No More Learning

Celtic mah'n).
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 intro duction, but that it was at first conducted on the system of joint posses sion. Of course a purely agricultural economy cannot have existed any where 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.
groups,
36 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS 300K I
constructs instead of the light but and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or ‘Eerie, 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
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 Sicam), or as field-labourers (0pm). 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 I-Iellenes are throughout associated with agriculture. 1
Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement of however rude. Accordingly, the measures of surface and the mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on like basis among both
The Oscan and Umbrian versus of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with the Greek plat/iron. The principle of marking ofi‘ 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
Nothing 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 Tellns (Plutarch, Ramul. 2a; Servius on Aen. iv. 166 Rossbach, Rfim. Elle, 257, 301), in Greece Demeter (Plu tarch, Conjug. Praec. z7iz7. ); in old Greek formulas the procreation of children called dpo'ros (p. 30 note); indeed the oldest Roman form of marriage, mnfrrreatio, derives its name and its ceremony from the culti vation of corn. The use of the plough in the founding of cities well known.
pronounced
peoples.
is
is
;
is
? )
1
a
it,
CHM’. II INTO ITALY
27
first place two lines, one from north to south, and another
from east to west, his station being at their point of inter
section (templum, -répevo; from -ré,u. vw) ; 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 ‘répfwves, usually 5pm). 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 ora river formed a natural boundary, they did not accept but wound up their allocation of the land with the last complete square.
It not solely in agriculture, however, that the especi- other ally close relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; 238$
unmistakably manifest also in the other provinces of economy. 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 the “blackened” chamber, with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals, and the hearth and precisely similar the Homeric megaron, with its household altar and hearth and smoke begrimed roof. We cannot say the same of shipbuilding. 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 origin ally common to the Greeks and Italians except such as are
;
;
it,
is
is,
it is
is
Difference of the Italian and the Greek character‘.
38
THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK 1
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 cer tainly 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” (rptirrayov, terebra), and the “ under-layer ” (o-répevs, io-xépa, Iabula, probably from tmdere,
In like manner the dress of the two peoples is essentially identical, for the tum'ca quite corresponds with the [11z70n, and the toga is nothing but a fuller kimation. Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to fre quent 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),1 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 founda tions 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.
It was otherwise in the mental domain. The great prob lem of man-how to live in conscious harmony with him
1 Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any can be shown to he certainly related; lanaa, although doubtless connected with M7707, is, as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards.
'ré‘rtlflat).
CHAP- Ir INTO ITALY
29
self, 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 con cealed 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 indi viduality 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
The family and 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 pro duced 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 connec tions with an earlier period-to direct the guesses of the discerning reader rather than to express them.
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,1 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
3O
THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK 1
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 the com munity 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 develop
Even in details this agreement appears; e. g. , in the designation of lawful wedlock as marriage concluded for the obtaining of lawful children" (76410: M ralflww 'ymcrlwr drpbrwahimnium liberrmml quamndorum cam-a).
slavery—was
‘'
1
;
is,
can. 11 INTO ITALY
31
ment of Greece the clan-bond maintained itself as a cor porate 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 origin ally 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 praenomm, became subordinate. It seems as if the small and ever diminishing number and the meaningless char acter 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 patriar chal 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
3:
THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK 1
and the execution of justice within the community, for mili tary 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.
Religion.
Judicial procedure (crimm, Kpr'vew), expiation (puma, wor'vq), retalia
tion (talio, raluiw, rkfivat), are Graeco~Italian ideas. The stern law of debt, by which the debtor was directly re sponsible 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, 11 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-confeder acies in the political fraternizing or even amalgamation of several previously independent stocks (symmachy, synoikis mos) 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,1 it will be the business of the sequel to show.
It is the same in religion. In Italy, as in Hellas, there
I 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 mztaeci has arisen alongside of a body of burgesses. As a matter of course, chance also plays in such cases its provoking game.
CHAP- u INTO ITALY
3
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 (-répevos, 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 bound 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
vol. I
3
34
THE RARLIEST MIGRATIONS sooK I
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 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 univer sal. To everything existing, to the man and to the tree, to the state and to the store-room, was assigned spirit which came into being with and perished along with 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 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 concrete and corporeal shape, the Roman could only make use of abstract, completely trans parent 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 form, the Roman could still less retain them, because the sacred conceptions seemed to him dimmed even the lightest
by
a
a
a
a
it
it,
it.
can. It INTO ITALY
35
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, never theless, in their spirituality-which only appears tame to dull apprehension—gained a powerful hold on men's minds, 9. 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), Relzgfo, 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.
Lastly, what holds good of real life is true also of its An. 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 The simplest elements of.
art are in Latium and Hellas quite the same; the decorous armed dance, the “leap ” (triumpus 0pt'apflos, 8t-06papfloe);
the masquerade of the “ full people ” (d‘é‘rvpot, satura), who, wrapped in the skins of sheep and goats, wound up the festival with their jokes lastly, the pipe, which with suitable
and regulated the solemn as well as the merry dance. Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
strains accompanied
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
close relationship
;
it.
