THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY Halsted VanderPoel Campanian Collection M084 Mommsen (T.) The History 01 Rome. Translated by W. P. Dickson. New Edi- t\ tion, revised throughout and embodying recent additions. 5 vols., sm. 8vo. 1908 857 Mommsen (Th.) Hist transl. by W. P. Dickson^ new-ed. rev., 5 vols., 1S94, top and bottom of spines frayed, pencil o-/>i>ic P- "fekl. ~~~~"^~ ?f MOMMSEN THE HISTORY OF ROME BY THEODOR MOMMSEN TRANSLATED WITH THE SANCTION OF THE AUTHOR BY WILLIAM PURDIE DICKSON, D.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW A NEW EDITION REVISED THROUGHOUT AND EMBODYING RECENT ADDITIONS VOL. I WITH A MILITARY MAP OF ITALY . LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET in rfcinarg to J^cr fHajrstg tljr ueen 1894 THE QETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY ' 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 explana- tions as to its method and aims : " In requesting English scholars to receive with indulgence this first portion of a translation of Dr. Mommsen's ' R6- mische 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 VI HISTORY OF ROME 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 per- mission 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. Momm- sen, 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 mean- ing, 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 unintel- ligible to the English reader, at least far from readable, while PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR Vll 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 defer- ence to his wishes, used such combinations as ' Carthagino- Sicilian,' 'Romano-Hellenic,' although less congenial to our English idiom, for the sake of avoiding longer peri- phrases. 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 ist volume, and in the critique of Euripides ... as to which I am not very confident that I have seized or suc- ceeded 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 via HISTORY OF ROME 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 addi- tional 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 re- sponsible 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 con- PREFACE. BY THE TRANSLATOR ix siderable 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 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. i. p. 104 /.) 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 "achieve- ments" ; "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 "clear- X HISTORY OF ROME and new dress, for which the book is indebted to the printers, it may still further meet the convenience of the reader. ness"; "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." Although I have learned that the book has been reproduced in the United States, I have not had any opportunity of yet seeing its American form. A French translation, which I have seen, dispenses with all the notes subjoined to the original ! September 1894. 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 corre- sponding year before the birth of Christ. In calculating the corresponding years, the year i 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 ist day of March, and the Greek with the ist day of July, the year i 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 com- muted 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 i : 15.5, been reckoned at 304^ Prussian thalers [about ^43], and the denarius, according to the value of silver, at 7 Prussian groschen [about Sd.]. 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 too sesterces as equivalent to i. TR. DEDICATIONS The Second : The First Volume of the original bears the inscription TO MY FRIEND MORIZ HAUPT OF BERLIN TO MY DEAR ASSOCIATES FERDINAND HITZIG OF ZURICH AND KARL LUDWIG OF VIENNA 1852, 1853, 1854 And the Third : DEDICATED WITH OLD AND LOYAL AFFECTION TO OTTO JAHN OF BONN CONTENTS BOOK FIRST THE PERIOD ANTERIOR TO THE ABOLITION OF THE MONARCHY CHAPTER I PAGE INTRODUCTION ....... 3 CHAPTER II THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS INTO ITALY ... 9 CHAPTER III THE SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS . . . .38 CHAPTER IV THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME ..... 53 CHAPTER V THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME . . .72 CHAPTER VI THE NON-BURGESSES AND THE REFORMED CONSTITUTION . 106 XIV HISTORY OF ROME CHAPTER VII I'AGB THE HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM . . . 124 CHAPTER VIII THE UMBRO - SABELLIAN STOCKS BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES ....... 143 CHAPTER IX THE ETRUSCANS . . . . . .150 CHAPTER X THE HELLENES IN ITALY MARITIME SUPREMACY OF THE TUSCANS AND CARTHAGINIANS .... 162 CHAPTER XI LAW AND JUSTICE ..--;. . . . . 188 CHAPTER XII RELIGION . .... 206 CHAPTER XIII AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE . . . 236 CHAPTER XIV MEASURING AND WRITING ... , . .. 263 CHAPTER XV ART ...... . 284 CONTENTS xv BOOK SECOND FROM THE ABOLITION OF THE MONARCHY IN ROME TO THE UNION OF ITALY CHAPTER I PAGE CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION LIMITATION OF THE POWER OF THE MAGISTRATE .... 313 CHAPTER II THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS AND THE DECEMVIRATE . 341 CHAPTER III THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, AND THE NEW ARIS- TOCRACY ....... 370 CHAPTER IV FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER THE CELTS . . 413 CHAPTER V SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME . 438 CHAPTER VI STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS AGAINST ROME . . . 465 APPENDIX THE PATRICIAN CLAUDII ..... 495 MILITARY MAP OF ITALY .... To face page i CORRIGENDA Vol. II. Page 422, line 3$, for Sopator read Sopater. ,, III. Page 278, line 25, for (Staatsrecht, iii. 3, p. 726) read (Staatsrecht, iii 3 . p. 726). ,, ,, Page 340, line 35, for (Staatsrecht, i. 3, p. 473) read (Staatsrecht, i 3 . p. 473). [The reference in these cases is to the Third Edition of the volumes. ] ,, IV. Page 1 8, yne 34, for elvai read el/j.ev ; and in line 37 for inrriKooi read VTTO.KOOI. ; , ,, Page 40, line 27, for Marcus read Lucius. ,, ,, Page 1 68, line 33, for Calida GSJ !>*- ^ BOOK FIRST THE PERIOD ANTERIOR TO THE ABOLITION OF THE MONARCHY Ta TrdXaiorepa aa.>s /J.fv evpeiv 5ia ^povov ir\fi6os ddvvara f\V e/c 5^ TfKfJ.f)plv &v eirl na.Kp6ra.rov ffKoirovvrl /tot TriffTevffcu {u/UjSaiVet ou fj.yd\a i, oSre Kara, rovs TTO\^/J.OVS oijre ^s ra &\\a. THUCYDIDES. VOL. BOOK FIRST THE PERIOD ANTERIOR TO THE ABOLITION OF THE MONARCHY To. TraXaioTfpa aaGis [lev evpeiv 5ia xp6cou 7rX?/0os ddfoara fy' IK d reK/j.i]piwv &v eirl (jLaKpoTarov ffKoirovvri fjioi TrtcrreOcrat ^vfj.paivfi ov fj.eyd\a i, otfre /card. TOVS TroX^/xous otfre ^s ra &\\a. THUCYDIDES. VOL. I CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA with its various branches, pene- Ancient trating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf hlstoI 7- of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or pro- jections 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 ethno- graphical 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 4 INTRODUCTION BOOK i 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 oh their respective destinies. So far, therefore, as cycles of culture admit of demarcation at all, the cycle which has its cul- minating 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, there- fore, is no mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chrono- logical 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 blessed- ness 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 CHAP. I INTRODUCTION 5 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. Our aim is to exhibit the last act of this great historical Italy, drama, to relate the ancient history of the central peninsula projecting from the northern continent into the Mediter- ranean. It is formed by the mountain-system of the Apennines branching off in a southern direction from the western Alps. The Apennines take in the first instance a south-eastern course between the broader gulf of the Mediterranean on the west, and the narrow one on the east ; and in the close vicinity of the latter they attain their greatest elevation, which, however, scarce reaches the line of perpetual snow, in the Abruzzi. From the Abruzzi the chain continues in a southern direction, at first undivided and of considerable height ; after a depression which forms a hill-country, it splits into a somewhat flattened succession of heights towards the south-east and a more rugged chain towards the south, and in both directions terminates in the formation of narrow peninsulas. The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically, nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land of mountain and hill, the Italy whose history is here to engage our attention. It was not till the seventh century of the city that the coast-district from Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy. The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but the Apennines. This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into a precipitous chain, but, spread- ing broadly over the land and enclosing many valleys and 6 INTRODUCTION BOOK i 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 an 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 pro- vided 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. More- over, 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 " ('P?jyiov) 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 CHAP, r INTRODUCTION 7 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 agri- culture 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. We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply Italian the history of the city of Rome. Although, in the formal hlstor y- 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 sub- 8 INTRODUCTION BOOK i jugation 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 : (i) 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. 1 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. 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. QHAP. II THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS INTO ITALY 9 CHAPTER II THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS INTO ITALY WE have no information, not even a tradition, concerning Primitive the first migration of the human race into Italy. It was the Ital universal belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as else- where, the first population had sprung from the soil. We leave it to the province of the naturalist to decide the question of the origin of different races, and of the influence of climate in producing their diversities. In a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population of a country were autochthones or immigrants. But it is incumbent on the historical inquirer t6 bring to light the successive strata of population in the country of which he treats, in order to trace, from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher standing. Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of civilization. The results of German archaeological research lead to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and io THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i fishing, making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with agriculture and the use of the metals. In India, in like manner, the Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population less susceptible of culture. But in Italy we neither meet with fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains ; nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity. Nothing has hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of agriculture and of the smelting of the metals ; and if the human race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of that primitive stage of oulture which we are accustomed to call the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared. Individual tribes, or in other words, races or stocks, are the constituent elements of the earliest history. Among the stocks which in later times we meet with in Italy, the immigration of some, of the Hellenes for instance, and the denationalization of others, such as the Bruttians and the inhabitants of the Sabine territory, are historically attested. Setting aside both these classes, there remain a number of stocks whose wanderings can no longer be traced by means of historical testimony, but only by d priori inference, and whose nationality cannot be shown to have undergone any radical change from external causes. To establish the national individuality of these is the first aim of our inquiry. In such an inquiry, had we nothing to fall back upon but the chaotic mass of names of tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical tradition, the task might CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 11 well be abandoned as hopeless. The conventionally received tradition, which assumes the name of history, is composed of a few serviceable notices by civilized travellers, and a mass of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been combined with little discrimination of the true character either of legend or of history. But there is another source of tradition to which we may resort, and which yields information fragmentary but authentic ; we mean the indigenous languages of the stocks settled in Italy from time immemorial. These languages, which have grown with the growth of the peoples themselves, have had the stamp of their process of growth impressed upon them too deeply to be wholly effaced by subsequent civilization. One only of the Italian languages is known to us completely ; but the remains which have been preserved of several of the others are sufficient to afford a basis for historical inquiry regarding the existence, and the degrees, of family relationship among the several languages and peoples. In this way philological research teaches us to dis- tinguish three primitive Italian stocks, the lapygian, the Etruscan, and that which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main branches, the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong. As to the lapygian stock, we have but little information. lapygians. At the south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language 1 have been found in considerable numbers ; un- doubtedly remains of the dialect of the lapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks. State- ments deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the conclusion that the same language and the same stock 1 Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound ; as Oeotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino and dazihonas platorrihi bollihi. 12 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i were indigenous also in Apulia. What we at present know of this people suffices to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians, but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned to them and to their language in the history of the human race. The inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected that they ever will be, deciphered. The jjen.itiye, forms, aihi and iht, corresponding to the Sanscrit asya and the Greek oto, appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic family. Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants and the avoiding of the letters m and / as terminal sounds, show that this lapygian dialect was essentially different from the Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects. The supposition of an especially close affinity between the lapygian nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions, and in the surprising facility with which that people became Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this respect of the other Italian nations. Apulia, which ip... theu- time^.ojriniaiis_(4ao) was still described as a barbarous land, had in the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek, although no__direct colonization from Greece had taken place ; and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various indications of a similar tendency. With the recognition of such a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the lapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means goes so far as to warrant our taking the lapygian language to be a rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result be attainable. 1 The lack of information, 1 The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between the lapygian language and the modern Albanian ; based, however, on points CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 13 however, is not much felt ; for this race, already on the decline at the period when our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and disappearing. The character of the Tapygian people, little capable of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical autochthones of Italy. There can be no doubt that all the primitive migrations of nations took place by land ; especially such as were directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's time wholly unknown to the Hellenes. But if the earlier settlers came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin of mountains from their stratifica- tion, the historical inquirer may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy ; and it is just at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the lapygian nation. The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back Italians, as trustworthy tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of being determined with greater precision than that of the lapygian nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is involved. Should this re- lationship be confirmed, and should the Albanians on the other hand a race also Indo-Germanic and on a par with the Hellenic and Italian races be really a remnant of that Helleno-barbaric nationality traces of which occur throughout all Greece and especially in the northern provinces,, the nation that preceded the Hellenes would be demonstrated as identical with that which preceded the Italians. Still the inference would not immediately follow that the lapygian immigration to Italy had taken place across the Adriatic Sea. i 4 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i Umbrians ; the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds there appears the peculiar spirant f, in the use of which they agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself. The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout, and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of their elements either by the media, or by the breathing alone / or h. The finer spirants, s, w, /, which the Greeks dispense with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further developed. The throwing- back of the accent and the consequent destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some Greek stocks and with the Etruscans ; but among the Italians this was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date, which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome. Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently : the concluding consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in the Latin and still more so in the Samnite ; while the Umbrian drops even these. In connection with this we find that the middle voice has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar passive formed by the addition CHAP. II INTO ITALY 15 of r takes its place ; and further that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the roots es and_/k, while the richer terminational system of the Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and of multitude ; while they have continued with much precision to express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly Italian, _and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines, a process carried out more completely here than in any other language. These examples selected from a great abundance of Relation of analogous phenomena suffice to establish the individuality the i talians of the Italian stock as distinguished from the other members Greeks, of the Indo-Germanic family, and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek. The Greek and the Italian are brothers ; the Celt, the German, and the Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations themselves ; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word of enigmatical origin, Graius or Graicus, which is applied to every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous appellation 'OTTIKOS, which is applied to all the Latin and Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to the lapygians or Etruscans. Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite 16 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK I Relation of dialects. It is true that of these only two, the Umbrian the Latins an( j fa e g arnn it e or Oscan, are in some degree known to to the Urn- bro-Sam- us, and these even in a manner extremely defective and mtes. uncertain. Of the rest some, such as the Marsian and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial Latin, completely dis- appeared. A conjoint view, however, of the facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin. In the 'pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian used / where the Roman used g, as pis for quis ; just as languages otherwise closely related are found to differ ; for instance, p is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, k to the Gaelic and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed, whereas in the southern Italian , dialects they have suffered little ; and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved, a modifica- tion which does not take place in the kindred group of languages. The genitive of words in a is in this group as among the Greeks as, among the Romans in the matured language ae ; that of words in us is in the Samnite eis, in the Umbrian es, among the Romans ei ; the locative dis- appeared more and more from the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the other Italian dialects ; the dative plural in bus is extant only in Latin. The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in urn is foreign to the Romans ; CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 17 while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root es after the Greek fashion (Jier-est like Aey-orw) has almost, perhaps altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from/z/0 (amabo). In many of these instances, however in the forms of the cases, for example the differences only exist in the two languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide. It thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of the Ionic to the Doric ; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian and kindred dialects may be com- pared with the differences between the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta. Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation of an historical event. With perfect cer- tainty they guide us to the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians ; that from this, at a subsequent period, the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans. When and where these separations took place, language of course cannot tell ; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope its conjectural way along the course oi those revolutions, the earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines. On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree of culture which the people had reached when these separations took place, and so furnish us VOL. I 2 iS THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK I with the beginnings of history, which is nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the degree of civilization attained ; its archives preserve evidence of the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records the future will not fail to draw in- formation as to those times regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb. * During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions, perceptions, such as sum, do, pater, the original echo of the impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot be explained either on the principle of an uniform develop- ment in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals ; the Sanscrit gdus is the Latin bos, the Greek fiovs; Sanscrit avis is the Latin ovis, Greek oi's; Sanscrit afvas, Latin equus, Greek tWos ; Sanscrit hansas, Latin anser, Greek x''/f > Sanscrit afis, Latin anas, Greek viyTcra ; in like manner pecus, sus, porcus, taurus, cam's, are Sanscrit words. Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of mankind has been CHAP, n INTO ITALY 19 dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand, we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single exception of ed, which philologically represents the Sanscrit yavas, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult in the case of plants than of animals ; and the cultivation of rice among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild in Mesopotamia, 1 not that they already cultivated grain. While, however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification. Agras among the Indians denotes a level surface in general ; kfirnu, anything 1 Barley, wheat, and spelt were found growing together in a wild state on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west from Anah (Alph. de Candolle, Geographic botanique raisonnie, ii. p. 934). The growth of barley and wheat in a wild state in Mesopotamia had already been mentioned by the Babylonian historian Berosus (ap. Georg. Syncell. p. 50 Bonn.), 20 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i pounded ; aritram, oar and ship ; venas, that which is pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are thus very ancient ; but their more definite application to the field (ager), to the grain to be ground (gramim\ to the implement which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea (aratrum}, to the juice of the grape (vinum), had not yet taken place when the earliest divi- sion of the stocks occurred, and it is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it (Gothic quairnus, Lithuanian girnos x ), received their names from the Sanscrit Mrnu. We may accordingly assume it as probable, that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but a very subordinate part in their economy ; for had it at that time held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans, it would have left a deeper impression upon the language. On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans is attested by the Sanscrit dam(as\ Latin domus, Greek So//,os; Sanscrit vfyas, Latin vicus, Greek O?KOS; Sanscrit dvaras, Latin fores, Greek Ovpa.; further, the building of oar-boats by the names of the boat, Sanscrit ndus, Latin navis, Greek vavs, and of the oar, Sanscrit aritmm, Greek e/Deiyxos, Latin remus, tri-res-mis ; and the use of waggons and the breaking in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit akshas (axle and cart), Latin axis, Greek awv, ap-ago. ; Sanscrit tugam, Latin iugum, Greek gvyov. The words that denote clothing- Sanscrit vastra, Latin vestis, Greek r0r/s ; as well as those that denote sewing and spinning Sanscrit siv, Latin suo ; Sanscrit nah, Latin neo, Greek v/#o>, are alike in all Indo- Germanic languages. This cannot, however, be equally 1 [Scotch quern. Mr. Robertson.] CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 21 affirmed of the higher art of weavingj__ The knowledge of the use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations ; and the same may be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed as implements or ornaments by man. At least the names of copper (aes) and silver (argentum), perhaps also ol gold, are met with in Sanscrit, andthese names can scarcely have originated betore man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores ; the Sanscrit asis, Latin ensis, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic weapons. No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental ideas on which the development of all Indo- Germanic states ultimately rests ; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon. On the other hand the positive organization of the body politic, the decision of the questions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong altogether to a later age. Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community of origin. The numbers are thej>ame ug to one hundred (Sanscrit fatam, ka$atam, Latin centum, ^~ I ~mHeLatin vieo, vimen, belong to the same root as our weave (German weberi) and kindred words, the word must still, when the Greeks and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed 'that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the preparation of linseed-oil. Hemp probably became known to the Italians at a still later period than flax ; at least cannabis looks quite like a borrowed word of later date. 22 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i Greek k-Karov, Gothic hund] ; and the moon receives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (mensis). The idea of Deity itself (Sanscrit dfrvas, Latin deus, Greek 0eos), and many of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism, belong to the common inheritance of the nations. The conception, for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths, the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman mythologies. Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber : thus the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater, Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention ; they were immi- grants along with the oldest settlers from the East. The divine greyhound Saramd, who guards for the Lord of heaven the golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed, becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Saramd, Saramtyas, or Hermeias ; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the steal- ing of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt con- nected with the Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant conception of nature. The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks properly belongs to the general history of the CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 23 ancient world. It is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain, so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted. Nor is this a superfluous labour'; we reach by means of it the stage at which Italian civiliza- tion commenced, the starting-point of the national history. While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a Agri- pastoral life and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, culture - only in their wild state, all indications point to the con- clusion that the Graeco-Italians were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people. The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of agriculture itself common to both, for this does not upon the whole warrant the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit it. An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans, or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture was certainly still unknown. The truth is, that the more advanced races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation ; and when the annals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture to the intro- duction of five species of grain that took place under a particular king in a particulafyear, the story undoubtedly depicts correctly, at least in a general way, the relations' subsisting in the earliest epochs of civilization. A common knowledge of agriculture, like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war chariots, of purple, and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their original unity. But as regards the Greeks and Italians", whose mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis that agriculture as well as writing and coinage ' 24 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i first came to Italy by means of the Hellenes may be characterized as wholly inadmissible. On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other is attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions relating to it ; ager, dypos ; aro aratrum, dpow aporpov ; ligo alongside of Aa^aivw ; hortus, \6pros ', hordeum, KfuQ-f] ; milium, ^XLvrf ; rapa, pafavis ; malva, naXd^tj ', vimtm, on/os. It is likewise attested by the agree- ment of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the plough, which appears of the same shape on the old Attic and the old Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain, millet, barley, spelt ; in the custom of cutting the ears with the sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten threshing- floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain puls TroAros, pinso Trrwrcrw, mola fj.vXrj ; for baking was of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always used in the Roman ritual instead of bread. That the culture of the vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration, is shown by the appellation "wine- land " (Olvarrpia), which appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers. It would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture, or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion. Moreover, at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with each other, but with other members of the great family; at least, it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation, while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo- Germanic family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in CHAP, ii INTO ITALY 25 common with the Celtic as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks. 1 The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its details and gradations. The investiga- tion of languages with this view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language, but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of tradi- tion. For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the Graeco-Italians still lived together. The task of discriminating the results of culture which are common to the European members of this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the Germano- Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in linguistic and historical inquiries. But there can be no doubt that, with the Graeco-Italians as with all other nations, agriculture became and in the mind of the people remained the germ and core of their national and of their private life. The house and the fixed hearth, which the husbandman 1 Thus aro, aratrum reappear in the old German aran (to plough, dialectically eren), erida, in Slavonian orati, oradlo, in Lithuanian arti, arimnas, in Celtic ar, aradar. Thus alongside of ligo stands our rake (German recfien], of hortus our garden (German garten], of mola our mill (German miihle, Slavonic mlyn, Lithuanian malunas, Celtic malin). With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely pastoral husbandry. If it was the possession of cattle, and not of land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture was of later 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. 26 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i constructs instead of the light hut and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or 'Ecn-t'a, almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic yet from the first common to both nations. One of the oldest legends of the Italian stock ascribes to king Italus, or, as the Italians must have pronounced the word, Vitalus or Vitulus, the introduction of the change from a pastoral to an agricultural life, and shrewdly connects with it the original Italian legislation. We have simply another version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite stock which makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the oldest Latin national names which designate the people as reapers (Siculi, perhaps also Sicant), or as field-labourers (Opsct). It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pastoral and hunting people as founding a city. Legend and faith, laws and manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes are throughout associated with agriculture. 1 Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement of it, however rude. Accordingly, the measures of surface and the mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on a like basis among both ! peoples. The Oscan and Umbrian versus of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with tn^7jreelc"^/i//%nw. The principle of marking off boundaries was also the same. The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the 1 Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during the earliest epoch of culture. Thus the gods in Italy immediately concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch, Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166 ; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301), in Greece Demeter (Plu- tarch, Conjug. Praec. init. ); in old Greek formulas the procreation of children is called dporos (p. 30 note) ; indeed the oldest Roman form of marriage, confarreatlo, derives its name and its ceremony from the culti- vation of corn. The use of the plough in the founding of cities is well known. CHAP, 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, re^os from Te/ww) ; 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 removes, usually opoi). This mode of defining boundaries, which is probably also Etruscan but is^TTardTy^of TSfiruscan origin, we find among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient records of the Tarentine Heracleots^ who are as little likely to have~ borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines : it is an ancient possession common to all. A . peculiar characteristic of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of the principle of the square ; even where the sea or a river formed a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their allocation of the land with the last complete square. It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especi- other ally close relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears ; feat ^ r f s it is 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 is, the " blackened " chamber, with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals, and the hearth ; and precisely similar is the Homeric tttegaron, with its household altar and hearth and smoke- begrimed roof. We cannot say the same of ship-building. The boat with oars was an old common possession of the Indo-Germans ; but the advance to the use of sailing vessels ' can scarcely be considered to have taken place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical terms origin- ally common to the Greeks and Italians except such as are \ 28 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK i 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 Lacpnians 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 " (rpviravov, terebra), and the " under-layer " (a-ropevs, ecrxapa, tabula, probably from tendere, rexa/wii). In. like manner Jji_dress of the twojpeoples is essentially identical, for the tunica quite corresponds with the thiton, and the toga is nothing but a fuller himation. 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 (ilumni arquites)^- 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. Difference It was otherwise in the mental domain. The great prob- Italian and ^ em ^ man novv to ^ ve ' n consc i us harmony with him- , J Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any can be shown to be certainly related ; lancea, although doubtless connected with \6yx"n- iSi as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards. CHAP. II 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^he internal dissolution of even local authority ; which in itjS 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 30 THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS BOOK I 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. The family All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state. e state reste d 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 slavery was maintained by the Romans with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences ; whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage Ttronghold_gf. Latium, which offered to settlers the mostwholesome air, the freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the new comers. Here Alba. '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 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 Palazsuola, whereby CHAP, in SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS 49 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 1 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 Momentum 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 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 VOL. i 4 1 -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" (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 associa- tion we can do little else than institute conjectures. From thejpnst aricjtentjiiiies there were held, in connec- tion with the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assent lilies 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 CHAP, in SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS 51 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 ; l 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 affirnr 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 1 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 ; tKexfiptai, Dionys. iv. 49) ; and a war was not allowed to be ? begun during its continuance (Macrob. /. c. ) 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 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 52 SETTLEMENTS OF THE LATINS BOOK i 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 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. 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. CHAP. IV THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 53 CHAPTER IV THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME ABOUT fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber Ramnes. / 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 Tides, bank of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the Luc 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, Tides, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth in other words, out of such a synoikismos 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 Mors, farreum ancient form for horreum, Fabii Fovii, Valerius Volesus, vacuus VOCIVUS. 54 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK i "-in Attica. 1 The great antiquity of this threefold division / of the community 2 is perhaps best evinced by the fact that Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, 'regularly used the forms tribuere ("to divide into three") ^and tribus ("a third") in the general sense of "to divide" and "a part," and the latter expression (tribus\ like our 1'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 1 The synoikismos did not necessarily involve an actual settlement together at one spot ; but while each resided as formerly on his own land, there was thenceforth only one council-hall and court-house for the whole (Thucyd. ii. 15 ; Herodot. i. 170). 2 We might even, looking to the Attic T/HTTI/S and the Umbrian trifo, raise the question whether a 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 a three- fold division would require to present itself more generally throughout the Graeco-Italian field than seems to be the case, and to appear uniformly everywhere as the ground-scheme. The Umbrians may possibly have adopted the word tribus only when they came under the influence of Roman rule ; it cannot with certainty be traced in Oscan. CHAP, 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, forsooth ! even Pelasgian fragments. Setting aside self -contradictory and unfounded hypotheses, we may sum up in a few words all that can be said' respecting the nationality of the component elements of the primitive Roman commonwealth. That the Ramnians were a Latin stock cannot be doubted, for they gave their name to the new Roman commonwealth and therefore must have substantially determined the nationality of the united community. Respecting the origin of the Luceres nothing can be affirmed, except that there is no difficulty in the way of our assigning them, like the Ramnians, to the Latin stock. The second of these communities, on the other hand, is with one consent derived from Sabina ; and this view can at least be traced to a tradition preserved in the Titian brotherhood, which represented that priestly college as having been instituted, on occasion of the Tities being admitted into the collective community, for the preservation of their distinctive Sabine ritual. It may be, therefore, that at a period very remote, when the Latin and Sabellian stocks were beyond question far less sharply contrasted in language, manners, and customs than were the Roman and the Samnite of a later age, a Sabellian community entered into a Latin canton- union ; and, as in the older and more credible traditions without exception the Tities take precedence of the Ramnians, it is probable that the intruding Tities com- pelled the older Ramnians to accept the synoikismos, A mixture of different nationalities certainly therefore' took place ; but it hardly exercised an influence greater than the migration, for example, which occurred some centuries afterwards of the Sabine Attus Clauzus or Appius Claudius and his clarismen and clients to Rome. The earlier THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME Rome the emporium of Latium. admission of the Titles among the Ramnians does not entitle us to class the community among mongrel peoples any more than does that subsequent reception of the Claudii among the Romans. With the exception, perhaps, of isolated national institutions handed down in connection with ritual, the existence of Sabellian elements can nowhere be pointed out in Rome; and the Latin language in particular furnishes absolutely no support to any such hypothesis. 1 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 " (LupercaKa\ 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 (e.g. Schwegler, R. G. i. 184, 193) still seek to discover in Latin a mixture of two nearly related Italian dialects. But we ask in vain for the linguistic or historical facts which render such an hypothesis necessary. When a language presents the appearance of being an intermediate link between two others, every philologist knows that the phenomenon may quite as probably depend, and more frequently does depend, on organic development than on external intermixture. CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 57 and, singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the other heathen festivals in Christian Rome. From these settlements the later Rome arose. The Character founding of a city in the strict sense, such as the legend Ol 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 TownjT 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- 1 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 sufficient rapidity ) to the sea, and in consequence it floods the low-lying lands and the valleys that open between the hills, and converts j them into swamps. For a settler thelocality 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 58 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK I Remus, is nothing but a naive attempt of primitive quasi- history to explain the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss ; but it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing the special relations of the .locality to propose a positive conjecture not regarding the way in which the place originated, but regarding the circumstances which occasioned its rapid and surprising prosperity and led to its occupying its peculiar position in Latium. Earliest Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the the l Roman R man territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnae, territory. Fidenae, Caenina, and Gabii lie in the immediate neighbour- hopd, 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 pagi], and the important salt- CHAP, iv 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 tete de pont, the " mount of Janus " (laniculum], 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 Tiber Tiber was the natural highway for the traffic of Latium ; and its mouth, on a coast scantily provided with harbours, became necessarily the anchorage of seafarers. Moreover, the Tiber formed from very ancient times the frontier defence of the Latin stock against their northern neigh- bours. There was no place better fitted for an emporium t , of the Latin river and sea traffic, and for a maritime frontier fortress of Latium, than Rome. It combined the' T 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 asr 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 6o THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME Early urban character of Rome. 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 CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 61 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 115 square miles, partly of marshy or sandy soil, and which, even under the earliest constitution of the city, furnished a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least 10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar in their public and private life, and that the distinction between them and the other Latins and Italians in general is pre-eminently the 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 Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand how, along with and in addition to Latin husbandry, an urban life should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus have laid the foundation for its distinctive career. It is far more important and more practicable to follow out the course of this mercantile and strategical growth of the city of Rome, than to attempt the useless task 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 quadratd), as it was called in later times from the - irregularly quadrangular form of the Palatine hill. The gates and walls that enclosed this original city remained visible down to the period of the empire : the sites of two of the former, the Porta Romana near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta Mugionis at the Arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the Palatine ring-wall is described by Tacitus from his own observation at least on the sides looking towards the Aventine and Caelian. Many traces indicate that this was the centre and original seat of the urban settlement. On the Palatine was to be found ^the sacred symbol of that settlement, the "outfit-vault" (mundus) as it was called, in which the first settlers deposited a sufficiency of everything necessary for a household and added a clod of their dear native earth. There, too, was situated the building in which all the curies assembled for religious and other purposes, each at its own hearth (curiae veteres). There stood the meeting- house of the " Leapers " (curia Saliorum) in which also the sacred shields of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the " Wolves " (Lupercat), and the dwelling of the priest of Jupiter. On and near this hill the legend of the founding of the city placed the scenes of its leading incidents, and the straw-covered house of Romulus, the shepherd's hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree towards CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF 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 Apollinis, was the primitive place of assembly for the burgesses and the senate, and the stage erected over the mundus itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community. The " festival of the Seven Mounts " (scptimontium), The Seven again, has preserved the memory of the more extended Mounts - settlement which gradually formed round the Palatine. Suburbs grew up one after another, each protected by its own separate though weaker circumvallation and joined to the original ring-wall of the Palatine, as in fen districts the outer dikes are joined on to the main dike. The " Seven Rings " were, the Palatine itself ; the Cermalus, the slope of the Palatine in the direction of the morass that extended between it and the Capitol towards the river (velabruni) ; the Velia, the ridge which connected the Palatine with the Esquiline, but in subsequent times was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the Fagutal, the Oppius, and the Cispius, the three summits of the Esquiline ; lastly, the Sucusa, or Subura, a fortress 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 64 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK i Palatine Rome, especially when we compare with them the Servian arrangement of districts which was afterwards formed on the basis of this earliest division. Oldest set- The Palatine was the original seat of the Roman dements m community, the oldest and originally the only ring-wall. The urban settlement, however, began at Rome as well as elsewhere not within, but under the protection of, the stronghold ; and the oldest settlements with which we are acquainted, and which afterwards formed the first and second regions in the Servian division of the city, lay in a circle round the Palatine. These included the settlement on the declivity of the Cermalus with the "street of the Tuscans " a name in which there may have been preserved a reminiscence of the commercial intercourse between the Caerites and Romans already perhaps carried on with vigour in the Palatine city and the settlement on the Velia ; both of which subsequently along with the strong- hold-hill itself constituted one region in the Servian city. Further, there were the component elements of the subse- quent second region the suburb on the Caelian, which probably embraced only its extreme point above the Colos- seum ; that on the Carinae, the spur which projects from the Esquiline towards the Palatine ; and, lastly, the valley and outwork of the Subura, from which the whole region received its name. These two regions jointly constituted the incipient city; and the Suburan district of it, which extended at the base of the stronghold, nearly from the Arch of Constantine to S. Pietro in Vincoli, and over the valley beneath, appears to have been more considerable and perhaps older than the settlements incorporated by the Servian arrangement in the Palatine district, because in the order of the regions the former takes precedence of the latter. A remarkable memorial of the distinction between these two portions of the city was preserved in one of the oldest sacred customs of the later Rome, the sacrifice of CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 65 the October horse yearly offered in the Campus Martins : down to a late period a struggle took place at this festival for the horse's head between the men of the Subura and those of the Via Sacra, and according as victory lay with the former or with the latter, the head was nailed either to the Mamilian Tower (site unknown) in the Subura, or to the king's palace under the Palatine. It was the two halves of the old city that thus competed with each other on equal terms. At that time, accordingly, the Esquiliae (which name strictly used is exclusive of the Caririae) were in reality what they were called, the "outer buildings" (ex- quiliae, like inquilinus, from colere) or suburb : this became the third region in the later city division, and it was always held in inferior consideration as compared with the Suburan and Palatine regions. Other neighbouring .heights also, such as the Capitol and the Aventine, may probably have been occupied by the community of the Seven Mounts ; the " bridge of piles " in particular (pens sublicius\ thrown over the natural pier of the island in the Tiber,' must have existed even then the pontifical college alone is sufficient evidence of this and the tete de pont on the Etruscan bank, the height of the Janiculum, would not be left unoccupied ; but the community had not as yet brought either within the circuit of its fortifications. The regula- tion which *was adhered to as a ritual rule down to the latest times, that the bridge should be composed simply of wood without iron, manifestly shows that in its original practical use it was to be merely a flying bridge, which must be capable of being easily at any time broken off or burnt. We recognize in this circumstance how insecure for a long time and liable to interruption was the command of the passage of the river on the part of the Roman community. No relation is discoverable between the urban settle- ments thus gradually formed and the three communities VOL. i 5 66 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK I The Hill- Romans on the Quirinal. into which from an immemorially early period the Roman commonwealth was in political law divided. As the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres appear to have been com- munities originally independent, they must have had their settlements originally apart ; but they certainly did not dwell in separate circumvallations on the Seven Hills, and all fictions to this effect in ancient or modern times must be consigned by the intelligent inquirer to the same fate with the charming tale of Tarpeia and the battle of the Palatine. On the contrary each of the three tribes of ^Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres must have been distributed , throughout the two regions of the oldest city, the Subura 7 and Palatine, and the suburban region as well : with this ^may be connected the fact, that afterwards not only in -the Suburan and Palatine, but in each of the regions subsequently added to the city, there were three pairs of Argean chapels. The Palatine city of the Seven Mounts may have had a history of its own ; no other tradition of it has survived than simply that of its having once existed. But as the leaves of the forest make room for the new growth of spring, although they fall unseen by human eyes, so has this unknown city of the Seven Mounts made room for the Rome of history. But the Palatine city was not the only one that in ancient times existed within the circle afterwards enclosed by the Servian walls; opposite to it, in its immediate vicinity, there lay a second city on the Quirinal. The "old stronghold" (Capitolium vetus) with a sanctuary of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and a temple of the goddess of Fidelity in which state treaties were publicly deposited, forms the evident counterpart of the later Capitol with its temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and with its' shrine of Fides Romana likewise destined as it were for^ a repository of international law, and furnishes a sure proof that the Quirinal also was once the centre of an independent CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 67 commonwealth. The same fact may be inferred from the double worship of Mars on the Palatine and the Quirin'al ; for Mars was the type of the warrior and the oldest chief divinity of the burgess communities of Italy. With this is connected the further circumstance that his ministers, the two primitive colleges of the "Leapers" (Satii) and of the " Wolves " (Luperci}, existed in the later Rome in duplicate : by the side of the Salii of the Palatine there were also Salii of the Quirinal ; by the side of the Quinctian Luperci of the Palatine there was a Fabian guild of Luperci, which in all probability had their sanctuary on the Quirinal. 1 All these indications, which even in themselves are of v great weight, become more significant when we recollect that the accurately known circuit of the Palatine city of the Seven Mounts excluded the Quirinal, and that after- wards in the Servian Rome, while the first three regions corresponded to the former Palatine city, a fourth region was formed out of the Quirinal along with the neighbouring Viminal. Thus, too, we discover an explanation of the reason why the strong outwork of the Subura was con- structed beyond the city wall in the valley between the Esquiline and Quirinal ; it was at that point, in fact, that the two territories came into contact, and the Palatine Romans, after having taken possession of the low ground, 1 That the Quinctian Luperci had precedence in rank over the Fabian is evident from the circumstance that the fabulists attribute the Quinctii to Romulus, the Fabii to Remus (Ovid, Fast. ii. 373 seq. ; Viet. De Oxig. 22). That the Fabii belonged to the Hill-Romans is shown by the sacrifice of their gens on the Quirinal (Liv. v. 46, 52), whether that sacrifice may or may not have been connected with the Lupercalia. Moreover, the Lupercus of the former college is called in inscriptions (Orelli, 2253) Lupercus Quinctialis vetus ; and the fraenomen Kaeso, which was most probably connected with the Lupercal worship (see Rom, Forschungen, i. 17), is found exclusively among the Quinctii and Fabii : the form commonly occurring in authors, Lupercus Quinctilius and Quinctilianus, is therefore a misnomer, and the college belonged not to the comparatively recent Quinctilii, but to the far older Quinctii. When, again, the Quinctii (Liv. i. 30), or Quinctilii (Dion. iii. 29), are named among the Alban clans, the latter reading is here to be preferred, and the Quinctii are to be regarded rather as an old Roman gens. 68 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK i were under the necessity of constructing a stronghold for protection against those of the Quirinal. Lastly, even the name has not been lost by which the men of the Quirinal distinguished themselves from their Palatine neighbours. As the Palatine city took the name of " the Seven Mounts," its citizens called themselves the "mount-men" (montani), and the term "mount," while applied to the other heights belonging to the city, was above all associated with the Palatine ; so the Quirinal height although not lower, but on the contrary somewhat higher, than the former as well as the adjacent Viminal never in the strict use of the language received any other name than "hill" (collis). In the ritual records, indeed, the Quirinal was not unfrequently designated as the "hill" without further addition. In like manner the gate leading out from this height was usually called the "hill-gate" (porta collind) ; the priests of Mars settled there were called those " of the hill " (Salii collint] in contrast to those of the Palatium (Salii Palatini\ and the fourth Servian region formed out of this district was termed the hill-region (tribus collind}}- The name of Romans primarily associated with the locality was probably appropriated by these " Hill- men " as well as by those of the " Mounts ; " and the 1 Although the name "Hill of Quirinus" was afterwards ordinarily used to designate the height where the Hill-Romans had their abode, we need not at all on that account regard the name " Quirites " as having been originally reserved for the burgesses on the Quirinal. For, as has been shown, all the earliest indications point, as regards these, to the name Collini ; while it is indisputably certain that the name Quirites denoted from the first, as well as subsequently, simply the full burgess, and had no connection with the distinction between montani and collinl (comp. chap. v. infra). The later designation of the Quirinal rests on the circumstance that, while the Mars quirinus, the spear-bearing god of Death, was originally worshipped as well on the Palatine as on the Quirinal as indeed the oldest inscriptions found at what was afterwards called the Temple of Quirinus designate this divinity simply as Mats, at a later period , for the sake of distinction the god of the Mount-Romans more especially was called Mars, the god of the Hill-Romans more especially Quirinus. When the Quirinal is called collis agonalis, " hill of sacrifice," it is so designated merely as the centre of the religious rites of the Hill-Romans. CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 69 former perhaps designated themselves as " Romans of the Hill" (Romani collini\ That a diversity of race may have lain at the foundation of this distinction between the two neighbouring cities is possible ; but evidence sufficient^ \ to warrant our pronouncing a community established on Latin soil to be of alien lineage is, in the case of the Quirinal community, totally wanting. 1 Thus the site of the Roman commonwealth was still at Relation this period occupied by the Mount-Romans of the Palatine t he W paia and the Hill-Romans of the Quirinal as two separate tine and communities confronting each other and doubtless in many respects at feud, in __ some degree resembling the Montigiani and the Trasteverini in modern Rome. That the community of the Seven Mounts early attained a great preponderance over that of the Quirinal may with certainty be inferred both from the greater extent of its newer portions and suburbs, and from the position of inferiority in which the former Hill- Romans were obliged to acquiesce under the later Servian arrangement. But even within the 1 The evidence alleged for this (comp. e.g. Schwegler, R. G. i. 480) mainly rests on an etymologico-historical hypothesis started by Varro and as usual unanimously echoed by later writers, that the Latin quiris and quirinus are akin to the name of the Sabine town Cures, and that the Quirinal hill accordingly had been peopled from Cures. Even if the linguistic affinity of these words were more assured, there would be little warrant for deducing from it such a historical inference. That the old sanctuaries on this eminence (where, besides, there was also a " Collis - Latiaris " ) were Sabine, has been asserted, but has not been proved. i^anuniirinus, Sol, Salus, Flora, SemoSancus or Deus fidius were doubtless JSabiu%-but- they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. If a name like that of 5emo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of the Quirinal which afterwards diminished in its importance (comp. the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from a neighbouring land. In so speaking we do not mean to deny that it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated in producing this state of things ; but if such was the case, they have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the constitution of Rome are only fitted serious'y to warn us against such baseless speculations leading to no result. 70 THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME BOOK i Palatine city there was hardly a true and complete amal- gamation of the different constituent elements of the settle- ment. We have already mentioned hoV the Subura and the Palatine annually contended for the horse's head ; the several Mounts also, and even the several curies (there was as yet no common hearth for the city, but the various hearths of the curies subsisted side by side, although in the same locality) probably felt themselves to be as yet more separated than united ; and Rome as a whole was probably rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. It appears from many indications that the houses of the old and powerful families were constructed somewhat after the manner of fortresses and were rendered capable of defence a precaution, it may be presumed, not unnecessary. It was the magnificent structure ascribed to king Servius Tullius that first surrounded not merely those two cities of the Palatine and Quirinal, but also the heights of the Capitol and the Aventine which were not comprehended within their enclosure, with a single great ring-wall, and thereby created the new Rome the Rome of history. But ere this mighty work was undertaken, the relations of Rome to the sur- rounding country had beyond doubt undergone a complete revolution. As the period, during which the husbandman guided his plough on the seven hills of Rome just as on the other hills of Latium, and the usually unoccupied places of refuge on particular summits alone presented the germs of a more permanent settlement, corresponds to the earliest epoch of the Latin stock without trace of traffic or achievement ; as thereafter the flourishing settlement on the Palatine and in the " Seven Rings " was coincident with the occupation of the mouths of the Tiber by the Roman community, and with the progress of the Latins to a more stirring and freer intercourse, to an urban civilization in Rome more especially, and perhaps also to a more con- CHAP, iv THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME 71 solidated political union in the individual states as well as in the confederacy; so the Servian wall, which was the foundation of a single great city, was connected with the epoch at which the city of Rome was able to contend for, and at length to achieve, the sovereignty of the Latin league. 72 ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME BOOK i CHAPTER V THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME The FATHER and mother, sons and daughters, home and home- Roman stead, servants and chattels such are the natural elements house. constituting the household m all cases, where polygamy has not obliterated the distinctive position of the mother. But the nations that have been most susceptible of culture have diverged widely from each other in their conception and treatment of the natural distinctions which the house- hold thus presents. By some they have been apprehended and wrought out more profoundly, by others more super- ficially ; by some more under their moral, by others more under their legal aspects. None has equalled the Roman in the simple but inexorable embodiment in law of the principles pointed out by nature herself. The house- The family formed an unity. It consisted of the free ^hoiTse? nian w * 10 u P on hi s father's death had become his own hold. master, and the spouse whom the priests by the ceremony of the sacred salted cake (confarreatio) had solemnly wedded to share with him water and fire, with their sons and sons' sons and the lawful wives of these, and their unmarried daughters and sons' daughters, along with all goods and substance pertaining to any of its members. The children of daughters on the other hand were excluded, because, if born in wedlock, they belonged to the family of the husband ; and if begotten out of wedlock, they had no CHAP, v ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME 73 place in a family at all. To the Roman citizen a house of his own and the blessing of children appeared the end and essence of life. The death of the individual was not an evil, for it was a matter of necessity ; but the extinction of a household or of a clan was injurious to the community itself, which in the earliest times therefore opened up to the childless the means of avoiding such a fatality by their adopting the children of others as their own. The Roman family from the first contained within it the conditions of a higher culture in the moral adjustment of the mutual relations of its members. Man alone could be head of a family. Woman did not indeed occupy a position inferior to man in the acquiring of property and money ; on the contrary the daughter inherited_an equal share with her brother, ari3[~tFe^miother an equaT~share~~with^ her children. But woman always and necessarily belonged to the household, not to the community ; and in the house- hold itself she necessarily held a position of domestic sub- jection the daughter to her father, the wife to her hus- band, 1 the fatherless unmarried woman to her nearest male relatives ; it was by these, and not by the king, that in case of need woman was called to account. Within the house, however, woman was not servant but mistress. Exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas belonged to the menials, the Roman house- wife devoted herself in the main to the superintendence of 1 This was not merely the case under the old religious marriage (matrimonium confarreatione) ; the civil marriage also (matrimonium consensu], although not in itself giving to the husband proprietary power over his wife, opened up the way for his acquiring this proprietary power, inasmuch as the legal ideas of "formal delivery" (coemptio), and " prescription" (usu$), were applied without ceremony to such a marriage. Till he acquired it, and in particular therefore during the period which elapsed before the completion of the prescription, the wife was (just as in the later marriage by causae probatio, until that took place), not uxor, but pro uxore. Down to the period when Roman jurisprudence became a completed system the principle maintained its ground, that the wife who was not in her husband's power was not a married wife, but only passed as such (uxor tantummodo habetur, Cicero, Top. 3, 14). 74 ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME BOOK i her maid-servants, and to the accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the plough was to man. 1 In like manner, the moral obligations of parents towards their children were fully and deeply felt by the Roman nation ; and it was reckoned a heinous offence if a father neglected or corrupted his child, or if he even squandered his property to his child's disadvantage. In a legal point of view, however, the family was abso- lutely guided and governed by the single all-powerful will of the " father of the household " {pater familias\ In relation to him all in the household were destitute of legal rights the wife and the child no less than the bullock or the slave. As the virgin became by the free choice of her husband his wedded wife, so it rested with his own free will to rear or not to rear the child which she bore to him. This maxim was not suggested by indifference to the pos- session of a family ; on the contrary, the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children were a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep and earnest hold of the Roman mind. Perhaps the only instance of support accorded on the part of the community in Rome 1 The following epitaph, although belonging to a much later period, is not unworthy to have a place here. It is the stone that speaks : Hospes, quod deico, paullum est. Asia ac pellige. Heic est sepulcrum haud pulcrum pulcrai feminae, Nomen parentes nominarunt Claudiam, Suom mareitum corde dilexit sovo, Gnatos duos creavit, horunc alterum In terra linquit, alium sub terra, locat ; Sermone lepido, turn autem incessu commodo, Domum servavit, lanam fecit. Dixi, Abei. (Corf. Inscr. Lai. 1007. ) Still more characteristic, perhaps, is the introduction of wool-spinning among purely moral qualities ; which is no very unusual occurrence in Roman epitaphs. OrellK.ffigp -.optim^ ft ftt^Afrffygq, fanificapia pudicd frugi casta domiseda. QrelHj 4861: modest ia probitate pudidtia obsequio Ian (ft do diligcntia fide par similhquc cctereis probgfjggjmafittt* Kpitnph of Tuna, I. 30 : domcstifii bona puJiritnir, opscqui,comitat_is.^faclll- tatis, laniJTctir^tTrrr adsiduitatis, religionis] sine superstttione, ornaTifs non conspiciendi, cultus modici. CHAP, v ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME 75 is the enactment that aid should be given to the father who had three children presented to him at a birth ; while theirf' ideas regarding exposure are indicated by the prohibition of it so far as concerned all the sons deformed births!', excepted and at least the first daughter. Injurious, how-^ ever, to the public weal as exposure might appear, then prohibition of it soon changed its form from that of legal !\ punishment into that of religious curse ; for the father was, j j above all, thoroughly and absolutely master in his household. The father of the household not only maintained the strictest discipline over its members, but he had the right and duty of exercising judicial authority over them and of punishing them as he deemed fit in life and limb. The grown-up son might establish a separate household or, as the Romans expressed it, maintain his "own cattle" (peculiuni) assigned to him by his father ; but in law all ' that the son acquired, whether by his own labour or by,, gift from a stranger, whether in his father's household or in his own, remained the father's property. So long as the father lived, the persons legally subject to him could never hold property of their own, and therefore could not alienate unless by him so empowered, or yet bequeath. In this respect wife and child stood quite on the same level with the slave, who was not unfrequently allowed to manage a household of his own, and who was likewise entitled to alienate when commissioned by his master. Indeed a father might convey his son as well as his slave in property to a third person : if the purchaser was a foreigner, the son became his slave ; if he was a Roman, the son, while as a Roman he could not become a Roman's slave, stood at least to his purchaser in a slave's stead (in mancipii causa). The paternal and marital power was subject to a legal restriction, besides the one already mentioned on the right of exposure, only in so far as some of the worst abuses were visited by legal punishment as well as by religious 76 ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME BOOK I curse. Thus these penalties fell uponrthejnanjwho solcLhis wife or married son; and it j%as_ a matter of family usage that in the exercise of domestic jurisdiction thlT father, ajnid still more the husband, should not pronounce sentence on child or wife without having previously consulted the nearest blood-relatives, his wife's as well as his own. But the latter arrangement involved no legal diminution of power, for the blood-relatives called in to the domestic judgment had not to judge, but simply to advise the father of the household in judging. But not only was the power of the master of the house substantially unlimited and responsible to no one on earth ; it was also, as long as he lived, unchangeable and inde- structible. According to the Greek as well as Germanic laws the grown-up son, who was practically independentjDf his father, was also independent legally ; but the power of the Roman father could not be dissolved during his life either by age or by insanity, or even by his own free will, excepting only that the person of the holder of the power might change, for the child might certainly pass by way of adoption into the power of another father, and the daughter might pass by a lawful marriage out of the hand of her father into the hand of her husband and, leaving her own gens and the protection of her own god to enter into the gens of her husband and the protection of his god, became thenceforth subject to him as she had hitherto been to her father. According to Roman law it was made easier for the slave to obtain release from his master than for the son to obtain release from his father ; the manumission of the former was permitted at an early period, and by simple forms ; the release of the latter was only rendered possible at a much later date, and by very circuitous means. In- deed, if a master sold his slave and a father his son and the purchaser released both, the slave obtained his freedom, but the son by the release simply reverted into his father's CHAP, v ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME 77 power as before. Thus the inexorable consistency with which the Romans carried out their conception of the paternal and marital power converted it into a real right of property. Closely, however, as the power of the master of the household over wife and child approximated to his pro- prietary power over slaves and cattle, the members of the family were nevertheless separated by a broad line of dis- tinction, not merely in fact but in law, from the family property. The power of the house-master even apart from the fact that it appeared in operation only within the house was of a transient, and in some degree of a re- presentative, character. Wife and child did not exist merely for the house-father's sake in the sense in which property exists only for the proprietor, or in which the subjects of an absolute state exist only for the king ; they were the objects indeed of a legal right on his part, but they had at the same time capacities of right of their own ; they were not things, but persons. Their rights were dormant in respect of exercise, simply because the unity of the household demanded that it should be governed by a single representative ; but when the master of the house- ! hold died, his sons at once came forward as its masters and now obtained on their own account over the women and children and property the rights hitherto exercised over these by the father. On the other hand the death of the master occasioned no change in the legal position of the slave. So strongly was the unity of the family realized, that (Family even the death of the master of the house did not entirely lf nd , la ' (gens). dissolve it. The descendants, who were rendered by that occurrence independent, regarded themselves as still in many respects an unity ; a principle which was made use of in arranging the succession of heirs and in many other relations, but especially in regulating the position of the widow and unmarried daughters. As according to the ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF ROME BOOK i Depend- ents of the house- hold. older Roman view a woman was not capable of having power either over others or over herself, the power over her, or, as it was in this case more mildly expressed, the " guardianship " (^/ freeholder fathers, without distinction of birth, was under obligation of service ; so that even the manumitted slave had to serve, if in an exceptional case he had come into possession of landed property. The Latins also possessing land others from without were not allowed to acquire Roman soil were called in to service, so far as they u6 THE NON-BURGESSES AND BOOK i had, as was beyond doubt the case with most of them, taken up their abode on Roman territory. The body of men liable to serve was distributed, according to the size of their portions of land, into those bound to full service or the possessors of a full hide, 1 who were obliged to appear in complete armour and in so far formed pre-eminently the war army (dassis), and the four following ranks of smaller land- holders the possessors respectively of three fourths, of a 'half, of a quarter, or of an eighth of a whole farm from whom was required fulfilment of service, but not equipment in complete armour, and they thus had a position below the full rate (infra classeni). As the land happened to be at that time apportioned, almost the half of the farms were full hides, while each of the classes possessing respectively three-fourths, the half, and the quarter of a hide, amounted to scarcely an eighth of the freeholders, and those again holding an eighth of a hide amounted to fully an eighth. It was accordingly laid down as a rule that in the case of the infantry the levy should be in the proportion of eighty holders of a full hide, twenty from each of the three next ranks, and twenty-eight from the last. The cavalry was similarly dealt with. The number of divisions in it was tripled, and the only difference in this case was that the six divisions already existing with the old names (Titles, Ramnes, Luceres primi and secundi) were left to the patricians, while the twelve new divisions were formed chiefly from the non- burgesses. The reason for * this difference is probably to be sought in the fact that at that period the infantry were formed anew for each campaign and discharged on their return home, whereas the cavalry with their horses were on military grounds kept together also in time of peace, and held their regular drills, which continued to subsist as festivals of the Roman 1 [ffufe, hide, as much as can be properly tilled with one plough, called in Scotland a plough-gate. ] CHAP, vi THE REFORMED CONSTITUTION 117 equites down to the latest times. 1 Accordingly the squadrons once constituted were allowed, even under this reform, to keep their ancient names. In order to make the cavalry accessible to every burgess, the unmarried women and orphans under age, so far as they had possession of land, were bound instead of personal service to provide the horses for particular troopers (each trooper had two of them), and to furnish them with fodder. On the whole there was one horseman to nine foot - soldiers ; but in actual service the horsemen were used more sparingly. The non-freeholders (adcensi, people standing at the side of the list of those owing military service) had to supply the army with workmen and musicians as well as with a number of substitutes who marched with the army unarmed (velatt], and, when vacancies occurred in the field, took their places in the ranks equipped with the weapons of the sick or of the fallen. To facilitate the levying of the infantry, the city was Levy-dis- distributed into four " parts " (tribus) ; by which the old triple division was superseded, at least so far as concerned its local significance. These were the Palatine, which comprehended the height of that name along with the Velia ; the Suburan, to which the street so named, the Carinae, and the Caelian belonged ; the Esquiline ; and the Colline, formed by the Quirinal and Viminal, the "hills" as contrasted with the "mounts" of the Capitol and Palatine. We have already spoken .of the formation of these regions (p. 64), and shown how they originated out of the ancient double city of the Palatine and the Quirinal. By what process it came to pass that every freeholder burgess belonged to one of those city-districts, we cannot tell ; but this was now the case ; and that 1 For the same reason, when the levy was enlarged after the admission of the Hill-Romans, the equites were doubled, while in the infantry force instead of the single "gathering" (legio) two legions were called out (p. 1077.) THE NON-BURGESSES AND BOOK I the four regions were nearly on an equality in point of numbers, is evident from their being equally drawn upon in the levy. TJiis division, which had primary reference to the soil aloneahd applietl~l5nly inferentially to those who possessed it, was merely for administrative purposes, and in particular never had any religious significance attached to it ; for the fact that in each of the city-districts there were six chapels of the enigmatical Argei no more confers upon them the character of ritual districts than the erection of an altar to the Lares in each street implies such a character in the streets. Each of these four levy-districts had to furnish approxi- mately the fourth part not only of the force as a whole, but of each of its military subdivisions, so that each legion and each century numbered an equal proportion of conscripts from each region, in order to merge all distinctions of a 1 gentile and local nature in the one common levy of the community and, especially through the powerful levelling influence of the military spirit, to blend the metoeci and the burgesses into one people. Organiza- I n a military point of view, the male population capable tion of the o f bearing arms was divided into a first and second levy, the former of which, the "juniors" from the commence- ment of the eighteenth to the completion of the forty-sixth year, were especially employed for service in the field, while the " seniors " guarded the walls at home. The military unit came to be in the infantry the now doubled legion (p. 90) a phalanx, arranged and armed completely in the old Doric style, of 6000 men who, six file deep, formed a front of 1000 heavy-armed soldiers; to which were attached 2400 "unarmed" (velites, see p. 91, note). , The four first ranks of the phalanx, the c/assis, were formed by the fully -armed hoplites of those possessing a full hide ; in the fifth and sixth were placed the less completely equipped farmers of the second and third division ; the CHAP, vi THE REFORMED CONSTITUTION 119 two last divisions were annexed as rear ranks to the phalanx or fought by its side as light-armed troops. Provision was made for readily supplying the accidental gaps which were so injurious to the phalanx. Thus there served in it 84 centuries or 8400 men, of whom 6000 were hoplites, 4000 of the first division, 1000 from each of the two following, and 2400 light-armed, of whom 1000 belonged to the fourth, and 1200 to the fifth division; approximately each levy-district furnished to the phalanx 2100, and to each century 25 men. This phalanx was the army destined for the field, while a like force of troops was reckoned for the seniors who remained behind to defend the city. In this way the normal amount of the infantry came to 16,800 men, 80 centuries of the first division, 20 from each of the three following, and 28 from the last division not taking into account the two centuries of substitutes or those of the workmen or the musicians. To all these fell to be added the cavalry, which consisted of 1800 horse; often when the army took the field, however, only the third part of the whole number was attached to it. The normal amount of the Roman army of the first and second levy rose accordingly to close upon 20,000 men : which number must beyond doubt have corresponded on the whole to the effective strength of the Roman population capable of arms, as it stood at the time when this new organization was introduced. As the population increased the number of centuries was not augmented, but the several divisions were strengthened by persons added, without altogether losing sight, however, of the fundamental number. Indeed the Roman corporations in general, closed as to numbers, very frequently evaded the limit imposed upon them by admitting supernumerary members. This new organization of the army was accompanied by Census, a more careful supervision of landed property on the part THE NON-BURGESSES AND BOOK i of the state. It was now either ordained for the first time or, if not, at any rate defined more carefully, that a land- register should be established, in which the several proprietors of land should have their fields with all their appurtenances, servitudes, slaves, beasts of draught and of burden, duly recorded. Every act of alienation, which did not take place publicly and before witnesses, was declared null; and a revision of the register of landed property, which was at the .same time the levy-roll, was directed to be made every fourth year. The mancipatio and the census thus arose out of the Servian military organization. Political It is evident at a glance that this whole institution was effects of f rom the outset of a military nature. In the whole detailed tne aer- * vian mili- scheme we do not encounter a single feature suggestive of eanization an y destination of the centuries to other than purely military purposes ; and this alone must, with every one accustomed to consider such matters, form a sufficient reason for pronouncing its application to political objects a later innovation. If, as is probable, in the earliest period every one who had passed his sixtieth year was excluded from the centuries, this has no meaning, so far as they were intended from the first to form a representation of the burgess-community similar to and parallel with the curies. Although, however, the organization of the centuries was introduced merely to enlarge the military resources of the burgesses by the inclusion of the metoed and, in so far, there is no greater error than to exhibit the Servian organization as the introduction of a timocracy in Rome yet the new obligation imposed upon the inhabit- ants to bear arms exercised in its consequences a material influence on their political position. He who is obliged to become a soldier must also, so long as the state is not rotten, have it in his power to become an officer ; beyond question plebeians also could now be nominated in Rome as centurions and as military tribunes. Although, more- CHAP, vi THE REFORMED CONSTITUTION 121 over, the institution of the centuries was not intended to curtail the political privileges exclusively possessed by the burgesses as hitherto represented in the curies, yet it was inevitable that those rights, which the burgesses hitherto had exercised not as the assembly of curies, but as the burgess-levy, should pass over to the new centuries of burgesses and metoeci. Henceforward, accordingly, it was the centuries whose consent the king had to ask before beginning an aggressive war (p. 96). It is important, on account of the subsequent course of development, to note these first steps towards the centuries taking part in public affairs; but the centuries came to acquire such rights at first more in the way of natural sequence than of direct design, and subsequently to the Servian reform, as before, the assembly of the curies was regarded as the proper burgess-community, whose homage bound the whole people in allegiance to the king. By the side of these new land- owning full-burgesses stood the domiciled foreigners from the allied Latium, as participating in the public burdens, tribute and task-works (hence municipes) ; while the burgesses not domiciled, who were beyond the pale of the tribes, and had not the right to serve in war and vote, came into view only as " owing tribute " (aerarit). In this way, while hitherto there had been distinguished only two classes of members of the community, burgesses and clients, there were now established those three political classes, which exercised a dominant influence over the constitutional law of Rome for many centuries. When and how this new military organization of the Time and Roman community came into existence, can only be con- jectured. It presupposes the existence of the four regions ; in other words, the Servian wall must have been erected before the reform took place. But the territory of the city must also have considerably exceeded its original limits, when it could furnish 8000 holders of full hides and as 122 THE NON-BURGESSES AND BOOK i many who held lesser portions, or sons of such holders. We are not acquainted with the superficial extent of "the normal Roman farm ; but it is not possible to estimate it as under twenty jugera, 1 If we reckon as a minimum 10,000 full hides, this would imply a superficies of 190 square miles of arable land ; and on this calculation, if we make a very moderate allowance for pasture, the space occupied by houses, and ground not capable of culture, the territory, at the period when this reform was carried out, must have had at least an extent of 420 square miles, probably an extent still more considerable. If \ve follow tradition, we must assume a number of 84,000 burgesses who were freeholders and capable of bearing armsj__fo such, we are told, were the numbers ascertained by Serviug, at the first census. A glance at the map, however, shows that this number must be fabulous ; it is not even a genuine tradition, but a conjectural calculation, by which the 16,800 capable of bearing arms who constituted the normal strength of the infantry appeared to yield, on an average of five persons to each family, the number of 84,000 burgesses, and this number was confounded with that Cof those capable of bearing arms. But even according to the more moderate estimates laid down above, with a territory of some 16,000 hides containing a population 273.' * Even about 480, allotments of land of seven jugera appeared to those that received them small (Val. Max. iii. 3, 5 ; Colum. i. praef. 