THE HISTORY OF ROME BY THEODOR MOMMSEN

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Translated With The Sanction Of The Author By William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.  Professor Of Divinity In The University Of Glasgow

A New Edition Revised Throughout And Embodying Recent Additions

PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY DR. MOMMSEN

DEDICATIONS

BOOK FIRST The Period Anterior To The Abolition Of The Monarchy

CHAPTER I Introduction

CHAPTER II The Earliest Migrations Into Italy

CHAPTER III The Settlements Of The Latins

CHAPTER IV The Beginnings Of Rome

CHAPTER V The Original Constitution Of Rome

CHAPTER VI The Non-Burgesses And The Reformed Constitution

CHAPTER VII The Hegemony Of Rome In Latium

CHAPTER VIII The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings Of The Samnites

CHAPTER IX The Etruscans

CHAPTER X The Hellenes In Italy--Maritime Supremacy Of The Tuscans And Carthaginians

CHAPTER XI Law And Justice

CHAPTER XII Religion

CHAPTER XIII Agriculture, Trade, And Commerce

CHAPTER XIV Measuring And Writing

CHAPTER XV Art

BOOK SECOND From The Abolition Of The Monarchy In Rome To The Union Of Italy

CHAPTER I Change Of The Constitution- Limitation Of The Power Of The Magistrate

CHAPTER II The Tribunate Of The Plebs And The Decemvirate

CHAPTER III The Equalization Of The Orders, And The New Aristocracy

CHAPTER IV Fall Of The Etruscan Power-- The Celts

CHAPTER V Subjugation Of The Latins And Campanians By Rome

CHAPTER VI Struggle Of The Italians Against Rome

CHAPTER VII Struggle Between Pyrrhus And Rome, And Union Of Italy

CHAPTER VIII Law-- Religion-- Military System-- Economic Condition-- Nationality

CHAPTER IX Art And Science

BOOK THIRD From The Union Of Italy To The Subjugation Of Carthage And The Greek States

CHAPTER I Carthage

CHAPTER II The War Between Rome And Carthage Concerning Sicily

CHAPTER III The Extension Of Italy To Its Natural Boundaries

CHAPTER IV Hamilcar And Hannibal

CHAPTER V The War Under Hannibal To The Battle Of Cannae

CHAPTER VI The War Under Hannibal From Cannae To Zama

CHAPTER VII The West From The Peace Of Hannibal To The Close Of The Third Period

CHAPTER VIII The Eastern States And The Second Macedonian War

CHAPTER IX The War With Antiochus Of Asia

CHAPTER X The Third Macedonian War

CHAPTER XI The Government And The Governed

CHAPTER XII The Management Of Land And Of Capital

CHAPTER XIII Faith And Manners

CHAPTER XIV Literature And Art

BOOK FOURTH The Revolution

CHAPTER I The Subject Countries Down To The Times Of The Gracchi

CHAPTER II The Reform Movement And Tiberius Gracchus

CHAPTER III The Revolution And Gaius Gracchus

CHAPTER IV The Rule Of The Restoration

CHAPTER V The Peoples Of The North

CHAPTER VI The Attempt Of Marius At Revolution And The Attempt Of Drusus At Reform

CHAPTER VII The Revolt Of The Italian Subjects, And The Sulpician Revolution

CHAPTER VIII The East And King Mithradates

CHAPTER IX Cinna And Sulla

CHAPTER X The Sullan Constitution

CHAPTER XI The Commonwealth And Its Economy

CHAPTER XII Nationality, Religion, And Education

Chapter XIII Literature And Art

BOOK FIFTH  The Establishment Of The Military Monarchy

CHAPTER I Marcus Lepidus And Quintus Sertorius

CHAPTER II Rule Of The Sullan Restoration

CHAPTER III The Fall Of The Oligarchy And The Rule Of Pompeius

CHAPTER IV Pompeius And The East

CHAPTER V The Struggle Of Parties During The Absence Of Pompeius.

CHAPTER VI Retirement Of Pompeius And Coalition Of The Pretenders

CHAPTER VII The Subjugation Of The West

CHAPTER VIII The Joint Rule Of Pompeius And Caesar

CHAPTER IX Death Of Crassus--Rupture Between The Joint Rulers

CHAPTER X Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, And Thapsus

CHAPTER XI The Old Republic And The New Monarchy

CHAPTER XII Religion, Culture, Literature, And Art

PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 1894.

 Notes for Preface

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

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY DR. MOMMSEN

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

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

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

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

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

DEDICATIONS

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

To My Friend

MORIZ HAUPT Of Berin

The Second:--

To My Dear Associates

FERDINAND HITZIG Of Zurich

And

KARL LUDWIG Of Vienna 1852, 1853, 1854

And the Third:--

Dedicated With Old And Loyal Affection To

OTTO JAHN Of Bonn

BOOK FIRST The Period Anterior To The Abolition Of The Monarchy

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

Thucydides.