36
THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS 300K I
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 indi viduals as their highest good. Latium in the poverty of its artistic development stands almost on a level with un civilized 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 re served 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 char acter 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
can. u INTO ITALY
37
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.
Indo-GQ manic mi
‘rations.
CHAPTER 111
m sn'rrmmnn'rs or THE m'rnrs
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 north western over Europe. It is diflicult to determine the
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
We cannot define more exactly their
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 consider able time after the departure of the Indians; for, accord
ing 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 to
primitive
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATLNS BOOK r
language. original locality,
CRAP. Ill SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
39
the 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
The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central mountain-ridge of Italy, in direction from north
to south, can still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely historical times. Less known regarding the route which the Latin migration followed. Probably
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 was possible, between the Latin tribes.
well known that Latin stock inhabited the country Extension
from the left bank of the Tiber to the Volscian of the mountains Latins in
but these mountains themselves, which appear to have been Italy. 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 stock
13).
a
(p.
;
It is
a
it
it
a is
4o
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK 1
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 1V0la (new-town), Campam' Capua, Vol turnus (from ooh/ere, like Iuturna from iuvare), Opm' (labourers), are demonstrably older than the Samnite in vasion, 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 inun dation by Samnite hordes, have in this instance obliterated the traces of the older nationality.
totally 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 (tie. 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 peculiar ities of Sicilian Greek with the Latin is probably to be ex plained 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 andLaus, and the
can. m SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
4r by
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.
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 erup tions 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 table land of the Sacco (Trerus, a tributary of the Liris), and stretching in a westerly direction terminates in the pro montory 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 nerges into the broad hill-land of Etruria. The region thus en
eastern half of Sicily were in primitive times inhabited different branches of the Latin nation.
Latium.
43
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK 1
closed 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”
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
(prisd Latim').
can. in SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
43
canton of Zurich-was Latium proper, the “plain,”1 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
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
is true, however, that the malaria may to a certain extent
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
1 Like ldtus (side) and rhird; (flat); it denotes therefore the flat country in contrast to the Sabine mountain-land, just as Campania, the " plain," forms the contrast to Samnium. Um, formerly rtllihu, has no
connection with Latium.
Metapontum.
Latin settle merits
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 agri culture 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. 1 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.
No accounts have been preserved of the mode in which the settlements of the Latins took place in the district which
1 A French statist, Dureau de la Malle (Econ. Pol. dcs Rmins, 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 en tirely 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 we 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.
44
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS 300K 1
can. III SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
45
has since home their name ; and we are left to gather what we can almost exclusively from d posteriori inference re garding them. Some knowledge may, however, in this way be gained, or at any rate some conjectures that wear an aspect of probability.
The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times
into a number of clan-districts, which were subsequently villages.
employed
in the formation of the earliest “rural wards”
Tradition informs us as to the tribu: 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 Camilz'i, Galeriz', Lemom'i, Pal/ii, Pupim'i, Voltinii), the very oldest patrician families of Rome, the Aemilii,
Cornelii, Fabiz', Horalii, . lllenem'i, Papiriz', Romilii, Sergr'r', Vaturii. 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 ” (oim’a) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the Kid/MIL and 85pm 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
(tribus rustime).
cantons.
clan-land belonging to which, as will afterwards be shown, was managed up to comparatively late period after the analogy of household-land, that on the system of joint-possession. Whether 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,1 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 by blood.
These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as independent societies, but as the integral parts of political community (cim'tas, populas). 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 canton as in that of
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 place of joint settlement in the strict sense-a town. It must, on the contrary, have been simply place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary
In Slavonia, where the patriarchal economy 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, administered by the house-father; the surplus 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, eg. by marrying into a stranger household (Csaplovies, Slammien,
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.
46
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK I
i. a 1
is
it, a
is is
is,
a
it
a
a
it
a
crur. m SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
47
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” (mpilolium, like input, 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
round the stronghold and were afterwards surrounded with the “ring” (urbs, connected with urvus, rur'uus, 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 3f 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,
gathered
Localities of the oldest can tons.
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.
These cantons accordingly, having their rendezvous in some stronghold, and including a certain number of clan ships, 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. Here
accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between the Alban lake (Lago di Caste/l0) and the Alban mount (Monte Cave), 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 Athene, 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
Alba.
48
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK I
CRAP. m SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
49
the place, which is e-vdered naturally inaccessible by the steep declivities of Monte Cavo on the south, is rendered equally unapproachaore 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 traflic. Such, above all, is the large subterranean tunnel cut—so that I. 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 con siderable 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.
All these cantons were in primitive times politically The Latin 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
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,
regarded
not. t
4t
5o
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS 300: I
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 metro politan 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 con federacies of the Greeks, the “Latin festival”
at which, on the “Mount of Alba” Albanus, Monte Cam), upon a day annually appointed
the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the “ Latin god ”
Latinae),
(ferz'ae (Mons
Each community taking part in the ceremony had to contribute to the sacrificial feast its fixed
(fupiter Latiaris).