14 ; i. 3, ii ; Plin. H. N. xviii. 3, 18 : fourteen jugera, Victor, 33; Plutarch, Apophth. Reg. et Imp. p. 235 Diibner, in accordance with which Plutarch, Crass. 2, is to be corrected). A comparison of the Germanic proportions gives the same result. The jugerum and the morgen [nearly $ of an English acre], both originally 'measures rather of labour than of surface, may be looked upon as originally identical. As the German hide consisted ordinarily of 30, but not unfrequently of 20 or 40 morgen, and the homestead frequently, at least among the Anglo-Saxons, amounted to a tenth of the hide, it will appear, taking into account the diversity of climate and the size of the Roman hcredium of 2 jugera, that the hypothesis of'a Roman hide of 20 jugera is not unsuitable to the circumstances of the case. It is to be regretted certainly that on this very point tradition leaves us without precise informa- tion. CHAP. VI THE REFORMED CONSTITUTION 123 of nearly 20,000 capable of bearing arms and at least three times that number of women, children, and old men, persons who had no land, and slaves, it is necessary to assume not merely that the region between the Tiber and Anio had been acquired, but that the Alban territory had also been conquered, before the Servian constitution was ' established; a result with which tradition agrees. What were the numerical proportions of patricians and plebeians originally in the army, cannot be ascertained. Upon the whole it is plain that this Servian institution did not originate in a conflict between the orders. On the contrary, it bears the stamp of a reforming legislator like the constitutions of Lycurgus, Solon, and Zaleucus; andjt : has evidently been produced under Greek influence. Par- < ticular analogies may be deceptive, such as the coincidence noticed by the ancients that in Corinth also widows and orphans were charged with the provision of horses for the cavalry ; but the adoption of the armour and arrangements of the Greek hoplite system was certainly no accidental coincidence. Now if we consider the fact that it was in the second century of the city that the Greek states in Lower Italy advanced from the pure clan-constitution to a modified one, which placed the preponderance in the hands of the landholders, we shall recognize in that move- ment the impulse which called forth in Rome the Servian reform a change of constitution resting in the main on the same fundamental idea, and only directed into a somewhat different course by the strictly monarchical form of the Roman state. 1 1 The analogy also between the so-called Servian constitution and the treatment of the Attic metoeci deserves to be particularly noticed. Athens, like Rome, opened her gates at a comparatively early period to the metoeci, and afterwards summoned them also to share the burdens of the state. We cannot suppose that any direct connection existed in this instance between Athens and Rome ; but the coincidence serves all the more distinctly to show how the same causes urban centralization and urban^ development everywhere and of necessity produce similar effects. I2 4 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK I CHAPTER VII THE HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM Extension THE brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked feuds among themselves and with their neighbours : as the country flourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become gradually changed into war and raids for pillage into conquest, and political powers must have begun to assume shape. No Italian Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations is moulded and expressed like the mind of the man in the sports and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the outward development of power and the comparative resources of the several Latin cantons. It is only in the case of Rome, at the utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power and of its territory. The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the united Roman community have been already stated (p. 58); in the landward direction they were on an average just about five miles distant from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (Ostia), at a distance of somewhat more than fourteen milesj from Rome. "The new city," says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome, "was surrounded by larger and CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 125 smaller tribes, some of whom dwelt in independent villages and were not subordinate to any national union." It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest exten- sions of the Roman territory took place. The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and Territory between the Tiber and the Anio Antemnae, Crustumerium, n the ' Anio. Ficulnea, Medullia, Caenina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia, were those which pressed most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans. The only community that subsequently appears as independent in this district was Nomentum ; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance with Rome. The possession of Fidenae, the tete de pont of the Etruscans on the left bank . of the Tiber, was contested between the Latins and the Etruscans in other words, between the Romans and Veientes with varying results. The struggle with Gabii, which held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a long period equally balanced : down to late times the Gabine dress was deemed synonymous with that of 'war, and Gabine ground the prototype of hostile soil. 1 By these conquests the Roman territory was probably extended to about 190 square miles. Another very early achieve- Alba, ment of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness than those obsolete struggles : Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops. How the collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell : the battle of the three 1 The formulae of accursing for Gabii and Fidenae are quite as character- istic (Macrob. Sat. iii. 9). It cannot, however, be proved and is ex- tremely improbable that, as respects these towns, there was an actual historical accursing of the ground on which they were built, such as really took place at Veii, Carthage, and Fregellae. It may be conjectured that old accursing formularies were applied to those two hated towns, and were considered by later antiquaries as historical documents. 126 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK I Roman with the three Alban brothers born at one birth is nothing but a personification of the struggle between two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at least was triune. We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome. 1 It is not improbable, although wholly a matter of con- jecture, that, at the same period when Rome was establish- ing herself on the Anio and on the Alban hills, Praeneste, which appears at a later date as mistress of eight neighbouring townships, Tibur, and others of the Latin K communities were similarly occupied in enlarging their / territory and laying the foundations of their subsequent far from inconsiderable power. ofthe" 1611 * ^ e ^ ee ^ ^ e want ^ accurate information as to the legal earliest ac- character and legal effects of these early Latin conquests, quisitions. g ^jj m ore than we miss the records of the wars in which they were won. Upon the whole it is not to be doubted that they were treated in accordance with the system of incorporation, out of which the tripartite community of Rome had arisen ; excepting that the cantons who were compelled by arms to enter the combination did not, like the primitive three, preserve some sort of relative inde- 1 But there seems to be no good ground for the doubt recently expressed in a quarter deserving of respect as to the destruction of Alba having really been the act of Rome. It is true, indeed, that the account of the destruction of Alba is in its details a series of improbabilities and impossibilities ; but that is true of every historical fact inwoven into legend. To the question as to the attitude of the rest of Latium towards the struggle between Rome and Alba, we are unable to give an answer ; but the question itself rests on a false assumption, for it is not proved that the constitution of the Latin league absolutely prohibited a separate war between two Latin communities (p. 51). Still less is the fact that a number of Alban families were received into the burgess-union of Rome inconsistent with the destruction of Alba by the Romans. Why may there not have been a Roman party in Alba just as there was in Capua? The circumstance, however, of Rome claiming to be in a religious and political point of view the heir-at-law of Alba may be regarded as decisive of the matter ; for such a claim could not be based on the migration of individual clans to Rome, but could only be based, as it actually was, on the conquest of the' town. CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 127 pendence as separate regions in the new united community, but became so entirely merged in the general whole as to be no longer traced (p. 108). However far the power of a Latin canton might extend, in the earliest times it tolerated no political centre except the proper capital ; and still less founded independent settlements, such as the Phoenicians and the Greeks established, thereby creating in their colonies clients for the time being and future rivals to the mother city. In this respect, the treatment which Ostia experienced from Rome deserves special notice : the Romans could not and did not wish to prevent the rise de facto of a town at that spot, but they allowed the place no political independence, and accordingly they did not bestow on those who settled there any local burgess-rights, but merely allowed them to retain, if they already possessed, the general burgess-rights of Rome. 1 This principle also determined the fate of the weaker cantons, which by force of arms or by voluntary submission became subject to a stronger. The stronghold of the canton was razed, its domain was added to the domain of the conquerors, and a new home was instituted for the inhabitants as well as for their gods in the capital of the victorious canton. This must not be understood absolutely to imply a formal transportation of the conquered inhabitants to the new capital, such as was the rule at the founding of cities in the East. The towns of Latium at this time can have been little more than the strongholds and weekly markets of the husbandmen : it was sufficient in general that the market and the seat of justice should be transferred to the new capital. That even the temples often remained at the old 1 Hence was developed the conception, in political law, of the maritime colony or colony of burgesses (colonia civium Romanorum}, that is, of a community separate in fact, but not independent or possessing a will of its own in law ; a community which merged in the capital as the peculium of the son merged in the property of the father, and which as a standing garrison was exempt from serving in the legion. 128 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i spot is shown in the instances of Alba and of Caenina, towns which must still after their destruction have retained some semblance of existence in connection with religion. Even where the strength of the place" that was razed rendered it really necessary to remove the inhabitants, they would be frequently settled, with a view to the cultivation of the soil, in the open hamlets of their old domain. That the conquered, however, were not unfrequently compelled either as a whole or in part to settle in their new capital, is proved, more satisfactorily than all the several stories from the legendary period of Latium could prove it, by the maxim of Roman state-law, that .only he who had extended the boundaries of the territory was entitled to advance the wall of the city (the pomeriuni). Of course the conquered, whether transferred or not, were ordinarily compelled to occupy the legal position of clients; 1 but .particular individuals or clans occasionally had burgess- rights or, in other words, the patriciate conferred upon them. In the time of the empire there were still recognized Alban clans which were introduced among the burgesses of Rome after the fall of their native seat ; amongst these were the Julii, Serviiij. Quinctilil^Cloelii, Geganii, Curiatii, fylejtilii' : the memory of their descent was preserved by their Alban family shrines, among which the sanctuary of the gens of the Julii at Bovillae again rose under the empire into great repute. This centralizing process, by which several small com- munities became absorbed in a larger one, of course was far from being an idea specially Roman. Not only did 1 To this the enactment of the Twelve Tables undoubtedly has reference : Nex\t mancipiique\ forti sanatique idem ius esto, that is, in dealings of private law the ' ' sound " and the ' ' recovered " shall be on a footing of equality. The^Latin allies cannot be here referred to, because their legal position was defined by federal treaties, and the law of the Twelve Tables treated only of the law of Rome. The sanates were the Lalini prisci cives Romani, or in other words, the communities of Latium compelled by the Romans to enter the plebeiate. CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 129 the development of Latium and of the Sabellian stocks hinge upon the distinction between national centralization and cantonal independence ; the case was the same with the- development of the Hellenes. Rome in Latium and Athens in Attica arose out of a like amalgamation of many cantons into one state ; and the wise Thales suggested a similar fusion to the hard-pressed league of the Ionic cities as the only means of saving their nationality. But Rome adhered to this principle of unity with more consistency, earnestness, and success than any other Italian canton ; and just as the prominent position of Athens in Hellas was the effect of her early centralization, so Rome was indebted for her greatness solely to the same system, in her case far more energetically applied. While the conquests of Rome in Latium may be mainly The hege- regarded as direct extensions of her territory and people mony [ presenting the same general features, a further and special Latium. significance attached to the conquest of Alba. It was not merely the problematical size and presumed riches of Alba that led tradition to assign a prominence so peculiar to its capture. Alba was regarded" as the metropolis of the Latin Alba, confederacy, and had the right of presiding among the thirty communities that belonged to it. The destruction of Alba, of course, no more dissolved the league itself than the destruction of Thebes dissolved the Boeotian con- federacy ; l but, in entire consistency with the strict applica- tion of the ins privatum which was characteristic of the Latin laws of war, Rome now claimed the presidency of the league as the heir-at-law of Alba. What sort of crises, if any, preceded or followed the acknowledgment of this 1 The community of Bovillae appears even to have been formed out of part of the Alban domain, and to have been admitted in room of Alba among the autonomous Latin towns. Its Alban origin is attested by its having been the seat of worship for the Julian gens and by the name Albani Longani Bovillenses (Orelli-Henzen, 119, 2252, 6019) ; its autonomy by Dionysius, v. 61, and Cicero, fro Plancio, 9, 23. VOL. I 9 130 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i claim, we cannot tell. Upon the whole the hegemony of Rome over Latium appears to have been speedily and generally recognized, although particular communities, such as Labici and above all Gabii, may for a time have declined to own it. Even at that time Rome was probably a maritime power in contrast to the Latin " land," a city in contrast to the Latin villages, and a single state in contrast 'to the Latin confederacy; even at that^time it was only in conjunction with and by means of Rome that the Latins could defend their coasts against Carthaginians, Hellenes, and Etruscans, and maintain and extend their landward frontier in opposition to their restless neighbours of the Sabellian stock. Whether the accession to her material resources which Rome obtained by the subjugation of Alba was greater than the increase of her power obtained by the capture of Antemnae or Collatia, cannot be ascertained : it is quite possible that it was not by the conquest of Alba that Rome was first constituted the most powerful com- munity in Latium ; she may have been so long before ; but she did gain in consequence of that event the presidency at the Latin festival, which became the basis of the future hegemony of the Roman community over the whole Latin confederacy. It is important to indicate as definitely as possible the nature of a relation so influential. The form of the Roman hegemony over Latium was, in general, that of an alliance on equal terms between the Roman community on the one hand and the Latin confed- eracy on the other, establishing a perpetual peace through- out the whole domain and a perpetual league for offence and defence. "There shall be peace between the Romans and all communities of the Latins, as long as heaven and earth endure ; they shall not wage war with each other, nor call enemies into the land, nor grant passage to enemies : help shall be rendered by all in concert to any community assailed, and whatever is won in joint warfare shall be CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 131 equally distributed." The stipulated equality of rights in trade and exchange, in commercial credit and in inheritance, tended, by the manifold relations of business intercourse to which it led, still further to interweave the interests of communities already connected by the ties of similar lan- guage and manners, and in this way produced an effect somewhat similar to that of the abolition of customs-restric- tions in our own day. Each community certainly retained in form its own law : down to the time of the Social war Latin law was not necessarily identical with Roman : we find, for example, that the enforcing of betrothal by action at law, which was abolisTied at an early period in Rome, continued to subsist in the Latin communities. But the simple and purely national development of Latin law, and the endeavour to maintain as far as possible uniformity of rights, led at length to the result, that the law of private relations was in matter and form substantially the same throughout all Latium. This uniformity of rights comes most distinctly into view in the rules laid down regarding the loss and recovery of freedom on the part of the in- dividual burgess. According to an ancient and venerable maxim of law among the Latin stock no burgess could become a slave in the state wherein he had been free, or suffer the loss of his burgess-rights while he remained within it : if he was to be punished with the loss of freedom and of burgess-rights (which was the same thing), it was necessary that he should be expelled from the state and should enter on the condition of slavery among strangers. This maxim of law was now extended to the whole territory of the league ; no member of any of the federal states might live as a slave within the bounds of the league. Applications of this principle are seen in the enactment embodied in the Twelve Tables, that the insolvent debtor, in the event of his creditor wishing to sell him, must be sold beyond the boundary of the Tiber, in other words, 132 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i beyond the territory of the league ; and in the clause of the second treaty between Rome and Carthage, that an ally of Rome who might be taken prisoner by the Cartha- ginians should be free so soon as he entered a Roman seaport. Although there did not probably subsist a general intercommunion of marriage within the league, yet, as has been already remarked (p. 50), intermarriage between the different communities frequently occurred. Each Latin could primarily exercise political rights only where he was enrolled as a burgess ; but on the other hand it was implied in an equality of private rights, that any Latin could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds ; or, to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by side with the special burgess- rights of the individual communities, a general right of settlement co- extensive with the confederacy; and, after the plebeian was acknowledged in Rome as a burgess, this right became converted as regards Rome into full freedom of settlement. It is easy to understand how this should have turned materially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium offered the means of urban inter- course, urban acquisition, and urban enjoyments ; and how the number of metoeci in Rome should have increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to live in perpetual peace with Rome. In constitution and administration the several com- munities not only remained independent and sovereign, so far as the federal obligations did not interfere, but, what was of more importance, the league of the thirty communities as such retained its autonomy in contradistinc- tion to Rome. When we are assured that the position of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities attained autonomy, this may well have been the case, in so far as Alba was essentially a member CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 133 of the league, while Rome from the first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the league than of a member included in it ; but, just as the states of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba may have been in reality an honorary right (p. 51) like that of the German emperors, and the protectorate of Rome from the first a supremacy like that of Napoleon. In fact Alba appears to have exercised the right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves under the guidance, as it appears, of a president selected from their own number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium, and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome the temple of Diana on the Aventine so that thenceforth sacrifice was offered both on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, and on Latin soil for Latium and Rome. With equal deference to the interests of the league the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community a stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions entertained, doubt- less not without reason, by the confederacy with reference to the powerful community taking the lead. The position of Rome not within, but alongside of Latium, is most clearly apparent in the arrangements for warfare. The fighting ' force of the league was composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin. The supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals ; year by year the Latin contingent had to appear before the gates of Rome, and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its general, after the Romans commis- sioned by the Latin federal council to take the auspices 134 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM had thereby assured themselves of the contentment of the gods with the choice that had been made. Whatever land or property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned among its members according to the judgment of the Romans. That the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained. The federal agree- ment did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from under- taking an aggressive war on their own behoof ; and if a war was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well as in the termination of the war. Practically indeed Rome must have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other, the prepon- derance usually falls to the side of the former. The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome now mistress of a territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading power in the Latin confederacy JSfVrfi extended still further her direct and indirect dominion, fall of Alba. can no longer be traced. There was no lack of feuds with the Etruscans and with the Veientes in particular, chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenae; but it does not appear that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in dislodging the Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations. -/j : every Latin town had its capitolium as well as Rome. The local name of the Roman - stronghold-hill was mons Tarpeius. - The enactment ne quis patricius in arce aut capitolio habitaret prob- ably prohibited only the conversion of the ground into private property, not the construction of dwelling-houses. Comp. Becker, Top. p. 386. 138 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i and their herds, when inundation or war drove them from the plain. The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city had fallen : its gate lay probably towards what was afterwards the Forum. 1 The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation. With this is connected the fact, that for purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants of the city proper (montani\ and those of the districts situated within the general ring- wall, but yet not reckoned as strictly belonging to the city (pagani Aventinenses, laniculenses, collegia Capitolinorum et Mercurialiuni)? The space enclosed by the new city wall thus embraced, in addition to the former Palatine and Quirinal cities, the two federal strongholds of the Capitol 1 For the chief thoroughfare, the Via Sacra, led from that quarter to the stronghold ; and the bending in towards the gate may still be clearly recognized in the turn which this makes to the left at the arch of Severus. The gate itself must have disappeared under the huge structures which were raised in after ages on the Clivus. The so-called gate at the steepest part of the Capitoline Mount, which is known by the name of Janualis or Saturnia, or the "open," and which had to stand always open in times of war, evidently had merely a religious significance, and never was a real gate. 2 Four such guilds are mentioned (i) the Capitollni (Cicero, ad Q. fr. ii. 5, 2), with maestri of their own (Henzen, 6010, 6011), and annual v games (Liv. v. 50 ; comp. Corp. Inscr. Lat. i. n. 805) ; (2) the Mer- curiales (Liv. ii. 27 ; Cicero, /. c. ; Preller, Myth. p. 597) likewise with magistri (Henzen, 6010), the guild from the valley of the Circus, where the temple of Mercury stood ; (3) the pagani Aventinenses likewise with magistri (Henzen, 6010) ; and (4) the pagani pagi laniculensis likewise with magistri (C. 1. L. i. n. 801, 802). It is certainly not accidental that these four guilds, the only ones of the sort that occur in Rome, belong to the very two hills excluded from the four local tribes but en- closed by the Servian wall, the Capitol and the Aventine, and the Jani- culum belonging to the same fortification ; and connected with this is the further fact that the expression montani paganive is employed as a desig- nation of the whole inhabitants in connection with the city (comp. besides the well-known passage, Cic. de Domo, 28, 74, especially the law as to the city aqueducts in Fcstus, v. sifus, p. 340 ; \nwn~\tanl paganive si\Jls aquam dividuntd\). The montani, properly the inhabitants of the three regions of the Palatine town (p. 67), appear to be here put a potiori for CHAP, vir HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 139 and the Aventine, and also the Janiculum ; l the Palatine, as the oldest and proper city, was enclosed by the other heights along which the wall was carried, as if encircled with a wreath, and the two castles occupied the middle. The work, however, was not complete so long as the ground, protected by so laborious exertions from outward foes, was not also reclaimed from the dominion of the water, which permanently occupied the valley between the Palatine and the Capitol, so that there was perhaps even a ferry there, and which converted the valleys between the Capitol and the Velia and between the Palatine and the Aventine into marshes. The subterranean drains jtill existing at the present day, composed of magnificent square blocks, which excited the astonishment of posterity as a marvellous work of regal Rome, must rather be reckoned to belong to the following epoch, for travertine is the material employed and we have~rnany accounts of "new structures of the kind the whole population of the four regions of the city proper. The pagani are, undoubtedly, the residents of the Aventine and Janiculum not included in the tribes, and the analogous collegia of the Capitol and the Circus galley. 1 The "Seven-hill-city" in the proper and religious sense was and ^continued to be the narrower Old-Rome of the Palatine (p. 62). Certainly the Servian Rome also regarded itself, at least as early as the time of Cicero (comp. e.g. Cic. ad- Att. vi. 5, 2 ; Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69), as " Seven-hill-city," probably because the festival of the Septimontium, which \was celebrated with great zeal even under the Empire, began to be re- garded as a festival for the city generally ; but there was hardly any definite agreement reached as to which of the heights embraced by the Servian ring-wall belonged to the "seven." The enumeration of the Seven Mounts familiar to us, viz. Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is not given by any ancient author. It is put together from the traditional narrative of the gradual rise of the city (Jordan, Topographic, ii. 206 seq. ), and the Janiculum is passed over in it, simply because otherwise the number would come out as eight. The earliest authority that enumerates the Seven Mounts (monies) of Rome is the description of the city from the age of Constantine the Great. It names as such the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican, and Janiculum, where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as colles, omitted, and in their stead two "monies" are introduced from the right bank of the Tiber, including even the Vatican which lay outside of the Servian wall. Other still later lists are given by Servius (ad Aen. vi. 783), the Berne Scholia to Virgil's Georgia (ii. 535), and Lydus (de Mens. p. 118, Bekker). 140 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i in the times of the republic ; but the scheme itself belongs beyond doubt to the regal period, although presumably to a later epoch than the designing of the Servian wall and the Capitoline stronghold. The spots thus drained or dried supplied large open spaces such as were needed by the new enlarged city. The assembling-place of the com- munity, which had hitherto been the Area Capitolina at the stronghold itself, was now transferred to the flat space, where the ground fell from the stronghold towards the city (comitittiri), and which stretched thence between the Palatine and the Carinae, in the direction of the Velia. At that side of the comitium which adjoined the stronghold, and upon the stronghold-wall which arose above the comitium in the fashion of a balcony, the members of the senate and the guests of the city had the place of honour assigned to them on occasion of festivals and assemblies of the people; and at the place of assembly itself was erected the senate- house, which afterwards bore the name of the Curia Hos- tilia. The platform for the judgment-seat (tribunal)^ and the stage whence the burgesses were addressed (the later rostra), were likewise erected on the comitium itself. Its prolongation in the direction of the Velia became the new market (forum Romanuni). At the end of the latter, beneath the Palatine, rose the community -house, which included the official dwelling of the king (regid) and the common hearth of the city, the rotunda forming the temple of Vesta ; at no great distance, on the south side of the Forum, there was erected a second round building con- nected with the former, the store-room of the community or temple of the Penates, which still stands at the present day as the porch of the church Sand Cosma e Damiano. It is a feature significant of the new city now united in a way very different from the settlement of the "seven mounts," that, over and above the hearths of the thirty curies which the Palatine Rome had been content with CHAP, vii HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM 141 associating in one building, the Servian Rome presented this general and single hearth for the city at large. 1 Along the two longer sides of the Forum butchers' shops and other traders' stalls were arranged. In the valley between the Palatine and Aventine a " ring " was staked off for races ; this became the Circus. The cattle-market was laid out immediately adjoining the river, and this soon became one of the most densely peopled quarters of Rome. Temples and sanctuaries arose on all the summits, above all the federal sanctuary of Diana on the Aventine (p. 133), and on the summit of the stronghold the far-seen temple of Father Diovis, who had given to his people all this glory ? and who now, when the Romans were triumphing over the surrounding nations, triumphed along with them over the subject gods of the vanquished. The names of the men, at whose bidding these great buildings of the city arose, are almost as completely lost in oblivion as those of the leaders in the earliest battles and victories of Rome. Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings the senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and the ring-wall to Servius Tullius. Some of these statements may perhaps be correct; and it is apparently not the result of accident that the building of the new ring-wall is associated both as to date and author with the new organi- zation of the army, which in fact bore special reference to the regular defence of the city walls. But upon the whole we must be content to learn from this tradition what is 1 Both the situation of the two temples, and the express testimony of Dionysius, ii. 65, that the temple of Vesta lay outside of the Roma quadrata, prove that these structures were connected with the foundation not of the Palatine, but of the second (Servian) city. Posterity reckoned this regia with the temple of Vesta as a scheme of Numa ; but the cause which gave rise to that hypothesis is too manifest to allow of our attaching any weight to it. 142 HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM BOOK i indeed evident of itself that this second creation of Rome stood in intimate connection with the commencement of her hegemony over Latium and with the remodelling of her burgess-army, and that, while it originated in one and the same great conception, its execution was not the work either of a single man or of a single generation. It is im- possible to doubt that Hellenic influences exercised a powerful effect on this remodelling of the Roman com- munity, but it is equally impossible to demonstrate the mode or the degree of their operation. It has already been observed that the Servian military constitution is essentially of an Hellenic type (p. 123); and it will be afterwards shown that the games of the Circus were organized on an Hellenic model. The new regia with the city hearth was quite a Greek frytaneion, and the round temple of Vesta, looking towards the east and not so much as consecrated by the augurs, was constructed in no respect according to Italian, but wholly in accordance with Hellenic, ritual."" With these facts before us, the statement of tradition appears not at all incredible that the Ionian confederacy^ Asia Minor to some extent served as a model for the Romano-Latin league, and that the new federal sanctuary on the Aventine was for that reason constructed in imitation of the Artemision at Ephesus. CHAP, viii THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS 143 CHAPTER VIII THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES THE migration of the Umbrian stocks appears to have Umbro- begun at a period later than that of the Latins. Like the Sabellian migration. Latin, it moved in a southerly direction, but it kept more in the centre of the peninsula and towards the east coast. It is painful to speak of it ; for our information regarding it comes to us like the sound of bells from a town that has been sunk in the sea. The Umbrian people extended 'according to Herodotus as far as the Alps, and it is not improbable that in very ancient times they occupied the whole of Northern Italy, to the point where the settlements of the Illyrian stocks began on the east, and those of the Ligurians on the west. As to the latter, there are traditions of their conflicts with the Umbrians, and we may perhaps draw an inference regarding their extension in very early times towards the south from isolated names, such as that of the island of Ilva (Elba) compared with the Ligurian Ilvates. To this period of Umbrian greatness the evidently Italian names of the most ancient settlements in the valley of the Po, Atria (black-town), and Spina (thorn-town), probably owe their origin, as well as the numerous traces of Umbrians in southern Etruria (such as the river Umbro, Camars the old name of Clusium, Castrum Amerinum). Such indications of an Italian population having preceded 144 THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS BOOK i the Etruscan especially occur in the most southern portion of Etruria, the district between the Ciminian Forest (below Viterbo) and the Tiber. In Falerii, the town of Etruria nearest to the frontier of Umbria and the Sabine country, according to the testimony of Strabo a language was spoken different from the Etruscan, and inscriptions bearing out that statement have recently been brought to light there, the alphabet and language of which, while presenting points of contact with the Etruscan, exhibit a general resemblance to the Latin. 1 The local worship also presents traces of a Sabellian character ; and a similar inference is suggested by the primitive relations subsisting in sacred as well as other matters between Caere and Rome. It is probable tihat the Etruscans wrested those southern districts from the Umbrians at a period considerably subsequent to their occupation of the country on the north of the Cimiman Forest, and that an Umbrian population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest. In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after 'the Roman conquest. That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the two arms of the Apennines which they subsequently held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical position, just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons and 1 In the alphabet the r especially deserves notice, being of the Latin (R) and not of the Etruscan form (D), and also the z ( X ) ; it can only be derived from the primitive Latin, and must very faithfully represent it. The language likewise has close affinity with the oldest Latin ; Marci Acarcelini he cupa, that is, Marcius Acarcelinius heic cubat : Menerva A. Catena La. f. . . zenatuo sentem . . dedet cuando . . cuncaptum, that is, Minervae A(ulus?) Catena La(rtis) f[ilius) de senatus sentetitia dedit quando (perhaps = 0/zV) conceptum. At the same time with these and similar inscriptions there have been found some others in a different char- acter and language, undoubtedly Etruscan. CHAP, viii BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES 145 that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar fate that has befallen them. Tradition also has to report that the Tuscans wrested from the Umbrians three hundred \ towns ; and, what is of more importance as evidence, in the national prayers of the Umbrian Iguvini, which we still possess, along with other stocks the Tuscans especially are cursed as public foes. In consequence, as may be presumed, of this pressure exerted upon them from the north, the Umbrians advanced towards the south, keeping in general upon the heights, because they found the plains already occupied by Latin stocks, but beyond doubt frequently making inroads and .encroachments on the territory of the kindred race, and intermingling with them the more readily, that the distinction in language and habits could not have been at all so marked then as we find it afterwards. To the class of such inroads belongs the tradition of the irruption of the Reatini and Sabines into Latium and their conflicts with the Romans; similar phenomena were probably repeated all along the west coast. Ujoon the whole the Sabines maintained their j. footing in the mountains, as in the district bordering on J Latium which has since been called by their name, and so too in the Volscian land, presumably because the Latin population did not extend thither or was there less dense ; while on the other hand the well-peopled plains were better able to offer resistance to the invaders, although they were not in all cases able or desirous to prevent isolated bands from gaining a footing, such as the Tities and afterwards the Claudii in Rome (p. 55). In this way the stocks here became variously mingled, a state of things which serves to explain the numerous relations that subsisted between the Volscians and Latins, and how it happened that their district, as well as Sabina, afterwards became so early and speedily Latinized. Th,e chief branch, however, of the Umbrian stock threw Samnites. VOL. I tO _ 146 THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS BOOK i itself eastward from Sabina into the mountains of the Abruzzi, and the adjacent hill-country to the south of them. Here, as on the west coast, they occupied the mountainous districts, whose thinly scattered population gave way before - the immigrants or submitted to their yoke; while in the plain along the Apulian coast the ancient native population, the lapygians, upon the whole maintained their ground, although involved in constant feuds, especially on the northern frontier about Luceria and Arpi. When these migrations took place, cannot of course be determined ; but it was presumably about the time when kings ruled in Rome. Tradition reports that the Sabines, pressed by the Umbrians, vowed a ver sacrum, that is, swore that they would give up and send beyond their bounds the sons and daughters born in the year of war, so soon as these should reach maturity, that the gods might at their pleasure destroy them or bestow upon them new abodes in other lands. i One band was led by the ox of Mars ; these were the Safini : or Samnites, who in the first instance established themselves on the mountains adjoining the river Sagrus, and at a later period proceeded to occupy the beautiful plain on the east of the Matese chain, near the sources of the Tifernus. Both in their old and in their new territory they named their place of public assembly which in the one case was situated near Agnone, in the other near Bojano from the I ox which led them Bovianum. A second band was led by the woodpecker of Mars ; these were~tHe~Picentes, " the woodpecker-people," who took possession of what is now the March of Ancona.^ A third band was led by the wolf (hirpus) into "trie region of Beneventum ; these were the 1 1 irpini. In a similar manner the other small tribes branched off from the common stock the Praetuttii near Teramo ; the Vestini on the Gran Sasso ; the Marrucini near Chieti ; Ihe Frentani on the frontier of Apulia ; the Paeligni on the Majella mountains ; and lastly the Marsi on the Fucine CHAP, vin BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES 147 lake, coming in contact with the Volscians and Latins. All of these tribes retained, as these legends clearly show, a vivid sense of their relationship and of their having come forth from the Sabine land. While the Umbrians suc- cumbed in the unequal struggle and the western offshoots' of the same stock became amalgamated with the Latin or Hellenic population, the Sabellian tribes prospered in the seclusion of their distant mountain land, equally remote from collision with the Etruscans, the Latins, and the Greeks. There was little or no development of an urban life amongst them ; their geographical position almost wholly precluded them from engaging in commercial inter- course, and the mountain-tops and strongholds sufficed for the necessities of defence, while the husbandmen continued to dwell in open hamlets or wherever each found the well- spring and the forest or pasture that he desired. In such circumstances their constitution remained stationary ; like the similarly situated Arcadians in Greece, their communities never became incorporated into a single state ; at the utmost they only formed confederacies more or less loosely con- nected. In the Abruzzi especially, the strict seclusion of the mountain valleys seems to have debarred the several cantons from intercourse either with each other or with the outer world. They maintained but little connection with each other and continued to live in complete isolation from the rest of Italy ; and in consequence, notwithstanding the bravery of their inhabitants, they exercised less influence than any other portion of the Italian nation on the develop- ment of the history of the peninsula. On the other hand the Samnite people decidedly ex- Their hibited the highest political development among the eastern Italian stock, as the Latin nation did among the western. m ent From an early period, perhaps from its first immigration, a comparatively strong political bond held 'together the Samnite nation, and gave "to it the strength which subse- 148 THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS BOOK i quently enabled it to contend with Rome on equal terms for the first place in Italy. We are as ignorant of the time and manner of the formation of the bond, as we are of its federal constitution ; but it is clear that in Samnium no single community was preponderant, and still less was there any town to serve as a central rallying point and bond of union for the Samnite stock, such as Rome was for the Latins. The strength of the land lay in its communes of husbandmen, and authority was vested in the assembly formed of their representatives ; it was this assembly which in case of need nominated a federal commander-in-chief. In consequence of its constitution the policy of this confederacy was~~fioT aggres~sive like the Roman, but was limited to the deferrce- of its own bounds ; only where the state forms a unity is power so concentrated and passion so strong, that the ex- tension of territory can be systematically pursued. Accord- fyjUC^ ^flgty the whole history of the two nations is prefigured in their diametrically opposite systems of colonization. What- >r. ever the Romans gained, was a gain to the state : the conquests of the Samnites were achieved by bands of volunteers who went forth in search of plunder and, whether they prospered or were unfortunate, were left to their own resources by their native home. The conquests, however, which the Samnites made on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian and Ionic seas, belong to a later age; during the regal period in Rome they seem to have been only gaining possession of the settlements in which we afterwards find them. As a single incident in the series of movements among the neighbouring peoples caused by this Samnite settlement may be mentioned the surprise of Cumae by Tyrrhenians from the Upper Sea, Umbrians, and Daunians 524. in the year 230. If we may give credit to the accounts of the matter which present certainly a considerable colouring of romance, it would appear that in this instance, as was often the case in such expeditions, the CHAP, vin BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES 149 intruders and those whom they supplanted combined to form one army, the Etruscans joining with their Umbrian enemies, and these again joined by the lapygians whom the Umbrian settlers had driven towards the south. Neverthe- less the undertaking proved a failure : on this occasion at least the Hellenic superiority in the art of war, and the bravery of the tyrant Aristodemus, succeeded in repelling the barbarian assault on the beautiful seaport. 150 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK i CHAPTER IX THE ETRUSCANS Etruscan "THE Etruscan people, or Ras, 1 as they called themselves, nationality, present a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well as to the Greeks. They were distinguished from these nations by their very bodily structure : instead of the slender and symmetrical proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms. Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian stocks. The religion of the Tuscans in particular, presenting a gloomy fantastic character and delighting in the mystical handling of numbers and in wild and horrible speculations and practices, is equally remote from the clear rationalism of the Romans and the genial image-worship of the Hellenes. The conclusion which these facts suggest is confirmed by the most important and authoritative evidence of nationality, the evidence of language. The remains of the Etruscan tongue which have reached us, numerous as they are and presenting as they do various data to aid in deciphering it, occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no one hitherto succeeded in interpreting these remains, but no one has been able even to determine precisely the place of 1 Ras-ennae, with the gentile termination mentioned at p. 152. CHAP, ix THE ETRUSCANS 151 : Etruscan in the classification of languages. Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly dis- tinguished. In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception avoided. 1 By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations, and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this soft and melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became intolerably harsh and rugged. 2 They changed for example ramu^af into ram^a, Tarquinius into Tarchnaf, Minerva into Menrva, Menelaos, Polydeukes, Alexandras, into Menle, Pultuke, Elchsentre. The indistinct and rugged nature of their pronunciation is shown most clearly by the fact that at a very early period the Etruscans made no distinction of o from u, b from /, c from g, d from t. At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial syllable. The aspirate consonants were treated in a j similar fashion ; while the Italians rejected them with the exception of the aspirated b or the f, and the Greeks, reversing the case, rejected this sound and retained the others ^, , x, the Etruscans allowed the softest and most pleasing of them, the <, to drop entirely except in words borrowed from other languages, but made use of the other three to an extraordinary extent, even where they had no proper place ; Thetis for example became Thethis, Telephus Thelaphe, Odysseus Utuze or Uthuze. Of the few termina- tions and words, whose meaning has been ascertained, the greater part are far remote from all Graeco-Italian analogies ; such as, all the numerals ; the termination al employed as a 1 To this period belong e.g. inscriptions on the clay vases of Caere, such as, minic^funiamima^tumaramlisiai^tipurenaie^teeraisieepanamine- ^tunastavhelefu, or mi ramu^aj kaiufinaia. 2 We may form some idea of the sound which the language now had from the commencement of the great inscription of Perusia ; eulat tanna larezul ameva^r lautn vel^tinase stlaafunas slel&caru. 152 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK i designation of descent, frequently of descent from the mother, e.g. Canial, which on a bilingual inscription of Chiusi is translated by Cainnia natus ; and the termination sa in the names of women, used to indicate the clan into which they have married, e.g. Lecnesa denoting the spouse of a Licinius. So cela or clan with the inflection clensi means son ; se\ daughter ; ril year ; the god Hermes . becomes Turms, Aphrodite Turan, Hephaestos Sethlans, Bakchos Fufluns. Alongside of these strange forms and sounds there certainly occur isolated analogies between the Etruscan and the Italian languages. Proper names are formed, substantially, after the general Italian system. The frequent gentile termination enas or ena x recurs in the termination enus which is likewise of frequent occurrence in Italian, especially in Sabellian clan-names; thus the Etruscan names Maecenas and Spurinna correspond closely to the Roman Maecius and Spurius. A number of names of divinities, which occur as Etruscan on Etruscan monu- ments or in authors, have in their roots, and to some extent even in their terminations, a form so thoroughly Latin, that, if these names were really originally Etruscan, the two languages must have been closely related; such as Usil (sun and dawn, connected with ausum, aurum, aurora, sol), Minerva (menervare), Lasa (lascivus), Neptunus, Voltumna. As these analogies, however, may have had their origin only in the subsequent political and religious relations between the Etruscans and Latins, and in the accommoda- tio'ns and borrowings to which these relations gave rise, they do not invalidate the conclusion to which we are led by the other observed phenomena, that the Tuscan language differed at least as widely from all the Graeco-Italian~ 1 Such as Maecenas, Porsena, Vivenna, Caecina, Spurinna. The vowel in the penult is originally long, but in consequence of the throwing back of the accent upon the initial syllable is frequently shortened and even rejected. Thus we find Pors6na as well as Porsena, and Ceicnc as well as Caecina. CHAP, ix THE ETRUSCANS 153 dialects as did the language of the Celts or of the Slavonians. So at least it sounded to the Roman ear; "Tuscan and Gallic" were the languages of barbarians, " Oscan and Volscian " were but rustic dialects. But, while the Etruscans differed thus widely from the Graeco-Italian family of languages, no one has yet succeeded in connecting them with any other known race. All sorts of dialects have been examined with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interroga- tion, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain. The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally suggest it for comparison ; but even in the Basque language no analogies of a decisive character have -been brought forward. As little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have reached our time, consisting of local and personal names, indicate any con- nection with the Tuscans. Even the extinct nation which has constructed those enigmatical sepulchral towers, called Nuraghe, by thousands in the islands of the Tuscan Sea, especially in Sardinia, cannot well be connected with the Etruscans, for not a single structure of the same character is to be met with in Etruscan territory. The utmost we can say is that several traces, that seem tolerably trust- worthy, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on the whole numbered with the Indo-Germans. Thus mi in the beginning of many of the older inscriptions is certainly e/it, i/, and the genitive form of consonantal stems veneruf, rafuvuf is exactly reproduced in old Latin, corresponding to the old Sanscrit termination as. IQ like manner th^ name of the Etruscan Zeus, Tina or Tinia, is probably connected with the Sanscrit dina, meaning day, as Zdv is connected with the synonymous diwan. But, even granting this, the Etruscan people appears withal scarcely less isolated. "The Etruscans," Dionysius said long ago, "are like no other nation in language 154 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK I Home of the Etruscans. and manners ; " and we have nothing to add to his statement. It is equally difficult to determine from what quarter the Etruscans migrated into Italy ; nor is much lost through our inability to answer the question, for this migration belonged at any rate to the infancy of the people, and their historical development began and ended in Italy. No question, however, has been handled with greater zeal than this, in accordance with the principle which induces anti- quaries especially to inquire into what is neither capable of being known nor worth the knowing to inquire " who was Hecuba's mother," as the emperor Tiberius professed to do. As the oldest and most important Etruscan towns lay far inland in fact we_find n^^_^iDgLe^tnjs^ajri_t^wjn_of any note immediately on the coast except Populonia, which we know for certain was not one of the old twelve cities and the movement of the Etruscans in historical times was from north to south, it seems probable that they migrated into the peninsula by land. Indeed the low stage of civilization, in which we find them at first, would ill accord with the hypothesis of immigration by sea. Nations even in the earliest times crossed a strait as they would a stream ; but to land on the west coast of Italy was a very different matter. We must therefore seek for the earlier home of the Etruscans to the west or north of Italy. It is not wholly improbable that the Etruscans may have come into Italy over the Raetian Alps ; for the oldest traceable settlers in the Orisons and Tyrol, the Raeti, spoke Etruscan down to historical times, and their name sounds similar to that of the Ras. These may no doubt have been a remnant of the Etruscan settlements on the Po ; but it is at least quite as likely that they may have been a portion of the people which remained behind in its earlier abode. -=> In glaring contradiction to this simple and natural view stands the story that the Etruscans were Lydians who had CHAP, ix THE ETRUSCANS 155 emigrated from Asia. It is very ancient : it occurs even story in Herodotus ; and it reappears in later writers with innu- merable changes and additions, although several intelligent origin. inquirers, such as Dionysius, emphatically declared their disbelief in it, and pointed to the fact that there was not the slightest apparent similarity between the Lydians and Etruscans in religion, laws, manners, or language. It is possible that an isolated band of pirates from Asia Minor may have reached Etruria, and that their adventure may have given rise to such tales ; but more probably the whole story rests on a mere verbal mistake. The Italian Etruscans or the Turs-ennae (for this appears to be the original form and the basis of the Greek Tvpa--r]voi, Tvpprjvoi, of the Umbrian Turs-ci, and of the two Roman forms Tusfi, Etrusci) nearly coincide in name with the Lydian people of the Topp7/3oi' or perhaps also Ivpp-r/voi, so named from the town Ivppa. This manifestly accidental resemblance in name seems to be in reality the only foundation for that hypothesis not rendered more trustworthy by its great antiquity and for all the pile of crude historical speculations that has been reared upon it. By connecting the ancient maritime commerce of the Etruscans with the piracy of the Lydians, and then by confounding (Thucydides is the first who has demonstrably done so) the Torrhebian pirates, whether rightly or wrongly, with the bucaneering Pelasgians who roamed and plundered on every sea, there has been produced one of the most mischievous complications of historical tradition. The term Tyrrhenians denotes some- times the Lydian Torrhebi as is the case in the earliest sources, such as the Homeric hymns ; sometimes under the form Tyrrhene -Pelasgians or simply that of Tyrrhenians, the Pelasgian nation ; sometimes, in fine, the Italian Etruscans, although the latter never came into lasting contact with the Pelasgians or Torrhebians, or were at all connected with them by common descent. '56 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK I Settle- ments of the Etruscans in Italy. Etruria. It is, on the other hand, a matter of historical interest to determine what were the oldest traceable abodes of the Etruscans, and what were their further movements when they issued thence. Various circumstances attest that before the great Celtic invasion they dwelt in the district to the north of the Po, being conterminous on the east along the Adige with the Veneti of Illyrian (Albanian ?) descent, on the west with the Ligurians. This is proved in particular by the already-mentioned rugged Etruscan dialect, which was still spoken in the time of Livy by the inhabitants of the Raetian Alps, and by the fact that Mantua remained Tuscan down to a late period. To the south of the Po and at the mouths of that river Etruscans and Umbrians were mingled, the former as the dominant, the latter as the older race, which had founded the old commercial towns of Atria and Spina, while the Tuscans appear to have been the founders of Felsina (Bologna) and Ravenna. A long time elapsed ere the Celts crossed the Po ; hence the Etruscans and Umbrians left deeper traces of their existence on the right bank of the river than they had done on the left, which they had to abandon at an early period. All the regions, however, to the north of the Apennines passed too rapidly out of the hands of one nation into those of another to permit the formation of any continuous national development there. Far more important in an historical point of view was the great settlement of the Tuscans in the land which still bears their name. Although Ligurians or Umbrians were probably at one time (p. 143) settled there, the traces of them have been almost wholly effaced by the Etruscan occupation and civilization. In this region, which extends along the coast from Pisae to Tarquinii and is shut in on the east by the Apennines, the Etruscan nationality found its permanent abode and maintained itself with great tenacity down to the time of the empire. The northern T CHAP. IX THE ETRUSCANS 157 boundary of the proper Tuscan territory was formed by the Arnus ; the region north from the Arnus as far as the mouth of the Macra and the Apennines was a debateable border land in the possession sometimes of Ligurians, some- times of Etruscans, and for this reason larger settlements were not successful there. The southern boundary was probably formed at first by the Ciminian Forest, a chain of hills south of Viterbo, and at a later period by the Tiber. We have already (p. 144) noticed the fact that the territory between the Ciminian range and the Tiber with the towns of Sutrium, Nepete, Falerii, Veii, and Caere appears not to have been taken possession of by the Etruscans till a period considerably later than the more northern districts, possibly not earlier than in the second century of Rome, and that the original Italian population must have maintained its ground in this region, especially in Falerii, although in a relation of dependence. From the time at which the river Tiber became the line Relations of demarcation between Etruria on the one side and Umbria ?f the Etruscans and Latium on the other, peaceful relations probably upon to Latium. the whole prevailed in that quarter, and no essential change seems to have taken place in the boundary line, at least so far as concerned the Latin frontier. Vividly as the Romans were impressed by the feeling that the Etruscan was a foreigner, while the Latin was their countryman, they yet seem to have stood in much less fear of attack or of danger from the right bank of the river than, for example, from their kinsmen in Gabii and Alba ; and this was natural, for they were protected in that direction not merely by the broad stream which formed a natural boundary, but also by the circumstance, so momentous in its bearing on the mercantile and political development of Rome, that none of the more powerful Etruscan towns lay immediately on the river, as did Rome on the Latin bank. The Veientes were the nearest to the Tiber, and it was with them that Rome and 158 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK i Latium came most frequently into serious conflict, especially for the possession of Fidenae, which served the Veientes as a sort of tete de pont on the left bank just as the Janiculum served the Romans on the right, and which was sometimes in the hands of the Latins, sometimes in those of the Etruscans. The relations of Rome with the" somewhat more distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early times. There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times of distant anti- quity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere ; Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to an especially close connection between the two- ancient centres of commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria. Sure traces of any advance of the , -Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. It is true that Etruscans are named in the first ranks of the great barbarian host, which Aristodemus annihilated in 524. 230 under the walls of Cumae (p. 148); but, even if we regard this account as deserving credit in all its details, it only shows that the Etruscans had taken part in a great plundering expedition. It is far more important to observe that south of the Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its origin to founders who came by land ; and that no indication whatever is discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the Latin nation. The possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber remained, so far as we can see, undis- puted in the hands of the Romans. As to the migrations of bodies of Etruscans to Rome, we find an isolated state- ment drawn from Tuscan annals, that a Tuscan band, led by Caelius Vivenna of Volsinii and after his death by his CHAP, ix THE ETRUSCANS 159 faithful companion Mastarna, was conducted by the latter to Rome. This may be trustworthy, although the derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is certainly nothing but an improbable ' conjecture of the archaeologists who busied themselves with legendary parallels. The name of the " Tuscan quarter " at the foot of the Palatine (p. 64) points further to Etruscan settlements in Rome. It can hardly, moreover, be doubted that the last regal The family which ruled over Rome, that of the Tarquins, was of Tarc l uins> Etruscan origin, whether it belonged to Tarquinii, as the legend asserts, or to Caere, where the family tomb of the Tarchnas has recently been discovered. The female name Tanaquil or Tanchvil interwoven with the legend, while it is not Latin, is common in Etruria. But the traditional story according to which Tarquin was the son of a Greek who had migrated from Gorinth to Tarquinii, and came to settle in Rome as a metoikos is neither history nor legend, and the historical chain of events is manifestly in this instance not confused merely, but completely torn asunder. If anything more can be deduced from this tradition beyond the bare and at bottom indifferent fact that at last a family of Tuscan descent swayed the regal sceptre in Rome, it can only be held as implying that this dominion of a man of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either as a dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community over Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria. There is, in fact, no sufficient ground either for the one hypothesis or for the other. The history of the Tarquins had its arena in Latium, not in Etruria ; and Etruria, so far as we can see, during the whole regal period exercised no influence of any essential moment on either the language or customs of Rome, and did not at all 160 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK i interrupt the regular development of the Roman state or of the Latin league. The cause of this comparatively passive attitude of Etruria towards the neighbouring land of Latium is probably to be sought partly in the struggles of the Etruscans with the Celts on the Po, which presumably the Celts did not cross until after the expulsion of the kings from Rome, and partly in the tendency of the Etruscan people towards seafaring and the acquisition of supremacy on the sea and seaboard a. tendency decidedly exhibited in their settlements in Campania, and of which we shall speak more fully in the next chapter. The The Tuscah constitution, like the Greek and Latin, was based on the gradual transition of the community to an urban life. The early direction of the national energies towards navigation, trade, and manufactures appears to have called into existence urban commonwealths, in the strict sense of the term, earlier in Etruria than elsewhere in Italy. Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is mentioned in Greek records. On the other hand we find that the Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the disposition for war than the Romans and Sabellians :_Jh. un-Italian custom of employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among~tfte~~ElTuT;cTns~ar^~Wry r early period. The oldest constitution of the communities must in its general outlines have resembled that of Rome. Kings or Lucumones ruled, possessing similar insignia and probably therefore a similar plenitude of power with the Roman kings. A strict line of demarcation separated the nobles from the common people. The resemblance in the clan-organization is attested by the analogy of the system of names ; only, among the Etruscans, descent on the mother's side received much more consideration than in Roman law. The con- stitution of their league appears to have been very lax. It did not embrace the whole nation ; the northern and the CHAP, ix THE ETRUSCANS 161 Campanian Etruscans were associated in confederacies of their own, just in the same way as the communities of Etruria proper. Each of these leagues consisted of twelve communities, which recognized a metropolis, especially fpr \ purposes of worship, and a federal head or rather a high priest, but appear to have been substantially equal in respect of rights ; while some of them at least were so powerful that neither could a hegemony establish itself, nor could the central authority attain consolidation. In Etruria proper Volsinii was the metropolis ; of the rest of its twelve towns we know by trustworthy tradition only Perusia, Vetulonium, Volci, and Tarquinii. It was, however, quite as unusual for the Etruscans really to act in concert, as it was for the Latin confederacy to do otherwise. Wars were ordinarily carried on by a single community, which endea- ' voured to interest in its cause such of its neighbours as it could ; and when an exceptional case occurred in which^ war was resolved on by the league, individual towns very frequently kept aloof from it. The Etruscan confederations appear to have been from the first still more than the other Italian leagues formed on a similar basis of national affinity deficient in a firm and paramount central authority. VOL. i 1 62 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK I CHAPTER X Relations of Italy with other lands. THE HELLENES IN ITALY MARITIME SUPREMACY OF THE TUSCANS AND CARTHAGINIANS IN the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered in the day ; and in their case too the dawn was in the east While the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed civilization. It falls to the lot of most nations in the early stages of their deve- lopment to be taught and trained by some rival sister- nation ; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the lot of the peoples of Italy. The circumstances of its geographical position, however, prevented this influence from being brought to bear upon the peninsula by land. No trace is to be found of any resort in early times to the difficult route by land between Italy and Greece. There were in all probability from time immemorial tracks for purposes of traffic, leading from Italy to the lands beyond the Alps ; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po on which account the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the home of amber and this route was joined by another leading across the peninsula over the Apennines to Pisae ; but from these regions no elements of civilization could come to the Italians. It was the seafaring nations CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 163 of the east that brought to Italy whatever foreign culture reached it in early times. The oldest civilized nation on the shores of the Mediter- Phoeni- ranean, the Egyptians, were not a seafaring people, and " therefore exercised no influence on Italy. But the same maybe with almost equal truth affirmed of the Phoenicians. It is true that, issuing from their narrow home on the extreme eastern verge of the Mediterranean, they were the first of all known races to venture forth in floating houses on the bosom of the deep, at first for the purpose of fishing and dredging, but soon also for the prosecution of trade. They were the first to open up maritime commerce ; and at an incredibly early period they traversed the Mediter- ranean even to its furthest extremity in the west. Maritime stations of the Phoenicians appear on almost all its coasts earlier than those of the Hellenes : in Hellas itself, in Crete and Cyprus, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and likewise on the western Italian main. Thucydides tells iis that all around Sicily, before the Greeks came thither or at least before they had established themselves there in any con- siderable numbers, the Phoenicians had set up their factories on the headlands and islets, not with a view to gain terri- tory, but for the sake of trading with the natives. But it was otherwise in the case of continental Italy. No sure proof has hitherto been given of the existence of any Phoenician settlement there excepting one, a Punic factory at Caere, the memory of which has been preserved partly by the appellation Punicum given to a little village on the Caerite coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself, Agylla, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of Pelasgic origin, but is a Phoenician word signifying the " round town " precisely the appearance which Caere pre- sents when seen from the sea. That this station and any similar establishments which may have elsewhere existed on f the coasts of Italy were neither of much importance nor of 164 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK i long standing, is evident from their having disappeared almost without leaving a trace. We have not the smallest reason to think them older than the Hellenic settlements of a similar kind on the same coasts. An evidence of no slight weight that Latium at least first became acquainted with the men of Canaan through the medium of the Hellenes is furnished by the Latin appellation "Poeni," which is borrowed from the Greek. All the oldest relations, indeed, of the Italians to the civilization of the east point decidedly .towards Greece ; and the rise of the Phoenician factory at Caere may be very well explained, without resorting to the pre-Hellenic period, by the subsequent well-known relations between the commercial state of Caere and Carthage. In fact, when we recall the circumstance that the earliest navi- gation was and continued to be essentially of a coasting character, it is plain that scarcely any country on the Mediterranean lay so remote from the Phoenicians as the Italian mainland. They could only reach it either from the west coast of Greece or from Sicily ; and it may well be believed that the seamanship of the Hellenes became developed early enough to anticipate the Phoenicians in braving the dangers of the Adriatic and of the Tyrrhene seas. There is no ground therefore for the assumption that any direct influence was originally exercised by the Phoenicians over the Italians. To the subsequent relations between the Phoenicians holding the supremacy of the western Mediterranean and the Italians inhabiting the shores of the Tyrrhene sea our narrative will return in the sequel. Greeks in To all appearance, therefore, the Hellenic mariners were Ital y- the first among the inhabitants of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to navigate the coasts of Italy. Of the important questions however as to the region from which, and as to the period at which, the Greek seafarers came thither, only the former admits of being answered with CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 165 some degree of precision and fulness. The Aeolian and Home of Ionian coast of Asia Minor was the region where Hellenic j mm i_ maritime traffic first became developed on a large scale, grants, and whence issued the Greeks who explored the interior of the Black Sea on the one hand and the coasts of Italy on the other. The name of the Ionian Sea, which was retained by the waters intervening between Epirus and Sicily, and that of the Ionian gulf, the term by which the Greeks in earlier times designated the Adriatic Sea, are memorials of the fact that the southern and eastern coasts of Italy were once discovered by seafarers from Ionia. The oldest Greek settlement in Italy, Kyme, was, as its name and legend tell, founded by the town of the same name on the Anatolian coast. According to trustworthy Hellenic tradi- tion, the Phocaeans of Asia Minor were the first of the Hellenes to traverse the more remote western sea. Other Greeks soon followed in the paths which those of Asia Minor had opened up ; lonians from Naxos and from Chalcis in Euboea, Achaeans, Locrians, Rhodians, Cor- inthians, Megarians, Messenians, Spartans. After the dis- covery of America the civilized nations of Europe vied with one another in sending out expeditions and forming settlements there ; and the new settlers when located amidst barbarians recognized their common character and common interests as civilized Europeans more strongly than they had done in their former home. So it was with the new discovery of the Greeks. The privilege of navigating the western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive property of a single Greek province or of a single Greek stock, but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation ; and, just as in the formation of the new North American world, English and French, Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Greek Sicily and " Great Greece " became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of Hellenic races often so amalgamated as to 166 THE HELLENES IN ITALY be no longer distinguishable. Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated position such as that of the Locrians with its onsets Hipponium and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocaeans which was not founded till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea) we may distinguish in a general view three leading groups. The original Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns, included in Italy Cumae with the other Greek settlements at Vesuvius and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Catana, Leontini, and Himera. The Achaean group embraced Sybaris and the greHei part of the cities of Magna Graecia. The Dorian group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea. On the whole the preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more ancient Hellenic influx, that of the lonians and the stocks settled in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration. Among the Dorians only the communities with a mixed population, such as Corinth and Megara, took a special part, whereas the purely Doric provinces had but a subordinate share in the movement. This result was naturally to be expected, for the lonians were from ancient times a trading and sea- faring people, while it was only at a comparatively late period that the Dorian stocks descended from theirnnland mountains to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from' maritime commerce. The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable, especially by their monetary standards. The Phocaean settlers coined according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia. The Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European Greece, and more especially the modification , of it which is found occurring in Euboea, The Achaean CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 167 communities coined by the Corinthian standard ; and lastly the Doric colonies followed that which Solon introduced in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception of 594. Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces adopted rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the Dorians in Sicily. The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will Time of the probably always remain enveloped in darkness. We may still, however, distinctly recognize a certain order of sequence. In the oldest Greek document, which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the west, to the lonians of Asia Minor the Homeric poems the horizon scarcely extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Sailors driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire : but in the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west ; and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in the air. In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries ; but Italy is still regarded as a group of islands. On the other hand, in all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the Hellenes. The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision. Thucydides evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the west ; and certainly he was not mistaken. It is true that many a landing-place lay 168 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK I \ nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated ; and that such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement, is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected for it on the mainland the steep but well-protected cliff, which still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian mother-city. Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west, full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world. On the supposition, moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae, the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries afterwards to designate the Italians collectively. There is a further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this immigration lonians from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead. Naxos in Sicily is said to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict colonization in Italy or Sicily ; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations followed, but not until a later period. It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of this series of events with even approximate accuracy. The founding of the Achaean city of Sybaris 721. 708. in 33, and that of the Dorian city Tarentum in 46, are probably the most ancient dates in Italian history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness, of CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 169 which may be looked upon as established. But how far beyond that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the poems of Hesiod or even of Homer. If Herodotus is correct in the period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome. The date thus 850. assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference ; and any one who carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with the Greek people before the name " Hellenes " had emerged for the race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes from the stock of the Grai or Graeci that early fell into abeyance in Hellas, 1 will be inclined to carry back the earliest intercourse of the 1 Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may be left an open question ; it must at a remote period have belonged to a prominent stock or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and have passed over from these 1 i'to the nation as a whole. In the Eoai of Hesiod it appears as the older I j collective name for the nation, although it is manifest that it is intentionally thrust aside and subordinated to that of Hellenes. The latter does not occur in Honier, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is 'found in Archilochus about the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably 700. earlier (Duncker, GescA. d. Alt. iii. 18, 556). Already before this period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the Greeks that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas, was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation, even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation. It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic stocks belonged to one race than the latter them- selves, and that hence the collective designation should have become more ' definitely fixed among the former than with the latter not the less, that it was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the nearest to them. