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 develop ment was so national, that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for f1 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.
lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian
Corruption
oflanguage stocks the development of the Greek alphabet primarily
andwriting.
consisted in a process of corruption. Thus the media disappeared in the whole of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost 7 and d, the Samnites d, and the Romans 7 ; and among the latter a’ also threatened to amalgamate with r. In like manner among the Etruscans a and :1 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 2, s, s11, 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 s and s, and the Roman of later times even to s alone. It is plain that the more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers of the alphabet, men of culture
1 The enigma as to hofw the Latins came to employ the Greek sign corresponding to 'u for the quite different in soundl has been solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (p. 277, note) with its flu/baked for fuit, 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 Boeolian inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word fltekadamoe
(Gustav Meyer, Griec/l. Grammatik, § 244, a), fin. ) the same combination of sound, and an aspirated ‘u might certainly approximate in sound to the Latin f.
mar. xiv MEASURING AND WRITING
283
and masters of two languages ; but after the national writing became wholly detached from the Hellenic mother-alphabet, the media: and their tenues gradually came to coincide, and :he sibilants and vowels were thrown into disorder-trans positions or rather destructions of sound, of which the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek. The de struction of the forms of fiexion 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.
CHAPTER XV ART
Aitistic en- POETRY is impassioned language, and its modulation is
‘00K 1
dowments of the Italians.
melody. While in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations have received a pre-eminent en dowment of poetic gifts. The Italian nation, however, was not and is not one of these. The Italian is deficient in the passion ot 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 per ception 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 Cammedia, and historical treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and Colletta, are pervaded by a
can. xv ART 28
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 en thrones in the room of genuine and genial art 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 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.
From the defectiveness of our traditional information
not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas music, and song in
among the several groups of nations in Italy; and in Latium. particular we are no longer in 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. 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,
in full armed attire. The merry dancers were divided into two companies-“ the sheep” in sheep
and generally
It is
a
is
it is
_~,
a
Religious chants.
286 ART BOOK I
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 (p. 2 r 5), and dancers (ludiz', 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 ap peared 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 tibidnum, p. 249), 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
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.
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 “favour
necessary,
from fawn) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had the gift of listening
to him, in rhythmically measured language (msmm, after wards :armen, 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 conjur
ing away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by
able spirit” (faunas,
can. xv ART
287
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. 1 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.
Ems, Laser, iu'oatel
Na value rue, Marmar, sins {mun-are in pleura‘! Saturfu, fer: Mars! limen . tali !