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 associa tion we can do little else than institute conjectures.
From the most ancient times there were held, in connec tion with the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assem blies 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
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
proportion
possessing
by
cHAP. III SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS
5|
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 lawto furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even
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 ;1 and probably on that occasion even tribes at feud granted safe conducts to eachother.
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. 2 On the whole it is probable that the extent of this
1 The Latin festival is expressly called " armistice " (indutiae, Macrob. Sat. i. 16; éxexetplat, Dionys. iv. 49); and a. war was not allowed to be begun during its continuance (Macrob. LC. )
2 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 suflicient 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 die Latin
against
52
SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK 1
Latin league, and the amount of its jurisdiction, were some what unsettled and fluctuating; yet it remained through out 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 suflice: 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 unionwith which the history of every people ends or at any rate ought to end.
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 passagu as Festus v. praetor, p. 241, and Dionys. iii. 10, sufiice to stamp Alba as a Latin Athens.
. -Aa>. \-~-‘i M ‘ >. -_. ‘ ia),_. u-e-r-. ,vv. u~‘l
can? - iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
53
CHAPTER IV ‘rm: nncmmnos or some
ABOUT fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber We‘ 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. ”
But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the Titles, bank of the Tiber. In the earliest division of. the mm" 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 synozh'smos as that from which Athens arose
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 Mon, (aims ancient form for hon-cum, Fabii Fo'uii, Valerias Valeria, vaanu mu.
54
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 800! I
in Attica. I The great antiquity of this threefold division of the community 2 is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, regularly used the forms trz'buere (“ to divide into three ”) and Iribus (“ 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
I The . gmoikirmos 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. 15; Herodot.
170).
We might even, looking to the Attic ‘rprrnis and the Umbrian Info,
raise the question whether triple division of the community was not a fundamental principle of the Graeco-Italians: in that case the triple division of the Roman community would not be referable to the amalga mation of several once independent tribes. But, in order to the establish ment of a hypothesis so much at variance with tradition, such three fold division would require to present itself more generally throughout the Greece-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 at Roman rule; cannot with certainty be traced in Oscan.
it
a
a
i.
i
ii.
CHAD. IV THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 55
language, polity, and religion, a pure and national develop ment such as few have equalled, into a confused aggregate of Etruscan and Sabine, Hellenic and, forsoothl 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 aflirmed, except that there is no difliculty 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 he, 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 com pelled the older Ramnians to accept the . gynozlkismos. 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
56
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 800K I
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
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 com munity from a stock so very closely related to it; and, besides, it must not be forgotten that at the time when the Tities 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.
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 surround ing 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,
1 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 (4;. 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 freouemlv does depend, on organic development than on external lnterminim.
hypothesis. 1
Rome the emporium of Latium.
CHAP- IV THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
S7
and, singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the other heathen festivals in Christian Rome.
From these settlements the later Rome arose. The Charactu founding of a city in the strict sense, such as the legend of its site. 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 yield ing 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 disad vantage 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 suflicient 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 settle ment 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
Earliest limits of the Roman territory.
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.
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 neighbour hood, 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 com munities 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 pagz'), and the important salt
58
THE BEGINNINGS 0F ROME 500: I
can. rv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
59
works at its mouth, were taken by king Romulus from the Veientes, and that king Ancus fortified on the right bank
the téte dc pant, the “mount of Janus” ([am'culum), 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.
This cannot have been the result of mere accident. The The Tlbc Tiber was the natural highway for the traffic of Latium ; and its
traflic. 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 neigh bours. There was no place better fitted for an emporium of the Latin river and sea traflic, 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 pro tection 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
Early urban character of Rome.
“ THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK I
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 resolu tion 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.
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
CRAP. 1v THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 6t
earlier period, probably, in the canton of Rome than any. where 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 r r 5 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 distinc tion 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 Roine 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
The Pala tine city.
62 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK I
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 import ance as a city.
The town, which in the course of centuries grew up as Rome, in its original form embraced according to trust worthy 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 (:urz'ae veteres). There stood the meeting house of the “ Leapers ” (:urz'a Saliorum) in which also the sacred shields of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the “Wolves” (Luperml), 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 but of ,his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree towards
CHAP- iv THE BEGINNINGS 0F ROME
63
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 Apollim's, was the primitive place of assembly for the burgesses and the
senate, and the stage erected over the mundur itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community.
The “festival of the Seven Mounts” (septimantium), The Seven
again, has preserved the memory of the more extended
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
Mounts.
settlement
but in subsequent times was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the Fagutal,
Esquiline,
and the Cispius, the three summits of the Esquiline; lastly, the Sucfisa, or Subfira, a fortress con structed 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
the Oppius,
Old-t let tlemts in the Pala flne and
Palatine Rome, especially when we compare with them the Servian arrangement of districts which was afterwards formed on the basis of this earliest division.
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 ina circle round the Palatine.