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with this fact the state- ment that a century before the foundation of Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor. We shall speak of the alphabet below ; its history yields entirely similar results. It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer on the strength of such considerations ; but is there no rashness in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of this kind ? 170 THE HELLENES IN ITALY Character of the Greek im- migration. The League of the Achaean cities. Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably more remote. The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of the history of Italy ; the Hellenic colonists of the west always retained the closest connection with their original home and participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes. But it is of importance even as bearing on Italy, that we should indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an influence on Italy! Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton, Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus. These colonists, taken as a whole, belonged to a Greek stock which steadfastly adhered to its own peculiar dialect, having closest affinity with the Doric, and for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which had elsewhere come into general use ; and which preserved its own nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution. The language of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may be applied also to these Italian Achaeans ; " Not only did they live in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws, like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates, councillors, and judges." This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a coloniza- tion. The cities had no harbours Croton alone had a CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 171 paltry roadstead and they had no commerce of their own ; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans bought and sold for him. These Achaean Greeks, however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt - along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the " land of wine" and "of oxen" (Oivwrpta, 'IraXia) or the "great Hellas ; " the native agicultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs. Sybaris in its time the largest city in Italy exercised dominion over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea. The exceedingly fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines it was there perhaps that grain was first cultivated for exportation. The height of prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful work- manship the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to be coined in 174. These coins show 580. that the Achaeans of the west did not simply participate in the noble development of plastic art that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were even superior in technical skill. For, while the silver pieces which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only on one side, and in general without inscription, the Italian Achaeans with great and independent skill struck from two similar dies partly cut in relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with inscriptions, and display- ing the advanced organization of a civilized state in the mode of impression, by which they were carefully protected 172 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK i from the process of counterfeiting usual in that age the plating of inferior metal with thin silver-foil. Nevertheless this rapid bloom bore no fruit. Even Greeks speedily lost all elasticity of body and of mind in a life of indolence, in which their energies were never tried either by vigorous resistance on the part of the natives or by hard labour of their own. None of the brilliant names in Greek art or literature shed glory on the Italian Achaeans, while Sicily could claim ever so many of them, and even in Italy the Chalcidian Rhegium could produce its Ibycus and the Doric Tarentum its Archytas. With this people, among whom the spit was for ever turning on the hearth, nothing flourished from the outset but boxing. The rigid aristocracy which early gained the helm in the several communities, and which found in case of need a sure reserve of support in the federal power, prevented the rise of tyrants ; but the danger to be apprehended was that the government of the best might be converted into a government of the few, especially if the privileged families in the different communities should combine to assist each other in carrying out their designs. Such was the pre- dominant aim in the combination of mutually pledged " friends " which bore the name of Pythagoras. It enjoined the principle that the ruling class should be "honoured like gods," and that the subject class should be " held in subservience like beasts," and by such theory and practice provoked a formidable reaction, which terminated in the annihilation of the Pythagorean " friends " and the renewal of the ancient federal constitution. But frantic party feuds, insurrections en masse of the slaves, social abuses of all sorts, attempts to supply in practice an impracticable state- philosophy, in short, all the evils of demoralized civilization never ceased to rage in the Achaean communities, till under the accumulated pressure their political power utterly broke r, down. CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 173 It is no matter of wonder therefore that the Achaeans settled in Italy exercised less influence on its civilization than the other Greek settlements. An agricultural people, they had less occasion than those engaged in commerce to extend their influence beyond their political bounds. With- in their own dominions they enslaved the native population and crushed the germs of their national development as ' Italians, while they refused to open up to them by means of complete Hellenization a new career. In this way the Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region ; and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real prosperity. This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time to the succeeding period. The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different lono character, and exercised a very different effect upon Italy. They by no means despised agriculture and the acquisition of territory ; it was not the wont of the Hellenes, at least when they had reached their full vigour, to rest content after the manner of the Phoenicians with a fortified factory in the midst of a barbarian land. But all their cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade, and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achaeans, they were uniformly established beside the best harbours and lading-places. These cities were very various in their origin and in the occasion and period of their respective foundations ; but there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet, 1 and in the very 1 Thus the three old Oriental forms of the i ($.}, I (/> ) and r (P), for 174 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK I Dorism of their language, which made its way at an early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example, 1 originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect. These settlements were of very various degrees of importance in their bear- ing on the development of Italy : it is sufficient at present to mention those which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae. Tarentum. Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined to play the most brilliant part. The excellent harbour, the only good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural emporium for the traffic of the south of Italy, and for some portion even of the commerce of the Adriatic. The rich fisheries of its gulf, the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine nmrex, which rivalled that of Tyre both branches of industry introduced there from Miletus in Asia Minor employed thousands of hands, and added to the carrying trade a traffic of export. The coins struck at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce of the Tarentines. At this epoch, when Tarentum was still contending with Sybaris for the first place among the Greek cities of Lower Italy, its extensive commercial con- nections must have been already forming ; but the Taren- tines seem never to have steadily and successfully directed their efforts to a substantial extension of their territory after the manner of the Achaean cities. which as apt to be confounded with the forms of the s, g, and / the signs I \f R were early proposed to be substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant use- among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at any rate chiefly the more recent forms. 1 E.g. the inscription on ah earthen vase of Cumae runs thus : Terrenes tp.1 X^t&os' F6s 5' &v /xe K\^$X6s ttrrai. CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 175 While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy Greek cities n Vesuvius. thus rapidly rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to C1 the north, in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity. There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria (Ischia) to the ' mainland, and had built a second home on a hill close by the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia (afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the " new city," Neapolis. They lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily, in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100) had established, 650. under a constitution democratic but modified by a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council of members selected from the wealthiest men a constitu- tion which proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob. We know little as to the external relations of these Campanian Greeks. They remained, whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of even narrower limits than the Tarentines ; and issuing from it not for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives, they created the means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization in Italy. While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the Relations whole southern coast of the mainland and its western coast f the Adriatic as far as Vesuvius, and on the other the larger eastern half regions to of the island of Sicily, were Greek territory, the west coast the Greeks - of Italy northward of Vesuvius and the whole of the east coast were in a position essentially different. No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of the Adriatic ; and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively small number and subordinate importance of the Greek colonies planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the 176 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK i numerous adjacent islands. Two considerable mercantile 627. towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium (now Durazzo, 127), and 587. Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during the regal period of Rome ; but no old Greek colony can be pointed out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 580. 174?)- No adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu) ' 710. founded not long after Rome (about 44) ; a traffic, which had as its emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated at the mouth of the Po. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those that lay to the west. The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus (Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of the Adriatic. Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention along the whole east coast the rise of Ancona belongs to a far later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium it may well be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently discharged their cargoes at Tarentum. The CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 177 Tarentines had also much intercourse with Apulia by land ; all the Greek civilization to be met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them. That civilization, however, was during the present period only in its infancy ; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of Apulia was developed. It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west Relations coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very of l ^ e western early times by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic Italians factories on its promontories and islands. Probably the earliest evidence of such voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the coasts of the Tyrrhene Sea. 1 When men discovered the isles of Aeolus in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens, at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial- mound of Elpenor, when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is the "wild," and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in the "inmost recess of the holy islands," or, according to a more recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe, and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso we recognize in these legends ancient sailors' tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea. The same noble vivid- ness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization 1 Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his materials), and the writer known as Scylax. The first of these sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old ; so that the origin of these legends may, on the whole, be confidently placed in the regal period of Rome, VOL. I 12 1 78 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK i of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions frequented by the Cumaean mariners. Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria ; and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near S. Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names, but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere and the Etruscan cities generally. Aethalia, the " fire-island," with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traffic with the natives ; the more especially as they could not have found the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded island without intercourse with the mainland. The silver mines of Populonja also on the headland opposite to Elba were perhaps already known to the Greeks and wrought by them. If, as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to carry them off as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the right of retaliation ; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that effect, but by the actual results. In these regions the Italians succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile cities and mercantile ports, but also of their CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 179 own sea. The same Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central Italy very much indeed against the will of their instructors towards navigation . and the founding of towns. It must have been in this/ quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. v > Here too we first encounter great mercantile cities, ^ particularly Caere in southern Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance from the sea, were like the exactly similar commercial towns at the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the south certainly not Greek, but Italian ' foundations. It is not in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against foreign aggression ; but we can still recognize the fact, which was of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium . ' and in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly Tuscan and adjoining provinces. Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin Hellenes with the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the' andLatms> mouth of the Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci. This cannot mean that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of Central Italy, but not permitted in others. Northward of Vesuvius there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical times ; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted, before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of the Italians or in other words of the Caerites. But in southern Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful inter- course with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged ; and such was not the case elsewhere. The 180 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK i position of Caere was especially remarkable. "The Caerites," says Strabo, " were held in much repute among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because, powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery." It is not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of Caere must have indulged like every other. But Caere was a sort of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks. We have already mentioned the Phoenician station subsequently called Punicum and the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium (pp. 163, 178). It was these ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood, early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths of the Tiber and Po. The cities we have just named are those which ~ appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece. \ The first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum. Spina and Caere had their special treasuries ..an the temple of the Delphic Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the shrine ; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle, is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome. These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became pre- eminently wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization. Hellenes Matters stood on a different footing with the " wild Tyr- and Etrus- r henians." The same causes, which in the province of cans. Latium, and in the districts on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the Po that were perhaps THE HELLENES IN ITALY 181 rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than strictly Etruscan, Etruscan had led to the emancipation of the natives from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in conse- quence possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people to violence and pillage, or it may be' for other reasons with which we are not acquainted. The Etruscans were not content with dislodging the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia ; even the individual trader was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks. It was not without reason that the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans. The rapidity with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their proceedings in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts. The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and the Greeks at Vesuvius ; but between them and by their side the Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum. The Volscians became clients of the Etruscans ; their forests contributed the keels for the Etruscan'^alieys"; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners the name of the Laestrygones. The high promontory of Sorrento with the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute of any harbour a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays of Naples and Salerno was early occupied by the Etruscans. The^ are affirmed even to have founded a " league of twelve towns " of their own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still i existed in its .inland districts in times quite historical. 1 82 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK I These settlements were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the Cumaeans at Vesuvius. Etruscan The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves ^ to robbery and pillage. The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek towns is attested by the gold and 554. silver coins which, at least from the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard. The circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks. For commerce they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium. Inhabiting the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains of Capua and Nola. They were the holders of the most important Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the amber which was brought to them from the Baltic (p. 162). Under the protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude naviga- tion act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish. 1 It jieed_nat surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian \ merchants competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to learn that the combination of privateer- ing and commerce on a great scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the vigour of Etruria early wasted away. While in Italy the Etruscans and, although in a lesser CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 183 degree, the Latins thus stood opposed to the Hellenes, Rivalry warding them .off and partly treating them as enemies, this ^^fhoe- antagonism to some extent necessarily affected the rivalry nicians and which then above all dominated the commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean the rivalry between the Phoenicians and Hellenes. This is not the place to set , forth in detail how, during the regal period of Rome, these two great nations contended for supremacy on all the shores of the Mediterranean, in Greece even and Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus, on the African, Spanish, an'd Celtic coasts. This struggle did not take place directly on Italian soil, but its effects were deeply and permanently felt in Italy. The fresh energies and more universal endowments of the younger competitor had at first the advantage 'everywhere. Not only did the Hellenes rid themselves of the Phoenician factories in their own European and Asiatic homes, but they dislodged the Phoenicians also from Crete and Cyprus, gained a footing in Egypt and Gyrene, and possessed themselves of Lower Italy and the larger eastern half of the island of Sicily. On all hands the small trading stations of the Phoenicians gave way before the more energetic colonization of the Greeks. Selinus (126) and 628. Agrigentum (174) were founded in western Sicily; the 580. more remote western sea was traversed, Massilia was built on the Celtic coast (about 150), and the shores of Spain 600. were explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia Minor. But about the middle of the second century the progress of Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested ; and there is no doubt that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya a rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression threatened the whole Phoenician - race. If the nation which had opened up maritime commerce on the Mediterranean had been already dislodged by its younger rival from the sole command of the western 184 THE HELLENES IN ITALY Phoeni- cians and Italians in opposition to the Hellenes. 579. 537. half, from the possession of both lines of communication between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and from the monopoly of the carrying trade between east and west, the sovereignty at least of the seas to the west of Sardinia and Sicily might still be saved for the Orientals ; and to its maintenance Carthage applied all the tenacious and circumspect energy peculiar to the Aramaean racer Phoenician colonization and Phoenician resistance assumed an entirely different character. The earlier Phoenician settlements, such as those in Sicily described by Thucydides, were mercantile factories : Carthage subdued extensive territories with numerous subjects and powerful fortresses. Hitherto the Phoenician settlements had stood isolated in opposition to the Greeks ; now the powerful Libyan city centralized within its sphere the whole warlike resources of those akin to it in race with a vigour to which the history of the Greeks can produce nothing parallel. Perhaps the element in this reaction which exercised the most momentous influence in the sequel was the close relation into which the weaker Phoenicians entered with the natives of Sicily and Italy in order to resist the Hellenes. When the Cnidians and Rhodians made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the centre of,the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled by the natives the Elymi of Segeste in concert with the Phoenicians. When the Phocaeans settled about 217 at Alalia (Aleria) in Corsica opposite to Caere, there appeared for the purpose of expelling them a combined fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians, numbering a hundred and twenty sail ; and although in the naval battle that ensued one of the earliest known in history the fleet of the Phocaeans, which was only half as strong, claimed the victory, the Carthaginians and Etruscans gained the object which they had in view in the attack ; the Phocaeans abandoned Corsica, and preferred to settle at Hyele (Velia) CHAP, x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 185 , on the less exposed coast of Lucania. A treaty between Etruria and Carthage not only established regulations regarding the import of goods and the giving due effect to rights, but included also an alliance-in-arms (raevides> praedes], were valid without further formality. On the other hand, contracts between private persons under ordinary circum- stances gave no claim for legal aid on the part of the state. The only protection of the creditor was the debtor's word of honour which was held in high esteem after the wont of merchants, and possibly also, in those frequent cases where an oath had been added, the fear of the gods who avenged perjury. The only contracts legally actionable were those of betrothal {the effect of which was that the father, in the event of his failing to give the promised bride, had to furnish satisfaction and compensation), of purchase (mancipatio), and of loan (nexum). A purchase was held to be legally concluded when the seller delivered the article purchased into the hand of the buyer (mancipare), and the buyer "at the same time paid to the seller the stipulated price in presence of witnesses. This was done, after copper superseded sheep and cattle as the regular standard of value, by weighing out the stipulated quantity of copper in a balance adjusted by a neutral person. 1 These condi- tions having been complied with, the seller had to answer for his being the owner, and in addition seller and purchaser 1 The mancipatio in its developed form must have been more recent than the Servian reform, as the selection of mancipable objects, which had for its aim the fixing of agricultural property, shows, and as even tradition must have assumed, for it makes Servius the inventor of the balance. But in its/origin the mancipatio must be far more ancient ; for it primarily applies only to objects which are acquired by grasping with the hand, and must therefore in its earliest form have belonged to the epoch when property consisted essentially in slaves and cattle (familia pecuniague). The enumeration of those objects which had to be acquired by mancipatio, falls accordingly to be ranked as a Servian innovation ; the mancipatio itself, and consequently the use also of the balance and of copper, are older. Beyond doubt mancipatio was originally the universal form of purchase, and occurred in the case of all articles even after the Servian reform ; it was only a misunderstanding of later ages which put upon the rule, that certain articles had to be transferred by mancipatio, the con- struction that these articles only and no others could be so transferred. process. 196 LAW AND JUSTICE BOOK i had to fulfil every stipulation specially agreed on ; the party failing to do so made reparation to the other, just as if he had deprived him of the article in question. But a purchase only founded an action in the event of its being a_ transaction for ready money : a purchase on credit neither gave nor took away the right of property, and constituted no ground of action. A loan was negotiated in a similar way ; the creditor weighed over to the debtor in presence of witnesses the stipulated quantity of copper under the obligation (nexum) of repayment. In addition to the capital the debtor had to pay interest, which under ordinary circumstances -probably amounted to ten per cent per annum. 1 The repayment of the loan took place, when the time came, with similar forms. Private f If a debtor to the state did not fulfil his obligations, he was without further ceremony sold with all that he had ; the simple demand on the part of the state was sufficient to establish the debt. If on the other hand a private person informed the king of any violation of his property (vindiciae), or if repayment of the loan received did not duly take place, the procedure depended on whether the facts relating to the cause needed to be established, which was ordinarily the case with actions as to property, or were already clearly apparent, which in the case of actions as to loans could easily be accomplished according to the current rules of law by means of the witnesses. The establishment of the facts assumed the form of a wager, in which each party made a deposit (sacramentum) against the contingency of his being worsted ; in important causes when the value involved was greater than ten oxen, a deposit of five oxen, - in causes of less amount, a deposit of five sheep. The judge then decided who had gained the wager, whereupon 1 Viz. for the year of ten months one twelfth part of the capital (uncia), which amounts to 8j per cent for the year of ten, and 10 per cent for the year of twelve, months. CHAP, xi LAW AND JUSTICE 197 .-', ; the deposit of the losing party fell to the priests for behoof ? \ of the public sacrifices. The party who lost the wager and allowed thirty days to elapse without giving due satisfaction to his opponent, and the party whose obligation to pay was established from the first consequently, as a rule, the debtor who had got a loan and had not witnesses to attest its repayment became liable to proceedings in execution " by laying on of hands " (manus iniectid) ; the plaintiff seized him wherever he found him, and brought him to the bar of the judge simply to satisfy the acknowledged debt. The party seized was not allowed to defend him- self; a third person might indeed intercede for him and represent this act of violence as unwarranted (vindex), in which case the proceedings were stayed ; but such an intercession rendered the intercessor personally responsible, for which reason the proletarian could not be intercessor for the tribute-paying burgess. If neither satisfaction nor intercession took place, the king adjudged the party seized to his creditor, so that the latter could lead him away and keep him like a slave. After the expiry of sixty days during which the debtor had~been three times exposed in the market-place and proclamation had been made to ascertain whether any one would have compassion upon him, if these steps were without effect, his creditors had the right to put him to death and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home in a slave's stead ; for such an one could not by the Roman law, so long as he remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become completely a slave (p. 131). Thus the Roman community protected every man's estate and effects with - unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent debtor. Protection was in like manner provided for the estate Guardian ^ship. 198 LAW AND JUSTICE BOOK I Manu- mission. of persons not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all for that of women ; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to undertake the guardianship. After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs : in the division all who were equal in proximity of relationship women included- shared alike, and the widow along with her children was admitted to her pro- portional share. A dispensation from the legal order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the people ; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be obtained on account of the ritual obligations attaching to succession. Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early period very frequent. In the event of a dispensation not being procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by means of the com- pletely free control which every one had over his property during his lifetime. His whole property was transferred to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes of the deceased. Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times. The owner might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights ; but this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave coming under mutual obligations ; still less did it enable the slave to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest or of a burgess. Accordingly manumission must have been at first simply de facto, not de jure ; and the master cannot have been debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the freedman as a slave. But there was a departure from this principle in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession of freedom. There was no special legal form, however, for thus binding the CHAP, xi LAW AND JUSTICE 199 master the best proof that there was at first no such thing as a manumission, but those methods were employed for this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action, or census. If the master had either declared his slave free when executing his last will in the assembly of the people, or had allowed his slave to claim freedom in his own presence before a judge or to get his name inscribed in the valuation-roll, the freedman was regarded not indeed as a burgess, but as personally free in relation to his former master and his heirs, and was accordingly looked upon at first as a client, and in later times as a plebeian (p. 1 1 o). The emancipation of a son encountered greater diffi- culties than that of a slave ; for while the relation of master to slave was accidental and therefore capable of being dissolved at will, the father could never cease to be father. Accordingly in later times the son was obliged, in order to get free from the father, first to enter into slavery and then to be set free out of this latter state ; but in the period now before us no emancipation of sons can have as yet existed. Such were the laws under which burgesses and clients Clients and lived in Rome. Between these two classes, so far as we c can see, there subsisted from the beginning complete equality of private rights. The foreigner on the other hand, if he had not submitted to a Roman patron and thus lived as a client, was beyond the pale of the law both in person and in property. Whatever the Roman burgess took from him was as rightfully acquired as was the shell- fish, belonging to nobody, which was picked up by the sea -shore ; but in the case of ground lying beyond the Roman bounds, while the Roman burgess might take practical possession, he could not be regarded as in a legal sense its proprietor; for the individual burgess was not entitled to advance the bounds of the community. The case was different in war : whatever the soldier who was 200 LAW AND JUSTICE BOOK i fighting in the ranks of the levy gained, whether moveable or immoveable property, fell not to him, but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the state whether it would advance or contract its bounds. Exceptions from these general rules were created by special state -treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of foreign communities within the Roman state. In particular, the perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts between Romans and Latins to be valid in law, and at the same time instituted in their case an accelerated civil process before sworn " recoverers " (recipera&zes^. As, contrary to Roman usage, which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge, these always sat in plural number and that number un- even, they are probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire. They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered into, and were obliged to have the process terminated at latest in ten days. The forms, under which the dealings between Romans and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians ; for the mancipatio and the nexum were origin- ally not at all formal acts, but the significant expression of legal ideas which held a sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language. Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a different fashion and by means of other forms. In very early times treaties as to , commerce and legal redress must have been entered into with the Caerites and other friendly peoples, and must have formed the basis of the international private law (ius gentium], which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of the land. An indication of the formation of such a law is found in the remarkable mutuum, "the exchange" (from CHAP, xi LAW AND JUSTICE 201 mutare like dividuus) a form of loan, which was not based like the nexum upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with foreigners as the nexum in business dealings at home. It is accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian Greek as [AOLTOV ; and with this is to be connected the reappearance of the Latin career in the Sicilian KapKapov. Since it is philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their occurrence in the local dialect of Sicily becomes an important testimony to the frequency of the dealings of Latin traders in the island, which led to their borrowing money there and becoming liable to that imprisonment for debt, which was everywhere in the earlier systems of law the consequence of the non-repayment of a loan. Conversely, the name of the Syracusan prison, "stone -quarries" or Xa.Top.ia.iy was transferred at an early period to the enlarged Roman state-prison, the lautumiae. We have derived our outline of these institutions mainly Characte. from the earliest record of the Roman common law prepared f tbe Roman about half a century after the abolition of the monarchy ; law. and their existence in the regal period, while doubtful per- haps as to particular points of detail, cannot be doubted in the main. Surveying them as a whole, we recognize the law of a far-advanced agricultural and mercantile city, marked alike by its liberality and its consistency. In its case the conventional language of symbols, such as e.g. the Ger- manic laws exhibit, has" already quite disappeared. There is no doubt that such a symbolic language must have existed at one time among the Italians. Remarkable instances of it are to be found in the form of searching a house, wherein the searcher must, according to the Roman as well as the Germanic custom, appear without upper .garment merely in his shirt ; and especially in the primitive Latin formula 202 LAW AND JUSTICE BOOK i for declaring war, in which we meet with two symbols occurring at least also among the Celts and the Germans the " pure herb " (herba pura, Franconian chrene chrudd) as a symbol of the native soil, and the singed bloody staff as a sign of commencing war. But with a few exceptions, in which reasons of religion protected the ancient usages to which class the confarreatio as well as the declaration of war by the college of Fetiales belonged the Roman law, as we know it, uniformly and on principle rejects the symbol, and requires in all cases neither more nor less than the full and pure expression of will. The delivery of an article, the summons to bear witness, the conclusion of marriage, were complete as soon as the parties "had in an intelligible manner declared their purpose ; it was usual, indeed, to deliver the article into the hand of the new owner, to pull the person summoned as a witness by the ear, to veil the bride's head and to lead her in solemn procession to her husband's house ; but all these primitive practices were already, under the oldest national law of the Romans, customs legally worthless. In a way entirely analogous to the setting aside of allegory and along with it of personification in religion, every sort of symbolism was i "on principle expelled from their law. In like manner that earliest state of things presented to usHBy the Hellenic as well as the Germanic institutions, wherein the power of the community still contends with the authority of the smaller associations of clans or cantons that are merged in it, is in Roman law wholly superseded ; there is no alliance for the vindication of rights within the state, to supplement the state's imperfect aid, by mutual offence and defence^jior is there any serious trace of vengeance for_blqodshed, or of the family property restricting the individual's power of dis- posal. Such institutions must probably at one time have existed among the Italians ; traces of them may perhaps be found in particular institutions of ritual, e.g. in the expiatory CHAP, xi LAW AND JUSTICE 203 goat, which the involuntary homicide was obliged to give to the nearest of kin to the slain ; but even at the earliest period of Rome which we can conceive this stage had long been transcended. The clan and the family doubtless were not annihilated in the Roman community ; but the theoretical as well as the practical omnipotence of the state in its own sphere was no more limited by them than by the freedom which the state granted and guaranteed to the burgess. The ultimate foundation of law was in all cases the state ; freedom was simply another expression for the right of citizenship in its widest sense ; all property was based on express or tacit transference by the community to the individual ; a contract was valid only so far as the com- munity by its representatives attested it, a testament only so far as the community confirmed it. The provinces of public and private law were definitely and clearly discrimi- nated : the former having reference to crimes against the state, which immediately called for the judgment of the state and always involved capital punishment ; the latter having reference to offences against a fellow-burgess or a guest, which were mainly disposed of in the way of com- promise by expiation or satisfaction made to the party injured, and were never punished with the forfeit of life, but, at most, with the loss of freedom. The^ greatest liberality in the permission of commerce and the most rigorous procedure in execution went hand in hand ;. just as in commercial states at the present day the universal right to draw bills of exchange appears in conjunction with a strict procedure in regard to them. The burgess and the client stood in their dealings on a footing of entire equality ; state-treaties conceded a comprehensive equality of rights also to the guest; women were placed completely on a level in point of legal capacity with men, although restricted in action ; the boy had scarcely grown up when he received at once the most comprehensive powers in the 204 LAW AND JUSTICE BOOK i disposal of his estate, and every one who could dispose at all was as sovereign in his own sphere as was the state in public affairs. A feature eminently characteristic was the system of credit. There did not exist any credit on landed security, but instead of a debt on mortgage the step which constitutes at present the final stage in mortgage-procedure the delivery of the property from the debtor to the creditor took place at once. On the other hand personal credit was guaranteed in the most summary, not to say ex- travagant fashion ; for the lawgiver entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent debtor like a thief, and granted to him in entire legislative earnest what Shylock, half in jest, stipu- lated for from his mortal enemy, guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to the cutting off too much more carefully than did the Jew. The law could not have more clearly expressed its design, which was to establish at once an independent agriculture free of debt and a mercantile credit, and to suppress with stringent energy all merely nominal ownership and all breaches of fidelity. If we further take into consideration the right of settlement recognized at an early date as belonging to all the Latins (p. 132), and the validity which was likewise early pro- nounced to belong to civil marriage (p. 112), we shall perceive that this state, which made the highest demands on its burgesses and carried the idea of subordinating the individual to the interest of the whole further than any state before or since has done, only did and only could do so by itself removing the barriers to intercourse and unshackling liberty quite as much as it subjected it to restriction. In permission or in prohibition the law was always absolute. As the foreigner who had none to intercede for him was like the hunted deer, so the guest was on a footing of equality with the burgess. A contract did not ordinarily furnish a ground of action, but where the right of the creditor was acknowledged, it was so all-powerful that there CHAP, xi LAW AND JUSTICE 205 was no deliverance for the poor debtor, and no humane or equitable consideration was shown towards him. It seemed as if the law found a pleasure in presenting on all sides its sharpest spikes, in drawing the most extreme consequences, in forcibly obtruding on the bluntest understanding the tyrannic nature of the idea of right. The poetical form and the genial symbolism, which so pleasingly prevail in the Germanic legal ordinances, were foreign to the Roman ; in his law all was clear and precise ; no symbol was employed, no institution was superfluous. It was not cruel ; everything necessary was performed without much ceremony, even the punishment of death ; that a free man could not be tortured was a primitive maxim of Roman law, to obtain which other peoples have had to struggle for thousands of years. Yet this law was frightful in its inexorable severity, which we cannot suppose to have been very greatly mitigated by humanity in practice, for it was really the law of the people ; more terrible than Venetian piombi and chambers of torture was that series of living entombments which the poor man saw yawning before him in the debtors' towers of the rich. But the greatness of Rome was involved in, and was based upon, the fact that the Roman people ordained for itself and endured a system of law, in which the eternal principles of freedom and of subordination, of property and of legal redress, reigned and ^still at the present day reign unadul- terated and unmodified 206 RELIGION BOOK i CHAPTER XII RELIGION * Roman THE Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated religion. ^ ^^ was a n jg ner counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in which the little and the great were alike repeated with painstaking exactness. The state and the clan, the individual phenomenon of nature as well as the individual mental operation, every man, every place and object, every act even falling within the sphere of Roman law, reappeared in the Roman world of gods ; and, as earthly things come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent a corresponding fluctuation. The tutelary spirit, which presided over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself : the tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man ; and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh. As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman com- munity, so every foreign community was presided over by its own gods ; but sharp as was the distinction between the burgess and non-burgess, between the Roman and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could be admitted by resolution of the community to the freedom of Rome, and when the citizens of a conquered city were CHAP, xii RELIGION 207 transported to Rome, the gods of that city were also invited to take up their new abode there. We obtain information regarding the original cycle of Oldest the gods, as it stood in Rome previous to any contact with R oman the Greeks, from the list of the public and duly named festivals, festival-days (feriae publicae) of the Roman community, which is preserved in its calendar and is beyond all question the oldest document which has reached us from Roman antiquity. The first place in it is occupied by the gods Jupiter and Mars along with the duplicate of the latter, Quirinus. To Jupiter all the days of full moon (idus) are sacred, besides all the wine-festivals and various other days to be mentioned afterwards; the 2ist May^(agonatia) is, dedicated to his counterpart, the " bad Jovis " ( Ve-diovis). To Mars belongs the new-year of the ist March, and generally the great warrior-festival in this month which derived its very name from the god ; this festival, introduced by the horse-racing (equirrid) on the 27th February, had during March its principal solemnities on the days of the shield-forging (equirria or Mamuralia, March 14), of the armed dance at the Comitium (quinquatrus, March 1 9), and of the consecration of trumpets (tubilustrium, March 23). As, when a war was to be waged, it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of the consecration of arms (arniilustrium, October 19). Lastly, to the second Mars, Quirinus, the i7th February was appropriated (Quirinalia). Among the other festivals those which related to the culture of corn and wine hold the first place, while the pastoral feasts play a subordinate part. To this class belongs especially the great series of spring-festivals in April, in the course of which sacrifices were offered on the i5th to Tellus, the nourishing earth (fordicidia, sacrifice of the pregnant cow), on the igth to Ceres, the goddess of ger- mination and growth (Cerialia\ on the 2ist to Pales, the 208 RELIGION BOOK i fecundating goddess of the flocks (Parilia), on the 23rd to Jupiter, as the protector of the vines and of the vats of the previous year's vintage which were first opened on this day (Vinalia), and on the 25th to the bad enemy of the crops, rust (Robigus : Robigalia). So after the completion of the work of the fields and the fortunate ingathering of their produce double festivals were celebrated in honour of the god and goddess of inbringing and harvest, Census (from condere) and Ops ; the first, immediately after the completion of cutting (August 21, Consualia ; August 25, Opiconsiva) ; and the second, in the middle of winter, when the blessings of the granary are especially manifest (December 15, Consualia; December 19, Opalia) ; between these two latter days the thoughtfulness of the old arrangers of the festivals inserted that of seed -sowing (Saturnalia from Saeturnusm Saturnus, December 17). In like manner the 1 festival of must or of healing (meditrinalia, October 1 1), so called because a healing virtue was attributed to the fresh must, was dedicated to Jovis as the wine-god after the com- pletion of the vintage ; the original reference of the third wine-feast (Vinalia, August 19) is not clear. To these festivals were added at the close of the year the wolf-festival (Lupercalia, February 17) of the shepherds in honour of the good god, Faunus, and the boundary-stone festival (Termi- nalia, February 23) of the husbandmen, as also the summer grove-festival of two days (Lucaria, July 19, 21) which may have had reference to the forest-gods (Silvant), the fountain- festival (Fontinalia, October 13), and the festival of the shortest day, which brings in the new sun (An-geronalia, Divalia, December 21). Of not less importance as was to be expected in the case of the port of Latium were the mariner-festivals of the divinities of the sea (Nfptunalia, July 23), of the harbour (Portunalia, August 17), and of the Tiber stream (Volturnalia, August 27). CHAP, xii RELIGION 209 Handicraft and art, on the other hand, are represented in this cycle of the gods only by the god of fire and of smith's work, Vulcanus, to whom besides the day named after him (Volcanalia, August 23) the second festival of the consecration of trumpets was dedicated (tubilustrium, May 23), and eventually also by the festival of Carmentis (Carmentalia^ January n, 15), who probably was adored originally as the goddess of spells and of song and only inferentially as protectress of births. Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber, Vesta and the Penates ( Vestalia, June 9); the festival of the goddess of birth l (Matralia, June 1 1); the festival of the blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (Liberalia, March, 17), the festival of departed spirits (Feralia, February 21), and the three days' ghost- celebration (Lcmuria, May 9, n, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the two otherwise to us somewhat obscure festivals of the king's flight (Regifugium, February 24) and of the people's flight (Poplifugia, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (Agonia or Septimontium, December n). A special day (agonia, January 9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning. The real nature of some other days that of Furrina (July 25), and that of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a feast of the Lares (December 23) is no longer known: This table is complete for the immoveable public 1 This was, to all appearance, the original nature of the ' ' morning- mother" or Mater matuta ; in connection with which we may recall the circumstance that, as the names Lucius and especially Manius show, the morning hour was reckoned as lucky for birth. Mater matuta probably became a goddess of sea and harbour only at a later epoch under the influence of the myth of Leucothea ; the fact that the goddess was chiefly worshipped by women tells against the view that she was originally a harbour-goddess. VOL. I 14 2io RELIGION BOOK i festivals ; and although by the side of these standing festal days there certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional festivals this document, in what it says as well as in what it omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise almost wholly lost to us. The union of the Old Roman community and the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars ; but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent ; nor was the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine ; nor was any notion of worship borrowed from the Greeks. Mars and x The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars, the killing god, 1 pre- eminently regarded as the divine champion of the burgesses, "hurling the spear, protecting the flock, and overthrowing the foe. Each community of course possessed its own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all; and accordingly every "ver sacrum" setting out to found a new community marched under the protection of its own Mars. To Mars was dedicated the first month not only in the Roman calendar of the months, which in no other instance takes notice of the gods, but also probably in all the other Latin and Sabellian calendars : among the Roman proper names, which in like manner contain no allusion to any gods, Marcus, Mamercus, and Mamurius appear in prevailing use from very early times ; with Mars and his sacred woodpecker was connected the oldest Italian * From Maurs, which is the oldest form handed down by tradition, there have been developed by different treatment of the u Mars, Mavors, Mors ; the transition to <* (similar to Paula, Pola, and the like) appears also in the double form Mar-Mor (comp. Ma-mtfrius) alongside of Mar- Mar and Ma-Mers. CHAP, xii RELIGION 211 prophecy ; the wolf, the animal sacred to Mars, was the badge of the Roman burgesses, and such sacred national legends as the Roman imagination was able to produce referred exclusively to the god Mars and to his duplicate Quirinus. In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis a purer and more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman community occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war ; but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman community still really centred at this time in the martial god of death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer" afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine. It is no part of our present task to consider the Roman Nature of deities in detail ; but it is important, even in an historical * he Roman point of view, to call attention to the peculiar character at once of shallowness and of fervour that marked the Roman faith. Abstraction and personification lay at the root of the Roman as well as of the Hellenic mythology : the Hellenic as well as the Roman god was originally suggested by some natural phenomenon or some mental conception, and to the Roman just as to the Greek every divinity appeared a person. This is evident from their apprehend- ing the individual gods as male or female ; from their style of appeal to an unknown deity, " Be thou god or goddess, man or woman ; " and from the deeply cherished belief that the name of the proper tutelary spirit of the community ought to remain for ever unpronounced, lest an enemy should come to learn it and calling the god by his name should entice him beyond the bounds. A remnant of this 212 RELIGION BOOK i strongly sensuous mode of apprehension clung to Mars in particular, the oldest and most national form of divinity in Italy. But while abstraction, which lies at the foundation of every religion, elsewhere endeavoured to rise to wider and more enlarged conceptions and to penetrate ever more deeply into the essence of things, the forms of the Roman faith remained at, or sank to, a singularly low level of con- ception and of insight. While in the case of the Greek every influential motive speedily expanded into a group of forms and gathered around it a circle of legends and ideas, in the case of the Roman the fundamental thought remained stationary in its original naked rigidity. The religion of Rome had nothing of its own presenting even a remote resemblance to the religion of Apollo investing earthly morality with a halo of glory, to the divine intoxication of Dionysus, or to the Chthonian and mystical worships with their profound and hidden meanings. It had indeed its " bad god " ( Ve-diovis\ its apparitions and ghosts (lemures), and afterwards its deities of foul air, of fever, of diseases, perhaps even of theft (lavernd) ; but it was unable to excite that mysterious awe after which the human heart has always a longing, or thoroughly to embody the incomprehensible and even the malignant elements in nature and in man, which must not be wanting in religion if it would reflect man as a whole. In the religion of Rome there was hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of the city, the Penates ; the real character, moreover, even of these gods was manifest to every one. The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them in its terminology, and to classify them systematically in the first instance, according to that division of persons and things which also formed the basis of private law that it might thus be able in due fashion to invoke the gods individually or by classes, and to point CHAP, xii RELIGION 213 out (indigitare) to the multitude the modes of appropriate invocation. Of such notions, the products of outward ab- straction of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable, sometimes ridiculous Roman theology was in substance made up. Conceptions such as sowing (saeturnus) and field-labour (ops), ground (tellus) and boundary -stone (terminus), were among the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities. Perhaps the most peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only one for whose worship there was devised an effigy peculiarly Italian, was the double-headed lanus ; and yet it was simply suggestive of the idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion, that at the commencement of every act the " spirit of opening " should first be invoked, while it above all betokened the deep conviction that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should stand singly and apart. 1 Of all the worships of Rome that which perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits that presided in and over the household and the storechamber : these were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before whom it was, even in the time of 1 The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (ianus matutinus) were sacred to lanus, and that he was always invoked before any other god and was even represented in the series of coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that he was the abstraction of opening and beginning. The double-head looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways. To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable, because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh, not the first ; that month seems rather to have derived its name from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh. It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year should also be included in the sphere of lanus, especially after lanuarius came to be placed at its head. 214 RELIGION BOOK i Cato the Elder, the first duty of the father of the household on returning home to perform his devotions. In the rank- ing of the gods, however, these spirits of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the highest place ; it was and it could not be otherwise with a religion which renounced all attempts to idealize not the broadest and most general, but the simplest and most individual abstrac- tion, in which the pious heart found most nourishment. This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already explained. Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce this was what the Roman desired from his gods ; and it very well accords with this view, that the god of good faith (deus fidius), the goddess of chance and good luck (fors fortuna ), and the god of traffic (mercurius), all originating out of their daily dealings, although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear very early as adored far and near by the Romans. Strict frugality and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart. Spirits. Respecting the world of spirits little can be said. The departed souls of mortal men, the "good" (manes), con- tinued to exist as shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (dii inferi\ and received meat and drink from the survivors. But they dwelt in the depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above. The hero- worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans, and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation of king Romulus into the god jQuirinus. Numa, the oldest and most venerable name in CHAP, xn RELIGION 215 Roman tradition, never received the honours of a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens. The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore Priests, reference to Mars ; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated for life, " the kindler of Mars " (flamen Martialts] as he was designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve " leapers " (salii\ a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song. We have already explained (p. 106) how the amalgamation of the Hill-com- munity with that of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication ^ of the Roman Mars, and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars the flamen Quirinalis and a second guild of dancers the salii collini. To these were added other public worships (some of which probably had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either single priests were appointed as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus, of the god of the harbour and the river or the celebration of which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the people. Such a college was probably that of the twelve " field-brethren " (fratres arvales) who invoked the "creative goddess" (dea dia) in May to bless th%growth of the seed; although it is very doubtful whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the empire. These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive cultus of the Roman Sabines (p. 55), and by the thirty " curial kindlers " (ftamine* curiales), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies. The " wolf festival '' (lupercalia) already mentioned was celebrated for the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the " favourable god " (faunus), by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in the month of February a genuine - 2i6 RELIGION BOOK I shepherds' carnival, in which the " Wolves " (luperct) jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin, and whipped with thongs those whom they met. In like manner the com- munity may be conceived as represented and participating in the case of other gentile worships. To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were gradually added. The most important of these worships had reference to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the construction of the great wall and stronghold. In it the highest and best lovis of the Capitol that is, the genius of the Roman peopledwas placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and his " kindler " thenceforth appointed, \heflamen Diatis, formed in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad of high-priests. Contemporaneously began the cultus of the new single city-hearth Vesta and the kindred cultus of the Penates of the community (p. 140). Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service, and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always blazing as an example (p. ^44) and an omen to the burgesses. This worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in Rome, and it accordingly ^as the latest of all the heathen worships there to give way before the ban of Christianity. The Aventine, moreover, was assigned to Diana as the representative of the Latin confederacy (p. 133), but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood was appointed for her; and the community gradually became accustomed to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods specially destined for their service ; in particular instances such as those of the god- dess of flowers (Flora) and of fruits (Pomona) it appointed also special flamines, so that the number of these was at length fifteen. But among them they carefully distinguished CHAP. XII RELIGION 217 those three " great kindlers " (famines maiores), who down to the latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses, just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal Salii always asserted precedence over all the other colleges of priests. Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the community were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges or regular ministers ; and the expense of sacrifices, which was presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines (pp. 92, 196). It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin, and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially similar in character. At any rate it can be shown that theJFlamines, Salii 3 Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome, but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently of the Roman model. Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods, so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities. There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Colleges Rome. Those, however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not to the priest. Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself directly to the divinity the community of course by the king as its mouthpiece, just as the curia by the curio and the equites by their colonels ; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal or to obscure this original and simple relation. But it was no easy matter to hold converse with a god. The god had his own way of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted with it; but one who did rightly under- 218 RELIGION BOOK 1 Augurs. stand it knew not only how to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural, therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult such men of skill and listen to their advice ; and thence arose the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far more important influence on political development than the individual priests and priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods were charged with the worship of a specific divinity ; the skilled colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances, the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge. These close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of skilled arts and sciences. Under the Roman constitution and^jthat of the Latin communities in general there were originallyTDUt two suCh "" colleges ; that of the augurs and that of the pantifiees. 1 1 The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and pontifices occur everywhere (e.g. Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous inscriptions), as does likewise the pater patratus of the Fetiales in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but ~ the other colleges do not. The former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and I ,npi:rci, as very ancient heirlooms of the Latin stock ; whereas the Ihioviri sacris faciiindis, and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to, Rome. But in the case of the second college the pontifices the influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier perhaps more than one designation ; or a hypothesis which philologically has much in its favour pons originally signified not "bridge," but "way" generally, and pontifex therefore meant "constructor of ways." The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in particular CHAP, xn RELIGION 219 The six " bird-carriers " (augures) were skilled in interpreting the language of the gods from the flight of birds ; an art which was prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific system. The six "bridge -builders" {pontifices) derived their name from their function, as sacred Pontifices. as it was politically important, of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery of measures and numbers ; whence there devolved upon them also the duty of managing the calendar of the state, of pro- claiming to the people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place on the right day. As they had thus an especial supervision of all religious observances, it was to them in case of need on occasion of marriage, testament, and adrogatio that the preliminary question - was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in any respect offend against divine law ; and it was they who fixed and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired (although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of whatever was connected with it and what was there that was not so connected ? They themselves described the sum of their knowledge as " the science of things divine and human." In fact the rudiments of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical recording proceeded from this college. For all writing of history was associated with the vary. The view that it was necessary for the number to be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96) ; and Livy (x. 6) does not say so, but only states that the number of Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had an odd number as its basis. According to Livy (/. c. ) the number was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same is virtually affirmed by Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14) when he represents Romulus as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls. On the number of the pontifices comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 20. 220 RELIGION BOOK i calendar and the book of annals ; and, as from the organ- ization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally preserved in the college of the pontifices, which alone was competent to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious law. Fetiales. By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corpora- tions of men versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college of the twenty state-heralds (fettales, of uncertain derivation), destined as a living repository to pre- serve traditionally the remembrance of the treaties con- cluded with neighbouring communities, to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or declare war. - They had precisely the same position with reference to international, as the pontifices had with reference to re- ligious, law ; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out the law, although not to administer it. But in however high repute these colleges were, and^ important and comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never forgotten least of all in the case of those which held the highest position that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer. Thus the highest of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but might not even give advice to him unasked. It was the province of the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation of birds ; the " bird-seer " simply stood beside him and interpreted to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven. In like manner the Fetialis and the Pontifex could not interfere in matters of international or common law except when those con- \ cerned therewith desired it. The Romans, notwithstanding CHAP, xii RELIGION 221 all their zeal for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state and excluded from all command ought like any other burgess to render obedience to the humblest magistrate. The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man's character enjoyment of earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate of ' he degree on his fear of the wild forces of nature ; it consisted pre-eminently therefore in expressions of joy, in lays and songs, in games and dances, and above all in banquets. In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship : a pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it was the usual roast for a feast. But all extravagance of expense as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid character of the Romans. Frugality in relation to the gods was one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship ; and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained. In consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which grow out of unrestrained indulgence. At the very core of the Xatin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. - The profound and fearful idea of substitution also meets us here : when the gods of the community were angry and 222 RELIGION BOOK 1 nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devovere se); noxious chasms in the ground were closed, and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or upon the foe. The " sacred spring " was based on a similar view ; all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified period were presented to the gods. If acts of this nature are to be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the essence of the Latin faith ; but we are bound to add that, far back as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose to die. Human sacrifices of a different description run counter to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later degeneracy and barbarism. They never gained admission among the Romans ; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary de- liverance through means so revolting. Of belief in ghosts, fear of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, compara- tively slight traces are to be found among the Romans. Oracles and prophecy never acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece, and never were able to exercise a serious control over private or public life. But on the other hand the Latin religion' sank into an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims ; this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly apparent in the saint- CHAP, xii RELIGION 223 worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy. The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor ; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain perform- ances and payments ; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident, it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of a man's religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements the pontifices could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence. The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had done so on his part. Man even dealt in speculation with his god ; a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain service to be rendered a certain equivalent return ; and the Roman legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was not the least important of the reasons on account of which all priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns of man in Latium. Nay, as the Ronlan merchant was entitled, without injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the teaching of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received instead of the object itself. They pre- sented to the lord of the sky heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at these rather than at the heads of men. In payment of the offering annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes were annually thrown into the stream. 1 The ideas of 1 It is only an unreflecting misconception that can discover in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices. 224 RELIGION BOOK i divine mercy and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable a master by means of a sham satisfaction. The Roman fear of the gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the multi- tude ; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively ; on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely different in any material respect from the trembling with which the Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such means the simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a cos- mogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle of universal humanity ; and for a long period the Greek religion was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical views the whole ideal development of the nation and to expand in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of deity con- tinued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art. As the god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualization of an earthly phenomenon, CHAP, xii RELIGION 225 this same earthly counterpart naturally formed his place of abode (templuni) and his image ; walls and effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to em- barrass the spiritual conception. Accordingly the original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them ; and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and had a little chapel (aedicula) built for him, such a figurative representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation. The Roman religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the exception, perhaps, of the double- headed lanus ; and Varro even in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and effigies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation. The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain of its practical use. The practical gain which accrued to the Roman community from their religion was a code of moral law gradually developed by the priests, and the pontifices in particular, which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations at a time when the state was still far from providing any direct police-guardian- ship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach of moral obligations. To the regulations of the former class belonged the religious inculcation of a due observance of holidays and of a cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the rules of good husbandry which we shall have occasion to notice more fully in the sequel as well as the worship of the hearth or of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary police (p. 213), VOL. i 15 226 RELIGION BOOK i and above all the practice of burning the bodies of the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period, far earlier than among the Greeks a practice implying a rational conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive times and is even foreign to our- selves at the present day. It must be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements. But the civilizing effect of this law was still more important. If a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son ; if a child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in- law ; if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest or dependent ; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common good faith ; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth on the head of the offender. Not that the person thus accursed (sacer) was outlawed ; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence an aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels between the orders. It was not the province of the individual burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into effect such a divine curse. Primarily the person thus accursed became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice ; and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked. But the banning was not confined to this ; the king was in reality entitled and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were, as a victim offered up to the injured deity (suppliciitm\ and thus to purify the community from the crime of the individual. If the crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there was substituted a CHAP, xii RELIGION 227 ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial victim or of similar gifts. Thus the whole criminal law rested as to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation. But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance of civil order and morality by such means as these. In this field Hellas had an unspeakable advan- tage over Latium ; it owed to its religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all ; the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all that was great in Hellenic life and all in it that was the common heritage of the nation. And yet even here Latium had, as compared with Hellas, its own advantages. The Latin religion, reduced as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely intelligible to every one and accessible in common to all ; and therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens, while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest thought, had from the earliest -times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite ; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning disappears before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came subsequently to wither ; but the Latins preserved their simplicity of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the Greeks. As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the destroyers of faith ; and, much as this process at once of development and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of nature certain results have 228 RELIGION BOOK i been reserved to the epoch of early simplicity results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours to attain. The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes, which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible for them to attain to a genuine political union ; they sacrificed thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self- devotion, the power of amalgamation, which constitute the f conditions of any such union. It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the Greeks ; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose, so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with their respective defects. The deepest and ultimate reason of the diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth come into contact with the East. No people on earth was great enough by . its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture ; history has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil. But if for this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from both. Foreign Such was the nature and such the influence of the worships. R orr ,an religion in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly, national development. Its national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from abroad ; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on / CHAP, xii RELIGION 229 individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state. An exchange of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must have been a matter of course ; the trans- plantation to Rome of gods and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable. Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we have already spoken (p. 215). Whether any conceptions of the gods were borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful : for the Lases, the older designation of the genii (from lascivus), and Minerva the goddess of memory (mens, menervare), which it is customary to describe as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological grounds, indigenous to Latium. It is at any rate certain, and in keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman inter- course, that the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention in Rome than any other of foreign origin. The Greek oracles furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction. The language of the Roman gods was ; on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at the most to / the making their will known by the method of casting lots, I which appears in its origin Italian ; x while from very t ancient times although not apparently until the impulse was received from the East the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual utterances of prophecy. The Romans made efforts, even' at an early period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of the sooth- saying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from Campania. For the reading and inter- pretation of the fortune-telling book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and pontifices, was insti- tuted in early times, consisting of two men of lore (duoviri 1 S^ors from serere, to. place in row. The sorles were probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when thrown formed figures of various kinds ; . an arrangement which puts one in mind of the Runic characters. 230 RELIGION BOOK i sacris faciundis), who were furnished at the expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek language. To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid some impending evil and they did not know to which -of the gods or with what rites it was to be performed. But Romans in search of advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself. Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already mentioned (p. 180), it is attested partly by the reception of the word thesaurus so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, Aperta, the "opener," an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of which is betrayed by its very barbarism. The Greek Herakles was naturalized in Italy as" Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early period and under a peculiar conception of his character, apparently in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any extraordinary increase of wealth ; for which reason the general was wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to Hercules at the chief altar (ara maxima) in the cattle-market. Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally, which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin god of good faith (deus fidius). The worship of Hercules was from an early date among the most widely diffused ; he was, to use the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy, and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the cities and along the country roads. The gods also of the mariner, Castor and Poly- deukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traffic Hermes the Roman Mercurius and the god of healing, CHAP, xii RELIGION 231 Asklapios or Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public worship only began at a kter period. The name of the festival of the "good goddess " (bona dea) damtum, corresponding to the Greek 8a/uov or Sripiov, may likewise reach back as far as this epoch. It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that the old Liber pater of the Romans was afterwards con- ceived as " father deliverer " and identified with the wine- god of the Greeks, the " releaser " (Lyaeos), and that the Roman god of the lower regions was called the " dispenser of riches " (Pluto Dis pater), while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of the initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman Proserpina, that is, "germinatrix." Even the goddess of the Romano- Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been copied from the federal goddess of the lonians of Asia Minor, the Ephesian Artemis ; at least her carved image in the Roman temple was formed after the Ephesian type (p. 142). It was in this way alone, through the myths of Apollo, Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis, which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic religion exercised at this period a remote and indirect influence on Italy. We clearly perceive from these facts that the intro- duction of the Greek religion was especially due to com- mercial intercourse, and that it was traders and mariners who primarily brought the Greek gods to Italy. These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may perhaps be a specimen (p. 22), had virtually disappeared. In all its leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the people' among whom we find it. The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the Religion little we know of it, rested upon quite the same fundamental sabeUians. 