CHAPTER I  Introduction

Ancient History

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

 Italy

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

The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically, nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land of mountain and hill, the Italy whose history is here to engage our attention.  It was not till the seventh century of the city that the coast-district from Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy. The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but the Apennines.  This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes, presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of man.  Still more suitable in this respect are the adjacent slopes and the coast-districts on the east, south, and west.  On the east coast the plain of Apulia, shut in towards the north by the mountain-block of the Abruzzi and only broken by the steep isolated ridge of Garganus, stretches in a uniform level with but a scanty development of coast and stream.  On the south coast, between the two peninsulas in which the Apennines terminate, extensive lowlands, poorly provided with harbours but well watered and fertile, adjoin the hill-country of the interior.  The west coast presents a far-stretching domain intersected by considerable streams, in particular by the Tiber, and shaped by the action of the waves and of the once numerous volcanoes into manifold variety of hill and

 valley, harbour and island.  Here the regions of Etruria, Latium, and Campania form the very flower of the land of Italy.  South of Campania, the land in front of the mountains gradually diminishes, and the Tyrrhenian Sea almost washes their base.  Moreover, as the Peloponnesus is attached to Greece, so the island of Sicily is attached to Italy--the largest and fairest isle of the Mediterranean, having a mountainous and partly desert interior, but girt, especially on the east and south, by a broad belt of the finest coast-land, mainly the result of volcanic action.  Geographically the Sicilian mountains are a continuation of the Apennines, hardly interrupted by the narrow rent --Pegion--of the straits; and in its historical relations Sicily was in earlier times quite as decidedly a part of Italy as the Peloponnesus was of Greece, a field for the struggles of the same races, and the seat of a similar superior civilization.

The Italian peninsula resembles the Grecian in the temperate climate

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

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

 Italian History

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

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

 Notes For Book I Chapter I

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

CHAPTER II  The Earliest Migrations Into Italy

CHAPTER III  The Settlements Of The Latins

Indo-Germanic Migrations

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

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

 Extension Of The Latins In Italy

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

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

 Latium

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

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

 Latin Settlements

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

 Clan-Villages

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

 Cantons

 These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political community (-civitas-, -populus-).  This first presents itself as an aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language, and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal redress and to united action in aggression and defence.  A fixed local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint settlement in the strict sense--a town.  It must, on the contrary, have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was not at all or but scantily inhabited.  Ancient places of refuge, of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present day on the tops of several of the hills in the highlands of east Switzerland.  Such a place was called in Italy height (-capitolium-, like --akra--, the mountain-top), or stronghold (-arx-, from -arcere-); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of one, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold and were afterwards surrounded with the ring (-urbs-, connected with -urvus-, -rurvus-, perhaps also with -orbis-).  The stronghold and town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of gates, of which the stronghold has as few as possible, and the town many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three. Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which prevailed in Italy anterior to the existence of towns: a constitution, the nature of which may still be recognized with some degree of clearness in those provinces of Italy which did not until a late period reach, and in some cases have not yet fully reached, the stage of aggregation in towns, such as the land of the Marsi and the small cantons of the Abruzzi.  The country if the Aequiculi, who even in the imperial period dwelt not in towns, but in numerous open hamlets, presents a number of ancient ring-walls, which, regarded as deserted towns with their solitary temples, excited the astonishment of the Roman as well as of modern archaeologists, who have fancied that they could find accommodation there, the former for their primitive inhabitants (-aborigines-), the latter for their Pelasgians.  We shall certainly be nearer the truth in recognizing these structures not as walled towns, but as places of refuge for the inhabitants of the district, such as were doubtless found in more ancient times over all Italy, although constructed in less artistic style.  It was natural that at the period when the stocks that had made the transition to urban life were surrounding their towns with stone walls, those districts whose inhabitants continued to dwell in open hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts

 and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone.  When peace came to be securely established throughout the land and such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations.

 Localities Of The Oldest Cantons

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

 freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the new comers.

 Alba

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

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

 The Latin League

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

From the most ancient times there were held, in connection with the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assemblies of the representatives of the several communities at the neighbouring Latin seat of justice at the source of the Ferentina (near Marino). Indeed such a confederacy cannot be conceived to exist without having a certain power of superintendence over the associated body, and without possessing a system of law binding on all.  Tradition records, and we may well believe, that the league exercised jurisdiction in reference to violations of federal law, and that it could in such cases pronounce even sentence of death.  The later communion of legal rights and, in some sense, of marriage that subsisted among the Latin communities may perhaps be regarded as an integral part of the primitive law of the league, so that any Latin man could beget lawful children with any Latin woman and acquire landed property and carry on trade in any part of Latium. The league may have also provided a federal tribunal of arbitration for the mutual disputes of the cantons; on the other hand, there is no proof that the league imposed any limitation on the sovereign right of each community to make peace or war.  In like manner there can be no doubt that the constitution of the league implied

 the possibility of its waging defensive or even aggressive war in its own name; in which case, of course, it would be necessary to have a federal commander-in-chief.  But we have no reason to suppose that in such an event each community was compelled by law to furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even against a member of the league.  There are, however, indications that during the Latin festival, just as was the case during the festivals of the Hellenic leagues, a truce of God was observed throughout all Latium;(5) and probably on that occasion even tribes at feud granted safe-conducts to each other.

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

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

 Notes For Book I Chapter III

1.  I. II. Italians

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV  The Beginnings Of Rome

Ramnes

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

 Tities, Luceres

 But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the bank of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a trace has been preserved of the fact that that body arose out of the amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth--in other words, out of such a  --synoikismos-- as that from which Athens arose in Attica.(2)  The great antiquity of this threefold division of the community(3) is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, regularly used the forms -tribuere- (to divide into three) and -tribus- ("a