232' RELIGION BOOK i views as the Latin with local variations of colour and form. That it was different from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine rites (p. 55); but that very fact affords an instructive illustration of the nature of the difference. Observation of the flight of birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods ; but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs. Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity of comparing them. Both stocks in common regarded the gods as abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature ; they differed in expression and ritual. It was natural that these diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those days ; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic dis- tinction, if any really existed. But the remains of the sacred ritual -of the Etruscans that have reached us are marked by a different spirit. Their prevailing characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing the changes on numbers, sooth- saying, and that solemn enthroning of pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees. We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness and purity as we know the Latin ; and it is not improbable indeed it cannot well be doubted that several of its features were only imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to us by tradition. But enough still remains to show that the mysticism and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential character of the Etruscan people. With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and the Italian ; but it is clear that CHAP, xii RELIGION 233 the most prominent among the Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous ; as indeed their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and at Tarquinii the Roman, prisoners. Instead of a tranquil world of departed " good spirits " ruling peacefully in the realms beneath, such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the con- ductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man with wings and a large hammer a figure which after- wards served in the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena. So fixed was the association of torture with this condition of the shades, that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of the gods above. It is remarkable that, in order to people their lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon, which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline. But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation of signs and portents. The Romans heard the voice of the gods in nature ; but their bird-seer under- stood only the signs in their simplicity, and knew only in general whether the occurrence boded good or ill. Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed the comitia ; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death as speedily as possible. But beyond the Tiber matters were carried much further. The 234 RELIGION BOOK i profound Etruscan read off to the believer his future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails of animals offered in sacrifice ; and the more singular the language of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation of prodigies all of them, and the science of lightning especially, devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the mind in pursuit of absurdities. A dwarf called Tages with the figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii we might almost fancy that practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present in this figure a caricature of themselves betrayed the secret of this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died. His disciples and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the lightning ; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came ; whether the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event ; and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed, or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed : how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no small desire of pocketing fees. How deeply repugnant this jugglery was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome, no attempt was made to naturalize it ; during our present period the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with the Greek oracles. The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the CHAP, xii RELIGION 235 Roman, in so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly wanting among the Romans a speculation veiled under religious forms. Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods (Dii involuti\ consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time, whose sections were the saecula. Respecting the intellectual value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however to have been from the very first character- ized by a dull fatalism and an insipid play upon numbers. 236 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i CHAPTER XIII AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE AGRICULTURE and commerce are so intimately bound up with the constitution and the external history of states, that the former must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter. We shall here endeavour to supple- ment the detached notices which we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and particularly of Roman economics. N It has been already observed (p. 24) that the transition from a pastoral to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians into the peninsula. Agriculture continued to be the main support of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans no less than of the Latins. There were no purely pastoral tribes in Italy during historical times, although of course the various races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation of the soil. The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture. In the case of Rome in particular and it is only in its case that we can speak of agrarian relations with any sort of certainty the Servian reform shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class CHAP, xin AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 237 originally preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the pith and marrow of the community. When in the course of time a large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the hands of non- burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently, by treating the members of the community without reference to their political position once for all according to their freeholding, and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders a step wlyeh in the natural course of things could not but be followed by the concession of public rights. The whole policy of Roman war and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of the freehold system ; as the freeholder alone was of value in the state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold members. The vanquished com- munity was either compelled to merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to this extremity, it. was required, not to pay a war-contribution or a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, jasually a third part, of its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms. Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans did ; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance. That which is gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it is not so with the conquests made by the plough ; while the Romans lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making peace ceded Roman soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads. The strength of man and of 238 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i the state lies in their dominion over the soil ; the greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of the body which thus acquired so firm a hold. System of We have already indicated (pp. 46, 85) that in the earliest ia'tion 11 times the arable land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce among the several house- holds belonging to it. There exists indeed an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case of co-proprietors. 1 Even the tradi- tions of Roman law furnish the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special property. 2 Better evidence that such was the case is afforded by the earliest designation of wealth as " cattle-stock " or " slave-and-cattle- stock " (pecunia, familia pecuniaqite), and of the separate possessions of the children of the household and of slaves as " small cattle " (peculiuni) ; also by the earliest form of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the 1 The system which we meet with in the case of the Germanic joint tillage, combining a partition of the land in property among the clansmen with its joint cultivation by the clan, can hardly ever have existed in Italy. Had each clansman been regarded in Italy, as among the Germans, in the light of proprietor of a particular spot in each portion of the collective domain that was marked off for tillage, the separate husbandry of later times would probably have set out from a minute subdivision of hides. But the very opposite was the case ; the individual names of the Roman hides (fundus Cornelianus] show clearly that the Roman proprietor owned from the beginning a possession not broken up but united. 2 Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14, comp. Plutarch, Q. Rom. 15) states: Turn I (in the time of Romulus) erat res in pecore et locorum possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletes vocabantur (Numa) primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, 'divisit viritim civibus. In like manner Dionysius represents Romulus as dividing the land into thirty curial districts, and Numa as establishing boundary-stones and introducing the festival of the Terminalia (i. 7, ii. 74 ; and thence Plutarch, Numa, 16). CHAP, xni AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 239 hand (rnancipatio\ which was only appropriate to the case of moveable articles (p. 195) ; and above all by the earliest measure of " land of one's own " (heredium, from herus lord), consisting of l^QJugera (about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to garden-ground, and not to the hide. 1 When and how the distribution of the arable 1 Since this assertion still continues to be disputed, we shall let the numbers speak for themselves. The Roman writers on agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on an average five modii of wheat as sufficient to sow ajugerum, and the produce as fivefolcl. The produce of a hcrediirm accordingly (even when, without taking into view the space occupied by the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as - entirely arable land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or deducting the seed forty, modii. For an adult hard-working \ slave Cato (c. 56) reckons fifty-one modii of wheat as the annual consump-^ tion. These data enable any one to answer for himself the question I whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the produce of a ' heredium. The attempted proof to the contrary is based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and that the assumption of a fivefold return is one too low for this earlier epoch ; both assumptions are probably correct, but for both there is a limit. Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs, vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially to be taken into account for the older period ; but the older Roman pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always notoriously grain. We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness of the earlier cultivation obtain a very considerable increase, especially of the gross produce and beyond doubt the farmers of this period drew a larger produce from their lands than the great landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained . (p. 44) ; but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates, because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital. The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be the utmost limit, and yet it is far from sufficing. In no case can the enormous deficit, which is left even according to those estimates between the produce of the heredium and the requirements of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation. In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when it shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural economics, according to which among a population chiefly subsisting on vegetables the produce of a piece of land of an acre and a quarter proves sufficient on an average for the subsistence of a family. It is indeed asserted that instances occur even in historical times of colonies founded with allotments of two jugera ; but the only instance of the kind (Liv. iv. 47) is that of the colony of Labici in the year 336; an 418. instance, which will certainly not be reckoned (by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the class of traditions that are trust- worthy in their historical details, and which is beset by other very serious 240 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i land took place, can no longer be ascertained. This much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute for it, whereas the Servian constitution pre- supposes the distribution of the land. It is evident from the same constitution that the great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms, .which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of the plough. The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already been shown (p. 122), be estimated at less than twenty jugera (12^ acres nearly). Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals. The usual grain was spelt (far) ; l but difficulties (see book ii. ch. 5, note). It is no doubt true that in the non- colonial assignation of land to the burgesses collectively {adsignatio viritana) sometimes only a tew jugera were granted (as e.g. Liv. viii. n, 21 ). In these cases however it was the intention not to create new farms with the allotments, but rather, as a rule, to add to the existing farms new parcels from the conquered lands (comp. C. I. L. i. p. 88). At any rate, any supposition is better than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as it were in a miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman house- hold. The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than their historiographers ; they themselves conceived that they could not subsist even on allotments of seven jugera or a produce of one hundred and forty modii. 1 Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two jugera of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro (de R.R. i. 44, i) reckons the seed requisite for the jugerum at five modii of wheat but ten modii of spelt, and estimates the produce as corresponding to this, whence it is inferred that the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, if not double, at least considerably higher than that of wheat. But the converse is more correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped is simply to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H. N. xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the fruit by threshing. For the same reason spelt is at the present day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks. According to Wiirtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average produce of the Wiirtemberg morgen is reckoned in the case of wheat (with a sowing of to \ scheffel} at 3 scheffel of the medium weight of 275 Ibs. ( = 825 Ibs. ) ; in the case of spelt (with a sowing of J to i^ scheffel} at least 7 scheffel of the medium CHAP, xin AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 241 different kinds of pulse, roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated. That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the Culture of first time into Italy by Greek settlers (p. 24), is shown by the vme ' the list of the festivals of the Roman community which reaches back to a time preceding the Greeks, and which presents three wine-festivals to be celebrated in honour of " father Jovis," not in honour of the wine-god of more recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the " father deliverer." The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as levying a wine-tax from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various versions of the widely-spread Italian story which affirms that the Celts were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their coming to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the grape and of wine, are indications of the pride of the Latins in their glorious vine, the envy of all their neighbours. A careful system of vine-husbandry was early and generally inculcated by the Latin priests. In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme priest of the community, the flamen of Jupiter, had granted permission for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new weight of 150 Ibs. ( = 1050 Ibs. ), which are reduced by shelling to about 4 scheffel. Thus spelt compared with wheat yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps triple the crop, but by specific weight before the shelling not much above, after shelling~[as "kernel") / Ip^g^qn, thp Vift|f_ It was not by mistake,~as has been asserted, but f because it was fitting in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was based on wheat ; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt, it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than rises. Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed to fewer risks than wheat ; but the latter yields on the whole, especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the malter of wheat stands at 1 1 gulden 3 krz. , the malter of spelt at 4 gulden 30 krz. ), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was undeniably a progress. VOL. I 1 6 242 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i Culture of the olive. wine, until the priest had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks. The early prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes ; just as, to introduce the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the offering of grain undried. The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and certainly was first brought to Italy by the Greeks. 1 The olive is said to have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean towards the close of the second century of the city ; and this view accords with the" fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy in the Rpman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the vine. The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans is shown by the vine and the olive-tr^e which were planted in the middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake. The fig. The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was probably a native of- Italy. The legend of the origin of Rome wove its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which stood near to and in the Roman Forum. 2 It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed generally the labours of husbandry : it is not probable that slaves or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of the ordinary farm. The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow; horses, asses, and J 1 Oleum and oliva are derived from HXatov, \vpa, purpura ; O-K^TTT/OOV, O-KOTCOV, sdpio ; perhaps also cAe^as, ebur ; 6vo\affTOv ) ; anquina, the rope fastening the yards (AyKoiva) ; nausea, sea-sickness (vavcrla). The four chief winds of the ancients aquilo, the "eagle-wind," the north-easterly Tramontana ; volturnus (of uncertain derivation, perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; auster the "scorching" south- west wind, the Sirocco; favonius, the "favourable" north-west wind blowing from the Tyrrhene Sea have indigenous names bearing no reference to navigation ; but all the other Latin names for winds are Greek CHAP, xni AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 255 in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter eT epistula\ a token (tessera, from recro-a/m 1 ), a balance ( statera), and earnest-money (dppa(3u>v, arrabo, arrd) ; and conversely from the adoption of Italian law-terms in Sicilian Greek (p. 201), as well as from the exchange of the proportions and names of coins, weights, and measures, which we shall notice in the sequel. The character of barbarism which all these borrowed terms obviously present, and especially the characteristic formation of the nominative from the accusative (placenta = TrAaK-owra ; ampora = dfjL(f)opfa statera = a-Tar^pa), constitute the clearest evidence of their great antiquity. The worship of the god of traffic (Mercurius) also appears to have been from the first influenced by Greek conceptions ; and his annual festival seems even to have been fixed on the ides of May, because the Hellenic poets celebrated him as the son of the beautiful Maia. It thus appears that Italy in very ancient times derived Commerce, its articles of luxury, just as imperial Rome did, from the "^^g 11 East, before it attempted to manufacture for itself after the Etruria' models which it imported. In exchange it had nothing actlve - to offer except its raw produce, consisting especially of its copper, silver, and iron, but including also slaves and timber for shipbuilding, amber from the Baltic, and, in the event of bad harvests occurring abroad, its grain. From this state of things as to the commodities in demand and the equivalents to be offered in return, we (such as eurus, notus), or translations from the Greek (e.g. solanus dTTTjXiciT?;?, Africus = \iif/). 1 This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service of the camp, the v\riv\a.KT]v /3pa%^a reX^ws ZXOVTO. xapa/cr^pa (Polyb. vi- 35' ?) I tne four vigiliae of the night-service gave name to the tokens ' generally. The fourfold division of the night for the service of watching is Greek as well as Roman ; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised an influence possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. 14) in the organization of the measures for security in the Roman camp. The employment of the non-Doric form speaks for the comparatively late date at which the word was taken over. 256 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i have already explained why Italian traffic assumed in Latium a form so differing from that which it presented in Etruria. The Latins, who were deficient in all the chief articles of export, could carry on only a passive traffic, and were obliged even in the earliest times to procure the copper of which they had need from the Etruscans in exchange for cattle or slaves we have already mentioned the very ancient practice of selling the latter on the right bank of the Tiber (p. 131). On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in Populonia, in Capua as in Spina. Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these regions and their power- ful commercial position ; whereas Latium remained pre- eminently an agricultural country. The same contrast recurs in all their individual relations. The oldest tombs constructed and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while with the exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii and southern Etruria the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments for the dead of foreign origin, arid not a single tomb of luxury proper belonging to the earlier times ; there as among the Sabellians a simple .turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead. The most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular : during the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g. one of Posidonia) have been found there. In architecture, plastic art, and embossing, the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with growing CHAP, xin AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 257 technical skill. The commodities were upon the whole the same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in Etruria ; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern neighbours in the energy with which its commerce was plied. The contrast between them in this respect is shown in the fact that the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria found a market in Latium, particularly at Praeneste, and even in Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the kind. A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce Etrusco- of the Latins and that of the Etruscans appears in their ^"tino- 1 " respective routes or lines of traffic. As to the earliest Sicilian commerce of the Etruscans in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra. We have already ' mentioned (p. 182) that the western Etruscans ventured boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily, but also with Greece proper. An ancient intercourse with Attica is indicated by the Attic clay vases, which are so numerous in the more recent Etruscan tombs, and had been perhaps even at this time introduced for other purposes than the already-mentioned decoration of tombs, while conversely Tyrrhenian bronze candlesticks and gold cups were articles early in request in Attica. Still more definitely is such an intercourse indicated by the coins. The silver pieces of Populonia were struck after the pattern of a very old silver piece stamped on one side with the Gorgoneion, on the other merely presenting an incuse square, which has been found at Athens and on the old amber-route in the district of Posen, and which was in all probability the very coin struck by order of Solon in Athens. We have mentioned already that the Etruscans had also dealings, and perhaps after the development of the Etrusco- Carthaginian maritime alliance their principal dealings, with VOL. i 17 258 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK I the Carthaginians. It is a remarkable circumstance that in the oldest tombs of Caere, besides native vessels of bronze and silver, there have been found chiefly Oriental articles, which may certainly have come from Greek merchants, but more probably were introduced by Phoenician traders. We must not, however, attribute too great importance to this Phoenician trade, and in particular we must not overlook the fact that the alphabet, as well as the other influences that stimulated and matured native culture, were brought to Etruria by the Greeks, and not by the Phoenicians. Latin commerce assumed a different direction. Rarely as we have opportunity of instituting comparisons between the Romans and the Etruscans as regards the reception of Hellenic elements, the cases in which such comparisons can be instituted exhibit the two nations as completely independent of each other. This is most clearly apparent in the case of the alphabet. The Greek alphabet brought to the Etruscans from the Chalcidico-Doric colonies in Sicily or Campania varies not immaterially from that which the Latins derived from the same quarter, so that, although both peoples have drawn from the same source, they have done so at different times and different places. The same phenomenon appears in particular words : the Roman Pollux and the Tuscan Pultuke are independent corruptions of the Greek Polydeukes ; the Tuscan Utuze or Uthuze is formed from Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes is an exact repro- duction of the form of the name usual in Sicily; in like manner the Tuscan Aivas corresponds to the old Greek form of this name, the Roman Aiax to a secondary form that was probably also Sicilian ; the Roman Aperta or Apello and the Samnite Appellun have sprung from the Doric Apellon, the Tuscan Apulu from Apollon. "'Thus the language and writing of Latium indicate that the direction of Latin commerce was exclusively towards the CHAP, xiu AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 259 Cumaeans and Siceliots. Every other trace which has survived from so remote an age leads to the same conclu- sion : such as, the coin of Posidonia found in Latium ; the purchase of grain, when a failure of the harvest occurred in Rome, from the Volscians, Cumaeans, and Siceliots (and, as was natural, from the Etruscans as well) ; above all, the relations subsisting between the Latin and Sicilian monetary systems. As the local Dorico-Chalcidian designation of silver coin vo/*os, and the Sicilian measure ^fiiva, were transferred with the same meaning to Latium as nummus and hemina, so conversely the Italian designations of weight, libra, triens, quadrans, sextans, uncia, which arose in Latium for the measurement of the copper which was used by weight instead of money, had found their way into the common speech of Sicily in the third century of the city under the corrupt and hybrid forms, Xirpa, rpias, rer/oct?, eas, Indeed, among all the Greek systems of weights and moneys, the Sicilian alone was brought into a deter- -minate relation to the Italian copper-system; not only was ihe value of silver set down conventionally and perhaps legally as two hundred and fifty times that of copper, but the equivalent on this computation of a. Sicilian pound of copper (i^th of the Attic talent, -f of the Roman pound) -was in very early times struck, especially at Syracuse, as a '.silver coin (Xirpa dpyvpiov, i.e. "copper-pound in silver"). > Accordingly it cannot be doubted that Italian bars of copper circulated also in Sicily instead of money ; and this exactly harmonizes with the hypothesis that the commerce of the Latins with Sicily was a passive commerce, in consequence of which Latin money was drained away thither. Other proofs of ancient intercourse between Sicily and Italy, especially the adoption in the Sicilian dialect of the Italian expressions for a commercial loan, a prison, and a dish, and the converse reception of Sicilian terms in Italy, have been already mentioned (pp. 201, 255). We meet also with 260 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK I several, though less definite, traces of an ancient intercourse of the Latins with the Chalcidian cities in Lower Italy, Cumae and Neapolis, and with the Phocaeans in Velia and Massilia. That it was however far less active than that with the Siceliots is shown by the well-known fact that all the Greek words which made their way in earlier times to Latium exhibit Doric forms we need only recall Aescula- pius, Latona, Aperta, macJttna. "Had their dealings with the originally Ionian cities, such as Cumae (p. 175) and the Phocaean settlements, been even merely on a similar scale with those which they had with the Sicilian Dorians, Ionic forms would at least have made their appearance along with the others ; although certainly Dorism early penetrated even into these Ionic colonies themselves, and their dialect varied greatly. While all the facts thus combine to attest the stirring traffic of the Latins with the Greeks of the western main generally, and especially with the Sicilians, there hardly occurred any immediate intercourse with the Asiatic Phoenicians, and the intercourse with those of Africa, which is sufficiently attested by statements of authors and by articles found, can only have occupied a secondary position as affecting the state of culture in Latium ; in particular it is significant that if we leave out of account some local names there is an utter absence of any evidence - from language as to ancient intercourse between the Latins and the nations speaking the Aramaic tongue. 1 1 If we leave out of view Sarranus, Afer, and other local designations (p. 185), the Latin language appears not to possess a single word immediately derived in early times from the Phoenician. The very few words from Phoenician roots which occur in it, such as arrabo or arra and perhaps also murra, nardus, and the like, are plainly borrowed proximately from the Greek, which has a considerable number of such words of Oriental extraction as indications of its primitive intercourse with the Aramaeans. That Al^as and ebur should have come from the same Phoenician original with or without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician article is in reality ha, and is not so employed ; besides the Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found. The same holds true of the enigmatical word thesaurus; whether" it may have been originally CHAP. xHi AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 261 If we further inquire how this traffic was mainly carried on, whether by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign , merchants in Italy, the former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at least so far as Latium is con- cerned. It is scarcely conceivable that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the commercial loan could have found* their way into general use in the language of the inhabitants of Sicily through the mere resort of Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their receipt of copper in exchange for ornaments. Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of landed proprietors developed itself in Rome. The reason of this surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale com- merce of Latium was from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors a hypothesis which is not so singular as it seems. It was natural that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in kind, should come at an early period to possess barks ; and there is evidence that such was the case. The transmarine traffic conducted on the trader's own account must therefore have fallen into the hands of the great landholder, seeing that he alone possessed the vessels for it and in his pro- duce the articles for export. 1 In fact the distinction Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (p. 230). 1 Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited the 220. senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300 amphorae (i amph, = nearly 6 gallons): id satis habitum ad fructus ex agris \vectandos ; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus (Liv. xxi. 63). It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted, that the senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport of the produce of their estates : on the other hand, transmarine mercantile speculation (quaeslus, traffic, fitting-out of vessels, &c. ) on their part was prohibited. It is a curious fact that the ancient Greeks as well as the Romans expressed the tonnage of their sea-going ships constantly in amphorae; the. reason evidently 262 AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK i between a landed and a moneyed aristocracy was unknown to the Romans of earlier times ; the great landholders were at the same time the speculators and the capitalists. In the' case of a very energetic commerce such a combination certainly could not have been maintained ; but, as the previous representation shows, while there was a com- paratively vigorous traffic in Rome in consequence of the trade of the Latin land being there concentrated, Rome was by no means essentially a commercial city like Caere or Tarentum, but was and continued to be the centre of an agricultural community. being, that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article. CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 263 CHAPTER XIV MEASURING AND WRITING THE art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man ; the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along with himself; together they make man what nature has not made him all-powerful and eternal. It is the privilege and duty of history to trace the course of national progress along these paths also. Measurement necessarily presupposes the development Italian of the several ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, measures - and of a whole consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of a numeral system. The most obvious bases presented by nature for this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of the sun and moon, or the day and the month ; in reference to space, the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in measuring than the arm ; in reference to gravity, the burden which a man is able to poise (librare) on his hand while he holds his arm stretched out, or the " weight " (libra). As a basis for the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily suggests itself as the hand with its five, or the hands with their ten, fingers ; upon this rests the decimal system. We have already observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin stocks, but even to the most remote primeval times. The antiquity in particular 264 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK I of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated by language (p. 22); even the mode of reckoning the days that elapse between the several phases of the moon, not forward from the phase on which it had entered last, but backward from that which was next to be expected, is at least older than the separation of the Greeks and Latins. The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive use of the decimal system among the Indo- Germans is furnished by the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive (p. 22). In the case of Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements : it may be sufficient to recall the number ten so usual in the case of witnesses, securities, envoys, and magistrates, the legal equivalence of one ox and ten sheep, the partition of the canton into ten curies and the pervading application generally ^of the decurial system, the limitatio, the tenth in offerings and in agriculture, decimation, and the praenomen Decimus. Among the applications of this most ancient decimal system in the sphere of measuring and of writing, the remarkable Italian ciphers claim a primary place. When the Greeks and Italians separated, there were still evidently no conventional signs of number. On the other hand we find the three oldest and most in- dispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by three signs I, V or A, X, manifestly imitations of the out- stretched finger, and the open hand single and double which were not derived either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans. They were the first steps towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse among the Italians which preceded their transmarine com- merce (p. 250). Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed, these signs, can of course no CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 265 longer be ascertained. Other traces of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field ; among them are the -versus, the Sabellian measure of surface of 100 square feet (p. 26), and the Roman year of 10 months. Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures, The duo- which were not connected with Greek standards and were probably developed by the Italians before they came into contact with the Greeks, there prevailed the partition of the " whole " (as) into twelve " units " (unciae). The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of the Salii and 1 Arvales (p. 215), as well as the leagues of the Etruscan cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelver The same number predominated in the Roman system. of weights and in the measures of length, where the pound (libra) and the foot (pes) were usually subdivided into twelve parts ; the unit of the Roman measures of surface was the "driving" (actus) of 120 square feet, a combina- tion of the decimal and duodecimal systems. 1 Similar arrangements as to the measures of capacity may have passed into oblivion. If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar periods. Still more than the double hand of ten fingers did the solar cycle of nearly twelve lunar periods first suggest to man the profound conception of an unit composed of equal units, and thereby originate the idea of a system of numbers, the 1 Originally both the actus, "driving," and its still more frequently \ occurring duplicate, the jugerum, "yoking," were, like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially in Italy by the ploughman's rest at noon. 266 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK I first step towards mathematical thought. The consistent duodecimal development of this idea appears to have be- longed to the Italian nation, and to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks. Hellenic But when at length the Hellenic trader had opened up measures ^ route to t ^ e west coas t o f Italy, the measures of surface remained unaffected, but the measures of length, of weight, and above all of capacity in other words those definite standards without which barter and traffic are impossible experienced the effects of the new international intercourse. The oldest Roman foot has disappeared ; that which we know, and which was in use at a very early period among the Romans, was borrowed from Greece, and was, in addi- tion to its new Roman subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four hand-breadths (palmus) and sixteen finger-breadths (digitus). Further, the Roman weights were brought into a fixed proportional relation to the Attic system, which prevailed throughout Sicily but not in Cumae another significant -proof that the Latin traffic was chiefly directed to the island ; four Roman pounds were assumed as equal to three Attic minae, or rather the Roman pound was assumed as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian litrae, or ha.\f-minae (p. 259). But the most singular and chequered aspect is presented by the Roman measures of capacity, as regards both their names and their proportions. Their names have come from the Greek terms either by corruption (amphora, modius after /ieSi/wos, congius from x f vs> hemina, cyathus) or by translation (acetabuhim from ou/3a(ov) ; while conversely eor?7s is a corruption of ' sextarius. All the measures are not identical, but those in most common use are so; among liquid measures the congius or chus, the sextarius, and the cyathtis, the two last also for dry goods ; the Roman amphora was equalized in water-weight to the Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek metretes in the fixed ratio of 3 : 2, and CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 267 to the Greek medimnos of 2 : i. To one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins. The Greek numeral signs were not adopted ; but the Roman probably availed himself of the Greek alphabet, when it reached him, to form ciphers for 50 and 1000, perhaps also for 100, out of the signs for the three aspir- atqd letters which he had no use for. In Etruria the sign for 100 at least appears to have been obtained in a similar way. Afterwards, as usually happens, the systems of notation among the two neighbouring nations became assimilated by the adoption in substance of the Roman system in Etruria. In like manner the Roman calendar and probably that The Italian of the Italians generally began with an independent de- ^forethe velopment of its own, but subsequently came under the period of influence of the Greeks. In the division of time the {^ence returns of sunrise and sunset, and of the new and full in Italy, moon, most directly arrest the attention of man; and accordingly the day and the month, determined not by cyclic calculation but by direct observation, were long the exclusive measures of time. Down to a late age sunrise and sunset were proclaimed in the Roman market-place by the public crier, and in like manner it may be presumed that in earlier times, at each of the four phases of the moon, the number of days that would elapse from that phase until the next was proclaimed by the priests. The mode of reckoning therefore in Latium and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans was by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which was next expected ; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between 7 and 8 days, the average length 268 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK i being yf ; and by lunar months, which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days, the average dura- tion of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes. For some time the day continued to be among the Italians the smallest, and the month the largest, division of time. It was not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when they began to employ the division into hours ; which explains why even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight, the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon. No calendar of the year had, at least when the Greeks separated from the Italians, as yet been organized, for the names for the year and its divisions in the two languages have been formed quite independently of each other. Nevertheless the Italians appear to have already in the pre-Hellenic period advanced, if not to the arrangement of a fixed calendar, at any rate to the institution of two larger units of time. The simplifying of the reckoning according to lunar months by the application of the decimal system, which was usual among the Romans, and the designation of a term of ten months as a "ring" (annus) or complete year, bear in them all the traces of a high antiquity. Later, but still at a period very early and undoubtedly previous to the opera- tion of Greek influences, the duodecimal system (as we have already stated) was developed in Italy, and, as it derived its very origin from the observation of the fact that the solar period was equal to twelve lunar periods, it was certainly applied in the first instance to the reckoning of time. This view accords with the fact that the individual names of the months which can only have originated after the month was viewed as part of a solar year particularly those of March and of May, were similar among the different branches of the Italian stock, while CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 269 there was no similarity between the Italian names and the Greek. It is not improbable therefore that the problem of laying down a practical calendar which should correspond at once to the moon and the sun a problem which may be compared in some sense to the quadrature of the circle, and the solution of which was only recognized as impossible and abandoned after the lapse of many centuries had already employed the minds of men in Italy before the epoch at which their contact with the Greeks began ; these purely national attempts to solve it, however, have passed into oblivion. What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of The oldest some other Latin cities as to the Sabellian and Etruscan measurement of time we have no traditional information is decidedly based on the oldest Greek arrangement of the year, which was intended to answer both to the phases of the moon and to the seasons of the solar year, constructed on the assumption of a lunar period of 29^ days and a solar period of \z\ lunar months or 368f days, and on the regular alternation of a full month or month of thirty days with a hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve with a year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena by arbitrary curtailments and intercala- tions. It is possible that this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into use among the Latins with- out undergoing any alteration ; but the oldest form of the Roman year which can be historically recognized varied from its model, not indeed in the cyclical result nor yet in the alternation of years of twelve with years of thirteen months, but materially in the designation and in the measuring off of the individual months. The Roman year began with the beginning of spring ; the first month in it and the only one which bears the name of a god, was named from Mars (Martius), the three following from 270 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK i sprouting (aprilis), growing (inaius\ and thriving (iuninf), the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers (quinctilts, sextilis, September, October, november, December), the eleventh from commencing (ianuarius) (p. 213), with reference presumably to the renewal of agricultural opera- tions that followed midwinter and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the last, from cleansing (febrnarius). To this series recurring in regular succession there was added in the intercalary year a nameless " labour- month " (mercedonius) at the close of the year, viz. after February. And, as the Roman calendar was independent as respected the names of the months which were probably taken from the old national ones, it was also independent as regarded their duration. Instead of the four years of the Greek cycle, each composed of six months of 30 and six of 29 days and an intercalary month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354 + 384 + 354 + 383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four years, each containing four months the first, third, fifth, and eighth of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28 days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary month of 27 days inserted every second year (355 + 383 + 355+382 = 1475 days). In like manner this calendar departed from the original division of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7, sometimes of 8 days ; it made the eight-day-week run on through the years without regard to the other relations of the calendar, as our Sundays do, and placed the weekly market on the day with which it began (noundinae). Along with this it once for all fixed the first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day. As the course of the months was thus permanently arranged, it was henceforth necessary to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 271 moon and the first quarter; thence the day of the new moon received the name of " proclamation-day " (kalendae). The first day of the second section of the month, uniformly of 8 days, was in conformity with the Roman custom of reckoning, which included the terminus ad quern designated as " nine-clay " (nonae). The day of the full moon retained the old name of idus (perhaps " dividing-day "). The motive lying at the bottom of this strange remodelling of the calendar seems chiefly to have been a belief in the salutary virtue of odd numbers ; J and while in general it is based on the oldest form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a mystic view of numbers. But the consequence was that this Roman calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should harmonize with the course both of sun and moon, in reality by no means so corresponded with the lunar course as did at least on the whole its Greek model, while, like the oldest Greek cycle, it could only follow the solar seasons by means of frequent arbitrary excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly, for it is scarcely likely that the calendar would be handled with greater skill than was manifested in its original arrangement. The retention moreover of the reckoning by months or which is the same thing by years of ten months implies a tacit, but not to be misunderstood, confession of the irregularity and untrustworthiness of the oldest Roman solar year. This Roman calendar may be regarded, at least in its essential 1 From the same cause all the festival-days are odd, as well those recurring every month (kalendae on the ist, nonae on the 5th or 7th, idus on the 1 3th or isth), as also, with but two exceptions, those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (p. 207). This is carried so far, that in the case of festivals of several days the intervening even days were dropped out, and so, for example, that of Carmentis was celebrated on Jan. n, 15, that of the Grove-festival (Lucarta) on July 19, 21, and that of the Ghosts-festival on May 9, n, and 13. 272 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK I Introduc- tion of Hellenic alphabets into Italy. features, as that generally current among the Latins. When we consider how generally the beginning of the year and the names of the months are liable to change, minor variations in the numbering and designations are quite compatible with the hypothesis of a common basis ; and with such a calendar-system, which practically was irrespective of the lunar course, the Latins might easily come to have their months of arbitrary length, possibly marked off by annual festivals as in the case of the Alban months, which varied between 16 and 36 days. It would appear probable there- fore that the Greek trieteris had early been introduced from Lower Italy at least into Latium and perhaps also among the other Italian stocks, and had thereafter been subjected in the calendars of the several cities to further subordinate alterations. For the measuring of periods of more than one year the regnal years of the kings might have been employed : but it is doubtful whether that method of dating, which was in use in the East, occurred in Greece or Italy during earlier times. On the other hand the intercalary period recurring every four years, and the census and lustration of the community connected with it, appear to have suggested a reckoning by lustra similar in plan to the Greek reckoning by Olympiads a method, however, which early lost its chronological significance in consequence of the irregular-' ity that now prevailed as to the due holding of the census at the right time. The art of expressing sounds by written signs was of later origin than the art of measurement. The Italians did not any more than the Hellenes develop such an art of themselves, although we may discover attempts at such a development in the Italian numeral signs (p. 264), and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom formed independently of Hellenic influence of drawing lots by means of wooden tablets. The difficulty which must have CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 273 attended the first individualizing of sounds occurring as they do in so great a variety of combinations is best demonstrated by the fact that a single alphabet propagated from people to people and from generation to generation has sufficed, and still suffices, for the whole of Aramaic, Indian, Graeco-Roman, and modern civilization ; and this most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation of the Aramaeans and the Indo-Germans. The Semitic family of languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing of the consonants ; and it was among the Semites accordingly that the first alphabet in which the vowels were still wanting was invented. It was the Indians and Greeks who first inde- pendently of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the Aramaean consonantal writing brought to them by commerce, a complete alphabet by the addition of the vowels which was effected by the application of four letters, which the Greeks did not use as consonantal signs, for the four vowels a e i i, and ^^^ to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it was adopted on the mainland of Hellas with the exception of Athens and Corinth and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. The Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear, when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the sound f the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet S (Samech) ; accordingly of the three new signs they adopted the for ?, but employed the X not for f, but for %f. The third sign originally invented for x* was probably allowed in most instances to drop ; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was retained, but received the value of \f/t. The mode of writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens ; only in its case not merely the ^f, but the f also, was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to be written as before. II. Equally early, if not still earlier, an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily occur between the forms for i ^ and for s ^ ; for all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to distinguish them otherwise and more precisely. Already in very early times two such proposals of change must have been made, each of which found a field for its diffusion. In the one case they employed for the sibilant for which the Phoenician alphabet furnished two signs, the fourteenth (M) f r s & and the eighteenth ($) for j not the latter, which was in sound the more suitable, but the former ; and such was in earlier times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans. In the other case they substituted for the sign of i the simple stroke | , which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became at least so far general that the broken i & everywhere disappeared, although individual communities retained the s in the form y\^ alongside of the | III. Of later date is the substitution of V for / (X) which might readily be confounded with F y. This we meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving to the y the semicircular form C instead of the hook-shape. IV. The forms for p P and r P, likewise very liable to be confounded, were distinguished by transforming the latter into R ; which more recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans, the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 275 alphabets were not derived the one from the other, but both directly from the Greek ; in fact the Greek alphabet came to Etruria in a form materially different from that which reached Latium. The Etruscan alphabet has a Magna Graecia and Sicily. Still the older form of the r P did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older form of the // this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to be placed later. V. The differen- tiating of the long and short e and the long and short o remained in the earlier times confined to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea. All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development. The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets], which has thrown a clear light on the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the Hellenes and Italians establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet is affected by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too great stress on a single one of these proposals. If systems are here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into two classes according to the value of the X as or as %, but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier times. In dealing, however, with the different proposals for the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and another there ; and it is just in this respect that the history of the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity. As to Italy in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (p. 173) ; in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained, in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such as the C 7 alongside of the \ I. The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the Chalcidico-Doric ; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of the r. For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the differentiation of/ and r had not yet taken place when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun when the Latins received it ; for which reason the Etruscans do not at all know the form R for r, whereas among the Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dr^ssel vase (p. 277, note), the younger form is met with exclusively. 276 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK r double sign s (sigma s and san sh} and only a single k, l and of the r only the older form P ; the Latin has, so far as we know, only a single s, but a double sign for k (kappa k and koppa q\ and of the r almost solely the more recent form R. The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds like the coiling of a snake ; the more recent employs parallel broken-off lines from right to left : the Latin writing, as far as our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left to right or from right to left, but subsequently ran among the Romans in the former, and among the Faliscans in the latter direction. The model alphabet brought to Etruria must notwithstanding its comparatively remodelled character reach back to an epoch very ancient, though not positively to be determined ; for, as the two sibilants sigma and san were always used by the Etruscans as different sounds side by side, the Greek alphabet which came to Etruria must doubtless still have possessed both of them in this way as living signs of sound ; but among all the monu- ments of the Greek language known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use. The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know it, bears on 1 That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems not doubt- ful ; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi vase. The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong ; moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position have any other value than that of the/, which was in fact the last letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its model. It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet first reached Etruria. Caprice and accident have at all times had a share in determining whether a sign becoming superfluous shall be retained or dropped from the alphabet ; thus the Attic alphabet lost the eighteenth Phoenician sign, but retained the others which had dis- appeared from the usual language. CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 277 the whole a more recent character ; and it is not improbable that the Latins did not simply receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with their Greek neighbours kept pace for a considerable period with the alphabet in use among these, and followed its variations. We find, for instance, that the forms A/V P l and 2 were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded in common use by the later forms M R and "$- a circumstance which can only be explained by supposing that the Latins employed for a considerable period the Greek alphabet as such in writing either their mother-tongue or Greek. It is dangerous therefore to draw from the more recent character of the Greek alphabet which we meet with in Rome, as compared with the older character of that brought to Etruria, the inference that writing was practised earlier in Etruria than in Rome. The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are illustrated by a remarkable vase from a sepulchral chamber of Caere built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old Greek model alphabet as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that of Palamedes evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria. Not less important for history than the derivation of the Develop- alphabet is the further course of its development on Italian Alphabets soil : perhaps it is even of more importance ; for by means in Italy. of it a gleam of light is thrown upon the inland commerce 1 The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light (Mitth. der rom. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older form of the m; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal (published by Dressel in the Annali dell' Institute, 1880) shows the older form of the r. 278 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK i of Jtaly, which is involved in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its coasts. In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and in what is now Tuscany. In course of time this alphabet^ manifestly diffusing itself from Atria and Spina, reached southward along the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, among, and indeed beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the Tyrol and Styria. The more recent epoch starts with a reform of the alphabet, the chief features of which were the intro- duction of writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the o, which was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the u, and the introduction of a new letter^ for which the alphabet as received by them had no corresponding sign. This reform evidently arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians. In its further course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with the several stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the Umbrians and the Samnites ; frequently the mediae were entirely or partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants were developed. But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria ; it was considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found probably in one of these tombs already presents the reformed alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape ; and, as the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back to the time when that alphabet came to Italy. CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 279 While the Etruscans thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet on the other hand was con- fined to Latium, and maintained its ground, upon the whole, there with but few alterations ; only the letters y K and a- gradually became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in each case one of the homophonous signs (K disappeared from writing. In Rome it can be shown that these were already laid aside before the end of the fourth century of the city, 1 and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception. 2 Now when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction between y c and K k is still regularly maintained ; 3 that the period, accordingly, when the sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond the beginning of the Samnite wars ; and lastly, that a consider- able interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction of writing and the establishment of a conven- 1 At this period we shall have to place that recorded form of the Twelve Tables, which subsequently lay before the Roman philologues, and of which we possess fragments. Beyond doubt the code was at its very origin committed to writing ; but that those scholars themselves referred their text not to the original exemplar, but to an official document written down after the Gallic conflagration, is proved by the story of the Tables having undergone reproduction at that time. This enables us easily to explain how their text by no means exhibited the oldest orthography, which was not unknown to them ; even apart from the consideration that in the case of such a written document, employed, moreover, for the purpose of being committed to memory by the young, a philologically exact transmission cannot possibly be assumed. 2 This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which has been mentioned at p. 277, note. On the other hand even on the Ficoroni cista C has the later form of K. 3 Thus C represents Gaius ; CN Gnaeus ; while K stands for Kaeso. With the more recent abbreviations of course this is not the case ; in these y is represented not by C, but by G (GAL Galeria), K, as a rule, by C (C centum COS consul; COL Collina), or before a by K (KAR&annentolta; MERK merkatus). For they expressed for a time the sound K before the vowels e i o and before all consonants by C, before a on the other hand by K, before u by the old sign of the koppa Q. 28o MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK i tional system of abbreviation ; we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Egyptian Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in Greece. 1 The high antiquity of the art of writing in Rome is evinced otherwise by numerous and plain indications. The existence of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested ; such was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name, and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal, which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagra- tion of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet in the temple of Diana on the Aventine. What he saw, however, was probably a copy restored after the fire with the help of a Latin exemplar, for it was not likely that engraving on metal was practised as early as the time of the kings. The charters of foundation of the imperial period still refer to the charter founding this temple as the oldest document ^of the kind in Rome and the common model for all. But even then they scratched (exarafe, scribere, akin to scrobes 2 ) or painted (linere, thence littera) on leaves {folium)^ inner bark (liber), or wooden tablets (tabula, album], afterwards also on leather and linen. The sacred records, of the Samnites as well as of the priest- 1 If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though ot course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns for the flourish- 850. ing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the post-Homeric period. 2 Just as the old Saxon writan signifies properly to tear, thence to write. CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 281 hood of Anagnia were inscribed on linen rolls, and so were the oldest lists of the Ronran -magistrates preserved in the temple of the goddess of recollection (Tuno moneta) on the Capitol. It is scarcely necessary to recall further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle (serif tura), in the mode of addressing the senate, " fathers and enrolled " (fatres conscrifti), and in the great antiquity of the books of oracles, the clan-registers, and the Alban and Roman calendars. When Roman tradition speaks of halls in the Forum, where the boys and girls of quality were taught to read and write, already in the earliest times of the republic, the statement may be, but is not necessarily to be deemed, an invention. We have been deprived of information as. to the early Roman history, not in consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of the historians of the succeeding age, which was called to inves- tigate the history, to work out the materials furnished by the archives, and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest epoch a delineation of motives and of char- acters, accounts of battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer. The history of Italian writing thus furnishes in the first Results, place a confirmation of the weak and indirect influence exercised by the Hellenic character over the Sabellians as ] compared with the more western peoples. The fact that the former received their alphabet from the Etruscans and not from the Romans is probably to be explained by supposing that they already possessed it before they entered I upon their migration along the ridge of the Apennines, and j that therefore the Sabines as well as Samnites carried it along with them from the mother-land to their new abodes. On the other hand this history of \yriting contains a salutary 282 MEASURING AND WRITING BOOK i warning against the adoption of the hypothesis, originated by the later Roman culture in its devotedness to Etruscan mysticism and antiquarian trifling, and patiently repeated by modern and even very recent inquirers, that Roman civilization derived its germ and its pith from Etruria. If this were the truth, some trace of it ought to be more especially apparent in this field ; but on the contrary the germ of the Latin art of writing was Greek, and its develop- ment was so national, that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for f. l Indeed, where there is an appearance of borrowing, as in the numeral signs, it is on the part of the Etruscans, who took over from the Romans at. least the sign for 50. Lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian sioc ^ s the development of the Greek alphabet primarily consisted in a process of corruption. Thus the mediae disappeared in the whole of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost y and d, the Samnites d, and the Romans y ; and among the latter d also threatened to amalgamate with r. In like manner among the Etruscans o and u early coalesced, and even among the Latins we meet with a tendency to the same corruption. Nearly the converse occurred in the case of the sibilants ; for while the Etruscan retained the three signs z, s, sh, and the Umbrian rejected the last but developed two new sibilants in its room, the Samnite and the Faliscan confined themselves like the Greek to s and z, and the Roman of later times even to s alone. . It is plain that the more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers of the alphabet, men of culture / * The ,enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign corresponding to v for the /quite different in sound,,' has been solved by the bracelet of PraeneSte (p. 277, note) with its fhefhaked tor fecit, and thereby at the same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed. For in a Boeotian inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word fhekadamoe (Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, 244, ap. fin.} the same combination of SQund, and an aspirated v might certainly approximate in sound to the Latin/. CHAP, xiv MEASURING AND WRITING 283 and masters of two languages ; but after the national writing became wholly detached from the Hellenic mother-alphabet, the mediae and their tenues gradually came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into disorder trans- positions or rather destructions of sound, of which the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek. The de- struction of the forms of flexion and derivation went hand in hand with this corruption of sounds. The cause of this barbarization was thus, upon the whole, simply the necessary process of corruption which is continuously eating away every language, where its progress is not stemmed by literature and reason ; only in this case indications of what has elsewhere passed away without leaving a trace have been preserved in the writing of sounds. The circumstance that this barbarizing process affected the Etruscans more strongly than any other of the Italian stocks adds to the numerous proofs of their inferior capacity for culture. The fact on the other hand that, among the Italians, the Umbrians apparently were the most affected by a similar corruption of language, the Romans less so, the southern Sabellians least of all, probably finds its explanation, at least in part, in the more lively intercourse maintained by the former with the Etruscans, and by the latter with the Greeks. 284 ART BOOK I CHAPTER XV ART Artistic en- POETRY is impassioned language, and its modulation is of the CntS me ldy- While in this sense no people is without poetry Italians. and music, some nations have received a pre-eminent en- dowment of poetic gifts. The Italian nation, however, was not and is not one of these. The Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which form the very essence of poetic art. His acuteness of per- ception and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio, in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in the lower comedy and in farce. Italian soil gave birth in ancient times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock- - heroic poetry. In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other nation equalled or equals the Italians. But in the -" more perfect kinds of art they have hardly advanced beyond dexterity of execution, and no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine drama. The very highest literary works that have been successfully produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and" historical treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and Colletta, are pervaded by a CHAP, xv ART 285 passion more rhetorical than spontaneous. Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, really creative talent has been far less conspicuous than the accomplishment which speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and en- thrones in the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering idol. The field of the inward in art so far as we may in the case of art distinguish an inward and an outward at all is not that which has fallen to the Italian as his special province ; the power of beauty, to have its full effect upon him, must be placed not ideally before his mind, but sensuously before his eyes. Accordingly he is thoroughly at home in architecture, painting, and sculpture; in these he was during the epoch of ancient culture the best disciple of the Hellenes, and in modern times he has become the master of all nations. From the defectiveness of our traditional information it Dance, is not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas ^^' n a among the several groups of nations in Italy; and in Latium. particular we are no longer in a position to speak of the poetry of Italy; we can only speak of that of Latium. Latin poetry, like that of every other nation, began in the lyrical form, or, to speak more correctly, sprang out of those primitive festal rejoicings, in which dance, music, and song were still inseparably blended. It is remarkable, however, that in the most ancient religious usages dancing, and next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than song. In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods and the champions, was assigned to the dancers grave and merry. The grave dancers were arranged in three groups of men, youths, and boys, all clad in red tunics with copper belts, with swords and short lances, the men being moreover furnished with helmets, and generally in full armed attire. The merry dancers " were divided into two companies " the sheep " in sheep- 286 ART BOOK i skins with a party-coloured over-garment, and " the goats " naked down to the waist, with a buck's skin thrown over them. In like manner the " leapers " (salif) were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods (p. 215), and dancers (ludit, ludiones) were indispensable in all public processions, and particularly at funeral solemnities ; so that dancing became even in ancient times a common trade. But, wherever the dancers made their appearance, there ap- peared also the musicians or which was in the earliest times the same thing the pipers. They too were never wanting at a sacrifice, at a marriage, or at a funeral ; and by the side of the primitive public priesthood of the "leapers" there was ranged, of equal antiquity although of far inferior rank, the' guild of the " pipers " (collegium tibicinum, p. 249), whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their ancient privilege maintained even in spite of the strictness of Roman police of wandering through the streets at their annual festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine. While dancing thus presents itself as an honourable function and music as one subordinate but still necessary, so that public corporations were instituted for both of them, poetry appears more as a matter incidental and, in some measure, indifferent, whether it may have come into existence on its own account or to serve as an accompaniment to the movements of the dancers. The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest. The whispers and pipings of the " favour- able spirit " (faunus, from favere) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had the gift of listening to him, in rhythmically measured language (casmen, after- wards carmen, from canere). Of a kindred nature to these soothsaying songs of inspired men and women (vates) were the incantations properly so called, the formulae for conjur- ing away diseases and other, troubles, and the evil spells by CHAP, xv ART 287 which they prevented rain and called down lightning or even enticed the seed from one field to another ; only in these instances, probably from the outset, formulae of mere sounds appear side by side with formulae of words. 1 More firmly rooted in tradition and equally ancient were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii and other priesthoods ; the only one of which that has come down to us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars probably composed to be sung in alternate parts, deserves a place here. Enos, Loses, iuvate ! Ne velue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores ! Satur fu, fere Mars I limen sali ! sta ! berber 1 Semunis alternei advocapit conctos I Enos, Marmar, iuvato ! Triumpe ! Which may be thus interpreted : f Nos, Lares, iuvate! _ , , j Ne veluem ( = malamluem)ruem(=.rttiiiam), Mamers, | sinas incurrere in plures I \_ Satur esto, fere Mars ! To the indivi- "I T T ? i * L n- i\ < . . , ,, > In hmen tnsili I sta ! veroera (Itmen ?) I dual brethren. I > Semones alterni advocate cunctos / brethren. J To the god. Nos, Mamers, iuvato ! To the indivi- \ ^ / ./- /2 dual- brethren. J 1 Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160) gives as potent against sprains the formula : hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodannaustra, which was presumably quite as obscure to its inventor as it is to us. Of course, along with these there were also formulae of words ; e.g. it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching the earth at the same time and spitting : " I think of thee, mend my feet. Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell" (terra pestem teneto, salus hie maneto. Varro de R. R. i. 2, 27). 2 Each of the first five lines was repeated thrice, and the call at the close five times. Various points in the interpretation are uncertain, particularly as respects the third line. The three inscriptions of the clay vase from the Quirinal (p. 277, note) run thus : iove sat deiuosqoi med mitat nei ted endo gosmis uirgo sied asted noisi ope toilesiai pakariuois duenos med faked ( = bonus me fecit) enmanom einom dze noine (probably = rf*> 288 ART BOOK i The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian songs, which were regarded even by the philologues of the Augustan age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and contents, with the Indian Vedas. Panegyrics Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later and lam- e p OC h. We misjht infer from the national character of the poons. r Italians that satirical songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of police directed against them. But the panegyrical chants became of more importance. When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accom- panied by a piper, sang his dirge (nenia). In like manner at banquets boys, who according to the fashion of those days attended their fathers even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply reciting them without accompaniment (assa voce canere). The custom of men singing in succession at banquets was presumably borrowed from the Greeks, and that not till a later age. We know no further particulars of these ancestral lays ; but it is self-evident that they must have attempted descrip- tion and narration and thus have developed, along with and out of the lyrical element, the features of epic poetry. The Other elements of poetry were called into action in the primitive popular carnival, the comic dance or satura (p. 35), which beyond doubt reached back to a period noni) med malo stated. Only individual words admit of being understood with certainty ; it is especially noteworthy that forms, which we have hitherto known only as Umbrian and Oscan, like the adjective pacer and the particle einom with the value of et, here probably meet us withal as old-Latin. CHAP, xv ART 289 anterior to the separation of the stocks. On such occasions song would never be wanting ; and the circumstances under which such pastimes were exhibited, chiefly at public . festivals and marriages, as well as the mainly practical shape which they certainly assumed, naturally suggested that several dancers, or sets of dancers, should take up reciprocal parts ; so that the singing thus came to be associated with a species of acting, which of course was chiefly of a comical and often of a licentious character. In this way there arose not merely alternative chants, such as afterwards went by the name of Fescennine songs, but also the elements of a popular comedy which were in this instance planted in a soil admirably adapted for their growth, as an acute sense of the outward and the comic, and a delight in gesticulation and masquerade have ever been leading traits of Italian character. No remains have been preserved of these incunabula of the Roman epos and drama. That the ancestral lays were traditional is self-evident, and is abundantly demonstrated by the fact that they were regularly recited by children ; but even in the time of Cato the Elder they had completely passed into oblivion. The comedies again, if it be allow- able so to name them, were at this period and long after- wards altogether improvised. Consequently nothing of this popular poetry and popular melody could be handed down but the measure, the accompaniment of music and choral dancing, and perhaps the masks. Whether what we call metre existed in the earlier times Metre. is doubtful ; the litany of the Arval Brethren scarcely- accommodates itself to an outwardly fixed metrical system, and presents to us rather the appearance of an animated recitation. On the other hand we find in subsequent times a very ancient rhythm, the so-called Saturnian * or Faunian 1 The name probably denotes nothing but "the chant-measure," inasmuch as the satura was originally the chant sung at the carnival VOL. I 19 290 ART BOOK i metre, which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be con- jectured to have arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin popular poetry. The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a far later age, may give an idea of it : Quod rt sud difeidens dsperl aflelcta Parens timtns heic v6vit v6to h6c soliito Decumd factd poloiicta leibereis lubentls Donii damint^,Hercoki mdxsumt ^_m$reto SemSl fe ordnt se v6ti crebro c6n^,demnes. That which, misfortune dreading sharply to' afflict him, An anxious parent vowed here, when his wish was granted, A sacred tenth for banquet gladly give his children To Hercules a tribute most of all deserving ; And now they thee beseech, that often thou wouldst hear them. Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in such a way that the caesura in particular in each line was strongly marked ; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took up the verse at this point. The Saturnian measure is, like every other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity ; but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the higher poetry. Melody. The fundamental elements of the national music and (P- 3S)- The gd of sowing, Saeturnus or Saiturnus, afterwards Sdturnus, received his name from the same root ; his feast, the Saturnalia, was certainly a sort of carnival, and it is possible that the farces were originally exhibited chiefly at this feast. But there are no proofs of a relation between the Satura and the Saturnalia, and it may be presumed that the immediate association of the versus saturnius with the god Saturn, and the lengthening of the first syllable in connection with that view, belong only to later times. CHAP, xv ART 291 choral dancing in Latium, which must likewise have been established during this period, are buried for us in oblivion ; except that the Latin pipe is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out of the light thigh- bone of some animal. Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing Masks, characters of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called : Maccus the harlequin. Bucco the glutton, | Pappus the good papa, and the wise Dossennus masks which have been cleverly and strikingly compared to the two servants, the pantalon and the dottore, in the Italian comedy of Pulcinello already belonged to the earliest ; Latin popular art. That they did so cannot of course be strictly proved ; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first establishment, as, moreover, those Atellane masks were of decidedly Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting those rudiments themselves. If our information respecting the earliest indigenous Earliest culture and art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses imparted in this respect to the Romans from without. In a certain sense we may 'include under this head their becoming acquainted with foreign languages, particularly the Greek. To this latter language, of course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles (p. 230); but an acquaintance with it must have been not at all uncommon 292 ART BOOK I in the case of merchants. The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing, closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek (p. 273). The culture of the ancient world, however, was not based either on the knowledge of foreign languages or on elementary technical accomplishments. An influence more important than any thus imparted was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the Hellenes. For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phoenicians or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised an influence on the Italians. We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus of the fine arts which can be referred to Carthage or Caere, and the Phoenician and Etruscan forms of civilization may be in general perhaps classed with those that are hybrid, and for that reason not further productive. 1 But the influence of Greece did not fail to bear fruit. The Greek seven-stringed lyre, the " strings " {fides, from o-^tS?/, gut ; also barbituSy (3dp(3iTos), was not like the pipe indigenous in Latium, and was always regarded there as an instrument of foreign origin ; but the early period at which it gained a footing is demonstrated partly by the barbarous mutilation of its Greek name, partly by its being employed 1 The statement that "formerly the Roman boys were trained in Etruscan culture, as they were in later times in Greek" (Liv. ix. 36), is quite irreconcilable with the" original character of the Roman training of youth, and it is not easy to see what the Roman boys could have learned in Etruria. Even the most zealous modern partizans of Tages-worship will not maintain that the study of the Etruscan language played such a part in Rome then as the learning of French does now with us ; that a non-Etruscan should understand ^anything of the art of the Etruscan haruspices was considered, even by those who availed themselves of that art, to be, a disgrace or rather an impossibility (Miiller, Etr. ii. 4). Perhaps the statement was concocted by the Etruscizing antiquaries of the last age of the' republic out of stories of the older annals, aiming at a causal explanation of facts, such as that which makes Mucius Scaevola learn Etruscan when a child for the sake of his conversation with Porsena .(Dionysius, v. 28 ; Plutarch, Poplicola, 17 ; comp. Dionysius, iii. 70). But there was at any rate an epoch when the dominion of Rome over Italy demanded a certain knowledge of the language of the country on the part of Romans of rank. CHAP, xv ART 293 even in ritual. 1 That some of the legendary stores of the Greeks during this period found their way into Latium, is shown by the ready reception of Greek works of sculpture with their representations based so thoroughly upon the poetical treasures of the nation; and the old Latin barbarous conversions of Persephone into Prosepna, Bellerophontes into Melerpanta, Kyklops into Codes, Laomedon into Alumentus, Ganymedes into Catamitus, Neilos into Melus, Semele into Stimula, enable us to perceive at how remote a period such stories had been heard and repeated by the Latins. Lastly and especially, the Roman chief festival or festival of the city (ludi maxim/, Roman!) must in all probability have owed, if not its origin, at any rate its later arrangements to Greek influence. It was an extraordinary thanksgiving festival celebrated in honour of the Capitoline Jupiter and the gods dwelling along with him, ordinarily in pursuance of a vow made by the general before battle, and therefore usually observed on the return home of the burgess-force in autumn. A festal procession proceeded toward the Circus staked off between the Palatine and Aventine, and furnished with an arena and places for spectators ; in front the whole boys of Rome, arranged according to the divisions of the burgess-force, on horseback and on foot ; then the champions and the groups of dancers which we have descrided above, each with their own music ; thereafter the servants of the gods with vessels of frankincense and other sacred utensils ; lastly the biers 1 The employment of the lyre in ritual is attested by Cicero de Orat. iii. 51, 197 ; Tusc. iv. 2, 4 ; Dionysius, vii. 72 ; Appian, Pun. 66 ; and the inscription in Orelli, 2448, comp. 1803. It was" likewise Used at the neniae (Varro ap. Nonium, v. nenia and praeficae). But playing on the lyre remained none the less unbecoming (Scipio ap. Macrob. Sat. ii. 10, et al.). The prohibition of music in 639 exempted only the "Latin 115. player on the pipe along with the singer," not the player on the lyre, and the guests at meals sang only to the pipe (Cato in Cic. Tusc. i. 2, 3 ; iv. 2, 3; Varro ap. Nonium, v. assa voce ; Horace, Carm. iv. 15, 30). Quintilian, who asserts the reverse (Inst. i. 10, 20), has inaccurately transferred to private banquets what Cicero (de Orat. iii. 51) states in reference to the feasts of the gods. 294 ART BOOK I with the images ot the gods themselves. The spectacle itself was the counterpart of war as it was waged in primitive times, a contest on chariots, on horseback, and on foot. First there ran the war-chariots, each of which carried in Homeric fashion a charioteer and a combatant ; then the. combatants who had leaped off; then the horsemen, each of whom appeared after the Roman style of fighting with a horse which he rode and another led by the hand (desultor) ; lastly, the champions on foot, naked to the girdle round their loins, measured their powers in racing, wrestling, and boxing. In each species of contest there was but one competition, and that between not more than two com- petitors. A chaplet rewarded the victor, and the honour in which the simple branch which formed the wreath was held is shown by the law permitting it to be laid on the bier of the victor when he died. The festival thus lasted only one day, and the competitions probably still left sufficient time on that day for the carnival proper, at which the groups of dancers may have displayed their art and above all exhibited their farces ; and doubtless other repre- sentations also, such as competitions in juvenile horseman- ship, found a place. 1 The honours won in real war also played their part in this festival ; the brave warrior exhibited on this day the equipments of the antagonist whom he had 1 The city festival can have only lasted at first for a single day, for in the sixth century it still consisted of four days of scenic and one day of Circensian sports (Ritschl, Parerga, i. 313) and it is well known that the scenic amusements were only a subsequent addition. That in each kind of contest there was originally only one competition, follows from Livy, xliv. 9 ; the running of five-and-twenty pairs of chariots in succession on one day was a subsequent innovation (Varro ap. Serv. Georg. iii. 18). That only two chariots and likewise beyond doubt only two horsemen and two wrestlers strove for the prize, may be inferred from the circum- stance, that at all periods in the Roman chariot-races only as many chariots competed as there were so-called factions ; and of these there were originally only two, the white and the red. The horsemanship- competition of patrician youths which belonged to the Circensian games, the so-called Troia, was, as is well known, revived by Caesar ; beyond doubt it was connected with the cavalcade of the boy-militia, which Dionysius mentions (vii. 72). CHAP, xv ART 295 slain, and was decorated with a chaplet by the grateful community just as was the victor in the competition. Such was the nature of the Roman festival of victory or city-festival ; and the other public festivities of Rome may be conceived to have been of a similar character, although less ample in point of resources. At the celebration of a public funeral dancers regularly bore a part, and along with them, if there was to be any further exhibition, horse-racers ; in that case the burgesses were specially invited beforehand to the funeral by the public crier. But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the Hellenic national festivals : more especially in the fundamental idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing the spear and stone ; in the nature of the prize of victory, which in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet, and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the charioteer, but to the owner of the team ; and lastly in introducing the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with the general national festival. This agreement cannot have been accidental, but must have been either a remnant of the primitive connection between the peoples, or a result of the earliest international intercourse ; and the probabilities preponderate in favour of the latter hypothesis. The city-festival, in the form in which we are acquainted with it, was not one of the oldest institutions of Rome, for the Circus itself was only laid out in the later regal period (p. 141); and just as the reform of the constitution then took place under Greek influence (p. 123), the city- festival may have been at the same time so far transformed as to combine Greek races with, and 296 ART BOOK I eventually to a certain extent to substitute them for, an older mode of amusement the "leap" (triumpus, p. 35), and possibly swinging, which was a primitive Italian custom and long continued in use at the festival on the Alban mount. Moreover, while there is some trace of the use of the war-chariot in actual warfare in Hellas, no such trace exists in Latium. Lastly, the Greek term oraSiov (Doric o-TraSiov) was at a very early period transferred to the Latin language, retaining its signification, as spatium ; and there exists even an express statement that the Romans derived their horse and chariot races from the people of Thurii, although, it is true, another account derives them from Etruria. It thus appears that, in addition to the impulses imparted by the Hellenes in music and poetry, the Romans were indebted to them for the fruitful idea of gymnastic competitions. Thus there not only existed in Latium the same funda- mental elements out of which Hellenic culture and art grew, but Hellenic culture and art themselves exercised a powerful influence over Latium in very early times. Not only did the Latins possess the elements of gymnastic training, in so far as the Roman boy learned like every farmer's son to manage horses and waggon and to handle the hunting-spear, and as in Rome every burgess was at the same time a soldier ; but the art of dancing was from the first an object of public care, and a powerful impulse was further given to such culture at an early period by the introduction of the Hellenic games. The lyrical poetry and tragedy of Hellas grew out of songs similar to the festal lays of . Rome ; the ancestral lay contained the germs of epos, the masked farce the germs of comedy; and in this field also Grecian in- fluences were not wanting. In such circumstances it is the more remarkable that these germs either did not spring up at all, or were soon arrested in their growth. The bodily training of the Latin CHAP, xv ART 297 youth continued to be solid and substantial, but far removed from the idea of artistic culture for the body, such as was the aim of Hellenic gymnastics. The public games of the Hellenes when introduced into Italy, changed not so much their formal rules as their essential character. While they were intended to be competitions of burgesses and beyond doubt were so at first in Rome, they became contests of professional riders and professional boxers, and, while the proof of free and Hellenic descent formed the first condition for participating in the Greek festal games, those of Rome soon passed into the hands of freedmen and foreigners and even of persons not free at all. Consequently the circle of fellow-competitors became converted into a public of spectators, and the chaplet of the victorious champion, which has been with justice called the badge of Hellas, was afterwards hardly ever mentioned in Latium. A similar fate befel poetry and her sisters. The Greeks and Germans alone possess a fountain of song that wells up spontaneously ; from the golden vase of the Muses only a few drops have fallen on the green soil of Italy. There was no formation of legend in the strict sense there. The Italian gods were abstractions and remained such ; they never became elevated into or, as some may prefer to say, obscured under, a true personal shape. In like manner men, even the greatest and noblest, remained in the view of the Italian without exception mortal, and were not, as in the longing recollection and affectionately cherished tradition of Greece, elevated in the conception of the multitude into god-like heroes. But above all no develop- ment of national poetry took place in Latium. It is the deepest and noblest effect of the fine arts and above all of poetry, that they break down the barriers of civil com- munities and create out of tribes a nation and out of the nations a world. As in the present day by means of our cosmopolitan literature the distinctions of civilized nations 298 ART BOOK i are done away, so Greek poetic art transformed the narrow and egoistic sense of tribal relationship into the conscious- ness of Hellenic nationality, and this again into the con- sciousness of a common humanity. But in Latium nothing similar occurred. There might be poets in Alba and in Rome, but there arose no Latin epos, nor even what were still more conceivable a catechism for the Latin farmer of a kind similar to the " Works and Days " of Hesiod. The Latin federal festival might well have become a national festival of the fine arts, like the Olympian and Isthmian games of the Greeks. A cycle of legends might well have ! gathered around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of Ilion, and^every community and every noble clan of Latium might have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own origin. But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained without national poetry or art. The inference which of necessity follows from these facts, that the development of the fine arts in Latium was rather a shrivelling up than an expanding into bloom, is confirmed in a manner even now not to be mistaken by tradition. The beginnings of poetry everywhere, perhaps, belong rather to women than to men ; the spell of incanta- tion and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former, and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived as feminine. But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses. In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin language had no designation for the poet. 1 The 1 Vates probably denoted in the first instance the " leader of the sing- ing" (for so the vates of the Salii must be understood) and thereafter in its older usage approximated to the Greek TT/HK^TJTTJS ; it was a word be- longing- to religious ritual, and even when subsequently used of the poet, always retained the accessory idea of a divinely-inspired singer the priest of the Muses. CHAP, xv ART 299 power of song emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly arrested in its growth. The exercise of the fine arts was there early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated or unincorpor- ated tradesmen. We have already mentioned that funeral chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys ; the religious litanies also were chiefly executed by children. The musicians formed an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (fraeficae) unincorporated, trades. While dancing, music, and singing remained constantly in Greece as they were originally also in Latium reputable em- ployments redounding to the honour of the burgess and of the community to which he belonged, in Latium the better portion of the burgesses drew more and more aloof from these vain arts, and that the more decidedly, in pro- portion as art came to be more publicly exhibited and more thoroughly penetrated by the quickening impulses derived from other lands. The use of the native pipe was sanctioned, but the lyre remained despised ; and while the national amusement of masks was allowed, the foreign amusements of the palaestra were not only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful. While the fine arts in Greece became more and more the common property of the Hellenes individually and collectively and thereby be- came the means of developing a universal culture, they gradually disappeared in Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people ; and, as they degenerated into utterly insignificant handicrafts, the idea of a general national culture to be communicated to youth never suggested itself at all. The education of youth remained entirely confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity. The boy never left his father's side, and accompanied him not only to the field with the plough and the sickle, but ' also to the house of a friend or to the council-hall, when his father was invited as a guest or summoned to the senate. This 300 ART BOOK i domestic education was well adapted to preserve man wholly for the household and wholly for the state. The permanent intercommunion of life between father and son, and the mutual reverence felt by adolescence for ripened manhood and by the mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political traditions, of the closeness of the family bond, and in general of the grave earnestness (gravitas) and character of moral worth in Roman life. \ This mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions of. homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are as simple as they are profound. But amidst the admiration which it awakens we may not overlook the fact that it could only be carried out, and was only carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous gifts of the Muses. Dance, Regarding the development of the tfne arts among the music, and song Etruscans and Sabellians our knowledge is little better than * m n the none. 1 We can only notice the fact that in Etruria the and dancers (histri, histriones) and the pipe-players (svbulones) Etruscans. ear iy ma d e a trade of their art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited themselves in public not only at home, but also in Rome for smail remuneration and less honour. It is a circumstance more remarkable that at the Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal priest, games were given like those of the Roman city-festival; we are, however, no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests, how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in attaining a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual communities. On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation 1 We shall show in due time that the Atellanae and Fescenninae be- longed not to Campanian and Etruscan, hut to Latin art. CHAP, xv ART 301 of learned lumber, particularly of a theological and astro- logical nature, by virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans divided with the Jews, Chaldeans, and Egyptians the honour of being admired as primitive sources of divine wisdom. We know still less, if possible, of Sabellian art ; but that of course by no means warrants the inference that it was inferior to that of the neighbouring stocks. On the contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart- withered and affected 1 court -poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry- smitten, youth. The elements of architecture were, as has been already Earliest indicated, a primitive common possession of the stocks. Italian ar ~ chitecture. The dwelling-house constitutes the first attempt of structural art ; and it was the same among Greeks and Italians. Built of wood, and covered with a pointed roof of straw or shingles, it formed a square dwelling-chamber, which let out the smoke and let in the light by an opening in the roof corresponding with a hole for carrying off the rain in the ground (cavum aedium). Under this " black roof " (atrium) the meals were prepared and consumed ; there .the house- hold gods were worshipped, and the marriage bed and the bier were set out ; there the husband received his guests, and the wife sat spinning amid the circle of her maidens. 1 [Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the calamistri Maecenatis.] 302 ART BOOK I The house had no porch, unless we take as such the un- covered space between the house door and the street, which obtained its name vestibulum, i.e. dressing-place, from the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around them when they went abroad. There was, moreover, no division of apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided around the dwelling- room ; and still less were there stairs, or stories placed one above another. ' Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose out of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts as possibly had preceded it. The very oldest Italian architecture with which we are acquainted is not much less under the influence of that of Greece than the architecture of the Augustan' age. The primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the -oldest one also of those recently discovered, at Prae'neste, have been, exactly like the thesauroi of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping^, and closed by a large stone cover. A very ancient building at the city wall of Tusculum was roofed in the same way, and so was originally the well- house (tuttianum) at the foot of the Capitol, till the top was pulled down to make room for another building. The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in Arpinum and in Mycenae. The tunnel which drains the Alban lake (p. 49) presents the greatest resemblance to that of lake Copais. What are called Cyclopean ring-walls frequently occur in Italy, "especially in Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and Sabina, and decidedly belong in point of design to the most ancient buildings of Italy, although the greater portion of those now extant were probably not CHAP, xv ART 303 executed till a much later age, several of them certainly not till the seventh century of the city. They are, just like those of Greece, sometimes quite roughly formed of large unwrought blocks of rock with smaller stones inserted between them, sometimes disposed in square horizontal courses, 1 sometimes composed of polygonal dressed blocks fitting into each other. The selection of one or other of these systems was doubtless ordinarily determined by the material, and accordingly the polygonal masonry does not occur in Rome, where in the most ancient times tufo alone was employed for building. The resemblance in the case of the two former and simpler styles may perhaps be trace- able to the similarity of the materials employed and of the object in view in building ; but it can hardly be,deemed 1 Of this character were the Servian walls. They consisted partly of a strengthening of the hill-slopes by facing them with lining-walls as much as 4 metres thick, partly in the intervals, above all on the Viminal and Quirinal, where from the Esquiline to the Collme gate there was an absence of natural defence of an earthen mound, which was finished off on the outside by a similar lining-wall. On these lining-walls rested the breastwork. A trench, according to trustworthy statements of the ancients 30 feet deep and 100 feet broad, stretched along in front of the wall, for which the earth was taken from this same trench. The breast~ work has nowhere been preserved ; of the lining-walls extensive remains have recently been brought to light. The blocks of tufo composing them are hewn in longish rectangles, on an average of 60 centimetres ( = 2 Roman feet) in height and breadth, while the length varies from 70 centimetres to 3 metres, and they are, without application of mortar, laid together in several rows, alternately with the long and with the narrow side outer- most. The portion of the Servian wall near the Viminal gate, discovered in the year 1862 at the Villa Negroni, rests on a foundation of huge blocks of tufo of 3 to 4 metres in height and breadth, on which was then raised the outer wall from blocks of the same material and of the same size as those elsewhere employed in the wall. The earthen rampart piled up behind appears to have had on the upper surface a breadth extending about 13 metres or fully 40 Roman feet, and the whole wall-defence, in- cluding the outer wall of freestone, to have had a breadth of as much as 15 metres or 50 Roman feet. The portions formed of peperino blocks, which are bound with iron clamps, have only been added in connection with subsequent labours of repair. Essentially similar to the Servian walls are those discovered in the Vigna Nussiner, on the slope of the Palatine towards the side of the Capitol, and at other points of the Palatine, which have been declared by Jordan ( Topographic, ii. 173), probably with reason, to be remnants of the citadel-wall of the Palatine Rome. 304 ART BOOK i accidental that the artistic polygonal wall-masonry, and the gate with the path leading up to it universally bending to the left and so exposing the unshielded right side of the assailant to the defenders, belong to the Italian fortresses as well as to the Greek. The facts are significant that in that portion of Italy which was not reduced to subjection by the Hellenes but yet was in lively intercourse with them, the true polygonal masonry was at home, and it is found in Etruria only at Pyrgi and at the towns, not very far distant from it, of Cosa and Saturnia ; as the design of the walls of Pyrgi, especially when we take into account the significant name ("towers"), may just as certainly be ascribed to the Greeks as that of the walls of Tiryns, in them most probably there still stands before our eyes one of the models from which the Italians learned how to build their walls. The temple in fine, which in the period of the empire was called the Tuscanic and was regarded as a kind of style co-ordinate with the various Greek temple-structures, not only generally resembled the Greek temple in being an enclosed space (cello) usually quadrangular, over which walls and columns raised aloft a sloping roof, but was also in details, especially in the column itself and its architectural features, thoroughly dependent on the Greek system. It is in accordance with all these facts probable, as it is credible of itself, that Italian architecture previous to its contact with the Hellenes was confined to wooden huts, abattis, and mounds of earth and stones, and that construction in stone was only adopted in consequence of the example and the better tools of the (1 reeks. It is scarcely to be doubted that the Italians first learned from them the use of iron, and derived from them the preparation of mortar (cal\_e\x, calecare, from x"^)* the machine (tnachina, /x^em;), the measuring-rod (groma, , a corruption from yvio/aov, -yi/w/xa), and the artificial lattice- work (clathri, K\ijOpov). Accordingly we can scarcely speak of an architecture peculiarly Italian. Yet in the woodwork CHAP, xv ART 305 of the Italian dwelling-house alongside of alterations pro- duced by Greek influence various peculiarities may have been retained or even for the first time developed, and these again may have exercised a reflex influence on the building of the Italian temples. The architectural development of the house proceeded in Italy from the Etruscans. The Latin and even the Sabellian still adhered to the hereditary wooden hut and to the good old custom of assigning to the god or spirit not a consecrated dwelling, but only a conse- crated space, while the Etruscan had already begun artistic- ally to transform his dwelling-house, and to erect after the model of the dwelling-house of man a temple also for the god and a sepulchral chamber for the spirit. That the advance to such luxurious structures in Latium first took place under Etruscan influence, is proved by the designation of the oldest style of temple architecture and of the oldest style of house architecture respectively as Tuscanic. 1 As concerns the character of this transference, the Grecian temple probably imitated the general outlines of the tent or dwelling-house ; but it was essentially built of hewn stone and covered with tiles, and the nature of the stone and the baked clay suggested to the Greek the laws of necessity and beauty. The Etruscan on the other hand remained a stranger to the strict Greek distinction between the dwelling of man necessarily erected of wood and the dwelling of the gods necessarily formed of stone. The peculiar character- istics of the Tuscan temple the outline approaching nearer to a square, the higher gable, the greater breadth of the intervals between the columns, above all, the increased inclination of the roof and the singular projection of the roof-corbels beyond the supporting columns all arose out of the greater approximation of the temple to the dwelling- house, and out of the peculiarities of wooden architecture" The plastic and delineative arts are more recent than Plastic art in Italy. Ratio Tuscamca : cavum aedivm Tuscanicum. VOL. I 20 306 ART BOOK i architecture ; the house must be built before any attempt is made to decorate gable and walls. It is not probable that these arts really gained a place in Italy during the regal period of Rome ; it was only in Etruria, where commerce and piracy early gave rise to a great concentration of riches, that art or handicraft if the term be preferred obtained a footing in the earliest times. Greek art, when it acted on Etruria, was still, as its copy shows, at a very primitive stage, and the Etruscans may have learned from the Greeks the art of working in clay and metal at a period not much later than that at which they borrowed from them the alphabet. The silver coins of Populonia, almost the only works that can be with any precision assigned to this period, give no very high idea of Etruscan artistic skill as it then stood ; yet the best of the Etruscan works in bronze, to which the later critics of art assigned so high a place, may have belonged to this primitive age; and the Etruscan terra-cottas also cannot have been altogether despicable, for the oldest works in baked clay placed in the Roman temples the statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the four- horse chariot on the roof of his temple were executed in Veii, and the large ornaments of a similar kind ,placed on the roofs of temples passed generally among the later Romans under the name of " Tuscanic works." On the other hand, among the Italians not among the Sabellian stocks merely, but even among the Latins native sculpture and design were at this period only coming into existence. The most considerable works of art appear to have been executed abroad. We have just mentioned the statues of clay alleged to have been executed in Veii ; and very recent excavations have shown that works in bronze made in Etruria, and furnished with Etruscan inscriptions, circulated in Praeneste at least, if not generally throughout Latium. The statue of Diana in the Romano-Latin federal temple on the Aventine, which was considered the oldest CHAP, xv ART 307 ~~ statue of a divinity in Rome, 1 exactly resembled the Massiliot Statue of the Ephesian Artemis, and was perhaps manufac- tured in Velia or Massilia. The guilds, which from ancient "-times existed in Rome, of potters, coppersmiths, and gold- / smiths (p. 249), are almost the only proofs of the existence of native sculpture and design there ; respecting the position of their art it is no longer possible to gain any clear idea. If we endeavour to obtain historical results from the Artistic re archives of the tradition and practice of primitive art, it is in the first place manifest that Italian art, like the Italian ments of measures and Italian writing, developed itself not under ca ^ s a ^ s Phoenician, but exclusively under Hellenic influence. There Italians. is not a single one of the aspects of Italian art which has not found its definite model in the art of ancient Greece ; and, so far, the legend is fully warranted which traces the manufacture of painted clay figures, beyond doubt the most ancient form of art in Italy, to the three Greek artists, the "moulder," "fitter," and "draughtsman," Eucheir, Diopos, and Eugrammos, although it is more than doubtful whether this art came directly from Corinth or came directly to Tarquinii. There is as little trace of any immediate imi- tation of oriental models as there is of an independently- developed form of art. The Etruscan lapidaries adhered to the form of the beetle or scarabaeus, which was originally Egyptian ; but scarabaei were also used as models for carv- ing in Greece in very early times (e.g, such a beetle-stone, with a very ancient Greek inscription, has been found in Aegina), and therefore they may very well have come to the Etruscans through the Greeks. The Italians may have bought from the Phoenician ; they learned only from the Greek. 1 When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31 ; com p. Plutarch Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and, beyond doubt, was the first 578, 535. statue of the gods, the consecration of which was mentioned in the authori- ties which Varro had before him. Comp. above, p. 280. 308 ART BOOK i To the further question, from what Greek stock the Etruscans in the first instance received their art- models, a categorical answer cannot be given ; yet relations of a re- markable kind subsist between the Etruscan and the oldest Attic art. The three forms of art, which were practised in Etruria at least in after times very extensively, but in Greece only to an extent very limited, tomb -painting, mirror- designing, and graving on stone, have been hitherto met with on Grecian soil only in Athens and Aegina. The Tuscan temple does not correspond exactly either to the Doric or to the Ionic ; but in the more important points of distinction, in the course of columns carried round the cella, as well as in the placing of a separate pedestal under each particular column, the Etruscan style follows the more recent Ionic ; and it is this same lono-Attic style of building still pervaded by a Doric element, which in its general design stands nearest of all the Greek styles to the Tuscan. In the case of Latium there is an almost total absence of any certain traces of intercourse bearing on the history of art. If it was as is indeed almost self-evident the general relations of traffic and intercourse that determined also the introduction of models in art, it may be assumed with certainty that the Campanian and Sicilian Hellenes were the instructors of Latium in art, as in the alphabet ; and the analogy between the Aventine Diana and the Ephesian Artemis is at least not inconsistent with such an hypothesis. Of course the older Etruscan art also served as a model for Latium. As to the Sabellian tribes, if Greek architectural and plastic art reached them at all, it must, like the Greek alphabet, have come to them only through the medium of the more western Italian stocks. If, in conclusion, we are to form a judgment respecting the artistic endowments of the different Italian nations, we already at this stage perceive what becomes indeed far more obvious in the later stages of the history of art that CHAP, xv ART 309 while the Etruscans attained to the practice of art at an earlier period and produced more massive and rich workman- ship, their works are inferior to those of the Latins and Sabellians in appropriateness and utility no less than in spirit and beauty. This certainly is apparent, in the case of our present epoch, only in architecture. The polygonal wall- masonry, as appropriate to its object as it was beautiful, was frequent in Latium and in the inland country behind it ; while in Etruria it was rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal blocks. Even in the religious prominence remarkable also as respects the history of art assigned to the arch (p. 213) and to the bridge (p. 2 1 9) in Latium, we may be allowed to perceive, as it were, an antici- pation of the future aqueducts and consular highways of Rome. On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks : for while they transferred the laws established for building in stone to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy appearance." The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek art but very little that was congenial to their thoroughly realistic tastes ; but what they did adopt they appropriated truly and heartily as their own, and in the development of the polygonal wall- architecture perhaps excelled their instructors. Etruscan art is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an evidence even of genial receptivity. As scholars have long since desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place in the history of Italian art. BOOK SECOND FROM THE ABOLITION OF THE MONARCHY IN ROME TO THE UNION OF ITALY - 5e? owe (KTr\-f]TTeiv rbv ffvyypata Tepa.Tev6fj.evov dia TTJS IffToptas rota tvTvyxdvovTas. POLYBIUS. CHAPTE-R I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION LIMITATION OF THE POWER OF THE MAGISTRATE THE strict conception of the unity and omnipotence of the Political state in all matters pertaining to it, which was the central di principle of the Italian constitutions, placed in the hands in Rome of the single president nominated for life a formidable power, which was felt doubtless by the enemies of the land, but was not less heavily felt by its citizens. Abuse and oppression could not fail to ensue, and, as a necessary consequence, efforts were made to lessen that power. It was, however, the grand distinction of the endeavours after reform and the revolutions in Rome, that there was no attempt either to impose limitations on the community as such or even to deprive it of corresponding organs of expression that there never was any endeavour to assert the so-called natural rights of the individual in contra- distinction to the community that, on the contrary, the attack was wholly directed against the form in which the community was represented. From the times of the Tarquins down to those of the Gracchi the cry of the party of progress in Rome was not for limitation of the power of the state, but for limitation of the power of the ^magistrates : nor amidst that cry was the truth ever forgotten, that the people ought not to govern, but to be governed. This struggle was carried on within the burgess-body. 314 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n Side by side with it another movement developed itself the cry of the non-burgesses for equality of political privileges. Under this head are included the agitations of the plebeians, the Latins, the Italians, and the freedmen, all of whom whether they may have borne the name of burgesses, as did the plebeians and the freedmen, or not, as was the case with the Latins and Italians were destitute of, and desired, political equality. A third distinction was one of a still more general nature ; the distinction between the wealthy and the poor, especially such as had been dispossessed or were en- dangered in possession. The legal and political relations of Rome led to the rise of a numerous class of farmers partly small proprietors who were dependent on the mercy of the capitalist, partly small temporary lessees who were dependent on the mercy of the landlord and in many instances deprived individuals as well as whole communities of the lands which they held, without affecting their - personal freedom. By these means the agricultural prole- tariate became at an early period so powerful as to have a material influence on the destinies of the community. The urban proletariate did not acquire political importance till a much later epoch. On these distinctions hinged the internal history of Rome, and, as may be presumed, not less the history totally lost to us of the other Italian communities. The political movement within the fully-privileged burgess-body, the warfare between the excluded and excluding classes, and the social conflicts between the possessors and the non-possessors of land variously as they crossed and interlaced, and singular as were the alliances they often ' produced were nevertheless essentially and fundamentally distinct. As the Servian reform, which placed the metoikos on a footing of equality in a military point of view with the CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 315 burgess, appears to have originated from considerations of Abolition an administrative nature rather than from any political party-tendency, we rnay assume that the first of the move- of the com- ments which led to internal crises and changes of the constitution was that which sought to limit the magistracy. The earliest achievement of this, the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community ; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy. How necessarily this was the result of the natural development of things, is most strikingly demonstrated by the fact, that the same change of constitution took place in an analogous manner through the whole circuit of the Italo-Grecian world. Not only in Rome, but likewise among the other Latins as well as among the Sabellians, Etruscans, and Apulians and generally, in all the Italian communities, just as in those of Greece we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In the case of the Lucanian canton there is evidence that it had- a democratic government in time of peace, and it was only. in the event of war that the magistrates appointed a king, that is, an official similar to the Roman dictator. The, Sabellian civic communities, such as those of Capua and Pompeii, in like manner were in later times governed by a "community-manager" (medix tuticus) changed from year to year, and we may assume that similar institutions existed . among the other national and civic communities of Italy. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of consuls for kings i'n Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity developed of itself by a sort of natural necessity the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term. Simple, however, as was the cause of this change, it might be brought about in various ways ; a resolution might be adopted on the death of one life-ruler CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION Expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. not to elect another a course which the Roman senate is said to have attempted after the death of Romulus ; or the ruler might voluntarily abdicate, as is alleged to have been the intention of king Servius Tullius ; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was termin- ated in Rome. For however much the history of the ex- pulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud," may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers ; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors ; that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labour and task-work beyond what was due. The exasperation of the people is attested by the formal vow which they made man by man for themselves and for -their posterity that thenceforth they would never tolerate a king ; by the blind hatred with which the name of king was ever afterwards regarded in Rome ; and above all by the enactment that the " king for offering sacrifice " (rex sacrorum or sacrificidus) whom they considered it their duty to create that the gods might not miss their accustomed mediator should be disqualified from holding any further office, so that this man became the foremost indeed, but also the most powerless in the Roman common- wealth. Along with the last king all the members of his clan were banished a proof how close at that time gentile ties still were. The Tarquinii thereupon transferred them- selves to Caere, perhaps their ancient home (p. 1 5 9), where their family tomb has recently been discovered. In the room of the one president holding office for life two annual CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 317 rulers were now placed at the head of the Roman com- munity. This is all that can be looked upon as historically certain in reference to this important event. 1 It is con- ceivable that in a great community with extensive dominion like the Roman the royal power, particularly if it had been in the same farcnly for several generations, would be more capable of resistance, and the struggle would thus be keener, than in the smaller states ; but there is no certain indication of any interference by foreign states in the struggle. The great war with Etruria which possibly, moreover, has been placed so close upon the expulsion of the Tarquins only in consequence of chronological confusion in the Roman annals cannot be regarded as an intervention of Etruria in favour of a countryman who had been injured in Rome, for the very sufficient reason that the Etruscans notwithstanding their complete victory neither restored the Roman monarchy, nor even brought back the Tarquinian family. If we are left in ignorance of the historical connections Powers of this important event, we are fortunately in possession of clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution. The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the very fact that, when a vacancy occurred afterwards as before, an " interim king " (interreot) was nominated. The one life-king was simply replaced by 1 The well-known fable for the most part refutes itself. To a consider- able extent it has been concocted for the explanation of surnames (Brutus, Poplicola, Scaevola). But even its apparently historical ingredients are found on closer examination to have been invented. Of this character is the statement that Brutus was captain of the horsemen (tribunus celerum] and in that capacity proposed the decree of the people as to the banishment of the Tarquins ; for, according to the Roman constitution, it is quite Hn- possible that a mere officer should have had the right to convoke the curies. The whole of this statement has evidently been invented with the view of furnishing a legal basis for the Roman republic ; and very ill invented it is, for in its case the tribunus celerum is confounded with the entirely different magister equitum (p. go/. ), and then the right of convoking the centuries which pertained to the latter by virtue of his praetorian rank is made to apply to the assembly of the curies. 3i8 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n two year-kings, who called themselves generals (fraetores), or judges (indices), or merely colleagues (consults)?- The principles of collegiate tenure and of annual duration are those which distinguish the republic from the monarchy, and they first meet us here. Collegiate The collegiate principle, from which the third and subsequently most current name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king. This was carried so far that, instead of one of the two colleagues undertaking perhaps the administration of justice, and the other the command of the army, they both administered justice simultaneously in the city just as they both set out together to the army ; in case of collision the matter was decided by a rotation measured by months or days. A certain partition of functions withal, at least in the supreme military command, might doubtless take place from the outset the one consul for example taking the field against the Aequi, and the other against the Volsci but it had in no wise binding force, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other. When, therefore, supreme power confronted supreme power and the one colleague forbade what the other enjoined, the consular commands neutralized each other. This peculiarly Latin, if not peculiarly Roman, institution of co-ordinate supreme authorities which in the Roman commonwealth on the whole approved itself as practicable, but to which it will be difficult to find a parallel in any other considerable state manifestly sprang out of the endeavour to retain the regal power in legally undiminished fulness. They were thus 1 Consules are those who ' ' leap or dance together, " as praesul is one who "leaps before," exul, one who "leaps out" (6 tKireff&v), insula, a " leap into," primarily applied to a mass of rock fallen into the sea. CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 319 led not to break up the royal office into parts or to transfer it from an individual to a college, but simply to double it and thereby, if necessary, to neutralize it through its own action. As regards the termination of their tenure of office, the Term of earlier interregnum of five days furnished a legal precedent. The ordinary presidents of the community were bound not to remain in office longer than a year reckoned from the day of their entering on their functions ; x and they ceased de jure to be magistrates upon the expiry of the year, just as the interrex on the expiry of the five days. Through this set termination of the supreme office the practical irresponsibility of the king was lost in the case of the consul. It is true that the king was always in the Roman common- wealth subject, and not superior, to the law ; but, as according to the Roman view the supreme judge could not be prosecuted at his own bar, the king might doubtless have committed a crime, but there was for him no tribunal and no punishment. The consul, again, if he had committed murder or treason, was protected by his office, but only so long as it lasted ; on his retirement he was liable to the ordinary penal jurisdiction like any other burgess. To these leading changes, affecting the principles of the constitution, other restrictions were added of a subordinate and more external character, some of which nevertheless produced a deep effect. The privilege of the king to have his fields tilled by task-work of the burgesses, and the special relation of clientship in which the metoeci as a body must 1 The day of entering on office did not coincide with the beginning of the year (ist March), and was not at all fixed. The day of retiring was regulated by it, except when a consul was elected expressly in room of one who had dropped out (consul suffectus) ; in which case the substitute succeeded to the rights and consequently to the term of him whom he re- placed. But these supplementary consuls in the earlier period only occurred when merely one of the consuls had dropped out : pairs of supplementary consuls are not found until the later ages of the republic. Ordinarily, therefore, the official year of a consul consisted of unequal portions of two civil years. 320 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n have stood to the king, ceased of themselves with the life tenure of the office. Right of Hitherto in criminal processes as well as in fines and cor- a PP ea poral punishments it had been the province of the king not only to investigate and decide the cause, but also to decide whether the person found guilty should or should not be allowed to appeal for pardon. The Valerian law now (in 509. 245) enacted that the consul must allow the appeal of the condemned, where sentence of capital or corporal punish- ment had been pronounced otherwise than by. martial law a regulation which by a later law (of uncertain date, but 451. passed before 303) was extended to heavy fines. In token of this right of appeal, when the consul appeared in the capacity of judge and not of general, the consular lictors laid aside the axes which they had previously carried by virtue of the penal jurisdiction belonging to their master. The law however threatened the magistrate, who did not allow due course to the provocatio^ with no other penalty than infamy which, as matters then stood, was essentially nothing but a moral stain, and at the utmost only had the effect of disqualifying the infamous person from giving testimony. Here too the course followed was based on the same view, that it was in law impossible to diminish the old regal powers, and that the checks imposed upon the holder of the supreme authority in consequence of the revolution had, strictly viewed, only a practical and moral value. When therefore the consul acted within the old regal jurisdiction, he might in so acting perpetrate an injustice, but he committed no crime and consequently was not amenable for what he did to the penal judge. A limitation similar in its tendency took place in the civil jurisdiction ; for probably there was taken from the consuls at the very outset the right of deciding at their discretion a legal dispute between private persons. The remodelling of the criminal as of civil procedure stood CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 321 in connection with a general arrangement respecting the Restric- transference of magisterial power to deputies or successors, ^^g While the king had been absolutely at liberty to nominate tion of deputies but had never been compelled to do so, the pov consuls exercised the right of delegating power in an essentially different way. No doubt the rule that, if the supreme magistrate left the city, he had to appoint a * warden there for the administration of justice (p. 83), remained in force also for the consuls, and the collegiate arrangement was not even extended to such delegation ; on the contrary this appointment was laid on the consul who was the last to leave the city. But the right of dele- gation for the time when the consuls remained in the city was probably restricted, upon the very introduction of this office, by providing that delegation should be prescribed to the consul for definite cases, but should be prohibited for all cases in which it was not so prescribed. According to this principle, as we have said, the whole judicial system was organized. The consul could certainly exercise criminal jurisdiction also as to a capital process in the way of submitting his sentence to the community and having it thereupon confirmed or rejected ; but he never, so far as we see, exercised this right, perhaps was soon not allowed to exercise it, and possibly pronounced a criminal judgment only in the case of appeal to the community being for any reason excluded. Direct conflict between the supreme magistrate of the community and the community itself was avoided, and the criminal procedure was organized really in such a way, that the supreme magistracy remained only in theory competent, but always acted through deputies who were necessary though appointed by himself. These were the two not standing pronouncers-of-judgment for revolt and high treason (dnoviri perduellionis) and the two standing trackers of murder, the quaestores parricidii. Something similar may perhaps have occurred in the regal VOL. I 21 322 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK it period, where the king had himself represented in such processes (p. 191); but the standing character of the latter institution, and the collegiate principle carried out in both, belong at any rate to the republic. The latter arrangement became of great importance also, in so far that thereby for the first time alongside of the two standing supreme magistrates were placed two assistants, whom each supreme magistrate nominated at his entrance on office, and who in due course also went out with him on his leaving it whose position thus, like the supreme magistracy itself, was organized accord- ing to the principles of a standing office, of a collegiate form, and of an annual tenure. This was not indeed as yet the inferior magistracy itself, at least not in the sense which the republic associated with the magisterial position, inas- much as the commissioners did not emanate from the choice of the community ; but it doubtless became the starting- point for the institution of subordinate magistrates, which was afterwards developed in so manifold ways. In a similar way the decision in civil procedure was withdrawn from the supreme magistracy, inasmuch as the right of the king to transfer an individual process for decision to a deputy was converted into -the duty of the consul, after settling the legitimate title of the party and the object of the suit, to refer the disposal of it to a private man to be selected by him and furnished by him with instruc- tions. In like manner there was left to the consuls the im- portant administration of the state-treasure and of the state-archives ; nevertheless probably at once, or at least very early, there were associated with them standing assistants in that duty, namely, those quaestors who, doubtless, had in exercising this function absolutely to obey them, but without whose previous knowledge and co-operation the consuls coald not act. Where on the other hand such directions were not in CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 323 existence, the president of the community in the capital had personally to intervene ; as indeed, for example, at the introductory steps of a process he could not under any circumstances let himself be represented by deputy. This double restriction of the consular right of delegation subsisted for the government of the city, and primarily for the administration of justice and of the state-chest. As com- mander-in-chief, on the other hand, the consul retained the right of handing over all or any of the duties devolving on him. This diversity in the treatment of civil and military delegation explains why in the government of the Roman community proper no delegated magisterial authority (pro magistrate) was possible,, nor were purely urban magistrates ever represented by non-magistrates ; and why, on the other hand, military deputies (pro console, pro praetore, pro quaestore) were excluded from all action within the com- munity proper. The right of nominating a successor had not been possessed Nomina- by the king, but only by the interrex (p. 99). The consul s c n ce f sor was in this respect placed on a like footing with the latter ; nevertheless, in the event of his not having exercised the power, the interrex stepped in as before, and the necessary continuity of the office subsisted still undiminished under the republican government. The right of nomination, how- ever, was materially restricted in favour of the burgesses, as the consul was bound to procure the assent of the burgesses for the successors designated by him, and, in the sequel, to nominate only those whom the community designated to him. Through this binding right of proposal the nomination of the ordinary supreme magistrates doubt- less in a certain sense passed substantially into the hands of the community ; practically, however, there still existed a very considerable distinction between that right of proposal' ' and the right of formal nomination. The consul conducting the election was by no means a mere returning officer ; he 324 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK II Change in the nomi- nation of priests. could still, e.g. by virtue of his old royal prerogative reject particular candidates and disregard the votes tendered for them ; at first he might even limit the choice to a list of candidates proposed by himself; and what was of still more consequence when the collegiate consulship was to be supplemented by the dictator, of whom we shall speak immediately, in so supplementing it the community was not consulted, but on the contrary the consul in that case appointed his colleague with the same freedom, wherewith the interrex had once appointed the king. The nomination of the priests, which had been a pre- rogative of the kings (p. 81), was not transferred to the consuls; but tlje colleges of priests filled up the vacancies in their own ranks, while the. Vestals. and single priests were nominated by the pontifical college, on which devolved also" the exercise of the paternal jurisdiction, so to speak, of the community over the priestesses of Vesta. With a view to the performance of these acts, which could only be properly performed by a single individual, the college probably about this period first nominated a president, the Pontifex maximus. This separation of the supreme authority in things sacred from the civil power while the already- mentioned "king for sacrifice" had neither the civil nor the sacred powers of the king, but simply the title, conferred upon him and the semi-magisterial position of the new high priest, so decidedly contrasting with the character which otherwise marked the priesthood in Rome, form one of the most significant and important peculiarities of this state-revolution, the aim of which was to impose limits on the powers of the magistrates mainly in the interest of the aristocracy. We have already mentioned that the outward state of the consul was far inferior to that of the regal office hedged round as it was with reverence and terror, that the regal name and the priestly consecration were with- CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 325 held from him, and that the axe was taken away from his attendants. We have to add that, instead of the purple robe which the king had worn, the consul was distinguished from the ordinary burgess simply by the purple border of his toga, and that, while the king perhaps regularly appeared in public in his chariot, the consul was' bound to accommodate himself to the general rule and like every other burgess to go within the city on foot. f These limitations, however, of the plenary power and The of the insignia of the magistracy applied in the main only to the ordinary presidency of the community. In extra- ordinary cases, alongside of, and in a certain sense instead of, the two presidents chosen by the community there emerged a single one, the master of the army (magister populi) usually designated as the dictator. In the choice of dictator the community exercised no influence at all, but it proceeded solely from the free resolve of one of the consuls for the time being, whose action neither his colleague nor any other authority could hinder. There was no appeal from his sentence any more than from that of the king, unless he chose to allow it. As soon as he was nominated, all the other magistrates were by right subject to his authority. On the other hand the duration of the dictator's office was limited in two ways : first, as the official colleague of those consuls, one of whom had nominated him, he might not remain in office beyond their legal term ; and secondly, a period of six months was fixed as the absolute maximum for the dura- tion of his office. It was a further arrangement peculiar to the dictatorship, that the "master of the army" was bound to nominate for himself immediately a " master of horse " (magister equitunt), who acted along with him as a dependent assistant somewhat as did the quaestor along with the consul, and ^with him retired from office an arrangement undoubtedly connected with the fact that the 326 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n _ dictator, presumably as being the leader of the infantry, was ^constitutionally prohibited from mounting on horseback. Tn the light of these regulations the dictatorship is doubtless to be conceived as an institution which arose at the same time with the consulship, and which was designed, especially in the event of war, to obviate for a time the disadvantages of divided power and to revive temporarily the regal authority ; for in war more particularly the equality of rights in the consuls could not but appear fraught with danger; and not only positive testimonies, but above all the oldest names given to the magistrate himself and his assistant, as well as the limitation of the office to the dura- tion of a summer campaign, and the exclusion of the provocatio^ attest the pre-eminently military design of the original dictatorship. On the whole, therefore, the consuls continued to be, as the kings had been, the supreme administrators, judges, and generals ; and even in a religious point of view it was not the rex sacrorum (who was only nominated that the name might be preserved), but the consul, who offered prayers and sacrifices for the community, and in its name ascertained the will of the gods with the aid of those skilled in sacred lore. Against cases of emergency, more- over, a power was retained of reviving at any moment, without previous consultation of the community, the full and unlimited regal authority, so as to set aside the limita- tions imposed by the collegiate arrangement and by the special curtailments of jurisdiction. In this way the problem of legally retaining and practically restricting the regal authority was solved in genuine Roman fashion with equal acuteness and simplicity by the nameless statesmen who worked out this revolution. Centuries The Community thus acquired by the change of con- and curies. s titution rights of the greatest importance : the right of annually designating its presidents, and that of deciding CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 327 in the last instance regarding the life or death of the burgess. But the body which acquired these rights could not possibly be the community as it had been hitherto constituted the patriciate which had practically become an order of nobility. The strength of the nation lay in the " multitude " (plebs\ which already comprehended in large numbers people of note and of wealth. The exclusion of this multitude from the public assembly, although it bore part of the public burdens, might be tolerated as long as that public assembly itself had no very material share in the working of the state machine, and as long as the royal power- by the very fact of its high and free position re- mained almost equally formidable to the burgesses and to the metoeci and thereby maintained equality of legal redress in the nation. But when the community itself was called regularly to elect and to decide, and the president was practically reduced from its master to its commissioner for a set term, this relation could no longer be maintained as it stood ; least of all when the state had to be remodelled on the morrow of a revolution, which could only have been carried out by the co-operation of the patricians and the metoeci. An extension of that community was inevitable ; and it was accomplished in the most comprehensive manner, inasmuch as the collective plebeiate, that is, all the non- burgesses who were neither slaves nor citizens of extraneous communities living at Rome under the ius hospitii, were admitted into the burgess-body. The curiate assembly of the old burgesses, which hitherto had been legally and practically the first authority in the state, was almost totally deprived of its constitutional prerogatives. It was to retain its previous powers only in acts purely formal or in those which affected clan-relations such as the vow of allegiance to be taken to the consul or to the dictator when they entered on office just as previously to the king (p. 81), and the legal dispensations requisite for an arrogatio or a testa- 328 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n ment but it was not in future to perform any act of a properly political character. Soon even the plebeians were admitted to the right of voting also in the curies, and by that step the old burgess-body lost the right of meeting and of resolving at all. The curial organization was virtually rooted out, in so far as it was based on the clan-organization and this latter was to be found in its purity exclusively among the old burgesses. When the plebeians were admitted into the curies, they were certainly also allowed to constitute themselves de jure as what in the earlier period they could only have been de facto (p. 1 1 o) families and clans ; but it is distinctly recorded by tradition and in itself also very conceivable, that only a portion of the plebeians proceeded so far as to constitute gentes, and thus the new curiate assembly, in opposition to its original character, included numerous members who belonged to no clan. All the political prerogatives of the public assembly as well the decision on appeals in criminal causes, which 'in- deed were essentially political processes, as the nomination of magistrates and the adoption or rejection of laws were transferred to, or were now acquired by, the assembled levy of those bound to military service ; so that the centuries now received the rights, as they had previously borne the burdens, of citizens. In this way the small initial movements made by the Servian constitution such as, in particular, the handing over to the army the right of assenting to the declaration of an aggressive war (p. 121) attained such a development that the curies were completely and for ever cast into the shade by the assembly of the centuries, and people became accustomed to regard the latter as the sovereign people. In this assembly debate took place merely when the presiding magistrate chose himself to speak or bade others do so ; of course in cases of appeal both parties had to be heard. A simple majority of the centuries was decisive. CHAP. I .CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 329 As in the curiate assembly those who were entitled to vote at all were on a footing of entire equality, and therefore after the admission of all the plebeians into the curies the result would have been a complete democracy, it may be easily conceived that the decision of political questions continued to be withheld from the curies ; the centuriate assembly placed the preponderating influence, not in the hands of the nobles certainly, but in those of the possessors . of property, and the important privilege of priority in voting, which often practically decided the election, placed it in the hands of the equites or, in other words, of the rich. The senate was not affected by the reform of the consti- Senate, tution in the same way as the community. The previously existing college of elders not only continued exclusively patrician, but retained also its essential prerogatives the right of appointing the interrex, and of confirming or re- jecting the resolutions adopted by the community as consti- tutional or unconstitutional. In fact these prerogatives were enhanced by the reform of the constitution, because the appointment of the magistrates also, which fell to be made by election of the community, was thenceforth subject to the confirmation or rejection of the patrician senate. In cases of appeal alone its confirmation, so far as we know, was never deemed requisite, because in these the matter at stake was the pardon of the guilty and, when this was granted by the sovereign assembly of the people, any cancelling of such an act was wholly out of the question. But, although by the abolition of the monarchy the constitutional rights of the patrician senate were increased rather than diminished, there yet took place and that, according to tradition, immediately on the abolition of the monarchy so far as regards other affairs which fell to be discussed in the senate and admitted of a freer treatment, an enlargement of that body, which brought into it plebeians - x , 330 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n also, and which in its consequences led to a complete remodelling of the whole. From the earliest times the senate had acted also, although not solely or especially, as a state-council ; and, while probably even in the time of the kings it was not regarded as unconstitutional for non- senators in this case to take part in the assembly (p. 102), it was now arranged that for such discussions there should be associated with the patrician senate (patres) a number of non-patricians "added to the roll" (conscripti). This did not at all put them on a footing of equality; the plebeians in the senate did not become senators, but remained members of the equestrian order, were not designated patres but were even now conscripti, and had no right to the badge of senatorial dignity, the red shoe (p. 99). Moreover, they not only remained absolutely excluded from the exercise of the magisterial prerogatives belonging to the senate (auctoritas\ but were obliged, even where the question had reference merely to an advice (consilium), to rest content with the privilege of being present in silence while the question was put to the patri- cians in turn, and of only indicating their opinion by adding to the numbers when the division was taken voting with the feet (pedtbus in sententiam ire, pedarii] as the proud nobility expressed it. Nevertheless, the plebeians found their way through the new constitution not merely to the Forum, but also to the senate-house, and the first and most difficult step towards equality of rights was taken in this quarter also. Otherwise there was no material change in the arrange- ments affecting the senate. Among the patrician members a distinction of rank soon came to be recognized, especially in putting the vote : those who were proximately designated for the supreme magistracy, or who had already administered it, were entered on the list and were called upon to vote before the rest ; and the position of the first of them, the CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 331 foreman of the senate (princeps senatus), soon became a highly coveted place of honour. The consul in office, on the other hand, no more ranked as a member of senate than did the king, and therefore in taking the votes did not include his own. The selection of the members both of the narrower patrician senate and of those merely added to the roll fell to be made by the consuls just as formerly by the kings ; but the nature of the case implied that, while the king had still perhaps some measure of regard to the representation of the several clans in the senate, this con- sideration was of no account so far as concerned the plebeians, among whom the clan-organization was but im- perfectly developed, and consequently the relation of the senate to that organization in general fell more and more into abeyance. We have no information that the electing consuls were restricted from admitting more than a definite number of plebeians to the senate ; nor was there need for such a regulation, because the consuls themselves belonged to the nobility. On the other hand probably from the outset the consul was in virtue of his very position practi- cally far less free, -and far more bound by the opinions of his order and by custom, in the appointment of senators than the king. The rule in particular, that the holding of the consulship should necessarily be followed by admission to the senate for life, if, as was probably the case at this time, the consul was not yet a member of it at the time of his election, must have in all probability very early acquired consuetudinary force. In like manner it seems to have become early the custom not to fill up the senators' places immediately on their falling vacant, but to revise and complete the roll of the senate on occasion of the census, consequently, as a rule, every fourth year; which also involved a not unimportant restriction on the authority entrusted with the selection. The whole number of the senators remained as before, and in this the conscripti were 332 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n Conser- character of the also included ; from which fact we are probably entitled to infer the numerical falling off of the patriciate. 1 We thus see that in the Roman commonwealth, even on ^ e convers i n f tne monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained. So far as a revolution in a state can be conservative at all, this one was so ; not one of the constituent elements of the commonwealth was really over- thrown by it. This circumstance indicates the character of the whole movement. The expulsion of the Tarquins was not, as the pitiful and deeply falsified accounts of it represent, the work of a people carried away by sympathy and enthusiasm for liberty, but the work of two great political parties already engaged in conflict, and clearly aware that their conflict would steadily continue the old burgesses and the metoed who, like the English Whigs and Tories in 1688, were for a moment united by the common danger which threatened to convert the common- wealth into the arbitrary government of a despot, and differed again as soon as the danger was over. The old burgesses could not get rid of the monarchy without the co- operation of the new burgesses; but the new burgesses were far from being sufficiently strong to wrest the power out of the hands of the former at one blow. Compromises of this sort are necessarily limited to the smallest measure of mutual concessions obtained by tedious bargaining ; and they leave the future to decide which of the constituent elements shall eventually preponderate, and whether they will work harmoniously together or counteract one another. To look therefore merely to the direct innovations, possibly to the mere change in the duration of the supreme magistracy, is altogether to mistake the broad import of the first Roman revolution : its indirect effects were by far the 1 That the first consuls admitted to the senate 164 plebeians, is hnnlly to be regarded as a historical fact, but rather as a proof that the later Roman archaeologists were unable to point out more than 136 gcntes of ^ the Roman nobility (Rom. Forsch. \. 121). CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 333 most important, and vaster doubtless than even its authors anticipated. This, in short, was the time when the Roman burgess- The new body in the later sense of the term originated. The community, plebeians had hitherto been metoeci, who were subjected to their share of taxes and burdens, but who were nevertheless in the eye of the law really nothing but tolerated aliens, between whose position and that of foreigners proper it may have seemed hardly necessary to draw a definite line of distinction. They were now enrolled in the lists as burgesses liable to military service, and, although they were . still far from being on a footing of legal equality although the old burgesses still remained exclusively entitled to perform the acts of authority constitutionally pertaining to the council of elders, and exclusively eligible to the civil magistracies and priesthoods, nay even by preference entitled to participate in the usufructs of burgesses, such as the joint use of the public pasture yet the first and most difficult step towards complete equalization was gained from the time when the plebeians no longer served merely in the common levy, but also voted in the common assembly and in the common council when its opinion was asked, and the head and back of the poorest metoikos were as well protected by the right of appeal as those of the noblest of the old burgesses. One consequence of this amalgamation of the patricians and plebeians in a new corporation of Roman burgesses was the conversion of the old burgesses into a clan-nobility, which was incapable of receiving additions or even of filling up its own ranks, since the nobles no longer pos- sessed the right of passing decrees in common assembly and the adoption of new families into the nobility by decree of the community appeared still less admissible. Under the kings the ranks of the Roman nobility had not been thus closed, and the admission of new clans was no very 334 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n \ rare occurrence : now this genuine characteristic of patri- cianism made its appearance as the sure herald of the speedy loss of its political privileges and of its exclusive estimation in the community. The exclusion of the plebeians from all public magistracies and public priesthoods while they were admissible to the position of officers and senators and the maintenance, with perverse obstinacy, of the legal impossibility of marriage between old burgesses and plebeians, further impressed on the patriciate from the out- set the stamp of an exclusive and wrongly privileged aristocracy. A second consequence of the new union of the burgesses must have been a more definite regulation of the right ot settlement, with reference both to the Latin confederates and to other states. It became necessary not so much on account of the right of suffrage in the centuries (which indeed belonged only to the freeholder) as on account of the right of appeal, which was intended to be conceded to the plebeian, but not to the foreigner dwelling for a time or even permanently in Rome to express more precisely the conditions of the acquisition of plebeian rights, and to mark off the enlarged burgess-body in its turn from those who were now the non-burgesses. To this epoch therefore we may trace back in the views and feelings of the people both the invidiousness of the distinction between patricians and plebeians, and the strict and haughty line of demarcation between cives Romani and aliens. But the former civic distinction was in its nature transient, while the latter political one was permanent ; and the sense of political unity and rising greatness, which was thus im- planted in the heart of the nation, was expansive enough first to undermine and then to carry away with its mighty current those paltry distinctions. Law and It was at this period, moreover, that law and edict were separated. The distinction indeed had its foundation in CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 335 the essential character of the Roman state ; for even the regal power in Rome was subordinate, not superior, to the law of the land. But the profound and practical veneration, which the Romans, like every other people of political capacity, cherished for the principle of authority, gave birth to the remarkable rule of Roman constitutional and private law, that every command of the magistrate not based upon a law was at least valid during his tenure of office, although it expired with that tenure. It is evident that in this view, so long as the presidents were nominated for life, the dis- tinction between law and edict must have practically been almost lost sight of, and the legislative activity of the public assembly could acquire no development. On the other hand it obtained a wide field of action after the presidents were changed annually ; and the fact was now by no means void of practical importance, that, if the consul in deciding a process committed a legal informality, his successor could institute a fresh trial of the cause. It was at this period, finally, that the provinces of civil Civil and and military authority were separated. In the former the law ruled, in the latter the axe : the former was governed by the constitutional checks of the right of appeal and of regulated delegation; in the latter the general held an absolute sway like the king. 1 It was an established prin- ciple, that the general and the army as such should not under ordinary circumstances enter the city proper. That organic and permanently operative enactments could only be made under the authority of the civil power, was implied in the spirit, if not in the letter, of the constitution. Instances indeed occasionally occurred where the general, disregarding this principle, convoked his forces in the camp 1 It may not be superfluous to remark, that the indicium legitimum, as well as that quod imperio continetur, rested on the imperium of the directing magistrate, and the distinction only consisted in the circumstance that the imperium was in the former case limited by the lex, while in the latter it was free. 336 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n as a burgess assembly, nor was a decree passed under such circumstances legally void ; but custom disapproved of such a proceeding, and it soon fell into disuse as though it had been forbidden. The distinction between Quirites and soldiers became more and more deeply rooted in the minds of the burgesses. Govern- Time however was required for the development of these patriciate C consequences of the new republicanism ; vividly as posterity felt its effects, the revolution probably appeared to the con- temporary world at first in a different light. The non-bur- gesses indeed gained by it burgess-rights, and the new bur- gess-body acquired in the comitia centuriata comprehensive prerogatives ; but the right of rejection on the part of the patrician senate, which in firm and serried ranks confronted the comitia as i it were an Upper House, legally hampered their freedom of movement precisely in the most important matters, and although not in a position to thwart the serious will of the collective body, could yet practically delay and cripple it. If the nobility in giving up their claim to be the sole embodiment of the community did not seem to have lost much, they had in other respects decidedly gained. The king, it is true, was a patrician as well as the consul, and the right of nominating the members of the senate belonged to the latter as to the former ; but while his exceptional position raised the former no less above the patricians than above the plebeians, and while cases might easily occur in which he would be obliged to lean upon the support of the multitude even against the nobility, the consul ruling for a brief term, but before and after that term simply one of the nobility, and obeying to-morrow the noble fellow-burgess whom he had commanded to-day by no means occupied a position aloof from his order, and the spirit of the noble in him must have been far more power- ful than that of the magistrate. Indeed, if at any time by way of exception a patrician disinclined to the rule of the CHAP. I CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 337 nobility was called to the government, his official authority was paralyzed partly by the priestly colleges, which were pervaded by an intense aristocratic spirit, partly by his colleague, and was easily suspended by the dictatorship ; and, what was of still more moment, he wanted the first element of political power, time. The president of a commonwealth, whatever plenary authority may be conceded to him, will never gain possession of political power, if he does not continue for some considerable time at the head of affairs ; for a necessary condition of every dominion is duration. Consequently the senate appointed for life inevitably acquired and that by virtue chiefly of its title to advise the magistrate in all points, so that we speak not of the narrower patrician, but of the enlarged patricio- plebeian, senate so great an influence as contrasted with the annual rulers, that their legal relations became precisely inverted; the senate substantially assumed to itself the powers of government, and the former ruler sank into a president acting as its chairman and executing its decrees. In the case of every proposal to be submitted to the com- munity for acceptance or rejection the practice of previously consulting the whole senate and obtaining its approval, while not constitutionally necessary, was consecrated by use and wont ; and it was not lightly or willingly departed from. The same course was followed in the case of important state-treaties, of the management and distribution of the public lands, and generally of every act the effects of which extended beyond the official year ; and nothing was left to the consul but the transaction of current business, the initial steps in civil processes, and the command in war. Especially important in its consequences was the change in virtue of which neither the consul, nor even the otherwise absolute dictator, was permitted to touch the public treasure except with the consent and by the .will of the senate. The senate made it obligatory on the consuls to commit VOL. I 22 338 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n the administration of the public chest, which the king had managed or might at any rate have managed himself, to two standing subordinate magistrates, who were nominated no doubt by the consuls and had to obey them, but were, as may easily be conceived, much more dependent than the consuls themselves on the senate (p. 322). It thus drew into its own hands the management of finance ; and this right of sanctioning the expenditure of money on the part of the Roman senate may be placed on a parallel in its- effects with the right of sanctioning taxation in the constitutional monarchies of the present day. The consequences followed as a matter of course. The first and most essential condition of all aristocratic govern- ment is, that the plenary power of the state be vested not in an individual but in a corporation. Now a preponderantly aristocratic corporation, the senate, had appropriated to itself the government, and at the same time the executive power not only remained in the hands of the nobility, but was also entirely subject to the governing corporation. It is true that a considerable number of men not belonging to the nobility sat in the senate ; but as they were incap- able of holding magistracies or even of taking part in the debates, and thus were excluded from all practical share in the government, they necessarily played a subordinate part in the senate, and were moreover kept in pecuniary de- pendence on the corporation through the economically important privilege of using the public pasture. The gradually recognized right of the patrician consuls to revise and modify the senatorial list at least every fourth year, ineffective as presumably it was over against the nobility, might very well be employed in their interest, and an obnoxious plebeian might by means of it be kept out of the senate or even be removed from its ranks. The It is therefore quite true that the immediate effect of the opposulon revolution was to establish the aristocratic government. It CHAP, i CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION 339 is not, however, the whole truth. While the majority of contemporaries probably thought that the revolution had brought upon the plebeians only a more rigid despotism, we who come afterwards discern in that very revolution the germs of young liberty. What the patricians gained was gained at the expense not of the community, but of the magistrate's power. It is true that the community gained only a few narrowly restricted rights, which were far less practical and palpable than the acquisitions of the nobility, and which not one in a thousand probably had the wisdom to value ; but they formed a pledge and earnest of the future. Hitherto the metoeci had been politically nothing, the old burgesses had been everything ; now that the former were embraced in the community, the old burgesses were overcome ; for, however much might still be wanting to full civil equality, it is' the first breach, not the occupation of the last post, that decides the fall of the fortress. With justice therefore the Roman community dated its political existence from the beginning of the consulate. While however the republican revolution may, notwith- standing the aristocratic rule which in the first instance it established, be justly called a victory of the former metoeci or the plebs, the revolution even in this respect bore by no means the character which we are accustomed in the present day to designate as democratic. Pure personal merit without the support of birth and wealth could perhaps gain influence and consideration more easily under the regal government than under that of the patriciate. Then admission to the patriciate was not in law foreclosed; now the highest object of plebeian ambition was to be admitted into the dumb appendage of the senate. The nature of the case implied that the governing aristocratic order, so far as it admitted plebeians at all, would grant the right of occupying seats in the senate not absolutely to the best men, but chiefly to the heads of the wealthy and 340 CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION BOOK n notable plebeian families ; and the families thus admitted^ jealously guarded the possession of the senatorial stalls. While a complete legal equality therefore had subsisted within the old burgess-body, the new burgess-body or former metoeci came to be in this way divided from the first into a number of privileged families and a multitude kept in a position of inferiority. But the power of the com- munity now according to the centuriate organization came into the hands of that class which since the Servian reform of the army and of taxation had borne mainly the burdens of the state, namely the freeholders, and indeed not so much into the hands of the great proprietors or into those of the small cottagers, as into those of the intermediate class of farmers an arrangement in which the seniors were still so far privileged that, although less numerous, they had as many voting-divisions as the juniors. While in this way the axe was laid to the root of the old burgess-body and their clan-nobility, and the basis of a new burgess-body was laid, the preponderance in the latter rested on the possession of land and on age, and the first beginnings were already visible of a new aristocracy based primarily on the actual consideration in which the families were held th^ future nobility. There could be no clearer indication of the fundamentally conservative character of the Roman commonwealth than the fact, that the revolution which gave birth to the republic laid down at the same time the primary outlines of a new organization of the state, which was in like manner conservative and in like nranner aristocratic. THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS 341 CHAPTER II THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS AND THE DECEMVIRATE UNDER the new organization of the commonwealth the old Material burgesses had attained by legal means to the full possession mterests - of political power. Governing through the magistracy which had been reduced to be their servant, preponderating in the senate, in sole possession of all public offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community, the patricians might have long preserved their practical power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim to sole legal authority. It is true that the plebeians could not but be painfully sensible of their political disabilities; but un- doubtedly in the first instance the nobility had not much to fear from a purely political opposition, if it understood the art of keeping the multitude, which desired nothing but equitable administration and protection of its material interests, aloof from political strife. In fact during the first pepiod after the expulsion of the kings we meet with various measures which were intended, or at any rate seemed to be intended, to gain the favour of the commons for the government of the nobility especially on economic grounds. 342 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n The port-dues were reduced ; when the price of grain was high, large quantities of corn were purchased on account of the state, and the trade in salt was made a state-monopoly, in order to supply the citizens with corn and salt at reason- able prices ; lastly, the national festival was prolonged for an additional day. Of the same character was the ordinance which we have already mentioned respecting property fines (p. 320), which was not merely intended in general to set limits to the dangerous fining-prerogative of the magistrates, (but was also, in a significant manner, calculated for the Sespecial protection of the man of small means. The magistrate was prohibited from fining the same man on the same day to an extent beyond two sheep or beyond thirty oxen, without granting leave to appeal ; and the reason of these singular rates can only perhaps be found in the fact, that in the case of the man of small means possessing only a few sheep a different maximum appeared necessary from that fixed for the wealthy proprietor of herds of oxen a considerate regard to the wealth or poverty of the person fined, from which modern legislators might take a lesson. But these regulations were merely superficial ; the main current flowed in the opposite direction. With the change in the constitution there was introduced a comprehensive revolution in the financial and economic relations of Rome. The government of the kings had probably abstained on principle from enhancing the power of capital, and had promoted as far as it could an increase in the number of farms. The new aristocratic government, again, appears to have aimed from the first at the destruction of the middle classes, particularly of the intermediate and smaller holdings of land, and at the development of a domination of landed and moneyed lords on the one hand, and of an agricultural proletariate on the other. The reduction of the port-dues, although upon the whole a popular measure, chiefly benefited the great merchant. CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 343 But a much greater accession to the power of capital was [Rising supplied by the indirect system of finance -administration. j p ?"f er It is difficult to say what were the remote causes that gave Capitalists. rise to it : but, while its origin may probably be referred to the regal period, after the introduction of the consulate the importance of the intervention of private agency must have been greatly increased, partly by the rapid succession of magistrates in Rome, partly by the extension of the financial action of the treasury to such matters as the purchase and sale of grain and salt ; and thus the foundation must have been laid for that system of farming the finances, thef development of which became so momentous and so pernicious for the Roman commonwealth. The state gradually put all its indirect revenues and all its more complicated payments and transactions into the hands of middlemen, who gave or received a round sum and then managed the matter for their own benefit. Of course only/ considerable capitalists and, as the state looked strictly to tangible security, in the main only large landholders, could enter into such engagements : and thus there grew up a class of tax-farmers and contractors, who, in the rapid growth of their wealth, in their power over the state to which they appeared to be servants, and in the absurd and sterile basis of their moneyed dominion, quite admit of comparison with the speculators on the stock exchange of the present day. The concentrated aspect assumed by the administration Public of finance showed itself first and most palpably in the land ' treatment of the public lands, which tended almost directly to accomplish the material and moral annihilation of the middle classes. The use of the public pasture and of the state-domains generally was from its very nature a privilege of burgesses ; formal law excluded the plebeian from the joint use of the common pasture. As however, apart from the conversion of the public land into private property or 344 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n its assignation, Roman law knew no fixed rights of usufruct on the part of individual burgesses to be respected like those of property, it depended solely on the pleasure of the king, so long as the public land remained such, to grant and to define its joint enjoyment; and it is not to be doubted that he frequently made use of his right, or at least his power, as to this matter in favour of plebeians. But on the introduction of the republic the principle was again strictly insisted on, that the use of the common pasture belonged in law merely to the burgess of best right, or in other words to the patrician ; and, though the senate still as before allowed exceptions in favour of the wealthy plebeian houses represented in it, the small plebeian land- holders and the day-labourers, who stood most in need of the common pasture, had its joint enjoyment injuriously withheld from them. Moreover there had hitherto been paid for the cattle driven out on the common pasture a grazing-tax, which was moderate enough to make the right of using that pasture still be regarded as a privilege, and yet yielded no inconsiderable revenue to the public purse. The patrician quaestors were now remiss and indulgent in levying it, and gradually allowed it to fall into desuetude. Hitherto, particularly when new domains were acquired by conquest, allocations of land had been regularly arranged, in which all the poorer burgesses and metoeci were provided for; it was only the land which was not suitable for agriculture that was annexed to the common pasture. The ruling class did not venture wholly to give up such assigna- tions, and still less to propose them merely in favour of the rich ; but they became fewer and scantier, and were replaced by the pernicious system of occupation that is to say, the cession of domain-lands, not in property or under formal lease for a definite term, but in special usufruct until further notice, to the first occupant and his heirs-at- law, so that the state was at any time entitled to resume CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 345 them, and the occupier had to pay the tenth sheaf, or in oil and wine the fifth part of the produce, to the exchequer. This was simply the precarium already described (p. 245) applied to the state-domains, and may have been already in use as to the public land at an earlier period, particularly as a temporary arrangement until its assignation should be carried out. Now, however, not only did this occupation- tenure become permanent, but, as was natural, none but privileged persons or their favourites participated, and the tenth and fifth were collected with the same negligence as the grazing-money. A threefold blow was thus struck at the intermediate and smaller landholders : they were de- prived of the common usufructs of burgesses ; the burden of taxation was increased in consequence of the domain revenues no longer flowing regularly into the public chest ; and those land -allocations were stopped, which had pro- vided a constant outlet for the agricultural proletariate somewhat as a great and well-regulated system of emigration would do at the present day. To these evils was added the farming on a large scale, which was probably already beginning to come into vogue, dispossessing the small agrarian clients, and in their stead cultivating the estates by rural slaves ; a blow, which was more difficult to avert and perhaps more pernicious than all those political usurpations put together. The burdensome and partly unfortunate wars, and the exorbitant taxes and task-works to which these gave rise, filled up the measure of calamity, so as either to deprive the possessor directly of his farm and to make him the bondsman if not the slave of his creditor-lord, or to re- duce him through encumbrances practically to the condition of a temporary lessee of his creditor. The capitalists, to whom a new field was here opened of lucrative speculation unattended by trouble or risk, sometimes augmented in this way their landed property; sometimes they left to the farmer, whose person and estate the law of debt placed in 346 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n their hands, nominal proprietorship and actual possession. The latter course was probably the most common as well as the most pernicious ; for while utter ruin might thereby be averted from the individual, this precarious position of the farmer, dependent at all times on the mercy of his creditor a position in which he knew nothing of property but its burdens threatened to demoralise and politically to anni- hilate the whole farmer-class. The intention of the legislator, when instead of mortgaging he prescribed the immediate transfer of the property to the creditor with a view to prevent insolvency and to devolve the burdens of the state on the real holders of the soil (p. 204), was evaded by the rigorous system of personal credit, which might be very suitable for merchants, but ruined the farmers. The free divisibility of the soil always involved the risk of an insol- vent agricultural proletariate ; and under such circumstances, when all burdens were increasing and all means of deliverance were foreclosed, distress and despair could not but spread with fearful rapidity among the agricultural middle class. Relations The distinction between rich and poor, which arose out of l . h f of these relations, by no means coincided with that between social ques- J tion to the the clans and the plebeians. If far the greater part of the patricians were , wealthy landholders, opulent and con- the orders, siderable families were, of course, not wanting among the -plebeians ; and as the senate, which even then perhaps , ^consisted in greater part of plebeians, had assumed the superintendence of the finances to the exclusion even of the patrician magistrates, it was natural that all those economic advantages, for which the political privileges of the nobility were abused, should go to the benefit of the wealthy collectively ; and the pressure fell the more heavily upon the commons, since those who were the ablest and the most capable of resistance were by their admission to the senate transferred from the class of the oppressed to the ranks of the oppressors. CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 347 But this state of things prevented the political position of the aristocracy from being permanently tenable. Had it possessed the self-control to govern justly and to protect the middle class as individual consuls from its ranks endea- voured, but from the reduced position of the magistracy were unable effectually, to do it might have long maintained itself in sole possession of the offices of state. Had it been willing to admit the wealthy and respectable plebeians to full equality of rights possibly by connecting the acquisition of the patriciate with admission into the senate both might long have governed and speculated with impunity. But neither of these courses was adopted ; the narrowness of mind and short-sightedness, which are the proper and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism, were true to their character also in Rome, and rent the powerful com- monwealth asunder in useless, aimless, and inglorious strife. The immediate crisis however proceeded not from those Secession who felt the disabilities of their order, but from the distress 1 the . Sacred of the farmers. The rectified annals place the political re- Mount, volution in the year 244, the social in the years 259 and 260 ; 510. 495. they certainly appear to have followed close upon each 494t other, but the interval was probably longer. The strict enforcement of the law of debt so runs the story excited - the indignation of the farmers at large. When in the year 259 the levy was called forth for a dangerous war, the men 495. bound to serve refused to obey the command. Thereupon ' the consul Publius Servilius suspended for a time the appli- - cation of the debtor-laws, and gave orders to liberate trie persons already imprisoned for debt as well as prohibited further arrests ; so that the farmers took their places in the ranks and helped to secure the victory. On their return from the field of battle the peace, which had been achieved by their exertions, brought back their prison and their chains : with merciless rigour the second consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the debtor-laws and his colleague, to whom 348 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n his. former soldiers appealed for aid, dared not offer opposi- tion. It seemed as if collegiate rule had been introduced not for the protection of the people, but to facilitate breach of faith and despotism ; they endured, however, what could not be changed. But when in the following year the war was renewed, the word of the consul availed no longer. It was not till Manius Valerius was nominated dictator that the farmers submitted, partly from their awe of the higher magisterial authority, partly from their confidence in his friendly feeling to the popular cause for the Valerii were one of those old patrician clans by whom government was - esteemed a privilege and an honour, not a source of gain. The victory was again with the Roman standards ; but when the victors came home and the dictator submitted his -proposals of reform to the senate, they were thwarted by its obstinate opposition. The army still stood in its array, as usual, before the gates of the city. When the news arrived, the long threatening storm burst forth ; the esprit de corps "and the compact military organization carried even the. timid t and the indifferent along with the movement. The army 1 abandoned its general and its encampment, and under the_ i leadership of the^comrnanders of the legions-rjhe military tribunes, who were at least in great part plebeians=- marched in martial order into the district of Crustumeria between the Tiber and the Anio, where it occupied a hill and threatened to establish in this most fertile part of the Roman territory a new plebeian city. This secession showed in a palpable manner even to the most obstinate of the oppressors that such a civil war must end with economic ruin to themselves ; and the senate gave way. The dic- tator negotiated an agreement ; the citizens returned within the city walls ; unity was outwardly restored. The people gave Manius Valerius thenceforth the name of "the great" (niaximus] and called the mount beyond the Anio "the sacred mount." There was something mighty and elevating CHAP. II AND THE DECEMVIRATE 349 in such a revolution, undertaken by the multitude itself without definite guidance under generals whom accident supplied, and accomplished without bloodshed ; and with pleasure and pride the citizens recalled its memory. Its consequences were felt for many centuries : it was the origin J* of the tribunate of the plebs. In addition to temporary enactments, particularly for plebeian remedying the most urgent distress occasioned by debt, tn ^unes ( and for providing for a number of the rural population by plebeian the founding of various colonies, the dictator carried in aediles - constitutional form a law, which he moreover doubtless in order to secure amnesty to the burgesses for the breach of their military oath caused every individual member of the community to swear to, and then had it deposited in a f temple under the charge and custody of two magistrates, specially appointed from the plebs for the purpose, the twq " house-masters " (aediles). This law placed by the side of the two patrician consuls two plebeian tribunes, who were to be elected by the plebeians assembled in curies. The power of the tribunes was of no avail in opposition to the military imperium, that is, in opposition to the authority of the dictator everywhere or to that of the consuls beyond the city ; but it confronted, on a footing of independence and equality, the ordinary civil powers which the consuls exercised. There was, however, no partition of powers. The tribunes obtained the right which pertained to the consul against his fellow-consul and all the more against an inferior magistrate (p. 318), namely, the right to cancel any com- mand issued by a magistrate, as to which the burgess whom it affected held himself aggrieved and lodged a complaint, through their protest timeously and personally interposed, and likewise of hindering or cancelling at discre- tion any proposal made by a magistrate to the burgesses, in other words, the right of intercession or the so-called tribunician veto. 3So THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK 11 Interces- The power of the tribunes, therefore, primarily involved Slon> the right of putting a stop to administration and to judicial action at their pleasure, of enabling a person bound to military service to withhold himself from the levy with impunity, of preventing or cancelling the raising of an action and legal execution against the debtor, the initiation of a criminal process and the arrest of the accused while the investigation was pending, and other powers of the same sort. That this legal help might not be frustrated by the absence of the helpers, it was further ordained that the tribune should not spend a night out of the city, and_ that his door must stand open day and night. Moreover, it lay in the power of the tribunate of the people through a single word of a single tribune to restrain the adoption of a resolution by the community, which otherwise by virtue of its sovereign right might have without ceremony recalled the privileges conferred by it on the plebs. But these rights would have been ineffective, if there had not belonged to the tribune of the people an instan taneously operative and irresistible power of enforcing them against him who did not regard them, and especially against the magistrate contravening them. This was conferred in such a form that the acting in opposition to the tribune when making use of his right, above all things the laying hands on his person, which at the Sacred Mount every plebeian, man by man for himself and his descendants, had sworn to protect now and in all time to come from all harm, should be a capital crime ; and the exercise of this criminal justice was committed not to the magistrates of the community but to those of the plebs. The tribune might in virtue of this his .judicial office call to account any burgess, especially the consul in office, have him< seized if he should not voluntarily submit, place him under arrest during investigation or allow him to find bail, and then sentence him to death or to a fine. For this CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 351 purpose the two plebeian aediles appointed at the same time were attached to the tribunes as their servants and assistants, primarily to effect arrest, on which account the same inviolable character was assured to them also by the collective oath of the plebeians. Moreover the aediles themselves had judicial powers like the tribunes, but only for the minor causes that might be settled by fines. If an appeal was lodged against the decision of tribune or aedile, it was addressed not to the whole body of the burgesses, with which the officials of the plebs were not entitled at all to transact business, but to the whole body of the plebeians, which in this case met by curies and finally decided by majority of votes. This procedure certainly savoured of violence rather than of justice, especially when it was adopted against a non-plebeian, as must in fact have been ordinarily the case. It was 'not to be reconciled either with the letter or the spirit of the constitution that a patrician should be called to account by authorities who presided not over the body of burgesses, but over an association formed within it, and that he should be compelled to appeal, not to the burgesses, but to this very association. This was originally without question Lynch justice ; but the self-help was doubtless carried into effect from early times in form of law, and was after the legal recognition of the tribunate of the plebs regarded as lawfully admissible. In point of intention this new jurisdiction of the tribunes and the aediles, and the appellate decision of the plebeian assembly therein originating, were beyond doubt just as much bound to the laws as the jurisdiction of the consuls and quaestors and the judgment of the centuries on appeal ; the legal conceptions of crime against the community (p. 1 94) and of offences against order (p. 192) were transferred from the community and its magistrates to the plebs and its champions. But these conceptions were themselves so 3$2 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n little fixed, and their statutory definition was so difficult and indeed impossible, that the administration of justice under these categories from its very nature bore almost inevitably the stamp of arbitrariness. And now when the very idea of right had become obscured amidst the struggles of the orders, and when the legal party-leaders on both sides were furnished with a co-ordinate jurisdiction, this jurisdiction must have more and more approximated to a mere arbitrary police. It affected in particular the magistrate. Hitherto the latter according to Roman state law, so long as he was a magistrate, was amenable to no jurisdiction at all, and, although after demitting his office he might have been legally made responsible for each of his acts, the exercise of this right lay withal in the hands of the members of his own order and ultimately of the collective community, to which these likewise belonged. Now in the tribunician jurisdic- tion there, emerged a new power, which on the one hand might interfere against the supreme magistrate even during his tenure of office, and on the other hand was wielded against the noble burgesses exclusively by the non-noble, and which was the more oppressive that neither the crime nor its punishment was formally defined by law. In reality through the co-ordinate jurisdiction of the plebs and the community the estates, limbs, and lives of the burgesses were abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of the party assemblies. In civil jurisdiction the plebeian institutions interfered only so far, that in the processes affecting freedom, which were so important for the plebs, the nomination of jury- men was withdrawn from the consuls, and the decisions in such cases were pronounced by the "ten-men-judges" destined specially for that purpose (iudices, decemviri, after- wards decemviri litibus iudicandis). Legisk- With this co-ordinate jurisdiction there was further tion ' associated a co-ordinate initiative in legislation. The right CHAP, n AND THE DECEMVIRATE 353 of assembling the members and of procuring decrees on their part already pertained to the tribunes, in so far as no association at all can be conceived without such a right. But it was conferred upon them, in a marked way, by legally securing that the autonomous right of the plebs to assemble and pass resolutions should not be interfered with on the j part of the magistrates of the community or, in fact, of the community itself. At all events it was the necessary pre- liminary to the legal recognition of the plebs generally, that the tribunes could not be hindered from having their succes- sors elected by the assembly of the plebs and from procuring the confirmation of their criminal sentences by the same body ; and this right accordingly was further specially guar- anteed to them by the Icilian law (262), which threatened 492. with severe punishment any one who should interrupt the tribune while speaking, or should bid the assembly disperse. It is evident that under such circumstances the tribune could not well be prevented from taking a vote on other proposals than the choice of his successor and the con- firmation of his sentences. Such "resolves of the multi- tude" (plebi scitd) were not indeed strictly valid decrees of the people ; on the contrary, they were at first little more than are the resolutions of our modern public meetings ; but, as the distinction between the comitia of the people and the councils of the multitude was of a formal nature rather than aught else, the validity of these resolves as autonomous determinations of the community was at once claimed at least on the part of the plebeians, and .the Icilian law for instance was immediately carried in this way. Thus was the tribune of the people appointed as a shield and protection for the individual, and as leader and manager for all, provided with unlimited judicial power in criminal proceedings, that in this way he might give emphasis to his command, and lastly even pronounced to be in his person inviolable (sacrosanctus), inasmuch as VOL. i 23 354 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n whoever laid hands upon him or his servant was not merely regarded as incurring the vengeance of the gods, .but was also among men accounted as if, after legally proven crime, deserving of death. Relation of The tribunes of the multitude {tribuni plebis) arose out to the ^ ^ ie mmtar y tribunes and derived from them their name ; consul. but constitutionally they had no further relation to them. On the contrary, in respect of powers the tribunes of the plebs stood on a level with the consuls. The appeal irom the consul to the tribune, and the tribune's right of inter- cession in opposition to the consul, were, as has been already said, precisely of the same nature with the appeal from consul to consul and the intercession of the one consul in opposition to the other ; and both cases were simply applications of the general principle of law that, where two equal authorities differ, the veto prevails over the command. Moreover the original number (which indeed was soon augmented), and the annual duration of the magistracy, which in the case of the tribunes changed its occupants on the loth of December, were common to the tribunes and the consuls. They shared also the peculiar collegiate arrangement, which placed the full powers of the office in the hands of each individual consul and of each individual tribune, and, when collisions occurred within the college, did not count the votes, but gave the Nay precedence over the Yea ; for which reason, when a tribune forbade, the veto of the individual was sufficient notwithstanding the opposition of his colleagues, while on the other hand, when he brought an accusation, he could be thwarted by any one of those colleagues. Both consuls and tribunes had full and co-ordinate criminal jurisdiction, although the former exercised it indirectly, and the latter directly ; as the two quaestors were attached to the former, the two aediles were associated with the latter. 1 The 1 That the plebeian aediles-were formed after the model of the patrician CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 355 consuls were necessarily patricians, the tribunes necessarily plebeians. The former had the ampler power, the latter the more unlimited, for the consul submitted to the pro- hibition and the judgment of the tribunes, but the tribune did not submit himself to the consul. Thus the tribunician power was a copy of the consular ; but it was none the less a contrast to it. The power of the consuls was essentially positive, that of the tribunes essentially negative. The consuls alone were magistrates of the Roman people, not the tribunes ; for the former were elected by the whole burgesses, the latter only by the plebeian association. In token of this the consul appeared in public with the apparel and retinue pertaining to state-officials ; the tribunes sat on a stool instead of the " chariot seat," and lacked the official attendants, the purple border, and generally all the insignia of magistracy : even in the senate the tribune had neither presidency nor so much as a seat. Thus in this remarkable institution absolute prohibition was in the most stern and abrupt fashion opposed to absolute command ; the quarrel was settled by legally recognizing and regulating the dis- cord between rich and poor. But what was gained by a measure which broke up the Political unity of the state ; which subjected the magistrates to a con- ^^ trolling authority unsteady in its action and dependent on tribunate, all the passions of the moment ; which in the hour of peril ^ might have brought the administration to a dead-lock at the bidding of any one of the opposition chiefs elevated to the quaestors' in the same way as the plebeian tribunes after the model of the patrician consuls, is evident both as regards their criminal functions (in which the distinction between the two magistracies seems to have lain in their tendencies only, not in their powers) and as regards their charge of the archives. The temple of Ceres was to the aediles what the temple of Saturn was to the quaestors, and from the former they derived their name. Significant, injhigjrespect is the enactment of the law of 305 (Liv. iii-S^), 449. that the decrees of the senate should be delivered over to the aediles there' (P- 369), whereas, as is well known, according to the ancient and sub- sequently after the settlement of the struggles between the orders, again preponderant practice those decrees were committed to the quaestors for preservation in the temple of Saturn. . 356 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n rival throne ; and which, by investing all the magistrates with co-ordinate jurisdiction in the administration of criminal law, as it were formally transferred that administration from the domain of law to that of politics and corrupted it for all time coming ? It is true indeed that the tribunate, if it did not directly contribute to the political equalization of the orders, served as a powerful weapon in the hands of the plebeians when these soon afterwards desired admission to the offices of state. But this was not the real design of the tribunate. It was a concession wrung not from the politically privileged order, but from the rich landlords and capitalists ; it was designed to ensure to the commons equit- able administration of law, and to promote a more judicious administration of finance. This design it did not, and could not, fulfil. The tribune might put a stop to particular iniquities, to individual instances of crying hardship; but the fault lay not in the unfair working of a righteous law, but in a law which was itself unrighteous, and how could the tribune regularly obstruct the ordinary course of justice ? Could he have done so, it would have served little to remedy the evil, unless the sources of impoverishment were stopped the perverse taxation, the wretched system of credit, and the pernicious occupation of the domain-lands. But such measures were not attempted, evidently because the wealthy plebeians themselves had no less interest in these abuses than the patricians. So this singular magistracy was instituted, which presented to the commons an obvious and available aid, and yet could not possibly carry out the necessary economic reform. It was no proof of political wisdom, but a wretched compromise between the wealthy aristocracy and the leaderless multitude. It has been affirmed that the tribunate of the people preserved Rome from tyranny. Were it true, it would be of little moment : a change in the form of the state is not in itself an evil for a people ; on the contrary, it was a misfortune CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 357 for the Romans that monarchy was introduced too late, after the physical and mental energies of the nation were exhausted. But the assertion is not even correct; as is shown by the circumstance that the Italian states remained as regularly free from tyrants as the Hellenic states re- gularly witnessed their emergence. The reason lies simply in the fact that tyranny is everywhere the result of universal suffrage, and that the Italians excluded the burgesses who had no land from their public assemblies longer than the . Greeks did : when Rome departed from this course, * monarchy did not fail to emerge, and was in fact associated with this very tribunician office. That the tribunate had its use, in pointing out legitimate paths of opposition and averting many a wrong, no one will fail to acknowledge ; but it is equally evident that, where it did prove useful, it was employed for very different objects from those for which it had been established. The bold experiment of allowing i the leaders of the opposition a constitutional veto, and of' investing them with power to assert it regardless of the con- s " sequences, proved to be an expedient by which the state was politically unhinged ; and social evils were prolonged by the application of useless palliatives. Now that civil war was organized, it pursued its course. Further The parties stood face to face as if drawn up for battle, dissensions - each under its leaders. Restriction of the consular and extension of the tribunician power were the objects con- tended for on the one side ; the annihilation of the tribunate was sought on the other. Legal impunity secured for in- subordination, refusal to enter the ranks for the defence of the land, impeachments involving fines and penalties directed specially against magistrates who had violated the rights of the commons or who had simply provoked their displeasure, were the weapons of the plebeians ; and to these the patricians opposed violence, concert with the public foes, and occasionally also the dagger of the assassin. 358 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n Hand-to-hand conflicts took place in the streets, and on both sides the sacredness of the magistrate's person was violated. Many families of burgesses are said to have migrated, and to have sought more peaceful abodes in neighbouring communities ; and we may well believe it. The strong patriotism of the people is obvious from the fact, not that they adopted this constitution, but that they endured it, and that the community, notwithstanding the most vehement convulsions, still held together. Coriolanus. The best-known incident in these conflicts of the orders is the history of Gnaeus Marcius, a brave aristocrat, who derived his surname from the storming of Corioli. In- dignant at the refusal of the centuries to entrust to him the 491 j consulate in the year 263, he is reported to have prorjosed,_ / according to one version, the suspension of the sa]es_of corn from the state-stores, till the hungry people should give up the tribunate ; according to another version, the direct abolition of the tribunate itself. Impeached by the tribunes so that his life was in peril, it is said that he left the city, but only to return at the head of a Volscian army ; that when he was on the point of conquering the city of his fathers for the public foe, the earnest appeal of his mother touched his conscience ; and that thus he expiated his first treason by a second, and both by death. How much of this is true cannot be determined ; but the story, over which the naive misrepresentations of the Roman annalists have shed a patriotic glory, affords a glimpse of the deep moral and political disgrace of these conflicts between the orders. Of a similar stamp was the surprise of the Capitol by a band \ of political refugees, led by a Sabine chief, Appius Herdonius, 460. in the year 294; they summoned the slaves to arms, and it was only after a violent conflict, and by the aid of the Tusculans who hastened to render help, that the Roman burgess-force overcame the Catilinarian band. The same character of fanatical exasperation marks other events of this CHAP. II AND THE DECEMVIRATE 359 epoch, the historical significance of which can no longer be apprehended in the lying family narratives ; such as the pre- dominance of the Fabian clan which furnished one of the two consuls from 269 to 275, and the reaction against it, the 485-479. emigration of the Fabii from Rome, and their annihilation by the Etruscans on the Cremera (277). Still more odious ^477. was the murder of the tribune of the people, Gnaeus Genucius, who had ventured to call two consulars to account, and who on the morning of the day fixed for the impeachment was found dead in bed (281). The imme-;473. diate effect of this misdeed was the Publilian law (283), one 471. of the most momentous in its consequences with which Roman history has to deal. Two of 'the mosfc important arrangements the introduction of the plebeian assembly of tribes, and the placing of the plebiscitum on a level, although conditionally, with the formal law sanctioned by the whole community are to be referred, the former certainly, . the latter probably, to the proposal of Volero Publilius the tribune of the people in 283. The plebs had hitherto 471. adopted its resolutions by curies ; accordingly in these its separate assemblies, on the one hand, the voting had been by mere number without distinction of wealth or of freehold property, and, on the other hand, in consequence of that standing side by side on the part of the clansmen, which was implied in the very nature of the curial assembly, the clients of the great patrician families had voted with one another in the assembly of the plebeians. These two circum : y stances had given to the nobility various opportunities of exercising influence on that assembly, and especially of managing the election of tribunes according to their views ; and both were henceforth done away by means of the new method of voting according to tribes. Of these, four had been formed under the Servian constitution for the purposes of the levy, embracing town and country alike (p. 117); subsequently perhaps in the year 259 the Roman 495. ' 360 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n territory had been divided into twenty districts, of which the first four embraced the city and its immediate environs, while the other sixteen were formed out of the rural territory on the basis of the clan-cantons of the earliest Roman domain (p. 45). To these was added probably only in -consequence of the Publilian law, and with a view to bring about the inequality, which was desirable for voting purposes, in the total number of the divisions as a twenty-first tribe the Crustuminian, which derived its name from the place where the plebs had constituted itself as such and had established the tribunate (p. 348) ; and thenceforth the special assemblies of the plebs took place, no longer by curies, but by tribes. In these divisions, which were based throughout on the possession of land, the voters were exclusively freeholders : but they voted without distinction as to the size of their possession, and just as they dwelt I together in villages and hamlets. Consequently, this I assembly of the tribes, which otherwise was externally modelled on that of the curies, was in reality an assembly of the independent middle class, from which, on the one hand, \ the great majority of freedmen and clients w;ere excluded as not being freeholders, and in which, on the other hand, the larger landholders had no such preponderance as in the cen- turies. This " meeting of the multitude " (concilium plebis) was even less a general assembly of the burgesses than the plebeian assembly by curies had been, for it not only, like the latter, excluded all the patricians, but also the plebeians who had no land ; but the multitude was powerful enough to carry the point that its decree should have equal legal validity with- that adopted by-*he centuries, ifi the event of its having been previously approved by the whpje senate. That this last Regulation had the force of established law before the issuing , of the Twelve Tables, is certain ; whether it was directly introduced on occasion of the Publilian plebiscitum, or whether it had already been called into existence by some CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 361 other now forgotten statute, and was only applied to the Publilian plebiscitutn^ cannot be any longer ascertained. In like manner it remains uncertain whether the number of tribunes was raised by this law from two to four, or whether that increase had taken place previously. More sagacious in plan than all these party steps was the Agrarian attempt of Spurius Cassius to break down the financial omni- ^ r us potence of the rich, and so to put a stop to the true source Cassius. of the evil. He was a patrician, and none in his order sur- passed him in rank and renown. After two triumphs, in his third consulate (268), he submitted to the burgesses a pro- 486. posal to have the public domain measured and to lease part of it for the benefit of the public treasury, while a further portion was to be distributed among the necessitous. In other words, he attempted to wrest the control of the public lands from the senate, and, with the support of the burgesses, to put an end to the selfish system of occupation. He prob- ably imagined that his personal distinction, and the equity and wisdom of the measure, might carry it even amidst that stormy sea of passion- and of weakness. But he was mistaken. The nobles rose as one man ; the rich plebeians took part with them ; the commons were displeased because Spurius Cassius desired, in accordance with federal rights and equity, to give to the Latin confederates their share in the assignation. Cassius had to die. There is some truth in the charge that he had usurped regal power, for he had indeed endeavoured like the kings to protect the free commons against his own order. His law ( was buried along with v him ; but its spectre thenceforward incessantly haunted " the eyes of the rich, and again and again it rose from the tomb against them, until amidst the conflicts to which it led . the commonwealth perished. A further attempt was made to get rid of the tribunician Decemvirs, power by securing to the plebeians equality.of rights in a more regular and more effectual way. The tribune of the 362 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n 462. people, Gaius Terentilius Arsa, proposed in 292 the nomination of a commission of five men to prepare a general code of law by which the consuls should in future be bound in exercising their judicial powers. But the senate refused to sanction this proposal, and ten years elapsed ere it was carried into effect years of vehement strife between the orders, and variously agitated moreover by wars and internal troubles. With equal obstinacy the party of the nobles hindered the concession of the law in the senate, and the plebs nominated again and again the same men as tribunes. Attempts were made to obviate the attack by other 457. concessions. In the year 297 an increase of the tribunes from four to ten was sanctioned a very dubious gain ;.and in the following year, by an Icilian plebiscitum which was admitted among the sworn privileges of the plebs, the Aventine, which had hitherto been a temple-grove and uninhabited, was distributed among the poorer burgesses as sites for buildings in heritable occupancy. The plebs took what was offered to them, but never ceased to insist in their 454. demand for a legal code. At length, in the year 300, a compromise was effected ; the senate in substance gave way. The preparation of a legal code was resolved upon ; for that purpose, as an extraordinary measure, the centuries were to choose ten men who were at the same time to act as supreme magistrates in room of the consuls (decemviri consulari imperio legibus scribundis), and to this office not merely patricians, but plebeians also might be elected. These were liere for the first time designated as eligible, though only for an extraordinary office. This was a great step in the progress towards full political equality ; and it was not too dearly 'purchased, when the tribunate of the people as well as the right of appeal were suspended while the decemvirate lasted, and the decemvirs were simply bound not to infringe the sworn liberties of the community. Previously however an embassy was sent to Greece to bring home the laws of Solon CHAP. II AND THE DECEMVIRATE 363 and other Greek laws ; and it was only on its return that the, decemvirs were chosen for the year 303. Although they 451. were at liberty to elect plebeians, the choice fell on patricians alone so powerful was the nobility still and it was only when a second election became necessary for 304, that some 450, plebeians were chosen the first non-patrician magistrates "that the Roman community had. Taking a connected view of these measures, we can scarcely attribute to them any other design than that of substituting for tribunician intercession a limitation of the consular powers by written law. On both sides there must have been a conviction that things could not remain as they were, and the perpetuation of anarchy, while it ruined the commonwealth, was in reality of no benefit to any one. People in earnest could not but discern that the inter- ference of the tribunes in administration and their action as prosecutors had an absolutely pernicious effect ; and the only real gain which the tribunate brought to the plebeians was the protection which it afforded against a partial administration of justice, by operating as a sort of court of cassation to check the caprice of the magistrate. Beyond doubt, when the plebeians desired a written code, the patricians replied that in that event the legal protection of tribunes would be superfluous ; and upon this there appears to have been concession by both sides. Perhaps there was never anything definitely expressed as to what was to be done after the drawing up of the code ; but that the plebs definitely renounced the tribunate is not to be doubted, since it was brought by the decemvirate into such a position that it could not get back the tribunate otherwise than by illegal means. The promise given to the plebs that its sworn liberties should not be touched, may be referred to the rights of the plebeians independent of the tribunate, such as the provocatio and the possession of the Aventine. The intention seems to have been that the decemvirs should, 364 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n on their retiring, propose to the people to re-elect the consuls who should now judge no longer according to their arbitrary pleasure but according to written law. Legisia- The plan, if it should stand, was a wise one ; all de- Tweive 1 e pended on whether men's minds exasperated on either Tables. side with passion would accept that peaceful adjustment. 451. The decemvirs of the year 303 submitted their law to the people, and it was confirmed by them, engraven on ten tables of copper, and affixed in the Forum to the rostra in front of the senate-house. But as a supplement appeared 450. necessary, decemvirs were again nominated in the year 304, who added two more tables. Thus originated the first and only Roman code, the law of the Twelve Tables. It pro- ceeded from a compromise between parities, and for that Very reason could not well have contained any changes in the existing law of a comprehensive nature, going beyond the regulation of secondary matters and of the I mere adaptation of means and ends. Even in the system of credit no further alleviation was introduced than the I - -. ^^^ MW *' -- ---I m Hi .! ' ' ' ^^Mi^MMMVMmMMM^Ma* r establishment of a probably low maximum of interest (io\ per cent) and the threatening of heavy penalties against the usurer penalties, characteristically enough, far heavier than those of the thief; the harsh procedure in actions of debt remained at least in its leading features unaltered. Still less, as may easily be conceived, were changes contemplated in the rights of the orders. On the contrary the legal distinction between burgesses liable to be taxed and those who were without estate, and the Invalidity of marriage between patricians and plebeians, were con- firmed anew in the law of the city. In like manner, with a view to restrict the caprice of the magistrate and to pro- tect the burgess, it was expressly enacted that the later law should uniformly have precedence over the earlier, and that no decree of the people should be issued against a single burgess. The most remarkable feature was the exclusion CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 365 of appeal to the comitia tributa in capital causes, while the privilege of appeal to the centuries was guaranteed ; which admits of explanation from the circumstance that the penal jurisdiction was in fact usurped by the plebs and its presidents (p. 350), and with the tribunate there necessarily fell the tribunician capital process, while it was perhaps the intention to retain the aedilician process of fine (multa). - The essential political significance of the measure resided far less in the contents of the legislation than in the formal obligation now laid upon the consuls to administer justice according to these forms of process and these rules of law, and in the public exhibition of the code, by which the administration of justice was subjected to the control of publicity and the consul was compelled to dispense equal and truly common justice to all. The end of the decemvirate is involved in much Fall of the obscurity. It only remained so runs the story for the decemvirs to publish the last two tables, and then to give place to the ordinary magistracy. But they delayed to do so : under the pretext that the laws were not ye.t ready, they themselves prolonged their magistracy after the expiry of their official year which was so far possible, as under Roman constitutional law 'the magistracy called in an extra- ordinary way to the revision of the constitution could not become legally bound by the term set for its ending. The moderate section of the aristocracy, with the Valerii and Horatii at their head, are said to have attempted in the senate to compel the abdication of the decemvirate ; but the head of the decemvirs Appius Claudius, originally a rigid aristocrat, but now changing into a demagogue and a tyrant, gained the ascendency in the senate, and the people submitted. The levy of two armies was accomplished without opposition, and war was begun against the Volscians as well as against the Sabines. Thereupon the former tribune of the people, Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest 366 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n man in Rome, who had fought in a hundred and twenty battles and had forty-five honourable scars to show, was found dead in front of the camp, foully murdered, as it was said, at the instigation of the decemvirs. A revolution was fermenting in men's minds ; and its outbreak was hastened by the unjust sentence pronounced by Appius in the process as to the freedom of the daughter of the centurion Lucius Verginius, the bride of the former tribune of the people Lucius Icilius a sentence which wrested the maiden from her relatives with a view to make her non-free and beyond the pale of the law, and induced her father himself to plunge his knife into the heart of his daughter in the open Forum, to rescue her from certain shame. While the people in amazement at the unprecedented deed surrounded the dead body of the fair maiden, the decemvir commanded his Hctors to bring he father and then the bridegroom before his tribunal, in order to render to him, from whose decision there lay no appeal, immediate account for their rebellion against his authority. The cup was now full. Protected by the furious multitude, the father and the bride- groom of the maiden made their escape from the lictors of the despot, and while the senate trembled and wavered in Rome, the pair presented themselves, with numerous witnesses of the fearful deed, in the two camps. The unparalleled tale was told ; the eyes of all were opened to the gap which the absence of tribunician protection had made in the security of law ; and what the fathers had done their sons repeated. Once more the armies abandoned their leaders : they marched in warlike order through the city, and proceeded once more to the Sacred Mount, where they again nominated their own tribunes. Still the de- cemvirs refused to lay down, their power ; then the army with its tribunes appeared in the city, and encamped on the Aventine. Now at length, when civil war was imminent and the conflict in the streets might hourly begin, the CHAP, ii AND THE DECEMVIRATE 367 decemvirs renounced their usurped and dishonoured power j. and the consuls Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius negotiated a second compromise, by which the tribunate of the plebs was again established. The impeachment of the decemvirs terminated in the two most guilty, Appius Claudius and Spurius Oppius, committing suicide in prison, while the other eight went into exile and the state con- fiscated their property. The prudent and moderate tribune of the plebs, Marcus Duilius, prevented further judicial prosecutions by a seasonable use of his veto. So runs the story as recorded by the pen of the Roman aristocrats ; but, even leaving out of view the accessory cir- - cumstances, the great crisis out of which the Twelve Tables ' arose cannot possibly have ended in such romantic adven- tures, and in political issues so incomprehensible. The decemvirate was, after the abolition of the monarchy and the institution of the tribunate of the people, the third great victory of the plebs ; and the exasperation of the opposite party against the institution and against its head Appius Claudius is sufficiently intelligible. The plebeians had through its means secured the right of eligibility to the highest magistracy of the community and a general code of law ; and it was not they that had reason to rebel against the new magistracy, and to restore the purely patrician consular government by force of arms. This end can only have been pursued by the party of the nobility, and if the patricio-plebeian decemvirs made the attempt to maintain themselves in office beyond their time, the nobility were certainly the first to enter the lists against them ; on which occasion doubtless the nobles would not neglect to urge that the stipulated rights of the plebs should be curtailed and ; the tribunate, in particular, should be taken from it. If thej nobility thereupon succeeded in setting aside the decemvirs, it is certainly conceivable that after their fall the plebs should once more assemble in arms with a view to secure / 368 THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS BOOK n 494. the results both of the earlier revolution of 260 and of the 449. latest movement; and the Valerio-Horatian laws of 305 can only be understood as forming a compromise in This flictr ._ The compromise, as was natural, proved very favourable Horatian to tne P^beians, and again imposed severely felt restrictions laws. on the power of the nobility. As a matter of course the tribunate of the people was restored, the code of law wrung .- from the aristocracy was definitively retained, and the consuls were obliged to judge according to it. Through the code indeed the tribes lost their usurped jurisdiction in capital causes ; but the tribunes got it back, as a way was found by which it was possible for them to transact business as to such cases with the centuries. Besides they retained, in the right to award fines without limitation and to submit this sentence to the comitia tributa, a sufficient means of putting an end to the civic existence of a patrician opponent. Further, it was on the proposition of the consuls decreed by the centuries that in future every magistrate and therefore the dictator among the rest should be bound at his nomination to allow the right of appeal : any one who should nominate a magistrate on other terms was to expiate the offence with his life. In other respects the dictator retained his former powers ; and in particular his official acts could not, like those of the consuls, be cancelled by a tribune. The plenitude of the consular power was further re- stricted in so far as the administration of the military chest was committed to two paymasters (qitaestores) chosen by the community, who were nominated for the first time in 447.. 307. The nomination as well of the two new paymasters for war as of the two administering the city-chest now passed over to the community ; the consul retained merely the conduct of the election instead of the election itself. The assembly in which the paymasters were elected was CHAP. II AND THE DECEMVIRATE 369 that of the whole patricio-plebeian freeholders, and voted by < districts ; an arrangement which likewise involved a con- cession to the plebeian farmers, who had far more command of these assemblies than of the centuriate comitia. A concession of still greater consequence was that which allowed the tribunes to share in the discussions of the senate. To admit the tribunes to the hall where the senate sat, appeared to that body beneath its dignity ; so a bench was placed for them at the door that they might from that spot follow its proceedings. The tribunician right of intercession had extended also to the decrees of the senate as a collective body, after the latter had become not merely a deliberative but a decretory board, which probably occurred at first in the case of a plebiscitum that was meant to be binding for the whole community (p. 353); it was natural that there should thenceforth be conceded to the tribunes a certain participation in the discussions of the senate- house. In order also to secure the decrees of the senate with the validity of which indeed that of the most important plebiscita was bound up from being tampered with or forged, it was enacted that in future they should be deposited not merely under charge of the patrician quaestores urbani in the temple of Saturn, but also under that of the plebeian aediles in the temple of Ceres. Thus this struggle, which was begun in order to get rid of the tribunician power, terminated in the renewed and now definitive sanctioning of its right to annul not only particular acts of administration on the appeal of the person aggrieved, but also any resolution of the constituent powers of the state at pleasure. The persons of the tribunes, and the uninterrupted maintenance of the college at its full number, were once more secured by the most sacred oaths and by every element of reverence that religion could present, and not less by the most formal laws. No attempt to abolish this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome. VOL. i 24 370 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n CHAPTER III THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY Union THE tribunician movements appear to have mainly origin- ated in social rather than political discontent, and there is plebeians. good reason to suppose that some of the wealthy plebeians admitted to the senate were no less opposed to these move- ments than the patricians. For they too benefited by the privileges against which the agitation was mainly directed ; and although in other respects they found themselves treated as inferior, it probably seemed to them by no means an appropriate time for asserting their claim to participate in the magistracies, when the exclusive financial power of the whole senate was assailed. This explains why during the first fifty years of the republic no step was taken aiming directly at the political equalization of the orders. But this league between the patricians and the wealthy plebeians by no means bore within itself any guarantee of ' permanence. Beyond doubt from the very first a portion . of the leading plebeian families had attached themselves to the movement-party, partly from a sense of what was due to the fellow-members of their order, partly in consequence of the natural bond which unites all who are treated as inferior, and partly because they perceived that concessions to the multitude were inevitable in the issue, and that, if turned to due account, they would result in the abrogation CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 371 of the exclusive rights of the patriciate and would thereby give to the plebeian aristocracy a decisive preponderance in the state. Should this conviction become as was in- evitable more and more prevalent, and should the plebeian aristocracy at the head of its order take up the struggle with the patrician nobility, it would wield in the tribunate a legalized instrument -of civil warfare, and it might, with the weapon of social distress, so fight its battles as to dictate to the nobility the terms of peace and, in the posi- tion of mediator between the two parties, compel its own admission to the offices of state. Such a crisis in the position of parties occurred after the fall of the decemvirate. It had now become perfectly clear that the tribunate of the plebs could never be set aside; the plebeian aristocracy could not do better than seize this powerful lever and employ it for the removal of the political disabilities of their order. Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan- Throwing nobility when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that P e ?. of rr . marriage the fundamental principle of the exclusive party the and of ma- invalidity of marriage between patricians and plebeians gistracies. fell at the first blow scarcely four years after the decem- viral revolution. In the year 309 it was enacted by the 445. Canuleian plebiscite, that a marriage between a patrician " and a plebeian should be valid as a true Roman marriage, and that the children begotten of such a marriage should follow the rank of the father. At the same time it was further carried that, in place of consuls, military tribunes of these' there were at that time, before the division of the army into legions, six, and the number of these magistrates was adjusted accordingly with consular powers 1 and 1 The hypothesis that legally the full imperium belonged to the patri- cian, and only the military imperium to the plebeian, consular tribunes, not only provokes various questions to which there is no answer as to the course followed, for example, in the event of the election falling, as was by law quite possible, wholly on plebeians but specially conflicts with the fundamental principle of Roman constitutional law, that the imperium, 372 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n Military tribunes with consular powers. consular duration of office should be elected by the centuries. The proximate cause was of a military nature, as the various wars required a greater number of generals in chief com- mand than the consular constitution allowed ; but the change came to be of essential importance for the conflicts of the orders, and it may be that that military object was rather the pretext than the reason for this arrangement. According to the ancient law every burgess or metoikos liable to service might attain the post of an officer (p. 120), and in virtue of that principle the supreme magistracy, after having been temporarily opened up to the plebeians in the decem- virate, was now after a more comprehensive fashion rendered equally accessible to all freeborn burgesses. The question naturally occurs, what interest the aristocracy could have that is to say, the right of commanding the burgess in name of the com- munity, was functionally indivisible and capable of no other limitation at all than a territorial one. There was a province of urban law and a province of military law, in the latter of which the provocatio and other regulations of urban law were not applicable ; there were magistrates, such as the proconsuls, who were empowered to discharge functions simply in the latter ; but there were, in the strict sense of law, no magistrates with merely jurisdictional, as there were none with merely military, imperium. The proconsul was in his province, just like the consul, at once commander- in-chief and supreme judge, and was entitled to send to trial actions not only between non-burgesses and soldiers, but also between one burgess and another. Even when, on the institution of the praetorship, the idea rose of apportioning special functions to the magistratus maiores, this division of powers had more of a practical than of a strictly legal force ; ihepraetor urbanus was primarily indeed the supreme judge, but he could also convoke the centuries, at least for certain cases, and could command an army ; the consul in the city held primarily the supreme administration and the supreme command, but he too acted as a judge in cases of emancipation and adoption the functional indivisibility of the supreme magistracy was therefore, even in these instances, very strictly adhered to on both sides. Thus the military, as well as jurisdictional authority, or, laying aside these abstractions foreign to the Roman law of this period, the absolute magis- terial power, must have virtually pertained to the plebeian consular tribunes | as well as to the patrician. But it may well be, as Becker supposes (Handb. ii. 2, 137), that, for the same reasons, for which at a subsequent period there was placed alongside of the consulship common to both orders the praetorship actually reserved for a considerable time for the patricians, even during the consular tribunate the plebeian members of the college were de facto kept aloof from jurisdiction, and so far the consular tribunate prepared the way for the subsequent actual division of jurisdiction between consuls and praetors. CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 373 now that it was under the necessity of abandoning its ex- clusive possession of the supreme magistracy and ot yield- ing in the matter in refusing to the plebeians the title, and conceding to them the consulate under this singular form ? l But, in the first place, there were associated with the holding of the supreme magistracy various honorary rights, partly personal, partly hereditary ; thus the honour of a triumph was regarded as legally dependent on the occupancy of the supreme magistracy, and was never given to an officer who had not administered the latter office in person ; and the descendants of a curule magistrate were at liberty to set up the image of such an ancestor in the family hall and to exhibit it in public on fitting occasions, while this was not allowed in the case of other ancestors.* It is as easy to be explained as it is difficult to be vindi- cated, that the governing aristocratic order should have, allowed the government itself to be wrested from their hands far sooner than the honorary rights associated with it, especially such as were hereditary ; and therefore, when it was obliged to share the former with the plebeians, it gave to the actual supreme magistrate the legal standing not of the holder of a curule chair, but of a simple staff- 1 The defence, that the aristocracy clung to the exclusion of the ple- beians from religious prejudice, mistakes the fundamental character of the Roman religion, and imports into antiquity the modern distinction between church and state. The admittance of a non-burgess to a religious cere- mony of the citizens could not indeed but appear sinful to the orthodox Roman ; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality. All such scruples of conscience, the honesty of which in themselves we do not mean to doubt, were precluded, when once they granted to the plebeians en masse at the right time the patriciate. This only may perhaps be alleged by way of excuse for the nobility, that after it had neglected the right moment for this purpose at the abolition of the monarchy, it was no longer in a position subsequently of itself to retrieve the neglect (p. 333). 2 Whether this distinction between these "curule houses" and the other families embraced within the patriciate was ever of serious political importance, cannot with certainty be either affirmed or denied ; and as, little do we know whether at this epoch there really was any considerable number of patrician families that were not yet curule. 374 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n Opposition of the patriciate. Their ex- pedients. officer, whose distinction was one purely personal. Of greater political importance, however, than the refusal of the ius imaginum and of the honour of a triumph was the circumstance, that the exclusion of the plebeians sitting in the senate from debate necessarily ceased in respect to those of their number who, as designated or former consuls, ranked among the senators whose opinion had to be asked before the rest ; so far it was certainly of great importance for the nobility to admit the plebeian only to a consular office, and not to the consulate itself. But notwithstanding these vexatious disabilities the privileges of the clans, so far as they had a political value, were legally superseded by the new institution ; and, had the Roman nobility been worthy of its name, it must now have given up the struggle. But it did not. Though a rational and legal resistance was thenceforth impossible, spiteful opposition still found a wide field of petty ex- pedients, of chicanery and intrigue ; and, far from honour- able or politically prudent as such resistance was, it was still in a certain sense fruitful of results. It certainly pro- cured at length for the commons concessions which could not easily have been wrung from the united Roman aris- tocracy ; but it also prolonged civil war for another century and enabled the nobility, in defiance of those laws, practically to retain the government in their exclusive possession for several generations longer. The expedients of which the nobility availed themselves were as various as political paltriness could suggest. Instead Of deciding at once the question as to the admission or exclusion of the plebeians at the elections, they conceded what they were compelled to concede only with reference to the elections immediately impending. The vain struggle was thus annually renewed whether patrician consuls or military tribunes from both orders with consular powers should be nominated ; and among the weapons of the aris- CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 375 tocracy this mode of conquering an opponent by weary- ing and annoying him proved by no means the least effective. Moreover they broke up the supreme power which had Subdivi- hitherto been undivided, in order to delay their inevitable ^-[ defeat by multiplying the points to be assailed. Thus tracy. the adjustment of the budget and of the burgess- and taxation-rolls, which ordinarily took place every fourth year and had hitherto been managed by the consuls, was entrusted as early as the t year 319 to two valuators 435. (censores), nominated by the centuries from among the Censor- nobles for a period, at the most, of eighteen months. s lp ' The new office gradually became the palladium of the aristocratic party, not so much on account of its financial influence as on account of the right annexed to it of filling up the vacancies in the senate and in the equites, and of removing individuals from the lists of the senate, equites, and burgesses on occasion of their adjustment. At this epoch, however, the censorship by no means possessed the great importance and moral supremacy which afterwards were associated with it. But the important change made in the year 333 in Quaestor- respect to the quaestorship amply compensated for this \^\' success of the patrician party. The patricio- plebeian - assembly of the tribes perhaps taking up the ground that at least the two military paymasters were in fact officers rather than civil functionaries, and that so far the plebeian appeared as well entitled to the quaestorship as to the military tribuneship carried the point that plebeian candi- dates also were admitted for the quaestorial elections, and thereby acquired for the first time the privilege of eligibility as well as the right of election for one of the ordinary magistracies. With justice it was felt on the one side as a great victory, on the other as a severe defeat, that thenceforth patrician and plebeian were equally capable 376 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 11 of electing and being elected to the military as well as to the urban quaestorship. Attempts The nobility, in spite of the most obstinate resistance, rev^utfon" on ty sustained loss after loss ; and their exasperation increased as their power decreased. Attempts were doubt- less still made directly to assail the rights secured by agreement to the commons; but such attempts were not so riiuch the \vell-calculated manoeuvres of party as the acts of aji impotent thirst for vengeance. Such in particular was the process against Maelius as reported by the tradition certainly not very trustworthy that has come down to us. Spurius Maelius, a wealthy plebeian, 439. during a severe dearth (315) sold corn at such prices as to put to shame and annoy the patrician store - president '_ (firaefectus annonae) Gaius Minucius. The latter accused him of aspiring to kingly power; with what amount of reason we cannot decide, but it is scarcely credible that a man who had not even filled the tribunate should have seriously * thought of sovereignty. Nevertheless the authorities took up the matter in earnest, and the cry of "^King " always -produced on the multitude in Rome an effect similar^ to that of the, cry of " Pope " on the masses in England. Titus, Quinctius Capitolinus, who was' for the sixth time consul, nominated Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who was eighty years of age, as dictator without appeal, in open violation of the solemnly sworn laws (p. 368). Maelius, summoned before him, seemed disposed to disregard the summons ; and the dictator's master of the horse, Gaius Servilius Ahala, slew him with his own hand. The house of the murdered man was pulled down, the corn from his ^granaries was distributed gratuitously to the people, ancl those who threatened to avenge his death were secretly made away with. This disgraceful judicial murder a disgrace even more to the credulous and blind people than to the malignant party CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 377 of young patricians passed unpunished ; but if that party had hoped by such means to undermine the right of appeal, it violated the laws and shed innocent blood in vain. Electioneering intrigues and priestly trickery proved in Intrigues the hands of the nobility more efficient than any other weapons. The extent to which the former must have prevailed is best seen in the fact that in 3*22 it appeared 432. necessary to issue a special law against electioneering practices, which of course was ' of little avail. When the voters could not be influenced by corruption or threatening, the presiding magistrates stretched their powers admitting, for example, so many plebeian candidates that the votes of the opposition were thrown away amongst them, or / omitting from the list of candidates those whom the - . - majority were disposed to choose. If in spite of all this an obnoxious election was carried, the priests were consulted whether no vitiating circumstance had occurred in the auspices or other religious ceremonies on the occasion ; and some such flaw they seldom failed to discover. Taking no thought as to the consequences and unmindful of the wise example of their ancestors,- the people allowed the principle to be established that the opinion of the skilled colleges of priests as to omens of birds, portents, and the like was legally binding on the magistrate, and thus put it into their power to cancel any state-act whether the consecration of a temple or any other act of administration, whether law or election 1 on the ground of religious informality. In this way it became possible that, although the eligibility of plebeians had been established by law already in 333 for the 421. quaestorship and thenceforward continued to be legally recognized, it was only in 345 that the first plebeiari 409. * attained the quaestorship; in like manner patricians almost exclusively held the military tribunate with consular 378 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n 400. powers down to 354. It was apparent that the legal abolition of the privileges of the nobles had by no means ( really and practically placed the plebeian aristocracy on a footing of equality with the clan -nobility. Many causes contributed to this result : the tenacious opposition of the nobility far more easily allowed itself to be theoretically superseded in a moment of excitement, than to be permanently kept down in the annually recurring elections; but the main cause was the inward disunion between the chiefs of the plebeian aristocracy and the mass of the farmers. The middle class, whose votes were decisive in the comitia, did not feel itself specially called on to advance the interests of genteel non-patricians, so long as its own demands were disregarded by the plebeian no less than by the patrician aristocracy. The During these political struggles social questions had lain suffering on ^ Q w h o i e dormant, .or were discussed at any rate with farmers. . ' less energy. After the plebeian aristocracy had gained possession of the tribunate for its own ends, no serious notice was taken either of the question of the domains or of a reform in the system of. credit ; although there was no lack either of newly acquired lands or of impoverished or decaying farmers. Instances indeed of assignations took place, particularly in the recently conquered border -terri- '442. tories, such as those of the domain of Ardea in 312, of 418. 393. Labici in 336, and of Veii in 361 more however on military grounds than for the relief of the farmer, and by no means to an adequate extent. Individual tribunes doubtless attempted to revive the law of Cassius for instance Spurius Maecilius and Spurius Metilius instituted 417. in the year 337 a proposal for the distribution of the whole state-lands but they were thwarted, in a manner characteristic of the existing state of parties, by the opposition of their own colleagues or in other words of the plebeian aristocracy. Some of the patricians also CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 379 attempted to remedy the common distress ; but with no better success than had formerly attended Spurius Cassius. A patrician like Cassius and like him distinguished by - military renown and personal valour, Marcus Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol during the Gallic siege, is said to have come forward as the champion of the oppressed people, with whom he was connected by the ties of com- radeship in war and of bitter hatred towards his rival, the ,' celebrated general and leader of the optimate party, Marcos Furius Camillus. When a brave officer was about to be led away to a debtor's prison, Manlius interceded for him' and released him with his own money ; at the same time he offered his lands to sale, declaring loudly that, as long as he possessed a foot's breadth of land, such iniquities should not occur. This was more than enough to unite the whole government party, patricians as well as plebeians, against the dangerous innovator. The trial for high treason, the charge of having meditated a renewal of the monarchy, wrought on the blind multitude with the insidious charm which belongs to stereotyped party - phrases. They themselves condemned him to death r and his renown availed him nothing save that it was,, ' deemed expedient to assemble the people for the bloody assize at a spot whence the voters could not see the rock - of the citadel the dumb monitor which might remind * them how their fatherland had b'een saved from the extremity of danger by the hands of the very man whom they were now consigning to the executioner (370). 384. While the attempts at reformation were thus arrested in the bud, the social disorders became still more crying ; for on the one hand the domain-possessions were ever extend- ing in consequence of successful wars, and on the other hand debt and impoverishment were ever spreading more widely among the farmers, particularly from the effects of the severe war with Veii (348-358) and of the burning of 406-396. 38o THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n 390. 409- Combina- tion of the plebeian aristocracy and the farmers against the nobility. Licinio- Sextian laws. the -capital in the Gallic invasion (364). It is true that, when in the Veientine war it became necessary to prolong the term of service of the soldiers and to keep them under arms not-^as hitherto at the utmost only during summer, but also throughout the winter, and when the farmers, foreseeing their utter economic ruin, were on the point of refusing their consent to the declaration of war, the senate resolved on making an important concession. It charged the pay, which hitherto the tribes had defrayed by con- tribution^ on the state'ncHest, or in other_words. on the produce of the indirect revenues and the domains (348). It was only in the event of the state -chest being at the moment empty that a general contribution (tributum^^_ imposed on account of the pay; and in that.ca.se it was. considered as a forced loan and was afterwards repaid by the community. The arrangement was equitable and wise ; but, as it was not placed upon the essential foundation of turning the domains to proper account for the benefit of the exchequer, there were added to the increased burden of service frequent contributions, which were none the less ruinous to the man of small means that they were officially regarded not as taxes but as advances. Under such circumstances, when the plebeian aris- tocracy saw itself practically excluded by the opposition of the nobility and the indifference of the commons from equality of political rights, and the suffering farmers were powerless as opposed to the close aristocracy, it was natural that they should help each other by a compromise. With this view the tribunes of the people, Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, submitted to the commons proposals to the following effect : first, to abolish the consular tribunate ; secondly, to lay it down as a rule that at least one of the consuls should be a plebeian; thirdly, to open up to the plebeians admission to one of the three great colleges of priests that of the custodiers of oracles, whose number CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY . 381 was to be increased to ten (duoviri, afterwards decemviri sacris faciundis, p. 230) ; fourthly, as respected the domains, to allow no burgess to maintain upon the common pasture more than a hundred oxen and five hundred sheep, or to hold more than five hundred jugera (about 300 acres) of the domain lands left free for occupation ; fifthly, to oblige the landlords to employ in the labours of the field a number of free labourers proportioned to that of their rural slaves ; and lastly, to procure alleviation for debtors by deduction of the interest which had been paid from the capital, and by the arrangement of set terms for the payment of arrears. The tendency of these enactments is obvious. They were designed to deprive the nobles of their exclusive possession of the curule magistracies and of the hereditary distinctions of nobility therewith associated ; which, it was characteristically conceived, could only be accomplished by the legal exclusion of the nobles from the place of second consul. They were designed, as a consequence, to eman- cipate the plebeian members of the senate from the sub- ordinate position which they occupied as silent by-sitters (p. 330), in so far as those of them at least who had filled the consulate thereby acquired a title to deliver their opinion with the patrician consulars before the other patrician senators (pp. 330, 374). They were intended, moreover, to withdraw from the nobles the exclusive possession of spiritual dignities ; and in carrying out this purpose for reasons sufficiently obvious the old Latin priesthoods of the augurs and pontifices were left to the old burgesses, but these were obliged to open up to the new burgesses the third great college of more recent origin and belonging to a worship that was originally foreign. They were in- tended, in fine, to procure a share in the common usufructs of burgesses for the poorer commons, alleviation for the suffering debtors, and employment for the day-labourers 382 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n Political abolition of the patriciate, that were destitute of work. Abolition of privileges, civil equality, social reform these were the three great ideas, of which it was the design of this movement to secure the recognition. Vainly the patricians exerted all the means at their command in opposition to these legislative proposals ; even the dictatorship and the old military hero Camillus were able only to delay, not to avert their accomplishment. Willingly would the people have separated the proposals ; of what moment to it were the consulate and custodiership of oracles, if only the burden of debt were lightened and the public lands were free ! But it was not for nothing that the plebeian nobility had adopted the popular cause ; it included the proposals in one single project of law, and after a long struggle it is said of eleven years the senate 367. at length gave its consent and they passed in the year 387. With the election of the first non-patrician consul the choice fell on one of the authors of this reform, the late tribune of the people, Lucius Sextius Lateranus the clan- aristocracy ceased both in fact and in law to be numbered among the political institutions of Rome. When after the final passing of these laws the former champion of the clans, Marcus Furius Camillus, founded a sanctuary of Concord at the foot of the Capitol upon an elevated plat- form, where the senate was wont frequently to meet, above the old meeting-place of the burgesses, the Comitium we gladly cherish the belief that he recognized in the legisla- tion thus completed the close of a dissension only too long continued. The religious consecration of the new concord of the community was the last public act of the old warrior and statesman, and a worthy termination of his long and glorious career. He was not wholly mistaken ; the more judicious portion of the clans evidently from this time forward looked upon their exclusive political privileges as lost,' and were content to share the government with the plebeian aristocracy. In the majority, however, the patrician CHAP. Ill AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 383 spirit proved true to its incorrigible character. On the strength of the privilege which the champions of legitimacy have at all times claimed of obeying the laws only when these coincide with their party interests, the Roman nobles on various occasions ventured, in open violation of the stipulated arrangement, to nominate two patrician consuls. But, when by way of answer to an election of that sort for the year 411 the community in the year following formally 343. resolved to allow both consular positions to be filled by non- patricians, they understood the implied threat, and still doubtless desired, but never again ventured, to touch the second consular place. In like manner the aristocracy simply injured itself by Praetor- the attempt which it made, on the passing of the Licinian shlp- laws, to save at least some remnant of its ancient privileges by means of a system of political clipping and paring. Under the pretext that the nobility were exclusively cognizant of law, the administration of justice was detached from the consulate when the latter had to be thrown open to the plebeians ; and for this purpose there was nominated a special third consul, or, as he was commonly called, a praetor. In like manner the supervision of the market Curule and the judicial police-duties connected with it, as well as aedllesh 'P- the celebration of the city-festival, were assigned to two newly nominated aediles, who by way of distinction from the plebeian aediles were named from their standing juris- diction "aediles of the judgment seat" (aediles curules). Complete But the curule aedileship became immediately so far P enin g"p accessible to the plebeians, that it was_hjldjbiyj3atrician_s and trades and plebeians alternately. Moreover the dictatorship was thrown " open to plebeians in 398, as the mastership of the horse had 356. already been in the year before the Licinian laws (386) ; 368. both the censorships were thrown open in 403, and the 351. praetorship in 417; and about the same time (415) the 337. 339. nobility were by law excluded from one of the censorship's, 384 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n as they had previously been from one of the consulships. It was to no purpose that once more a patrician augur detected secret flaws, hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated, 327. in the election of a plebeian dictator (427), and that the patrician censor did not up to the close of our present 280. period (474) permit his colleague to present the solemn sacrifice with which the census closed; such chicanery served merely to show the ill humour of patricianism. Of ' as little avail were the complaints which the patrician presi- dents of the senate would not fail to raise regarding the participation of the plebeians in its debates ; it became a settled rule that no longer the patrician members, but those who had attained to one of the three supreme ordinary magistracies the consulship, praetorship, and curule aedileship should be summoned to give their opinion in this order and without distinction of class, while the senators who had held none of these offices still even now took part merely in the division. The right, in fine, of the patrician senate to reject a decree of the community as un- constitutional a right, however, which in all probability it rarely ventured to exercise was withdrawn from it by the 339. Publilian law of 415 and by the Maenian law which was not passed before the middle of the fifth century, in so far that it had to bring forward its constitutional objections, if it had any such, when the list of candidates was exhibited or the project of law was brought in ; which practically amounted to a regular announcement of its consent before- hand. In this character, as a purely formal right, the confirmation of the decrees of the people still continued in the hands of the nobility down to the last age of the republic. The clans retained, as may naturally be conceived, their religious privileges longer. Indeed, several of these, which were destitute of political importance, were never interfered with, such as their exclusive eligibility to the offices of the CHAP, ill AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 385 three supreme flamines and that of rex sacrorum as well as to the membership of the colleges of Salii. On the other hand the two colleges of pontifices and of augurs, with which a considerable influence over the courts and the comitia were associated, were too important to remain in the exclusive possession of the patricians. The Ogulnian law of 454 accordingly threw these also open to plebeians, 300. by increasing the number both of the pontifices and of the augurs from six to nine, and equally distributing the stalls I in the two colleges between patricians and plebeians. The two hundred years' strife was brought at length to Equiva- a close by the law of the dictator Q. Hortensius (465, 468).^!^ which was occasioned by a dangerous popular insurrection, piebis- and which declared that the decrees of the plebs should ^gg" 1 286 stand on an absolute footing of equality instead of their earlier conditional equivalence with those of the whole community. So greatly had the state of things been changed that that portion of the burgesses which had once possessed exclusively the right of voting was thenceforth, under the usual form of taking votes binding for the whole burgess-body, no longer so much as asked the question. The struggle between the Roman clans and commons The later was thus substantially at an end. While the nobility still j^," preserved out of its comprehensive privileges the de facto possession of one of the consulships and one of the censor- ships, it was excluded by law from the tribunate, the plebeian aedileship, the second consulship and censorship, and from participation in the votes of the plebs which were legally equivalent to votes of the whole body of burgesses. As a righteous retribution for its perverse and stubborn resistance, the patriciate had seen its former privileges con- verted into so many disabilities. The Roman clan-nobility, however, by no means disappeared because it had become an empty name. The less the significance and power of the nobility, the more purely and exclusively the patrician VOL. i 25 386 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n spirit developed itself. The haughtiness of the " Ramnians " survived the last of their class-privileges for centuries ; after they had steadfastly striven " to rescue the consulate from the plebeian filth " and had at length become reluctantly convinced of the impossibility of such an achievement, they continued at least rudely and spitefully to display their aristocratic spirit. To understand rightly the history of Romp in the fifth and sixth centuries, we must never over- look this sulking patricianism ; it could indeed do little more than irritate itself and others, but this it did to the best of its ability. Some years after the passing of the 296. Ogulnian law (458) a characteristic instance of this sort occurred. A patrician matron, who was married to a leading plebeian that had attained to the highest dignities . . of the state, was on account of this misalliance ex- pelled from the circle of noble dames and was refused admission to the common festival of Chastity ; and in con- sequence of that exclusion separate patrician and plebeian goddesses of Chastity were thenceforward worshipped in Rome. Doubtless caprices of this sort were of very little moment, and the better portion of the clans kept them- selves entirely alo,of from this miserable policy of peevish- ness; but it left behind on both sides a feeling of discontent, and, while the struggle of the commons against the clans was in itself a political and even moral necessity, these convulsive efforts to prolong the strife the aimless combats of the rear-guard after the battle had been decided, as well as the empty squabbles as to rank and standing needlessly irritated and disturbed the public and private life of the Roman community. The social Nevertheless one object of the compromise concluded tress sufd ' ky tne two portions of the plebs in 387, the abolition of the the at- patriciate, had in all material points been completely relieve 5 it attained. The question next arises, how far the same oan be affirmed of the two positive objects aimed at in the CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 387 compromise ? whether the new order of things in reality checked social distress and established political equality ? The two were intimately connected; for, if economic embarrassments ruined the middle class and broke up the burgesses into a minority of rich men and a suffering proletariate, such a state of things would at once annihilate civil equality and in reality destroy the republican common- wealth. The preservation and increase of the middle class, and in particular of the farmers, formed therefore for every patriotic statesman of Rome a problem not merely important, but the most important of all. The plebeians, moreover, recently called to take part in the government, greatly indebted as they were for their new political rights to the proletariate which was suffering and expecting help at their hands, were politically and morally under special obligation ' to attempt its relief by means of government measures, so far as relief was by such means at all attainable. " Let us first consider how far any real relief was contained The Licin- in that part of the legislation of 387 which bore upon the tan .[***; question. That the enactment in favour of the free day- laws, labourers could not possibly accomplish its object namely, to check the system of farming on a large scale and by means of slaves, and to secure to the free proletarians at least a share of work is self-evident. In this matter legislation could afford no relief, without shaking the foundations of the civil organization of the period in a way that would reach far beyond its immediate horizon. In the question of the domains, on the other hand, it was quite possible for legislation to effect a change ; but what was done was manifestly inadequate. The new domain-arrange- ment, by granting the right -of driving very considerable flocks and herds upon the public _ pastures, and that of occupying domain -land not laid out in pasture up to a maximum fixed on a high scale, conceded to the wealthy an important and perhaps even disproportionate prior share 388 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n in the produce of the domains ; and by the latter regulation conferred upon the domain-tenure, although it remained in law liable to pay a tenth and revocable at pleasure, as well as upon the system of occupation itself, somewhat of a legal sanction. It was a circumstance still more suspicious, that the new legislation neither supplemented the existing and manifestly unsatisfactory provisions for the collection of the pasture-money and the tenth by compulsory measures of a more effective kind, nor prescribed any thorough revision of the domanial possessions, nor appointed a magistracy charged with the carrying of the 'new laws into effect. The distribution of the existing occupied domain- land partly among the holders up to a fair maximum, partly among the plebeians who had no property, in both cases in full ownership ; the abolition in future of the system of occupation ; and the institution of an authority empowered to make immediate distribution of any future acquisitions of territory, were so clearly demanded by the circumstances of the case, that it certainly was not through want of discernment that these comprehensive measures were neglected. We cannot fail to recollect that it was the plebeian aristocracy, in other words, a portion of the very class that was practically privileged in respect to the usufructs of the domains, which proposed the new arrange- ment, and that one of its very authors, Gaius Licinius Stolo, was among the first to be condemned for having exceeded the agrarian maximum ; and we cannot but ask whether the legislators dealt altogether honourably, and whether they did not on the contrary designedly evade a solution, really tending to the common benefit, of the unhappy question of "the domains. We do not mean, however, to express any doubt that the regulations of the Licinian laws, such as they were, might and did substantially benefit the small farmer and the day-labourer. It must, moreover, be acknowledged that in the period immediately succeeding CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 389 the passing of the law the authorities watched with at least comparative strictness over the observance of its rules as to the maximum, and frequently condemned the possessors of large herds and the occupiers of the domains to heavy fines. In the system of taxation and of credit also efforts were Laws made with greater energy at this period than at any before ^^ smg or subsequent to it to remedy the evils of the national economy, so far as legal measures could, do so. Thejduty levied in 397 of five per cent on the value of slaves that 357. were to be manumitted was irrespective of the fact that it- imposed a check on the undesirable multiplication of freed- meh the first tax in Rome that was really laid upon the rich, in like manner efforts were made to remedy the system of credit. The usury_ Jaws, which the Twelve Laws of Tables had established (p. 364), were renewed and gradu- CI ally rendered more stringent, so that the maximum of interest was successively lowered from 10 per cent (en- forced in 397) to 5 per cent (in 407) for the year of twelve -357. 347. months, and at length (412) the taking of interest was 342. altogether forbidden. The latter foolish law remained formally in force, but, of course, it was practically in- operative ; the standard rate of interest afterwards usual, viz. i per cent per month, or 12 per cent for the civil common year which, according to the value of money in antiquity, was probably at that time nearly the same as, according to its modern value, a rate of 5 or 6 per cent must have been already about this period established as the maximum of appropriate interest. Any action at law for higher rates must have been refused, perhaps even judicial claims for repayment may have been allowed; moreover notorious usurers were not unfrequently summoned before the bar of the people and readily condemned by the tribes to heavy fines. Still more important was the alteration of the procedure in cases of debt by the Poetelian law 35: 345 390 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK II 326 or 313. (428 or 441). On the one hand it allowed every debtor whrM^rTareH nn^nftfh, hiq snlyenry tnsave his personaTfree- dom by the cession of his property ; on the other hand it ahnHshffl thp fr>rnipr_^nrnrnary prnpppfiinirq j n execution on ajoan-debt, and laid down the rule that no Roman burgess- could be led away to bondage except upon the sentence of jurymen. Continued It is plain that all these expedients might perhaps in ess ' some respects mitigate, but could not remove, the existing t economic disorders. The continuance of the distress is shown by the appointment of a bank-commission to regu- late the relations of credit and to provide advances from the state-chest in 402, by the fixing of legal payment by instalments in 407, and above all by the dangerous popular 287. insurrection about 467, when the people, unable to obtain new facilities for the payment of debts, marched out to the Janiculum, and nothing but a seasonable attack by external enemies, and the concessions contained in the Hortensian law (p. 385), restored peace to the community. It is, how- ever, very unjust to reproach these earnest attempts to check the impoverishment of the middle class with their inadequacy. The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by baseness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd. On the contrary, we may ask whether the vile spirit of demagogism had not even thus early laid hold of this matter, and whether expedients were really needed so violent and dangerous as, for example, the deduction of the interest paid from the capital. Our documents do not enable* us to decide the question of right or wrong in the ' case. But we recognize clearly enough that the middle class of freeholders still continued economically in a perilous* and critical position ; that various endeavours were madej by those in power to remedy it by prohibitory laws and by CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 391 respites, but of course in vain ; and that the aristocratic ruling class continued to be too weak in point of control over its members, and too much entangled in the selfish interests of its order, to relieve the middle class by the only effectual means at the disposal of the government the entire and unreserved abolition of the system of occupying the state-lands and by that course to free the government ' from the reproach of turning to its own advantage the oppressed position of the governed. A more effectual relief than any which the government influence was willing or able to give was derived by the middle en sjo n e of classes from the political successes of the Roman com- the Roman munity and the gradual consolidation of the Roman i^e"^.? sovereignty over Italy. The numerous and large colonies ing the which it was necessary to found for the securing of that sovereignty, the greater part of which were sent forth in the fifth century, furnished a portion of the agricultural pro- letariate with farms of their own, while the efflux gave relief to such as remained at home. The increase of the indirect and extraordinary sources of revenue, and the flourishing condition of the Roman finances in general, rendered it but seldom necessary to levy any contribution from the farmers in the form of a forced loan. While the earlier small holdings were probably lost beyond recovery, the rising average of Roman prosperity must have converted the former larger landholders into farmers, and in so far added new members to the middle class. People of rank sought principally to secure the large newly-acquired districts for occupation ; the mass of wealth which flowed to Rome through war and commerce must have reduced the rate of interest ; the increase in the population of the capital benefited the farmer throughout Latium ; a wise system of incorporation united a number of neighbouring and formerly subject communities with the Roman state, and thereby strengthened especially the middle class; 392 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n finally, the glorious victories and their mighty results silenced faction. If the distress of the farmers was by no means removed and still less were its sources stopped, it yet admits of no doubt that at the close of this period the Roman middle class was on the whole in a far less oppressed condition than in the first century after the expulsion of the kings. Civic Lastly civic equality was in a certain sense undoubtedly 367. attained or rather restored by the reform of 387, and the development of its legitimate consequences. As formerly, when the patricians still in fact formed the burgesses, these had stood upon a footing of absolute equality in rights and duties, so now in the enlarged burgess-body there existed in the eye of the law no arbitrary distinctions. The gradations to which differences of age, sagacity, cultivation, and wealth necessarily give rise in civil society, naturally also pervaded the sphere of public life ; but the spirit animating the bur- gesses and the policy of the government uniformly operated so as to render these differences as little conspicuous as possible. The whole system of Rome tended to train up herturgesses on an average as sound and capable, but not to bring into prominence the gifts of genius. The growth of culture among the Romans did not at all keep pace with the development of the power of their community, and it was instinctively repressed rather than promoted by those in power. That there should be rich and poor, could not be prevented ; but (as in a genuine community of farmers) the farmer as well as the day-labourer personally guided the plough, and even for the rich the good economic rule held good that they should live with uniform frugality and above all should hoard no unproductive capital at home excepting the salt-cellar and the sacrificial ladle, no silver articles were at this period seen in any Roman house. Nor was this of little moment. In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved during the century CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 393 from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers ; that the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians ; that the consulate did not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat ; and that a poor husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn. In regard however to this imposing republican equality New we must not overlook the fact that it was to a considerable ai extent only formal, and that an aristocracy of a very decided stamp grew out of it or rather was contained in it from the very first. The non-patrician families of wealth and con- sideration had long ago separated from the plebs, and leagued themselves with the patriciate in the participation of senatorial rights and in the prosecution of a policy distinct from that of the plebs and very often counteracting it. The Licinian laws abrogated the legal distinctions within the ranks of the aristocracy, and changed the character of the barrier which excluded the plebeian fronv the government, so that it was no longer a hindrance unalterable in law, but one, not indeed insurmountable, but yet difficult to be surmounted in practice. In both ways fresh blood was mingled with the ruling ordef"~m Rome ; but in itself the government still remained, as before, aristocratic. In this respect the Roman community was a genuine farmer-commonwealth, in which the rich holder of a whole hide was little distinguished externally from the poor cottager and held intercourse with him on equal terms, but aristocracy nevertheless exercised so all- powerful a sway that a man without means far sooner rose 394 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n to be master of the burgesses in the city than mayor in his own village. It was a very great and valuable gain, that under the new legislation even the poorest burgess might fill the highest office of the state ; nevertheless it was a rare exception when a man from the lower ranks of the popu- lation reached such a position, 1 and not only so, but probably it was, at least towards the close of this period, possible only by means of an election carried by the opposition. New oppo- Every aristocratic government of itself calls forth a cor- lon- responding opposition party; and as the formal equaliza- tion of the orders only modified the aristocracy, and the new ruling order not only succeeded the old patriciate but engrafted itself on it and intimately coalesced with it, the opposition also continued to exist and in all respects pursued a similar course. As it was now no longer the plebeian burgesses as such, but the common people, that were treated as inferior, thejne^opposi^n^^ofes^ed,^!!!, the first to be the representative of the lower classes^and particularly of the small farmers ; and as the new aris- tocracy attached itself to the patriciate, so the first move- ments of this new opposition were interwoven with the final struggles against the privileges of the patricians. The first names in the series of these new Roman popular leaders 290. 275. were Manius Curius (consul 464, 479, 480; censor 481) 274 273 282 278 an ^ Gaius Fabricius (consul 472, 476, 481 ; censor 479); 273. 275. both of them men without ancestral lineage and without wealth, both summoned in opposition to the aristocratic principle of restricting re-election to the highest office of 1 The statements as to the poverty of the consulars of this period, which play so great a part in the moral anecdote-books of a later age, mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal economy which might very well consist with considerable prosperity and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections which was far from being a pauper burial. The method also of explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to this belief (Serranus). CHAP. HI AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 395 the state thrice by the votes of the burgesses to the chief magistracy, both, as tribunes, consuls, and censors, opponents of patrician privileges and defenders of the small farmer-class against the incipient arrogance of the leading houses. The future parties were already marked out ; but the interests of party were still suspended on both sides in presence of the interests of the commonweal. The patrician Appius Claudius and the farmer Manius Curius vehement in their personal antagonism^-jointly by wise counsel and vigorous action conquered king Pyrrhus ; and while Gaius Fabricius as censor inflicted penalties on Publius Cornelius Rufinus for his aristocratic sentiments and aristocratic habits, this did not prevent him from supporting the claim of Rufinus to a second con- sulate on account of his recognized ability as a general. The breach was already formed ; but the adversaries still shook hands across it. The termination of the struggles between the old and The new new burgesses, the various and comparatively successful ^^" endeavours to relieve the middle class, and the germs already making their appearance amidst the newly acquired civic equality of the formation of a new aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed in review. It remains that we describe the shape which the new government assumed amidst these ^changes, and the positions in which after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of the republican commonwealth the burgesses, the magistrates, and the senate stood towards each other. The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as The.bur- hitherto to be the highest authority in the commonwealth s ess ' bod y- and the legal sovereign. But it^was settled by law that apart from the matters committed once for all to the Its corn- decision of the centuries, such as the election of consuls pos and censors voting by districts should be just as valid as 396 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORpERS, BOOK n voting by centuries : a regulation introduced as regards the patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of 449. 339. 305 (p. 368) and extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the plebeian separate assembly by 287. the Hortensian law about 467 (p. 385). We have already noticed that the same individuals, on the whole, were entitled to vote in both assemblies, but that apart from the exclusion of the patricians from the plebeian separate assembly in the general assembly of the districts all entitled to vote were on a footing of equality, while in the centuriate comitia the working of the suffrage was graduated with reference to the means of the voters, and in so far, therefore, the change was certainly a levelling and democratic innovation. It was a circumstance of far greater importance that, towards the end of this period, the primitive freehold basis of the right of suffrage began for the first time to be called in question. Appius Claudius, the boldest innovator known in Roman history, 31 2[. in his censorship in 442 without consulting the senate or people so adjusted the burgess-roll, that a man who had no land was received into whatever tribe he chose and^ tfien according to his means into the corresponding century. But this alteration was too far in advance of the spirit of the age to obtain full acceptance. One of the immediate successors of Appius, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, the famous conqueror of the Samnites, undertook in his censor- 304. ship of 450 not to set it aside entirely, but to confine it within such limits that the real power in the burgess- assemblies should continue to be vested in the holders of land and of wealth. He assigned those who had no land . collectively to the four city tribes, which were now made t<5 rank not as the first but as the last. The rural tribes, on the other hand, the number of which gradually increased 387. 241. b.etween 367 and 513 from seventeen to thirty-one thus forming a majority, greatly preponderating from the first AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 397 and ever increasing in preponderance, of the voting-divisions were reserved by law for the whole of the burgesses who were freeholders. In the centuries the equalization of th freeholders and non-freeholders remained as Appius ha introduced it. In this manner provision was made for th preponderance of the freeholders in the comitia of the tribes while for the centuriate comitia in themselves the wealthy already turned the scale. By this wise and moderate arrangement on the part of a man who for his warlike feats and still more for this peaceful achievement justly received the surname of the Great (Maximus), on the one hand the duty of bearing arms was extended, as was fitting, also to the non-freehold burgesses ; on the other hand care was taken that their influence, especially that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part without property in land, should be subjected to that check which is unfortunately, in a state allowing slavery, an indispensable necessity. A peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually came to be associated with the census and the making up of the burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political purity of citizenship. The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period increasing a tendency to enlarge their range, but in a manner very j^J^m gradual. The increase in the number of magistrates to be gesses. elected by the people- falls, to some extent, under this head ; it is an especially significant fact that from 392 the military 362. tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four tribunes in each 311. of the first four legions respectively, were nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses. During this period the burgesses did not on the whole interfere in administration ; only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which a prolonged armistice concluded 398 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n instead of a peace expired and what was not in law but in 427. fact a new war began (327). In other instances a question of administration was hardly submitted to the people except when the governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred the matter to the people as when the leaders of the moderate party among the nobility, Lucius Valerius 449. and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and the first plebeian 356. dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not allowed by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned ; 295. when the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of jurisdiction ; and when the senate, 390. in 364, resolved to give up to the Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune carried the matter to the community. This was the first occasion on which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people ; and heavily the community atoned for it. Sometimes in difficult cases the government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued for peace, after the people had declared war against it but before war had actually begun 353. (401); and at a subsequent period, when the senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of 318. the Samnites for peace (436). It is not till towards the close of this epoch that we find a considerably extended intervention of the comitia tributa in affairs of administration, particularly through the practice of consulting it as to the conclusion of peace and of alliances : this extension 287. probably dates from the Hortensian law of 467. Decreasing But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers importance o f j^e burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state burgess- affairs began, particularly towards the close of this period, tb wane. First of all, the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community, it formerly might very well meet in sufficiently full numbers, and might very well know its own wishes, even without CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 399 discussion ; but the Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state. The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It is, therefore, quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which had great practical importance during the first two centuries of the republic, gradually became a mere instru- ment in the hands of the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument, because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the consti- tutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment, inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of a "will and action of their own, and there was as yet no demagog- ism, in the proper sense of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, it would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence ; whereas througEdUl this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses, and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude, and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help or to hinder it. As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution, 400 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n trates. Partition and weak- ening of the consular powers. The magis- although not the direct design of the struggles between the old and new burgesses, was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy ; and the consul, like the king in former times, still had the appoint- ment of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice. At the termination of that contest its most important functions jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites, the census and financial administration were separated from the consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more co-ordinate t than subordinate. The consulate, formerly the single ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely the first. In the new arrangement as to the . ranking and usual order of succession of the public offices the consulate stood indeed above the praetorship, aedile- ship, and quaestorship, but beneath the censorship, which in addition to the most important financial duties was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites, and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest as well as the most prominent. The conception of limited magisterial power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the one and indivisible im- perium. A first step was already taken in this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices, particu- larly the quaestorship (p. 322) ; it was completely carried out 367. by the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three supreme magistrates, and assigned administration CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 401 and the conduct of war to the two first, and the manage- ment of justice to the third. But the change did not stop here. The consuls, although they were in law wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times divided between them in practice the different departments of duty (firovinciae). Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or in default of it by casting lots ; but by degrees the other constituent authorities in the common- wealth interfered with this practical definition of functions. It became usual for the senate to define annually the spheres of duty ; and, while it did not directly distribute them among the co-ordinate magistrates, it exercised decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request. In an extreme case the senate doubtless V obtained a decree of the community, definitively to settle the question of distribution (p. 398) ; the government, however, [ very seldom employed this dangerous expedient. Further, j the most important affairs, such as the concluding of peace, _ were withdrawn from the consuls, and they were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and to act according to its instructions. Lastly, in cases of extremity the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from office ; for, according to an usage never established by lawl but never violated in practice, the creation of a dictatorship cbepended simply upon the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be nominated, although consti- l tutionally vested in the nominating consul, really under; ordinary circumstances lay with the senate. The old unity and plenary legal power of the imperium Limitation were retained longer in the case of the dictatorship than in ator shia" that of the consulship. Although of course as an extra- ordinary magistracy it had in reality from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a special character than the consulate. But it also was gradually affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced VOL. i 26 402 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n 363. into the legal life of Rome. In 391 we first meet with a dictator expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere accomplishment .of a religious ceremony ; and though that dictator himself, doubtless in formal accord- ance with the constitution, treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command of the army in spite of it, such an opposition on the part of the magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly 351. restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thence- forward very frequently. On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted themselves bound by their powers as specially defined. Restric- Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy I 0ns r^lo were involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the I- - n ' 'i -j-- ""^^^^^^^^""^g?*;^***"!^^"^ i' " accumula- accumulation of the ordinary curule office^ and in the teVe i enactment of the same date, that the same person should occupation \not again administer the same office under ordinary circum- stances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as well as in the subsequent regulation that the office which practically was the highest, the censorship, should not be 265. held a second time at all (489). But the government was still strong enough not to be afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account from employing those who were the most serviceable. Brave officers were very frequently released from these rules, 1 and cases still 342. 1 Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412 will have no doubt as to the existence of the above-mentioned law respecting re-election to the consulate ; for, while before that year a return to office, especially after three or four years, was a~cbmm6n Occurrence, afterwards' intervals of ten years and more were as frequent. Exceptions, however, occur in very great numbers, particularly during the severe years "of war 320-311 434-443. On the other hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was strictly adhered to. There is no certain instance of the corn- bination of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, 4) offices (the consulate, praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the of in master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 30) ; of the praetorship and censorship (/''(/.v/. Cap. a. 501} ; of the praetorship and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12) ; of the consulate and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12). CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 403 occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483) who, after he had filled six 370-271. consulships, the first in his twenty-third, the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred. While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more The tribun- completely and definitely transformed from the absolute pgopie'as lord into the limited commissioner and administrator of an instra- the community, the old counter-magistracy, the tribunate of ^^rn- the people, was undergoing at the same time a similar m ent. transformation internal rather than external. It served a double purpose in the commonwealth. It had been from the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a somewhat revolutionary assistance (auxiliwn) against the overbearing violence of the magistrates ; it had subse- quently been employed to get rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the gentile nobility. The latter end was attained. The original object was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political possibility, but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and quite as incompatible with the new organization which originated in the equalization of the orders and had if possible a still more decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded it, as it was obnoxious to this gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician consular constitution. But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they preferred to convert it from a weapon of opposition into an instrument of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were originally excluded from all share in administration and were neither magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing authorities. 404 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation, they now received we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon after the final equalization of the orders a position of equality with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority, the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the pro- ceedings of the senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of the general principle of Roman state- law, that those only should give counsel who were not called to act ; in accord- ance with which the whole of the acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a seat, not a vote, in the council of the state (p. 330). But concession did not rest here. The tribunes received the distinctive prerogative of supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged only to the consuls and praetors besides the right of convoking the senate, of consulting it, and of procuring decrees from it. 1 This was only as it should be ; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician aristocracy in the senate, when once the govern- ment had passed from the clan -nobility to the united aristocracy. Now that this opposition -college, originally excluded from all share in the public administration, became particularly with reference to strictly urban affairs a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the senate, for managing the burgesses and 1 Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs, and Senate (Cicero, ad Fam. xv. 2, etal.} CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 405 especially for checking the excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its original character, absorbed and politically annihilated ; but this course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate with a deceit- ful prospect of relief, but was at the same time decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a strictly speaking anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs ; and we do not need to recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude, it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the state. Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should attract as little attention as possible. The mere name of this essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within the aristocratically governed commonwealth an incongruity for the present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary party, a sharp and dangerous weapon. For the moment, however, and for a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn move- ments of opposition that now and then proceeded from 406 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n individual tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of the tribunate itself. The senate. In reality it was the senate that governed the common- si t t s ; ^ mpo " wealth, and did so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders. Its very composition had undergone a change. The free prerogative of the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after the setting aside of the old clan-representation (p. 98), had , been already subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the presidency for life (p. 331). - A further step towards the emancipation of the senate from the power of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate functionaries from the consuls to the censors (p. 375). Certainly, whether' immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit from it individual senators on account of a stain .attaching to them and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced, at least more precisely defined/ and in this way the foundations were laid of that 1 This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in their powers. It was the community, not the censor, that conferred burgess-rights ; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the inferior place, till the preparation of a new list. The same was the case with the senate ; the person omitted by the censor from his list ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained valid unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate the earlier list. Evidently therefore the important question in this respect was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors, as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to summon according to their lists. Hence it is easy to understand how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected as such. As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the enactment of the Ovinian plebiscitum exercised a material share of influence that the censors should admit to the senate " the best men out of all classes." -CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 407 peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high repute of the censors was chiefly based (p. 397). But censures of that sort especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence on the magistracy. But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the Licinian laws. That law at once conferred a seat and vote in the senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor, or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude them from the roll only for such reasons as .~suffice,d for the rejection of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been magistrates was far from sufficing to keep the senate up to the normal number of three hundred ; and below that point it could not be allowed to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the . same time that of jurymen. , Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise of the censorial right of election ; but those senators who were chosen not in consequence of having held office, but by selection on the part of the censor frequently burgesses who had filled a non-curule public office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed an enemy in battle or saved the life of a burgess took part in voting, but not in debate (p. 384). The main body of the senate, and that portion of it into whose hands government and administration were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially based no longer on the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but indirectly on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some approach to, although it did not reach, the . 408 THE EQUALIZATION -OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n Powers of the senate. great institution of modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate of the non-debating senators furnished what it is so necessary and yet so diffi- cult to get in governing corporations a compact mass of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion, but voting in silence. The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution ; it permitted, though it did no|r promote, the enlargement in a democratic direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power a decisive influence over legislation and the official - elections, and the whole control of the state. its in- Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary legislation deliberation in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magis- trate venture to lay a proposal before the community with- out or in opposition to the senate's opinion. If he did so, the senate had in the intercessory powers of the magis- trates and the annulling powers of the priests an ample set of means at hand to nip in. the bud, or subsequently to get rid of, obnoxious proposals ; and in case of extremity it had in its hands as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that the community should ratify the proceeding a reservation which from the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose the ratifying .decree. As to the elections, they passed^ so far as they depended on the magistrates and were of political importance, practi- cally into the hands of the senate. In this way it acquired, Influence on the elections. CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 409 as has been mentioned already (p. 402), the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had certainly to be shown to the community ; the right of bestowing the public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it ; but, -as has likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was imminent. Moreover - the newly introduced idea of special functions on the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to it an important share in official appointments. Of the influence which the senate exercised in settling the official spheres of the consuls in particular, we have already spoken (p. 401).' One of the most important applications of the dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal term of his tenure of office -a. dispensation which, as con- trary to the fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions " in a consul's or praetor's stead " (pro consule, pro praetore). Of Course this important right of extending the term of office essentially on a par with the right of nomination belonged by law to the community alone, and at the beginning was in fact exercised by it ; but in 447, and regularly thenceforward, the command of the commander-m- chief was prolonged by mere decree of the senate. To this was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily, although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to the government Finally -as regards administration, war, peace and Senatorial . govern- alliances, the founding of colonies, the assignation of mem. 4io THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK n lands, building, in fact every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate. It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each ; and recourse was had to its counsel in every case of importance. The keepers of the state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous decree of the senate. In the management, how- ever, of current affairs and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme governing corporation did not interfere ; the Roman aristocracy had too much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official, or to turn the instrument into a machine. That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention of existing forms involved a complete revolutioniz- ing of the old commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should be arrested and benumbed ; that the magistrates should be reduced to be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners ; that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution and should become, although under very modest forms, the central government of the state these were steps of revolution and usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern, even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the free choice of the nation ; confirmed CHAP, in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 411 every fifth year by the stern moral judgment of the worthiest men ; holding office for life, and so not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying opinion of the people ; having its ranks close and united ever after the equalization of the orders ; embracing in it all the political intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed ; absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was at the -service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels between the orders the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost political corporation of all times still even now an " assembly of kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican self-devotion. Never was a state represented in its external relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best times by its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from benefi- cially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle, concurred with the brilliance of military and political successes in preserving the harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians. 412 EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS BOOK n And, as the fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human undertakings a wise and happy self-government. CHAP. IV FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER 413 CHAPTER IV FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER THE CELTS IN the previous chapters we have presented an outline of Etmsco- the development of the Roman constitution during the first C ^*' two centuries of the republic ; we now recur to the com- maritime mencement of that epoch for the purpose of tracing the su P rei external history of Rome and of Italy. About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan power had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the Carthaginians who were in close alliance with them, possessed undisputed supremacy on the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia amidst continual and severe struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania -and of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also (p. 186), were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia the sons of the Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of their house and of their city by the complete conquest of the island (about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic 500. colonies were occupied with their internal feuds, the Phoenicians retained possession of the western half without material opposition. The vessels of the Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic ; and their pirates were dreaded even in the more eastern waters. By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive 4 i4 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n Subjuga- importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it Latium by r Etruria. and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufficiently protected Latium, and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of the Tiber. But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the wonted resistance. Rome surrendered, 507. and in the peace (assigned to 247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive Command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for the ploughshare. It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan supremacy was not far distant. Etruscans But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the badTfrom Etruscan and Carthaginian nations had threatened both Latium. Greeks and Italians, was fortunately averted by the com- bination of peoples drawn towards each other by family affinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, ^had its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had hastened to the succour of the Aricines 506. (248). We know not how the war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This much only is certain, that on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground permanently on the left bank of the Tiber. Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with CHAP, iv THE CELTS 415 the barbarians both of the west and of the east. It was Fall of the about the time of the Persian wars. The relation in which clnha" the Tyrians stood to the great king led Carthage also to ginian follow in the wake of Persian policy there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between the Carthaginians and Xerxes and, along with the Carthaginians, the Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political com- binations which simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts against Greece, and the Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and civilization from the face of the earth. The victory remained with the Hellenes. The victories battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas ^^f cinci |_4ioi proper ; and on the same day so runs the story the Himera, rulers of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, a d their vanquished the immense army of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely, that the war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames : and the latest times gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang. The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage was the fall of the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies. Anaxilas, ruler of Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against their privateers by means of a standing fleet (about 272); soon afterwards 432. (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a 474.1 decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid. This is the victory which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode ; and there is still extant an Etruscan helmet, 416 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the inscription : " Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus, Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma." l Maritime While these extraordinary successes against the Cartha- oHhe" 18 f ginians and Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Tarentines Greek cities in Sicily, the Doric Tarentum rose to un- cusans^ disputed pre-eminence among the Italian Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the 511. expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible 474. defeat of the Tarentines by the lapygians (280), the most severe disaster which a Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the Italian waters ; the Tarentines pre- dominated in the Adriatic and Ionic, the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy. After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria (Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the Campanian and the northern 452. Etruscans. About the year 302, with a view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special ex- pedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and" the Etruscan coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not- wholly re- pressed Antium, for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome the powerful Syracuse formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians. For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse in the course of the 1 Fidpov .6 Aeipo/t^ceoj Kai rol 2vpa.ic6ffioi roi AJ Wpav' airb JW/uay. CHAP, iv THE CELTS 417 Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the 415-413. Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three .. fifty-oared galleys. But the victory remained, as is well known, both in the west and in the east with the Dorians. After the ignominious failure of the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state, aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the Italian seas ; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the immediate results of these struggles ; we notice their effect only so far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius (who Dionysius reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were ^ S g yra " severely felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation 406-3G7. of his new colonial power especially in the sea to the east of Italy, the more northern water^ of which now became, for the first time, subject to a Greek maritime 'power. About the year 367, Pionysius occupied and colonized the 387. port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and the ports' pf Aricona, Numana, ,and Atria, on the coast of Italy. The memory of ^the Syracusan dominion in this remote region is preserved not only by the " trenches of Philistus," a canal constructed at the mouth of the Po beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (368 et seg.~) at 386. Atria, but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian eastern sea itself, which from this time forth, instead of its- earlier designation of the "Ionic Gulf" (p. 165), received the appellation still current at the present day, and probably VOL. i 27 418 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK II referable to these events, of the sea " of Hadria." 1 But not content with these attacks on the possessions and com- mercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea, Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport 385. of Caere (369). From this blow it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but slight interruptions they thenceforth main- tained, it proved a burden no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks ; so that, when Agathocles of Syracuse in 3,10. 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy, which still existed in the 384-322. time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus broken up; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength. The This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would Romans ^g inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very opposed to the time when the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the crfVeif Etruscans found themselves assailed with the severest blows on every side by land. About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman annals, 483-474. between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved 477. the memory of the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital (p. 359) and had undertaken the / 497. T Hecataeus (t after 257 u.c. ) and Herodotus also (270 after 345) \ 484-409. onty know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes its shores (O. Miiller, Etrusker, i. p. 140 ; Geogr. Graeci min. ed. C. Miiller, i. p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea, in its more extended sense, 336. first occurs in the so-called Scylax about 418 u.c. CHAP, iv THE CELTS 419 defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera. But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated the war, was so far favourable to the Romans ~that it at least restored the status quo of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We cannot ascertain how v far this Romano-Etruscan war was. connected directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with that between the Sicilians anti. Carthaginians ; but whether the Romans were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there was at any rate a coincidence of , interests as well as of results. , The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves The upon the Etruscans; and hardly had their Campanian settlement been cut off from the motherland in consequence the Etrus- of the battle of Cumae, when it found itself no longer able to resist the assaults of the Sabellian mountain tribes. Capua, the capital, fell in 330 ; and the Tuscan population 424. there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion : Cumae itself was conquered by the Sabellians in 334. But the' Hellenes maintained their ground at Neapolis 420. especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans, while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history \excepting some, detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged a pitiful and forlorn existence there. Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps : it was the Celts ; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans. The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the Character common mother endowments different from those of its Ce i ts e Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters. With various solid 420 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n qualities and still more that were brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great in human develop- ment. It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us, for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands. They preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the -fertile plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests day and night. Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier apparently than in Italy. Their political constitution was imperfect. Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly as a bond of connec- tion as is, in fact, the case with all nations at first but the individual communities were deficient in concord and firm control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. The only organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the bonds of discipline relieved the in- dividual from the troublesome task of self-control. "The , prominent qualities of the Celtic race," says their historian Thierry, " were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations ; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression ; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order, ostentation and perpetual discord the result of boundless vanity." Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect; "the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things fighting and esprit? l Such qualities those of good soldiers but of bad citizens explain the historical fact, that the Celts have 1 Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime perscquitur : rem mililarem et argute loqui (Cato, Orig. 1. ii. fr. 2. Jordan). CHAP, iv THE CELTS 421 shaken all states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove or, in other words, to march ; pre- ferring moveable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else ; following the profession of arms as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true soldiers- " of-fortune of antiquity, as figures and descriptions represent them : with big but not sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip ; in variegated embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfre- quently thrown off; with a broad gold ring round the neck ; wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill- tempered sword, a dagger and a lance all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds, which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought < on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants likewise mounted ; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Various traits remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages ; particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accus- tomed during war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures ; during peace also they fought with each other in splendid | suits of armour, as for life or death. After such feats j carousals followed "as" a" matter of course. In this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life ; they were dispersed from Ireland and Spain to 422 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and so-called feats of heroism. But all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring ; and nowhere did they create a great state or develop a distinctive culture of their own. Celtic Such is the description which the ancients give us of this migrations, nation. Its origin can only be conjectured. Sprung from the same cradle from which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued, l the Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean and established their headquarters in what is now France, cross- ing to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession of the peninsula. This, their first great migration, flowed past the Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began those move- ments of smaller masses in the opposite direction move- ments which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence organized by Augustus for ever broke their power. The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us mainly by Livy, relates the story of these 1 It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there is a closer affinity between the Celts and Italians than there is even between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and Celts. This hypothesis com- mends itself much to acceptance in a geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civiliza- tion may very well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian in fact we know nothing of the earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however, seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples. CHAP. IV THE CELTS 423 later retrograde movements as follows. 1 The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges), sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and descended into the valley of the Po. From the former proceeded the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube ; from the latter The Celts the oldest Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the ^rascair canton of the Insubres with Mediolanum (Milan) as its in North- capital. Another host soon followed, which founded the ei canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia (Brescia) and Verona. Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the Alps into the beautiful plain ; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the Po was in their hands. After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum (presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which the 1 The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24). But the association of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research ; and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may have taken place at a very early period ; but the great overflowing of northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half of the third century of the city. In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority of the legend, but on his own conjecture. Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that must remain undecided. 424 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK II Attack on Etruria by the Romans. Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united 396. w ith newly arrived tribes (358 ?), these latter crossed to the right bank of the river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their original abodes. Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the Poenine Alps (the Great St. Bernard) ; they settled in the modern Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital. Finally came the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their way over the Alps ; they took up their abode along the coast -of the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona. But isolated bands of Celtic settlers must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to the border of Etruria proper ; -for stone- inscriptions in the Celtic language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber. The limits of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted, and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth bore and still bears their name. Subjected to these simultaneous and, as it were, concerted assaults on the part of very different peoples the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites, and above all the Celts the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on both the Italian seas, underwent a still more rapid and violent collapse. The loss of their maritime supremacy and the subjugation of the Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to the utmost and almost reduced to bondage by Porsena, first assumed an attitude of aggression 474. towards Etruria. By the armistice with Veii in 280 Rome CHAP, iv THE CELTS 425 had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the kings. When it expired in the year 309, the 445. warfare began afresh ; but it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to no material result on either side. Etruria was still too powerful for Rome to be able seriously to attack it. At length the revolt of the Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys, and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to a more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans ; the king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus Cornelius Cossus (326?), Fidenae was taken, 428. and a new armistice for 200 months was concluded in 329. 425. During this truce the troubles of Etruria became more and , more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on the right bank of the Po. When the armistice, expired in the nd of 346, the Romans on their part resolved to 408., undertake a war of conquest against Etruria ; and on this occasion the war was carried on not merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush it. The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, Conquest and Falisci, and of the siege of Veii, which is said, like ofVeii> that of Troy, to have lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy. Legend and poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with reason ; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented exertions, for an unprecedented prize. It was the first occasion on which a Roman army remained in the field summer and -winter, year after year, till its object was attained. It was the first occasion on which the com- munity paid the levy from the resources of the state. But it was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted to subdue a nation of alien stock, and carried 426 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n their arms beyond the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land. The struggle was vehement, but the issue was scarcely doubtful. The Romans were supported by the Latins and Hernici, to whom the overthrow of their dreaded neighbour was productive of scarcely less satisfac- tion and advantage than to the Romans themselves ; whereas Veii was abandoned by its own nation, and only the adjacent towns of Capena and Falerii, along with Tar- quinii, furnished cpntingents to its help. The contemporary attacks of the Celts would alone suffice to explain the non- intervention of the northern communities ; it is affirmed however, and there is no reason to doubt, that this inaction of the other Etruscans was primarily occasioned by internal factions in the league of the Etruscan cities, and particu- larly by the opposition which the regal form of government retained or restored by the Veientes encountered from the aristocratic governments of the other cities. Had the Etruscan nation been able or willing to take part in the conflict, the Roman community would hardly have been able undeveloped as was the art of besieging at that time to accomplish the gigantic task of subduing a large and strong city. But isolated and forsaken as Veii was, it suc- 396. cumbed (3 5 8) after a valiant resistance to the persevering and heroic spirit of Marcus Furius Camillus, who first opened up to his countrymen the brilliant and perilous career of foreign conquest. The joy which this great success excited in Rome had its echo in the Roman custom, continued down to a late age, of concluding the festal games with a " sale of Veientes," at which, among the mock spoils sub- mitted to auction, the most wretched old cripple who could be procured wound up the sport in a purple mantle and ornaments of gold as "king of the Veientes." The city was destroyed, and the soil was doomed to perpetual desolation. Falejii and Capena hastened to make peace ; the powerful Volsinii, which with federal indecision had CHAP, iv THE CELTS 427 remained quiet during the agony of Veil and took up arms after its capture, likewise after a few years (363) consented 391. to peace. The statement that the two bulwarks of the Etruscan nation, Melpum and Veii, yielded on the same day, the former to the Celts, the latter to the Romans, may be merely a melancholy legend ; but it at any rate involves a deep historical truth. The double assault from the north and from the south, and the fall of the two frontier strong- holds, were the beginning of the end of the great Etruscan nation. For a moment, however, it seemed as if the two peoples, The Celts through whose co-operation Etruria saw her very existence ^^g put in jeopardy, were about to destroy each other, and the reviving power of Rome was to be trodden under foot by foreign barbarians. This turn of things, so contrary to what might naturally have been expected, the Romans brought upon themselves by their own arrogance and short- sightedness. The Celtic swarms, which had crossed the river after the fall of Melpum, rapidly overflowed northern Italy not merely the open country on the right bank of the Po and along the shore of the Adriatic, but also Etruria proper to the south of the Apennines. A few years afterwards (363) 391. Clusium situated in the heart of Etruria (Chiusi, on the borders of Tuscany and the Papal State) was besieged by the Celtic Senones ; and so humbled were the Etruscans that the Tuscan city in its straits invoked aid from the destroyers of Veii. Perhaps it would have been wise to grant it and to reduce at once the Gauls by arms, and the Etruscans by according to them protection, to a state of dependence on Rome ; but an intervention with aims so extensive, which would have compelled the Romans to undertake a serious struggle on the northern 'Tuscan frontier, lay beyond the horizon of the Roman policy at that time. No course was therefore left but to refrain from 428 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n all interference. Foolishly, however, while declining to send auxiliary troops, they despatched envoys. With still greater folly these sought to impose upon the Celts by haughty language, and, when this failed, they conceived that they might with impunity violate the law of nations in dealing with barbarians ; in the ranks of the Clusines they took part in a skirmish, and in the course of it one of them stabbed and dismounted a Gallic officer. The barbarians acted in this case with moderation and prudence. They sent in the first instance to the Roman community to demand the surrender of those who had outraged the law of nations, and the senate was ready to comply with the reasonable request. But with the multitude compassion for their countrymen outweighed justice towards the foreigners ; satisfaction was refused by4he burgesses ; and according to some accounts they even nominated the brave champions of 390. their fatherland as consular tribunes for the year 364^ which was to be so fatal in the Roman annals. Then the Brennus or, in^ other words, the " king of the army " of the Gauls broke up the siege of Clusium, and the whole Celtic host the numbers of which are stated at 70,000 men turned against Rome. Such expeditions into un- known and distant regions were not unusual for the Gauls, who marched as bands of armed emigrants, troubling them- selves little as to the means of cover or of retreat ; but it was evident that none in Rome anticipated the dangers involved Battle on in so sudden and so mighty an invasion. It was not till the Gauls were marching upon Rome that a Roman military force crossed the Tiber and sought to bar their way. Not twelve miles from the gates, opposite to the confluence of the rivulet Allia with the Tiber, the armies 390. jnet, and a battle took place on the i8th July, 364. Even 1 This is according to the current computation 390 B.C. ; but, in fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B.C., and has been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the Roman calendar. CHAP, iv THE CELTS 429 now they went into battle not as against an army, but as against freebooters with arrogance and foolhardiness and under inexperienced leaders, Camillus having in con- sequence of the dissensions of the orders withdrawn from taking part in affairs. Those against whom they were to fight were but barbarians ; what need was there of a camp, or of securing a retreat ? These barbarians, however, were men whose courage despised death, and their mode of fighting was to the Italians as novel as it was terrible; sword in hand the Celts precipitated themselves with furious onset on the Roman phalanx, and shattered it at the first shock. The overthrow was complete ; of the Romans, who had fought with the river in their rear, a large portion met their death in the attempt to cross it; such as escaped threw themselves by a flank movement into the neighbouring Veii. The .victorious Celts stood between the remnant of the beaten army and the capital. The latter was irretrievably abandoned to the enemy ; the Capture of small forqe that was left behind, or that had fled thither, Rome ' . was* not sufficient to garrison the walls, arid three days after the battle the victors marched through the open gates into Rome. Had they done so at first, as they might have done, not only the city, but the state also must have been lost ; the brief interval gave opportunity to tarry away or to bury the sacred objects, and, what was more important, to .occupy the citadel and to furnish it with provisions for the exigency. No one was admitted to the citadel who was incapable of bearing arms there was not food for all. The mass of the defenceless dispersed among the neighbour- ing towns ; but many, and in particular a number of old men of high standing, would not survive the downfall o/ the city and awaited death in their houses by the sword of the barbarians. They came, murdered all they met with; plundered whatever property they found, and at length set. - the city on fire on all sides before the eyes of the Roman 43 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n garrison in the Capitol. But they had no knowledge of the art of besieging, and the blockade of the steep citadel rock was tedious and difficult, because subsistence for the great host could only be procured by armed foraging parties, and the citizens of the neighbouring Latin cities, the Ardeates in particular, frequently attacked the foragers with courage and success. Nevertheless the Celts persevered, with an energy which in their circumstances was unparalleled, for seven months beneath the rock, and the garrison, which had escaped a surprise on a dark night only in consequence of the cackling of the sacred geese in the Capitoline temple and the accidental awaking of the brave Marcus Manlius, already found its provisions beginning to fail, when the Celts received information as to the Veneti having invaded the Senonian territory recently acquired on the Po, and were thus induced to accept the ransom money that was offered to procure their withdrawal. The scornful throwing down of the Gallic sword, that it might be outweighed by Roman gold, indicated very truly how matters stood. The iron of the barbarians had conquered, but they sold their victory and by selling lost it. Fruitless- The fearful catastrophe of the defeat and the conflagra- Ceiti? thC iion the l8th of J ulv and the rivulet of the Allia > the s P ot victory. where the sacred objects were buried, and the spot where . the surprise of the citadel had been repulsed all the details of this unparalleled event were transferred from the recollection of contemporaries to the imagination of posterity; and we can scarcely realize the fact that two thousand years have actually elapsed since those world- renowned geese showed greater vigilance than the sentinels at their posts. And yet although there was an enactment in Rome that in future, on occasion of a Celtic invasion no legal privilege should give exemption from military service ; although dates were reckoned by the years from the conquest of the city ; although the event resounded CHAP, iv THE CELTS 431 throughout the whole of the then civilized world and found its way even into the Grecian annals the battle of the Allia and its results can scarcely be numbered among those historical events that are fruitful of consequences. It made no alteration at all in political relations. When the Gauls had marched off again with their gold which only a legend of late and wretched invention represents the hero Camillus as having recovered for Rome and when the fugitives had again made their way home, the foolish idea suggested by some faint-hearted prudential politicians, that the citizens should migrate to Veii, was set aside by a spirited speech of Camillus ; houses arose out of the ruins hastily and irregularly the narrow and crooked streets of Rome owed their origin to this epoch ; and Rome again stood in her old commanding position. Indeed it is not improbable that this occurrence contributed materially, though not just at the moment, to diminish the antagonism between Rome and Etruria, and above all to knit more closely the ties of union between Latium and Rome. The conflict between the Gauls and the Romans was not, like that between Rome and Etruria or between " Rome and Samnium, a collision of two political powers which affect and modify each other ; it may be compared to those catastrophes of nature, after which the organism, if it is not destroyed, immediately resumes its equilibrium. , The Gauls often returned to Latium: as in the year 387, 367. when Camillus defeated them at Alba the last victory of the aged hero, who had been six times military tribune with consular powers, and five times dictator, and had four times marched in triumph to the Capitol ; in the year 393, 361. when the dictator Titus Quinctius Pennus encamped opposite to them not five miles from the city at the bridge of the Anio, but before any encounter took place the Gallic host marched onward to Campania; in the year 394, when 360. the dictator Quintus Servilius Ahala fought in front of the 432 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n Colline gate with the hordes returning from Campania ; in 358. the year 396, when the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus 350. inflicted on them a signal defeat ; in_the_^ear 404, when they even spent the winter encamped upon the Alban mount and joined with the Greek pirates along the coast for plunder, till Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the celebrated general, in the following year dislodged them an incident which came to the ears of Aristotle who was 384-322. contemporary (370432) in Athens. But these predatory expeditions, formidable and troublesome as they may have been, were rather incidental misfortunes than events of political significance ; and their most essential result was, that the Romans were more and more regarded by them- selves and by foreigners as the bulwark of the civilized nations of Italy against the onset of the dreaded barbarians .a view which tended more than is usually supposed to further their subsequent claim to universal empire. Further / The Tuscans, who had taken advantage of the Celtic of^orneln attac ^ on Rome to assail Veii, had accomplished nothing, Etruria. because they had appeared in insufficient force; the barbarians had scarcely departed, when the heavy arm of Latium descended on the Tuscans with undiminished South weight. After the Etruscans had been repeatedly defeated, the whole of southern Etruria as far as the Ciminian hills remained in the hands of the Romans, who formed four new . 387. tribes in the territories of Veii, Capena, and Falerii (367), and secured the" northern boundary by establishing the 383. 373. fortresses of Sutrium (371) and Nepete (381). With rapid steps this fertile region, covered with Roman colonists, 358. became completely Romanized. About 396 the nearest Etruscan towns, Tarquinii, Caere, and Falerii, attempted to. revolt against the Roman encroachments, and the deep ex- asperation which these had aroused in Etruria was shown by the slaughter of the whole of the Roman prisoners taken in the first campaign, three hundred and seven in number, in CHAP, iv THE CELTS 433 the market-place of Tarquinii ; but it was the exasperation of impotence. In the peace (403) Caere, which as situated 351. nearest to the Romans suffered the heaviest retribution, was compelled to cede half its territory to Rome, and with the diminished domain which was left to it to withdraw from the Etruscan league, and to enter into the relationship ^ of subjects to Rome which had in the meanwhile been constituted primarily for individual Latin communities. It seemed, however, not advisable to leave to this more remote community alien in race from the Roman such communal independence as was still . retained by the subject communities of Latium ; the Caerite community received the Roman franchise not merely without the privilege of electing or of being elected at Rome, but also subject to the ^withholding of self-administration, so that the place of magistrates of its own was as regards justice and the census taken by those of Rome, and a representative \ ~ ~ (praefectus) of the Roman praetor conducted the admihii- tration on the spot a form of subjection, which in state- law first meets us here, whereby a state which had hitherto been independent became converted into a communky continuing to subsist de jure, but deprived of all power of movement on its own part. Not long afterwards (411) 343. Falerii, which had preserved its original Latin nationality even under Tuscan rule, abandoned the Etruscan league and entered into perpetual alliance with Rome; and thereby the whole of southern Etruria became in one form or other subject to Roman supremacy. In the case of Tarquinii and perhaps of northern Etruria generally, the Romans were content with restraining them for a lengthened period by a treaty of peace for 400 months (403). 351. In northern Italy likewise the peoples that had come Patifica- into collision and conflict gradually settled on a permanent n" tl ern footing and within more defined limits. The migrations Italy, over the Alps ceased, partly perhaps in consequence of the VOL. i 28 434 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n desperate defence which the Etruscans made in their more restricted home, and of the serious resistance of the power- ful Romans, partly perhaps also in consequence of changes unknown to us on the north of the Alps. Between the Alps and the Apennines, as far south as the Abruzzi, the Celts were now generally the ruling nation, and they were masters more especially of the plains and rich pastures ; but from the lax and superficial nature of their settlement their dominion took no deep root in the newly acquired land and by no means assumed the shape of exclusive possession. How matters stood in the Alps, and to what extent Celtic settlers became mingled there with earlier Etruscan or other stocks, our unsatisfactory information as -to the nationality of the later Alpine peoples does not permit us to ascertain ; only the Raeti in the modern Grisons and Tyrol may be described as a probably Etruscan stock. The Umbrians retained the valleys of the Apennines, and the Veneti, speaking a different language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley of the Po. Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating the Celt-land proper from Etruria. The Celts dwelt only in the intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north of the Po, the Boii to the south, and not to mention smaller tribes the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona, in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (ager Gallicus). But even there Etruscan settle- ments must have continued partially at least to subsist, somewhat as Ephesus and Miletus remained Greek under the supremacy of the Persians. Mantua at any rate, which was protected by its insular position, was a Tuscan city even in the time of the empire, and Atria on the Po also, where numerous discoveries of vases have been made, appears to have retained its Etruscan character; the CHAP, iv THE CELTS 435 description of the coasts that goes under the name of Scylax, composed about 418, calls the district of Atria and 336. Spina Tuscan land. This alone, moreover, explains how Etruscan corsairs could render the Adriatic unsafe till far into the fifth century, and why not only Dionysius of Syracuse covered its coasts with colonies, but even Athens, as a remarkable document recently discovered informs us, resolved about 429 to establish a colony in the Adriatic 325. for the protection of seafarers against the Tyrrhene pirates. But while more or less of an Etruscan character con- tinued to mark these regions, it was confined to isolated remnants and fragments of their earlier power; the Etruscan nation no longer reaped the benefit of such gains as were still acquired there by individuals in peaceful^ commerce or in maritime war. On the other hand it was probably from these half-free Etruscans that the germs proceeded of such civilization as we subsequently find among the Celts and Alpine peoples in general (p. 278). The very fact that the Celtic hordes in the plains of Lombardy, to use the language of the so-called Scylax, . abandoned their warrior-life and took to permanent settle- ment, must in part be ascribed to this influence; the rudiments moreover of handicrafts and arts and the alphabet came to the Celts in Lombardy, and in fact to the Alpine peoples as far as the modern Styria, through the medium of the Etruscans. Thus the Etruscans, after the loss of their possessions Etruria in Campania and of the whole district to the north of the P r P er at peace and Apennines and to the south of the Ciminian Forest, on the remained restricted to very narrow bounds ; their season of power and of aspiration had for ever passed away. The closest reciprocal relations subsisted between this external decline and the internal decay of the nation, the seeds of which indeed were doubtless already deposited at a far earlier period. The Greek authors of this age are full of 436 FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n descriptions of the unbounded luxury of Etruscan life : poets of Lower Italy in the fifth century of the city celebrate the Tyrrhenian wine, and the contemporary historians Timaeus and Theopompus delineate pictures of Etruscan unchastity and of Etruscan banquets, such as fall nothing short of the worst Byzantine or French demoraliza- tion. Unattested as may be the details in these accounts, the statement at least appears to be well founded, that the detestable amusement of gladiatorial combats the gangrene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of antiquity generally first came into vogue among the Etruscans. At any rate on the whole they leave no doubt as to the deep degeneracy of the nation. It pervaded even its political condition. As far as our scanty informa- tion reaches, we find aristocratic tendencies prevailing, in the same way as they did at the same period in Rome, but more harshly and more perniciously. The abolition of royalty, which appears to have been carried out in all the cities of Etruria about the time of the siege of Veii, called into existence in the several cities a patrician government, which experienced but slight restraint from the laxity of the federal bond. That bond but seldom succeeded in combining all the Etruscan citis even for the defence of the land, and the nominal hegemony of Volsinii does not admit of the most remote comparison with the energetic vigour which the leadership of Rome communicated to the Latin nation. The struggle against the exclusive claim put forward by the old burgesses to all public offices and to all public usufructs, which must have destroyed even the Roman state, had not its external successes enabled it in some measure to satisfy the demands of the oppressed proletariate at the expense of foreign nations and to open up other paths to ambition that struggle against the exclusive rule and (what was specially prominent in Etruria) the priestly monopoly of the clan-nobilitymust CHAP, iv THE CELTS 437 have ruined Etruria politically, economically, and morally. Enormous wealth, particularly in landed property, became r concentrated in the hands of a few nobles, while the masses / were impoverished ; the social revolutions which thence - arose increased the distress which they sought to remedy ; and, in consequence of the impotence of the central power, no course at last remained to the distressed aristocrats e.g. in Arretium in 453, and in Volsinii in 488 but to call 301. (266. in the aid of the Romans, who accordingly put an end to the disorder but at the same time extinguished the remnant of independence. The energies of the nation were broken from the day of Veii and Melpum. Earnest attempts were still once or twice made to escape from the Roman supremacy, but in such instances the stimulus was com- municated to the Etruscans from without from another Italian stock, the Samnites. 438 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS CHAPTER V The hege- mony of Rome over Latium shaken and re-estab- lished. 499? 496? 493. SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME THE great achievement of the regal period was the establish- ment of the sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony. It is in the nature of the case evident that the change in the constitution of Rome could not but powerfully affect both the relations of the Roman state towards Latium and the internal organization of the Latin communities themselves ; and that it did so, is obvious from tradition. The fluctuations which the revolution in Rome occasioned in the Romano-Latin confederacy are attested by the legend, unusually vivid and various in its hues, of the victory at the lake Regillus, which the dictator or consul Aulus Postumius (255 ? 258?) is said to have gained over the Latins with the help of the Dioscuri, and still more definitely by the renewal of the perpetual league between Rome and Latium by Spurius Cassius in his second consulate (261). These narratives, however, give us no information as to the main matter, the legal relation between the new Roman republic and the Latin con- federacy ; and what from other sources we learn regarding that relation comes to us without date, and can only be inserted here with an approximation to probability. The nature of a hegemony implies that it becomes gradually converted into sovereignty by the mere inward force of circumstances ; and the Roman hegemony over CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 439 Latium formed no exception to the rule. It was based Original upon the essential equality of rights between the Roman r^ht^ state on the one side and the Latin confederacy on the between other (p. 130); but at least in matters of war and in the Lathm!" 1 ' treatment of the acquisitions thereby made this relation between the single state on the one hand and the league of states on the other virtually involved a hegemony. According to the original constitution of the league not only was the right of making wars and treaties with foreign states in other words, the full right of political self- determination reserved in all probability both to Rome and to the individual towns of the Latin league ; and when a joint war took place, Rome and Latium probably furnished the like contingent, each, as a rule, an " army " of 8400 men ; l but the chief command was held by the Roman general, who then nominated the officers of the staff, and so the leaders-of-division (tribuni militum}, according to his own choice. In case of victory the moveable part of the spoil, as well as the conquered territory, was shared between Rome and the confederacy ; when the establish- ment of fortresses in the conquered territory was resolved on, their garrisons and population were composed partly of Roman, partly of confederate colonists ; and not only so, but the newly- founded community was received as a sovereign federal state into the. Latin confederacy and furnished with a seat and vote in the Latin diet. These stipulations must probably even in the regal Eneroach- period, certainly in the republican epoch, have undergone J!^ ts alteration more and more to the disadvantage of the con- equality of federacy and to the further development of the hegemony n of Rome. The earliest that fell into abeyance was beyond As to wars doubt the right of the confederacy to make wars and tre aties. 1 The original equality of the two armies is evident from Liv. i. 52 ; viii. 8, 14, and Dionys. viii. 15 ; but most clearly from Polyb. vi. 26. 440 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK II As to the officering of the army. As to ac- quisitions in war. treaties with foreigners ; l the decision of war and treaty passed once for all to Rome. The staff officers for the Latin troops must doubtless in earlier times have been likewise Latins ; afterwards for that purpose Roman citizens were taken, if not exclusively, at any rate predominantly. 2 On the other hand, afterwards as formerly, no stronger contingent could be demanded from the Latin confederacy asr a whole than was furnished by the Roman community ; and the Roman commander-in-chief was likewise bound not to break up the Latin contingents, but to keep the contingent sent by each community as a separate division of the army under the leader whom that community had appointed. 3 The right of the Latin confederacy to an equal share in the moveable spoil and in the conquered land continued to subsist in form ; in reality, however, the substantial fruits of war beyond doubt went, even at an early period, to the leading state. Even in the founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the 1 Dionysius (viii. 15) expressly states, that in the later federal treaties between Rome and Latium the Latin communities were interdicted from calling'oTrt their contingents of their own motion and sending them into the field alone._ 2 These Latin staff-officers were the twelve praefecti sociorum, who subsequently, when the old phalanx had been resolved into the later legions and aloe, had the charge of the two alae of the federal contingents, six to each ala, just as the twelve war-tribunes of the Roman army had charge of the two legions, six to each legion. Polybius (vi. 26, 5) states that the consul nominated the former, as he originally nominated the latter. Now, as according to the ancient maxim of law, that every person under obligation of service might become an officer (p. 106), it was legally allowable for the general to appoint a Latin as leader of a Roman, as well as conversely a Roman as leader of a Latin, legion, this led to the practical result that the tribuni militum were wholly, and the praefecti sociorum at least ordinarily, Romans. 8 These were the decuriones turmarum and praefecti cohortium (Polyb. vi. 21, 5; Liv. xxv. 14 ; Sallust. Jug. 69, et al.) Of course, as the Roman consuls were in law and ordinarily also in fact commanders-in- chief, the presidents of the community in the dependent towns also were perhaps throughout, or at least very frequently, placed at the head of the community-contingents (Liv. xxiii. 19 ; Orelli, Inscr. 7022). Indeed, the usual name given to the Latin magistrates (praetores) indicates that they were officers. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 441 colonists were Romans ; and although by the transfer- / ence they were converted from Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted town- ship in all probability frequently retained a preponderant and for the confederacy dangerous attachment to the real mother-city. The rights, on the contrary, which were secured by the Private federal treaties to the individual burgess of one of the allied communities in every city belonging to the league, under- went no restriction. These included, in particular, full equality of rights as to the acquisition of landed property and moveable estate, as to traffic and exchange, marriage and testament, and an unlimited liberty of migration ; so that not only was a man who had burgess-rights in a town of the league legally entitled to settle in any other, but where- ever he settled, he as a right-sharer (municeps) participated in all private and political rights and duties with the ex- ception of eligibility to office, and was even although in a limited fashion entitled to vote at least in the comitia tributa?- Of some such nature, in all probability, was the relation between the Roman community and the Latin confederacy in the first period of the republic. We cannot, however ascertain what elements are to be referred to earlier stipulations, and what to the revision of the alliance in 261. 493. With somewhat greater certainty the remodelling of the Remodel- arrangements of the several communities belonging to the arrange- e Latin confederacy, after the pattern of the consular ments of k 1 Such a metoikos was not like an actual burgess assigned to a specific commun j_ oting district once for all, but before each particular vote the district in t] - es a f ter rhich the metoeci were upon that occasion to vote was fixed by lot. tne R onian In reality this probably amounted to the concession to the Latins of one pa t tern vote in the Roman comitia tributa. As a place in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate suffrage, if the metoeci shared in the voting in the assembly of the centuries which we do not know a similar allotment must have been fixed for the latter. In the curies they must have taken part like the plebeians. 442 . SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n constitution in Rome, may be characterized as an innova- tion and introduced in this connection. For, although the different communities may very well have arrived at the abolition of royalty in itself independently of each other (p. 315), the identity in the appellation of the new annual kings in the Roman and other commonwealths of Latium, and the comprehensive application of the peculiar principle of collegiateness, 1 evidently point to some external connection. At some time or other after the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the arrangements of the Latin communities must have been throughout revised in accordance with the scheme of the consular constitution. This adjustment of the Latin constitutions in conformity with that of the leading city may possibly belong only to a later period ; but internal probability rather favours the supposition that the Roman nobility, 1 Ordinarily, as is well known, the Latin communities were presided over by two praetors. Besides these there occur in several communities single magistrates, who in that case bear the title of dictator ; as in Alba (Orelli Henzen, Inscr. 2293), Tusculum (p. 445, note 2), Lanuvium (Cicero, fro Mil. 10, 27 ; 17, 45 ; Asconius, in Mil. p. 32, Orell. ; Orelli, n. 2786, 5157, 6086) ;, Compitum (Orelli, 3324) ; Nomentum (Orelli, 208, 6138, 7032 ; comp. Henzen, Bullett. 1858, p. 169) ; and Aricia (Orelli, n. 1455). To these falls to be added the similar dictator in the civitas sine suffragio of Caere (Orelli, n. 3787, 5772 ; also Garrucci Diss. arch. i. p. 31, although erroneously placed after Sutrium) ; and further the officials of the like name at Fidenae (Orelli, 112). All these magistracies or priesthoods that originated in magistracies (the dictator of Caere is to be explained in accordance with Liv. ix. 43 : Anagninis magistratibus praeter quant sacrorum curatione interdictunt), were annual (Orelli, 208). The statement of Macer likewise and of the annalists who borrowed from him, that Alba was at the time of its fall no longer under kings, but under annual directors (Dionys. v. 74 ; Plutarch, Romul. 27 ; Liv. i. 23), is presumably a mere inference from the institution, with which he was acquainted, of the sacerdotal Alban dictatorship which was beyond doubt annual like that of Nomentum ; a view in which, moreover, the democratic partisanship of its author may have come into play. It may be a question whether the inference is valid, and whether, even if Alba at the time of its dissolution was under rulers holding office for life, the abolition of monarchy in Rome might not subsequently lead to the conversion of the Alban dictatorship into an annual office. AH these Latin magistracies substantially coincide in reality, as well as specially in name, with the arrangement established in Rome by the revolution in a way which is not adequately explained by the mere similarity of the political circumstances underlying them. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 443 after having effected 'the abolition of royalty for life at home, suggested a similar change of constitution to the communities of the Latin confederacy, and at length introduced aristocratic government everywhere in Latium notwithstanding the serious resistance, imperilling the stability of the Romano-Latin league itself, which seems to have been offered on the one hand by the expelled Tarquins, and on the other by the royal clans and by partisans well affected to monarchy in the other communi- ties of Latium. The mighty development of the power of Etruria that occurred at this very time, the constant assaults of the Veientes, and the expedition of Porsena, may have materially contributed to secure the adherence of the Latin nation to the once-established form of union, or, in other words, to the continued recognition of the supremacy or Rome, and disposed them for its sake to acquiesce in a change of constitution for which, beyond doubt, the way had been in many respects prepared even in the bosom of the Latin communities, nay perhaps to submit even to an enlargement of the rights of hegemony. The permanently united nation was able not only to Extension maintain, but also to extend on all sides its power. We nd or have already (p. 414) mentioned that the Etruscans Latium to remained only for a short time in possession of supremacy an^Touth over Latium, and that the relations there soon returned to the position in which they stood during the regal period ; but it was not till more than a century after the expulsion of the kings from Rome that any real extension of the Roman boundaries took place in this direction. With the Sabines who occupied the middle mountain At the range from the borders of the Umbrians down to the e ^P^ nse of the region between the Tiber and the Anio, and who, at the Sabines. epoch when the history of Rome begins, 'penetrated fighting and conquering as far as Latium itself, the 444 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n Romans notwithstanding their immediate neighbourhood subsequently came comparatively little into contact. The feeble sympathy of the Sabines with the desperate re- sistance offered by the neighbouring peoples in the east and south, is evident even from the accounts of the annals ; and what is of more importance we find here no fortresses to keep the land in subjection, such as were so numerously established especially in the Volscian plain. Perhaps this lack of opposition was connected with the fact that the Sabine hordes probably about this very time poured them- selves over Lower Italy. Allured by the pleasantness of the settlements on the Tifernus and Volturnus, they appear to have interfered but little in the conflicts of which the region to the south of the Tiber was the arena. At the Far more vehement and lasting was the resistance .of tne Aequi, who, having their settlements to the eastward of and Voisci. Rome as far as the valleys of the Turano and Salto and on the northern verge of the Fucine lake, bordered with the Sabines and Marsi, 1 and of the Voisci, who to the south of the Rutuli settled around Ardea, and of the Latins extend- ing southward as far as Cora, possessed the coast almost as far as the river Liris along with the adjacent islands and in the interior the whole region drained by the Liris. We do not intend to narrate the feuds annually renewed with these two peoples feuds which are related in the Roman chronicles in such a way that the most insignificant foray is scarcely distinguishable from a momentous war, and historical connection is totally disregarded ; it is sufficient to indicate the permanent .results. We plainly perceive that it was the especial aim of the Romans and Latins 1 The country of the Aequi embraces not merely the valley of the Anio above Tibur and the territory of the later Latin colonies Carsioli (on the upper part of the Turano) and Alba (on the Fucine lake), but also the district of the later municipium of the Aequiculi, who are nothing but that remnant of the Aequi to which, after the subjugation by the Romans, and after the assignation of the largest portion of the territoiy to Roman or Latin colonists, municipal independence was left. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 445 to separate the Aequi from the Volsci, and to become masters of the communications between them; in the region between the southern slope of the Alban range, the Volscian mountains and the Pomptine marshes, moreover, the Latins and the Volscians appear to have come first into contact and to have even had their settlements inter- mingled. 1 In this region the Latins took the first steps beyond the bounds of their own land, and federal fortresses on foreign soil Latin colonies, as they were called were first established, namely : in the plain Velitrae (as is alleged, about 260) beneath the Alban range itself, and Suessa in the 494. Pomptine low lands, in the mountains Norba (as is alleged, in 262) and Signia (alleged to have been strengthened in 492. 259), both of which lie at the points of connection between 495. the Aequian and Volscian territories. The object was League attained still more fully by the accession of the Hernici to lth * h . e * * Hernici. the league of the Romans and Latins (268), an accession 486. which isolated the Volscians completely, and provided the league with a bulwark against the Sabellian tribes dwelling on the south and east ; it is easy therefore to perceive why this little people obtained the concession of full equality with the two others in counsel and in distribution of the spoil. The feebler Aequi were thenceforth but little for- midable ; it was sufficient to undertake from time to time a plundering expedition against them. The Rutuli also, who bordered with Latium on the south in the plain along the coast, early succumbed ; their town Ardea was converted into a Latin colony as early as 3i2. 2 The Volscians 1 To all appearance Velitrae, although situated in the plain, was originally Volscian, and so a Latin colony ; Cora, on the other hand, j on the Volscian mountains, was originally Latin. 2 Not long afterwards must have taken place the founding of the Nemus Dianae in the forest of Aricia, which, according to Cato's account (p. 12, Jordan), a Tusculan dictator accomplished for the urban com- munities of old Latium, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, and Tibur, and of the two Latin colonies (which therefore stand last) Suessa Pometia and Ardea (populus Ardeatis Rutulus). The absence of Praeneste and of the smaller communities of the old Latium shows, as was 446 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n opposed a more serious resistance. The first notable success, after those mentioned above, achieved over them by the Romans was, remarkably enough, the foundation of 393. Circeii in 361, which, as long as Antium and Tarracina continued free, can only have held communication with Latium by sea. Attempts were often made to occupy 467. Antium, and one was temporarily successful in 287 ; but in 459. 295 the town recovered its freedom, and it was not till after the Gallic conflagration that, in consequence of a violent war 389-377. of thirteen years (365377), the Romans gained a decided superiority in the Antiate and Pomptine territory. Satricum, not far from Antium, was occupied with a Latin colony 385. in 369, and not long afterwards probably Antium itself as well as Tarracina. 1 The Pomptine territory was secured by 382. 379. the founding of the fortress Setia (372, strengthened in 375), and was distributed into farm -allotments and burgess - 383. districts in the year 371 and following years. After this date the Volscians still perhaps rose in revolt, but they waged no further wars against Rome. Crises But the more decided the successes that the league withm the Q f Romans Latins, and Hernici achieved against the Romano- Latin Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli, the more that league league. became liable to disunion. The reason lay partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a implied in the nature of the case, that not all the communities of the Latin 382. league at that time took part in the consecration. That it falls before 372 is proved by the emergence of Pometia (p. 449), and the list quite accords with what can otherwise be ascertained as to the state of the league shortly after the accession of Ardea. More credit may be given to the traditional statements regarding the years of the foundations than to most of the oldest traditions, seeing that the numbering of the year ab urbe condita, commori to the Italian cities, has to all appearance preserved, by direct tradition, the year in which the colonies were founded. 1 The two do not appear as Latin colonies in the so-called Cassian list 382. 348. about 372, but they so appear in the Carthaginian treaty of 406 ; the towns had thus become Latin colonies in the interval. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 447 heavy burden in Latium ; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by the leading community. Of this nature was especially the infamous sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea in 308, in 446. which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to themselves ; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while the nobility adhered to Rome, these dis- sensions were still more disgracefully employed as a pretext for the already mentioned sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed (312). The main cause however of the internal breaking 442. up of the league was the very subjugation of the common foe ; forbearance ceased on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they thought that they had no longer need of each other; \The open breach between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory. The former allies soon stood opposed in the field. Already Latin volunteers in great numbers had f taken part in the last despairing struggle of the Antiates : now the most famous of the Latin cities, Lanuvium (371), 383. Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394, 382-380. 400), and even several of the fortresses established in the 360 ' Volscian land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to be subdued by force of arms, and the 1 Tiburtines were not afraid even to make common cause j against Rome with the once more advancing hordes of the Gauls. No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome mastered the individual towns without much trouble. <. 448 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n 381. Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a subject community (civitas sine suffragio), so that the town retained its walls and an although limited self-administration, including magistrates and a burgess- assembly of its own, whereas its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected the first instance of a whole burgess -body being incorporated as- a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth. The struggle with the Hernici was more severe 362-358. (392396); the first consular commander-in-chief belong- ing to the plebs, Lucius Genucius, fell in it ; but here too Renewal of the Romans were victorious. The crisis terminated with of^lnance 5 tnfi renewa ^ of the treaties between Rome and the Latin 358. and Hernican confederacies in 396. The precise contents of these treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman hegemony. The institution which took place in the same year of two new tribes in the/ Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty advances made by the Roman power. Closing of In manifest connection with this crisis in the relations confedera / Between Rome and Latium stands the closing of the Latin tion. [384; confederation, 1 which took place about the year 370, 1 In the list given by Dionysius (v. 61) of the thirty Latin federal cities the only list which we possess there are named the Ardeates, Aricini, Bovillani, Bubentani (site unknown), Corni (rather Corani), Carventani (site unknown), Circeienses, Coriolani, Corbintes, Cabani (perhaps the Cabenses on the Alban Mount, Bull, delt Inst. 1861, p. 205), Fortinei (unknown), Gabini, Laurentes, Lanuvini, Lavinates, Labicani, Nomentani, Norbani, Praenestini, Pedani, Querquetulani (site, unknown), Satricani, Scaptini, Setini, Tiburtini, Tusculani, Tellenii (site unknown), Tolerini (site unknown), and Veliterni. The occasional notices of communities entitled to participate, such as of Ardea (Liv. xxxii. i), Laurentum (Liv. xxxvii. 3), Lanuvium (Liv. xli. 16), Bovillae, Gabii, Labici (Cicero, pro Plane. 9, 23) agree with this list. Dionysius gives it 498. on occasion of the declaration of war by Latium against Rome in 256, and it was natural therefore to regard as Niebuhr did this list as 493. derived from the well-known renewal of the league in 261. But, as in this list drawn up according to the Latin alphabet the letter g appears CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 449 \ although we cannot precisely determine whether it was the x effect or, as is more probable, the cause of the revolt of Latium against Rome which we have just described. As the law had hitherto stood, every sovereign city founded by Rome and Latium took its place among the communes entitled to participate in the federal festival and federal diet, whereas every community incorporated with another city and thereby politically annihilated was erased from the ranks of the members of the league. At the same time, however, according to Latin use and wont the number in a position which it certainly had not at the time of the Twelve Tables and scarcely came to occupy before the fifth century (see my Unteritalische Dial. p. 33), it must be taken from a much more recent source; and it is by far the simplest hypothesis to recognize it as a list of those places which were afterwards regarded as the ordinary members of the Latin confederacy, and which Dionysius in accordance with his systematizing custom specifies as its original component elements. As was to be expected, the list presents not a single non-Latin community ; it simply enumerates places originally Latin or occupied by Latin colonies no one will lay stress on Corbio and Corioli as exceptions. Now if we compare with this list that of the Latin colonies, there had been founded down to 372 Suessa Pometia, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Ardea, Circeii (361), 382. 393. Satricum (369), Sutrium (371), Nepete (371), Setia (372). Of the last 386. 7 383. three founded at nearly the same time the two Etruscan ones may very 382. well date somewhat later than Setia, since in fact the foundation of every town claimed a certain amount of time, and our list cannot be free from minor inaccuracies. If we assume this, then the list contains all the colonies sent out up to the year 372, including the two soon afterwards 382. deleted from the list, Satricum destroyed in 377 and Velitrae divested of 377. Latin rights in 416 ; there are wanting only Suessa Pometia, beyond 438. doubt as having been destroyed before 372, and Signia, probably because 382. in the text of Dionysius, who mentions only twenty-nine names, SIFNINON has dropped out after SHTINiiN". In entire harmony with this view there are absent from this list all the Latin colonies founded after 372 as well as all places, which like Ostia, Antemnae, Alba, were 382. incorporated with the Roman community before the year 370, whereas 384. those incorporated subsequently, such as Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, are retained in it. As regards the list given by Pliny of thirty-two townships extinct in his time which had formerly participated in the Alban festival, after deduction of seven that also occur in Dionysius (for the Cusuetani of Pliny appear to be the Carventani of Dionysius), there remain twenty-five townships, most of them quite unknown, doubtless made up partly of those seventeen non- voting communities most of which perhaps were just the oldest subsequently disqualified members of the Alban festal league partly of a number of other decayed or ejected members of the league, to which latter class above all the ancient presiding township of Alba, also named by Pliny, belonged. VOL. I 29 450 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n once fixed of thirty confederate communities was so adhered to, that of the participating cities never more and never less than thirty were entitled to vote, and a number of the communities that were of later admission, or were disqualified for their slight importance or for the crimes they had committed, were without the right of voting. In 384. this way the confederacy was constituted about 370 as follows; Of old Latin townships there were besides some which have now fallen into oblivion, or whose sites are unknown still autonomous and entitled to vote, Momentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia, Labici, 1 Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban range ; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on the Alban range ; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum in the plain along the ' coast. To these fell to be added the colonies instituted by Rome and the Latin league ; Ardea in the former territory of the Rutuli, and Satricum, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Setia and Circeii in that of the Volsci. Besides, seventeen other townships, whose names are not known with certainty, had the privilege of participating in the Latin festival without the right of voting. On this footing of forty-seven townships entitled to participate and thirty entitled to vote the Latin confederacy continued henceforward unalterably fixed. The Latin communities founded subsequently, such as Sutrium, Nepete (p. 432), Antium, Tarracina (p. 446), and Gales, were not admitted into the confederacy, nor were the Latin communities 418. 1 Livy certainly states (iv. 47) that Labici became a colony in 336. But apart from the fact that Diodorus (xiii. 6) says nothing of it Labici cannot have been a burgess-colony, for the town did not He olTthe coast and besides it appears subsequently as still in possession of autonomy ; nor can it have been a Latin one, for there is not, nor can there be from the nature of these foundations, a single other example oi a Latin colony established in the original Latium. Here as elsewhere it is most probable especially as two jitgera are named as the portion of land allotted that a public assignation to the burgesses has been con- founded with a colonial assignation (p. 240). CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 451 subsequently divested of their autonomy, such as Tusculum / and Lanuvium, erased from the list. With this closing of the confederacy was connected the Fixing of geographical settlement of the limits of Latium. So long ll l e limlts to of Latium. as the Latin confederacy continued open, the bounds of Latium had advanced with the establishment of new federal cities : but as the later Latin colonies had no share in the Alban festival, they were not regarded geographically as part of Latium. For this reason doubtless Ardea and Circeii were reckoned as belonging to Latium, but not Sutrium or Tarracina. But not only were the places on which Latin privileges isolation of were bestowed after 370 kept aloof .from the federal | he T ^ 4< later Latin association ; they were isolated also from one another as cities as respected private rights. While each of them was allowed ^ate 6 * 1 to have reciprocity of commercial dealings and probably rights, also of marriage (commercium et conubiuni) with Rome, no such reciprocity was permitted with the other Latin com- munities. The burgess of Satrium, for example, might possess in full property a piece of ground in Rome, but not in Praeneste ; and might have legitimate 'Children with a Roman, but not with a Tiburtine, wife. 1 If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been Prevention allowed within the confederacy, and for example the six old ea !?, e e c s ia Latin communities, Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in common a shrine for the Aricine Diana ; it is doubtless not the mere result of accident that we find no further instance in later times of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony of Rome. 1 This restriction of the ancient full reciprocity of Latin rights first occurs in the renewal of the treaty in 416 (Liv. viii. 14); but as the 338. system of isolation, of which it was an essential part, first began in reference to the Latin colonies settled after 370, and was only generalized in 416, it is proper to mention this alteration here. 452 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n Revision of We may likewise assign to this epoch the further re- c^aTcon" modeling which the Latin municipal constitutions under- stitutions. went, and their complete assimilation to the constitution of judges Rome. If in after times two aediles, intrusted with the _ police -super vision of markets and highways and the administration of justice in connection therewith, make their appearance side by side with the two praetors as necessary elements of the Latin magistracy, the institution of these urban police functionaries, which evidently took place at the same time and at the instigation of the leading power in all the federal communities, certainly cannot have preceded the establishment of the curule aedileship in 367. Rome, which occurred in 387 ; probably it took place about that very time. Beyond doubt this arrangement was only one of a series of measures curtailing the liberties and modifying the organization of the federal communities in the interest of aristocratic policy. Domina- After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine uon of the t err it orVj R O me evidently felt herself powerful enough to exaspera- tighten the reins of her hegemony and to reduce the whole Latins ^ of the Latm cit * es to a P ositi o n so dependent that they 348. became in fact completely subject. At this period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were subject to Rome, viz. the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii, and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans. This plainly shows by what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected by it, and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course. It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 453 if not also the Hernican retained its formal title to a third of the gains of war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of rights ; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the exaspera- tion which at this period prevailed among the Latins against Rome. Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign standards against the community at their head, wherever they found armies in the field against Rome ; but in 405 even the Latin federal assembly resolved 349. to refuse to the Romans its contingent. To all appearance Collision a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be |^ ween anticipated at no distant date ; and at that very moment a Romans collision was imminent with another Italian nation, which samnit^s was able to encounter on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock. After the overthrow of the northern Vol- scians no considerable people in the first instance opposed the Romans in the south ; their legions unchecked approached the Liris. As early as 3 9 7 they had contended 357. successfully with the Privernates ; and in 409 occupied 345. Sora on the upper Liris. Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier ; and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the sure 354. token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy a struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within the Latin nation. The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of Conquests the Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a samnites in considerable period in possession of the hill-country which the south rises between the Apulian and Campanian plains and com- mands them both, had hitherto found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period on the other by the Greeks and Etruscans. But the fall of the Etruscan power towards the end of the third, and the decline of the 450. 454 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n 450-350. Greek colonies in the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west and south ; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to, and even moved across, the south Italian seas. They first made their appearance in the plain adjoining the bay, with which the name of the Campanians has been associated from the beginning of the fourth century ; the Etruscans there were suppressed, and the Greeks were confined within narrower 424. bounds ; Capua was wrested from the former (330), Cumae 420. from the latter (334). About the same time, perhaps even earlier, the Lucanians appeared in Magna Graecia : at the beginning of the fourth century they were involved in con- flict with the people of Terina and Thurii ; and a consider- 390. able' time before 364 they had established themselves in the Greek Laus. About this period their levy amounted to 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry. Towards the end of the fourth century mention first occurs of the separate con- federacy of the Bruttii, 1 who had detached themselves from the Lucanians not, like the other Sabellian stocks, as a colony, but through a quarrel and had become mixed up with many foreign elements. The Greeks of Lower Italy tried to resist the pressure of the barbarians ; the league of 393. the Achaean cities was reconstructed in 361 ; and it was determined that, if any of the allied towns should be assailed by the Lucanians, all should furnish contingents, and that the leaders of contingents which failed to appear ^should suffer the punishment of death. But even the .. union of Magna Graecia no longer availed ; for the ruler of JSyracuse, Dionysius the Elder, made common cause with the Italians against his countrymen. While Dionysius wrested frcjm the fleets of Magna Graecia the mastery of the, Italian seas, one Greek city after another was occupied 4 The name, itself is very ancient ; in fact it -is the most ancient indigenous name for the inhabitants of the present Calabria (Antiochus, Fr. 5. Mull. ). The well-known derivation is doubtless an invention. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 455 or annihilated by the Italians. In an incredibly short time the circle of flourishing cities was destroyed or laid desolate. Only a few Greek settlements, such as Neapolis, succeeded with difficulty, and more by means of treaties than by force of arms, in preserving at least their existence and their nationality. Tarentum alone remained thoroughly in- dependent and powerful, maintaining its ground in con- sequence of its more remote position and its preparation for war the result of its constant conflicts with the Messapians. Even that city, however, had constantly to fight for its existence with the Lucanians, and was com- pelled to seek for alliances and mercenaries in the mother- country of Greece. About the period when Veii and the Pomptine plain came into the hands of Rome, the Samnite hordes were already in possession of all Lower Italy, with the exception of a few unconnected Greek colonies, and of the Apulo- Messapian coast. The Greek Periplus, composed about 418, sets down the Samnites proper with their "five 336. tongues " as reaching from the one sea to the other ; and specifies the Campanians as adjoining them on the Tyrrhene sea to the north, and the Lucanians to the south, amongst whom in this instance, as often, the Bruttii are included, and who already had the whole coast apportioned- among them from Paestum on the Tyrrhene, to Thurii on the Ionic, sea. In fact to one who compares the achieve- ments of the two great nations of Italy, the Latins and the' Samnites, before they came into contact, the career ,of conquest on the part of the latter appears far wider arid' more splendid than that of the former. But the character of their conquests was essentially different. From the fixeoS- urban centre which Latium possessed in Rome the dominion of the Latin stock spread slowly on all sides, and lay within limits comparatively narrow ; but it planted its foot firmly at every step, partly by founding fortified towns of the N 456 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n Roman type with the rights of dependent allies, partly by Romanizing the territory which it conquered. It was f otherwise with Samnium. There was in its case no single leading community and therefore no policy of conquest. While the conquest of the Veientine and Pomptine terri- tories was for Rome a real enlargement of power, Samnium "was weakened rather than strengthened by the rise of the Campariian cities and of the Lucanian and Bruttian con- federacies ; for every swarm, which had sought and found new settlements, thenceforward pursued a path of its own. Relations The Samnite tribes filled a disproportionately large the^am- s P ace > while yet they showed no disposition to make it nites and thoroughly their own. The larger Greek cities, Tarentum, ' s ' Thurii, Croton, Metapontum, Heraclea, Rhegium, and Neapolis, although weakened and often dependent, con- tinued to exist; and the Hellenes were tolerated even in - the open country and in the smaller towns, so that Cumae for instance, Posidonia, Laus, and Hipponium, still re- ' mained as the Periplus already mentioned and coins show Greek cities even under Samnite rule. Mixed^ populations thus arose ; the bi-lingual Bruttii, in particular, included Hellenic as well .as Samnite elements and even perhaps remains of the ancient autochthones ; in Lucania and Campania also similar mixtures must to a lesser extent have taken place. Campanian The Samnite nation, moreover, could not resist the- sm> dangerous charm of Hellenic culture ; least of all in Campania, where Neapolis early entered into friendly intercourse with the immigrants, and where the sky itself \ humanized the barbarians. Nola, Nuceria, and Teanum, although having a purely Samnite population, adopted Greek manners and a Greek civic constitution ; in fact the indigenous cantonal form of constitution could not possibly I subsist under these altered circumstances. The Samnite^ 1 cities of Campania began to coin money, in part with CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 457 Greek inscriptions; Capua became by its commerce and agriculture the second city in Italy in point of size the first in point of wealth and luxury. The deep demoraliza- tion, in which, according to the accounts of the ancients, that city surpassed all others in Italy, is especially reflected in the mercenary recruiting and in the gladiatorial sports, both of which pre-eminently flourished in Capua. No- where did recruiting officers find so numerous a concourse as in this metropolis of demoralized civilization ; while Capua knew not how to save itself from the attacks of the aggressive Samnites, the warlike Campanian youth flocked forth in crowds under self-elected condottieri, especially to Sicily. How deeply these soldiers of fortune influenced by their enterprises the destinies of Italy, we shall have after- wards to show; they form as characteristic a feature of Campanian life as the gladiatorial sports which likewise 1 , if they did not originate, were at any rate carried to perfection in Capua. There sets of gladiators made their appearance even during banquets ; and their number was proportioned to the rank of the guests invited. This degeneracy of the most important Samnite city a degeneracy which beyond doubt was closely connected with the Etruscan habits that lingered there must have been fatal for the nation at large ; although the Campanian nobility knew how to combine chivalrous valour and high mental culture with the deepest moral corruption, it could never become to its nation what the Roman nobility was to the Latin. Hellenic influence had a similar, though less powerful, effect on the Lucanians and Bruttians as on the Campanians. The objects discovered in the tombs throughout all these regions show how Greek art was cherished there barbaric luxuriance ; the rich ornaments of gold and amber and the magnificent painted pottery, which are now dis- interred from the abodes of the dead, enable us to con- ' jecture how extensive had been their departure from the 458 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n ancient manners of their fathers. Other indications are preserved in their writing. The old national writing which they had brought with them from the north was abandoned by the Lucanians and Bruttians, and exchanged for Greek ; while in Campania the national alphabet, and perhaps also the language, developed itself under the influence of the Greek model into greater clearness and delicacy. We meet even with isolated traces of the influence of Greek philosophy. The Sam- The Samnite land, properly so called, alone remained mte con- unaffected by these innovations, which, beautiful and federacy. ' natural as they may to some extent have been, powerfully contributed to relax still more the bond of national unity which even from the first was loose. Through the influence of Hellenic habits a deep schism took place in the Samnite stock. The civilized " Philhellenes " of Campania were accustomed to tremble like the Hellenes themselves before the ruder tribes of the mountains, who - were continually penetrating into Campania and disturbing the degenerate earlier settlers. Rome was a compact state, having the strength of all Latium at its disposal ; its subjects might murmur, but they obeyed. The Samnite stock was dispersed and divided ; and, while the con- federacy in Samnium proper had preserved unimpaired the manners and valour of their ancestors, they were on that very account completely at variance with the other Samnite tribes and towns. Submission In fact, it was this variance between the Samnites of of Capua ^g pi a jn an( j fa e Samnites of the mountains that led the to Rome. Romans over the Liris. The Sidicini in Teanum, and the 343. Campanians in Capua, sought aid from the Romans (411) against their own countrymen, who in swarms ever renewed ravaged their territory and threatened to establish them- selves there. When the desired alliance was refused, the Campanian envoys made offer of the submission of their CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 459 country to the supremacy of Rome : and the Romans were unable to resist the bait. Roman envoys were sent to the Rome and Samnites to inform them of the new acquisition, and to co^e'to" summon them to respect the territory of the friendly power, terms. The further course of events can no longer be ascertained in detail ; l we discover only that whether after a campaign, or without the intervention of a war Rome and Samnium came to an agreement, by which Capua was left at the disposal of the Romans, Teanum in the hands of the Samnites, and the upper Liris in those of the Volscians. 1 Perhaps no section of the Roman annals has been more disfigured than the narrative of the first Samnite-Latin war, as it stands or stood in Livy, Dionysius, and Appian. It runs somewhat to the following effect. After both consuls had marched into Campania in 411, first the consul 343. Marcus Valerius Corvus gained a severe and bloody victory over the Samnites at Mount Gaurus ; then his colleague Aulus Cornelius Cossus gained another, after he had been rescued from annihilation in a narrow pass by the self-devotion of a division led by the military tribune Publius Decius. The third and decisive battle was fought by both consuls at the entrance of the Caudine Pass near Suessula ; the Samnites were com- pletely vanquished forty thousand of their shields were picked up on the field of battle and they were compelled to make a peace, in which the Romans retained Capua, which had given itself over to their possession, while they left Teanum to the Samnites (413). Congratulations came from all sides, even from Carthage. The Latins, who had refused their contingent and seemed to be arming against Rome, turned their arms not against Rome but against the Paeligni, while the Romans were occupied first with a military conspiracy of the garrison left behind in Campania (412), then with the capture of Privernum (413) and the war against the 342. 341. Antiates.. But now a sudden and singular change occurred in the position of parties. The Latins, who had demanded in vain Roman citizenship and a share in the consulate, rose against Rome in conjunction with the Sidicines, who had vainly offered to submit to the Romans and knew not how to save themselves from the Samnites, and with the Campanians, who were already tired of the Roman rule. Only the Laurentes in Latium and the equites of Campania adhered to the Romans, who on their part found support among the Paeligni and Samnites. The Latin army fell upon Samnium ; the Romano-Samnite army, after it had marched to the Fucine lake and from thence, avoiding Latium, into Campania, fought the 'decisive battle against the combined Latins and Campanians at Vesuvius ; the consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus, after he had himself restored the wavering discipline of the army by the execution of his own son who had slain a foe in opposition to orders from head- quarters, and after his colleague Publius Decius Mus had appeased the gods by sacrificing his life, at length gained the victory by calling up the last reserves. But the war was only terminated by a second battle, in which the consul Manlius engaged the Latins and Campanians near 460 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK II Revolt of the Latins and Cam- panians against Rome. 377. 342. 329. 295. The consent of the Samnites to treat is explained by the energetic exertions made about this very period by the Tarentines to get quit of their Sabellian neighbours. But the Romans also had good reason for coming to terms as quickly as possible with the Samnites ; for the impending transition of the region bordering on the south of Latium into the possession of the Romans converted the ferment that had long existed among the Latins into open in- surrection. All the original Latin towns, even the Tusculans who had been received into the burgess-union Trifanum ; Latium and Capua submitted, and were mulcted in a portion of their territory. The judicious and candid reader will not fail to observe that this report swarms with all sorts of impossibilities. Such are the statement of the Antiates waging war after the surrender of 377 (Liv. vi. 33) ; the independent campaign of the Latins against the Paeligni, in distinct con- tradiction to the stipulations of the treaties between Rome and Latium ; the unprecedented march of the Roman army through the Marsian and Samnite territory to Capua, while all Latium was in arms against Rome ; to say nothing of the equally confused and sentimental account of the military insurrection of 412, and the story of its forced leader, the lame Titus Quinctius, the Roman Gotz von Berlichingen. Still more suspicious, perhaps, are the repetitions. Such is the story of the military tribune Publius Decius modelled on the courageous deed of Marcus Calpurnius Flamma, or whatever he was called, in the first Punic war ; such is the recurrence of the conquest of Privernum by Gaius Plautius in the year 425, which second conquest alone is registered in the triumphal Fasti ; such is the self-immolation of Publius Decius, repeated, as is well known, in the case of his son in 459. Throughout this section the whole representation betrays a different period and a different hand from the other more credible accounts of the annals. The narrative is full of detailed pictures of battles ; of inwoven anecdotes, such as that of the praetor of Setia, who breaks his neck on the steps of the senate-house because he had been audacious enough to solicit the consulship, and the various anecdotes concocted out of the surname of Titus Manlius ; and of prolix and in part suspicious archaeological digressions. In this class we include the history of the legion of which the notice, most probably apocryphal, in Liv. i. 52, regarding the maniples of Romans and Latins intermingled formed by the second Tarquin, is evidently a second fragment ; the erroneous view given of the treaty between Capua and Rome (see my Rom. Munzwesen, p. 334, n. 122) ; the formularies of self-devotion, the Campanian denarius, the Laurentine alliance, and the bina jugera in the assignation (p. 450, note). Under such circumstances it appears a fact of great weight that Diodorus, who follows other and often older accounts, ki\ow.s absolutely nothing of any of these events except the last Kiltie at Trifanum ; a battle in fact that ill accords with the rest of the narrative, which, in accordance with the rules of poetical justice, ought to have- con- cluded with the death of Decius. CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 461 of Rome, took up arms against Rome, with the single exception of the Laurentes, whereas of the colonies founded beyond the bounds of Latium only the old Volscian towns Velitrae, Antium, and Tarracina adhered to the revolt. We can readily understand how the Capuans, notwithstand- ing their very recent and voluntarily offered submission to the Romans, should readily embrace the first opportunity of again ridding themselves of the Roman rule and, in spite of the opposition of the optimate party that adhered to the treaty with Rome, should make common cause with the Latin confederacy, whereas the still independent Volscian towns, such as Fundi and Formiae, and the Hernici abstained like the Campanian aristocracy from taking part in this revolt. The position of the Romans was critical ; the legions which had crossed the Liris and occupied Campania were cut off by the revolt of the Latins and Volsci from their home, and a victory alone could Victory save them. The decisive battle was fought near Trifanum ^ ^ ns (between Minturnae, Suessa, and Sinuessa) in 414; the 340. consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus achieved a complete victory over the united Latins and Campanians. In the two following years the individual towns, so far as they still offered resistance, were reduced by capitulation or assault, and the whole country was brought into subjection. The effect of the victory was the dissolution of the Latin Dissolution league. It was transformed from an independent political federation into a mere association for the purpose of a reli- league. gious festival ; the ancient stipulated rights of the confede- racy as to a maximum for the levy of troops and a share of the gains of war perished as such along with it, and assumed, where they were recognized in future, the character of acts . of grace. Instead of the one treaty between Rome on the one hand and the Latin confederacy on the other, there came at best perpetual alliances between Rome and the v several confederate towns. To this footing of treaty there 462 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK n were admitted of the old- Latin places, besides Laurentum, also Tibur and Praeneste, which however were compelled to cede portions of their territory to Rome. Like terms were obtained by the communities of Latin rights founded outside of Latium, so far as they had not taken part in the war. The principle of isolating the communities from each other, which had already been established in 384. regard to the places founded after 370 (p. 451), was thus extended to the whole Latin nation. In other respects the several places retained their former privileges and their Coioniza- autonomy. The other old -Latin communities as well as land of th^ tne colomes tnat hacl revolted lost all of them independ- Voisci. ence and entered in one form or another into the Roman burgess-union. The two important coast towns Antium 338. 329. (416) and Tarracina (425) were, after the model of Ostia, occupied with Roman full-burgesses and restricted to a communal independence confined within narrow limits, while the previous burgesses were deprived in great part of their landed property in favour of the Roman colonists and, so far as they retained it, likewise adopted into the full burgess-union. Lanuvium, Aricia, Nomentum, Pedum became Roman burgess -communities after the model of Tusculum (p. 448). The walls of Velitrae were demolished, its senate was ejected en masse and deported to the interior of Roman Etruria, and the town was probably constituted a dependent community with Caerite rights (p. 433). Of the land acquired a portion the estates, for instance, of the senators of Velitrae was distributed to Roman burgesses : with these special assignations was connected 332. the erection of two new tribes in 422. The deep sense Which prevailed in Rome of the enormous importance of the result achieved is attested by the honorary column, -which was erected in the Roman Forum to the victorious 338. dictator of 416, Gaius Maenius, and by the decoration of the orators' platform in the same place with the beaks CHAP, v AND CAMPANIANS BY ROME 463 taken from the galleys of Antium that were found un- serviceable. In like manner the dominion of Rome was established Complete and confirmed in the south Volscian and Campanian of^ ission territories. Fundi, Formiae, Capua, Cumae, and a number Volscian of smaller towns became dependent Roman communities ^P d Campanian with self- administration. To secure the pre-eminently provinces, important city of Capua, the breach between the nobility and commons was artfully widened, the communal con- stitution was revised in the Roman interest, and the adminis- tration of the town was controlled by Roman officials annually sent to Campania. The same treatment was measured out some years after to the Volscian Privernum, whose citizens, supported by Vitruvius Vaccus a bold partisan belonging to Fundi, had the honour of fighting the last battle for the freedom of this region ; the struggle ended with the storming of the town (425) and the execution of Vaccus in a Roman 329. prison. In order to rear a population devoted to Rome in these regions, they distributed, out of the lands won in war particularly in the Privernate and Falernian territories, so numerous allotments to Roman burgesses, that a few years later (436) they were able to institute there also two 318. new tribes. The establishment of two fortresses as colonies with Latin rights finally secured the newly won land. These were Cales (420) in the middle of the 334. Campanian plain, whence the movements of Teanum and Capua could be observed, and Fregellae (426), which com- 328. manded the passage of the Liris. Both colonies were unusually strong, and rapidly became flourishing, notwith- standing the obstacles which the Sidicines interposed to the founding of Cales and the Samnites to tha^of Fregellae. A Roman garrison was also despatched to Sora, a step of which the Samnites, to whom this district had been left by the treaty, complained with reason, but in vain. Rome pursued her purpose with undeviating steadfastness, and 464 SUBJUGATION OF THE LATINS BOOK u displayed her energetic and far-reaching policy more even than on the battlefield in the securing of the territory which she gained by enveloping it, politically and militarily, in a net whose meshes could not be broken. inaction As a matter of course, the Samnites could not behold Samnites tne threatening progress of the Romans with satisfaction, and they probably put obstacles in its way ; nevertheless they neglected to intercept the new career of conquest, while there was still perhaps time to do so, with that energy which the circumstances required. They appear indeed in accordance with their treaty with Rome to have occupied and strongly garrisoned Teanum ; for while in earlier times that city sought help against Samnium from Capua and Rome, in the later struggles it appears as ihe bulwark of the Samnite power on the west. They spread, conquering and destroying, on the upper Liris, but they neglected to establish themselves permanently in that quarter. They destroyed the Volscian town Fregellae by which they simply facilitated the institution of the Roman colony there which we have just mentioned^ and they so terrified two other Volscian towns, Fabrateria (Ceccano) and Luca (site unknown), that these, following the example of Capua, "330. surrendered themselves to the Romans (424). The Sam- nite confederacy allowed the Roman conquest of Campania to be completed before they in earnest opposed it; and the reason for their doing so is to be sought partly in the contemporary hostilities between the Samnite nation and the Italian Hellenes^ but principally in the remiss and dis- tracted policy which the confederacy pursued. CHAP, vi STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS 465 CHAPTER VI STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS AGAINST ROME WHILE the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Wars be- Volturnus, other conflicts agitated the south-east of the slbe"iiai peninsula. The wealthy merchant-republic of Tarentum, and Taren- daily exposed to more serious peril from the Lucanian and ll Messapian bands and justly distrusting its own sword, gained by good words and better coin the help of condottieri from the mother-country. The Spartan king, Archidamus, Archida- who with a strong band had come to the assistance of his mus< fellow-Dorians, succumbed to the Lucanians on the samel day on which Philip conquered at Chaeronea (416); a- 338. retribution, in the belief of the pious Greeks, for the share ^ which nineteen years previously tie and his people had taken in pillaging the sanctuary of Delphi. cHis place was ' , taken by an abler commander,- Alexander the Molossian, Alexander brother of Olympias the mother of Alexander the Great. Molossian X In addition to the troops which he had brought along with him he united under his banner the contingents of the Greek cities, especially those of the Tareiitines and Metapontines ; the Poediculi (around Rubi, now Ruvo), who like the Greeks found themselves in danger from the - Sabellian nation ; and lastly, even the, Lucanian exiles themselves, whose considerable numbers point to the existence of violent internal troubles in that confederacy. Thus he soon found himself superior" to the enemy. VOL. i 30 466 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Consentia (Cosenza), which seems to have been the federal headquarters of the Sabellians settled in Magna Graecia, fell into his hands. In vain the Samnites came to the help of the Lucanians ; Alexander defeated their combined forces near Paestum. He subdued the Daunians around 7 Sipontum, and the Messapians in the south-eastern penin- sula ; he already commanded from sea to sea, and was on the point of arranging with the Romans a joint attack on the Samnites in their native abodes. But successes so unexpected went beyond the desires of the Tarentine merchants, and filled them with alarm. War broke out between them and their captain, who had come amongst them a hired mercenary and now appeared desirous to found a Hellenic empire in the west like his nephew in the east. Alexander had at first the advantage ; he wrested Heraclea from the Tarentines, restored Thurii, and seems to have called upon the other Italian Greeks to unite under his protection ^against the Tarentines, while he at the same' time tried to bring about a peace between them and the Sabellian tribes. But his grand projects found only feeble support among the degenerate and desponding Greeks, and the forced change of sides alienated from him his - former Lucanian adherents : he fell at Pandosia by the 832. hand of a Lucanian emigrant (42 2). 1 On his death matters substantially reverted to their old position. The Greek cities found themselves once more isolated and once more left to protect themselves as best they might by treaty or payment ' of tribute, or even by extraneous aid ; 8 24 - Croton for instance repulsed the Bruttii about 430 with the help of the Syracusans. The Samnite tribes acquired 1 It may not be superfluous to mention that our knowledge of Archidamus and Alexander is derived from Greek annals, and that the synchronism between these and the Roman is in reference to the present epoch only approximately established. We must beware, therefore, of pursuing too far into detail the unmistakable general connection between the events in the west and those in the east of Italy. CHAP, vi -AGAINST ROME 467 renewed ascendency, and were able, without troubling themselves about the Greeks, once more to direct their eyes towards Campania and Latium. Btlt there during the brief interval a prodigious change had occurred.. The Latin confederacy was broken and shattered, the last resistance of the Volsci was overcome, the province of Campania, the richest and finest in the peninsula, was in the undisputed and well-secured possession of the Romans, and the second city of Italy was a depend- ency^of Rome. While the Greeks and Samnites were contending with each other, Rome had almost without a contest raised herself to a position of power which no single people in the peninsula possessed the means of shaking, and which threatened to render all of them subject to her yoke. A joint exertion on the part of the peoples who were not severally a match for Rome might perhaps still burst the chains, ere they became fastened completely. But the clearness of perception, the courage, the self-sacrifice required for such a coalition of numerous peoples and cities that had hitherto been for the most part foes or at any rate strangers to each other, were not to be found at all, or were found only when it was already too late. 'After the fall of the Etruscan power and the weakening Coalition of the Greek* republics, the Samnite confederacy was beyond doubt, next to Rome, the most considerable power against in Italy, and at the same time that which was most closely and immediately endangered by Roman encroachments. To its lot therefore fell the foremost place and the heaviest burden in the struggle for freedom and nationality which the Italians had to wage against Rome. It might reckon upon the assistance of the small Sabellian tribes, the Vestini, Frentani, Marrucini, and other smaller cantons, who dwelt in rustic seclusion amidst their mountains, but were not deaf to the appeal of a kindred stock calling 468 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK II them to take up arms in defence of their common posses- sions. The assistance of the Campanian Greeks- and those of Magna Graecia (especially the Tarentines), and of the powerful Lucanians and Bruttians would have been of greater importance ; but the negligence and supineness of the demagogues ruling in Tarentum and the entangle- ment of that city in the affairs of Sicily, the internal distractions of the Lucanian confederacy, and above all the deep hostility that had subsisted for centuries between the Greeks of Lower Italy and their Lucanian oppressors, scarcely permitted the hope that Tarentum and Lucania would make common cause with the Samnites. From the Sabines and the Marsi, who were the nearest neighbours of the Romans and had long lived in peaceful relations with Rome, little more could be expected than lukewarm sympathy or neutrality. The Apulians, the ancient and bitter antagonists of the Sabellians, were the natural allies of the Romans. On the other hand it might be expected that the more remote Etruscans would join the league if a first success were gained ; and even a revolt in Latium and the land of the Volsci and Hernici was not impossible. I But the Samnites the Aetolians of Italy, in whom national vigour still lived unimpaired had mainly to rely on their own energies for such perseverance in the unequal struggle as would give the other peoples time for a generous sense of shame, for calm deliberation, and for the mustering of their forces ; a single success might then kindle the flames of war and insurrection all around Rome. History cannot but do the noble people the justice of acknowledg- ing that they understood and performed their duty. Outbreak Differences had already for several years existed between of war Rome and Samnium in consequence of the continual between Samnium aggressions in which the Romans indulged on the Liris, R 328 an d of which the founding of Fregellae in 426 was the latest and most important. But it was the Greeks of CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 469 Campania that gave occasion to the outbreak of the con- test. After Cumae and Capua had become Roman, nothing Pacifica- so naturally suggested itself to the Romans as the subjuga- , on of . tion of the Greek city Neapolis, which ruled also over the Greek islands in the bay the only town not yet reduced to subjection within the field of the Roman power. The Tarentines and Samnites, informed of the scheme of the Romans to obtain possession of the town, resolved to an- ticipate them ; and while the Tarentines were too remissT perhaps rather than too distant for the execution of ihis plan, the Samnites actually threw into it a strong garrison. The Romans immediately declared war nominally against the Neapolitans, really against the Samnites (427), and 327. began the siege of Neapolis. ^After it had lasted a while, the Campanian Greeks became weary of the dis- turbance of their commerce and of the foreign garrison ; and the Romans, whose whole efforts were directed to keep states of the second and third rank by means of separate treaties aloof from the coalition which was about to .be formed, hastened, as soon as the Greeks consented to negotiate, to offer them the most favourable terms full equality of rights and exemption from land" service, equal alliance and perpetual peace. Upon these conditions, < after the Neapolitans had rid themselves of the garrison, by stratagem, a treaty was concluded (428). 326. The,, Sabellian towns to the south of the Volturnus, Nola, Nuceria, Herculaneum, and Pompeii, took part with Samnium in the beginning of the war ; but their greatly exposed situation and the machinations of the Romans who endeavoured to bring over to their side the optimate party in these towns by all the levers of artifice and self- interest, and found a powerful support to their endeavours in the precedent of Capua induced these towns to declare themselves either in favour of Rome or neutral not long after the fall of Neapolis. 470 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Alliance A still more important success befell the Romans in the^Ro" Lucania. There also the people with true instinct was in mans and favour of joining the Samnites ; but, as an alliance with the ms ' Samnites involved peace with Tarentum and a large portion of the governing lords of Lucania were not disposed to suspend their profitable pillaging expeditions, the Romans succeeded in concluding an alliance with Lucania an alliance which was invaluable, because it provided employ- ment for the Tarentines and thus left the whole power of Rome available against Samnium. War in Thus Samnium stood on all sides unsupported ; except- am< ing that some of the eastern mountain districts sent their 326. contingents. In the year 428 the war began within the Samnite land itself : some towns on the Campanian frontier, Rufrae (between Venafrum and Teanum) and Allifae, were occupied by the Romans. In the following years the Roman armies penetrated Samnium, fighting and pillaging, as far as the territory of the Vestini, and even as far as Apulia, where they were received with open arms ; every- where they had very decidedly the* advantage. The courage of the Samnites was broken ; they sent back the Roman prisoners, and along with them the dead body of the leader of the war party, Brutulus Papius, who had an- ticipated the Roman executioners, when the Samnite national assembly determined to ask the enemy for peace and to procure for themselves more tolerable terms. by the surrender of their bravest general. But when the humble, almost suppliant, request was not listened to by the Roman 322. people (432), the Samnites, under their new general Gavius Pontius, prepared for the utmost and most desperate re- sistance. The Roman army, which under the two consuls 321. of the following year (433) Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius was encamped near Calatia (between Caserta and Maddaloni), received accounts, confirmed by the affirmation of numerous captives, that the Samnites had closely invested CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 471 Luceria, and that that important town, on which depended The the possession of Apulia, was in great danger. They broke p^ up in haste. If they wished to arrive in good time, no and the other route could be taken than through the midst of the ^ pc3.CC* enemy's territory where afterwards, in continuation of the Appian Way, the Roman road was constructed from Capua by way of Beneventum to Apulia. This route led, between the present villages of Arpaja and Montesarchio (Caudium), through a watery meadow, which was wholly enclosed by high and steep wooded hills and was only accessible through deep defiles at the entrance and outlet. Here the Samnites had posted themselves in ambush. The Romans, who had entered the valley unopposed, found its outlet obstructed by abattis and strongly occupied ; on marching back they saw that the entrance was similarly closed, while at the same time the crests of the surrounding mountains were crowned by Samnite cohorts. They per- ceived, when it was too late, that they had suffered them- selves to be misled by a stratagem, and that the Samnites awaited them, not at Luceria, but in the fatal pass of Caudium. They fought, but without hope of "success and without earnest aim ; the Roman army was totally unable to manoeuvre and was completely vanquished without a struggle. The Roman generals offered to capitulate. It is only a foolish rhetoric that represents the Samnite general as shut up to the simple alternatives of disbanding or of slaughtering the Roman army; he could not have done better than accept the offered capitulation and make prisoners of the hostile army the whole force which for the moment the Roman community could bring into action with both its commanders-in-chief. In that case the way to Campania and Latium would have stood open ; and in the then existing state of feeling, when the Volsci and Hernici and the larger portion of the Latins would have received him with open arms, the political existence" of ine 472 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK, n Rome would have been in serious danger. But instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention, Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole quarrel by an equitable peace ; whether it was that he shared that foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war from spoiling I his unexampled victory. The terms laid down were ^moderate enough; Rome was to raze the fortresses which she had constructed in defiance of the treaty Gales and JFregellae and to renew her equal alliance with Samnium. After the Roman generals had agreed to these terms and had given six hundred hostages chosen from the cavalry for their faithful execution besides pledging their own word and that of all their staff-officers on oath to the same effect the Roman army was dismissed uninjured, but disgraced; for the Samnite army, drunk with victory, could not resist the desire to subject their hated enemies to the disgraceful formality of laying down their arms and passing under the yoke. But the Roman senate, regardless of the oath of their officers and of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agree- ment, and contented themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it as personally responsible for its fulfilment. Impartial history can attach little im- portance to the question whether in so doing the casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law, or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it ; under a human and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the Romans. It was a question of com- parative indifference whether, according to the formal state law of the Romans, the general in command was or was ^not entitled to conclude peace without reserving its ratifica- tion by the burgesses. According to the spirit and practice CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 473 of the constitution it was quite an established principle that in Rome every state-agreement, not purely military, pertained to the province of the civil authorities, and a general who concluded peace without the instructions of the senate and the burgesses exceeded his powers. It was a greater error on the part of the Samnite general to give the Roman generals the choice between saving their army and exceeding their powers, than it was on the part of the latter that they had not the magnanimity absolutely to repel such a suggestion ; and it was right and necessary that the Roman senate should reject such an agreement. A great nation does not surrender what it possesses except under the pressure of extreme necessity : all treaties making con- cessions are acknowledgments of such a necessity, not moral obligations. If every people justly reckons it a point of honour to tear to pieces by force of arms treaties that are disgraceful, how could honour enjoin a patient ad- herence to a convention like the Caudine to which an unfortunate general was morally compelled, while the sting of the recent disgrace was keenly felt and the vigour of the nation subsisted unimpaired ? Thus the convention of Caudium did not produce the Victory rest which the enthusiasts for peace in Samnium had fthe Romans. foolishly expected from it, but only led to war after war with exasperation aggravated on either side by the oppor- tunity forfeited, by the breach of a solemn engagement, by military honour disgraced, and by comrades that had been abandoned. The Roman officers given up were not received by the Samnites, partly because they were too magnanimous to wreak their vengeance on those unfor- tunates, partly because they would thereby have admitted the Roman plea that the agreement bound only those who j swore to it, not the Roman state. Magnanimously they spared even the hostages whose lives had been forfeited by the rules of war, and preferred to resort at once to arm. i 474 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Luceria was occupied by them and Fregellae surprised and 320. taken by assault (434) before the Romans had reorganized their broken army ; the passing of the Satricans l over to the Samnites shows what they might have accomplished, had they not allowed their advantage to slip through their hands. But Rome was only momentarily paralyzed, not weakened ; full of shame and indignation the Romans raised all the men and means they could, and placed the highly experienced Lucius Papirius Cursor, equally distin- guished as a soldier and as a general, at the head of the newly formed army. The army divided ; the one - half marched by Sabina and the Adriatic coast to appear before Luceria, the other proceeded to the same destination through Samnium itself, successfully engaging and driving before it the Samnite army. They formed a junction again under the walls of Luceria, the siege of which was prosecuted with the greater zeal, because the Roman equites lay in captivity there ; the Apulians, particularly the Arpani, lent the Romans important assistance in the siege, especially by procuring supplies. After the Samnites had given battle for the relief of the town and been defeated, '319. Luceria surrendered to the Romans (435). Papirius enjoyed the double satisfaction of liberating his comrades who had been given up for lost, and of requiting the yoke of Caudium on the Samnite garrison of Luceria. In the 319-317. next years (435-437) the war was carried on 2 not so much in Samnium itself as in the adjoining districts. In the first place the Romans chastised the allies of the Samnites in the Apulian and Frentanian territories, and concluded new conventions with the Teanenses of Apulia and the Canusini. At the same time Satricum was again reduced 1 These were not the inhabitants of Satricum near Antium (p. 446), but those of another Volscian town constituted at that time as a Roman burgess-community without right of voting, near Arpinum. 2 That a formal armistice for two years subsisted between the Romans 318-317. and Samnites in 436-437 is more than improbable. CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 475 to subjection and severely punished for its revolt. Then the war turned to Campania, where the Romans conquered the frontier town towards Samnium, Saticula (perhaps S. Agata de' Goti) (438). But now the fortune of war seemed 316. disposed once more to turn against them. The Samnites gained over the Nucerians (438), and soon afterwards 316. the Nolans, to their side ; on the upper Liris the Sorani of themselves expelled the Roman garrison (439); the 315. Ausonians were preparing to rise, and threatened the important Gales ; even in Capua the party opposed to Rome was vigorously stirring. A Samnite army advanced into Campania and encamped before the city, in the hope that its vicinity might place the national party in the ascendant (440). But Sora was immediately attacked by 314. the Romans and recaptured after the defeat of a Samnite relieving force (440). The movements among the 314. Ausonians were suppressed with cruel rigour ere the insurrection fairly broke out, and at the same time a special dictator was nominated to institute and decide political processes against the leaders of the Samnite party in Capua, so that the most illustrious of them died a voluntary death to escape from the Roman executioner (440). The Samnite army before Capua was defeated and 314. compelled to retreat from Campania; the Romans, follow- ing close at the heels of the enemy, crossed the Matese and encamped in the winter of 440 before Bovianum, the 314. capital of Samnium. Nola was abandoned by its allies ; and the Romans had the sagacity to detach the town for ever from the Samnite party by a very favourable con- vention, similar to that concluded with Neapolis (441). 313. Fregellae, which after the catastrophe of Caudium had fallen into the hands of the party adverse to Rome and had been their chief stronghold in the district on the Liris, finally fell in the eighth year after its occupation by the Samnites (441); two hundred of the citizens, the chief 313. 476 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK a members of the national party, were conveyed to Rome, and there openly beheaded in the Forum as an example and a warning to the patriots who were everywhere bestirring themselves. New for- Apulia and Campania' were thus in the hands of the Apulia and R mans - * n order finally to secure and permanently to Campania, command the conquered territory, several new fortresses 314-312. were founded in it during the years 440-442 : Luceria in Apulia, to which on account of its isolated and exposed situation half a legion was sent as a permanent garrison ; Pontiae (the Ponza islands) for the securing of the Campanian waters; Saticula on the Campano-Samnite frontier, as a bulwark against Samnium ; and lastly Interamna (near Monte Cassino) and Suessa Aurunca (Sessa) on the road from Rome to Capua. Garrisons moreover were sent to Caiatia (Cajazzo), Sora, and other stations of military importance. The great military road from Rome to Capua, which with the necessary embank- ment for it across the Pomptine marshes the censor Appius 312. Claudius caused to be constructed in 442, completed the securing of Campania. The designs of the Romans were more and more fully developed; their object was the subjugation of Italy, which was enveloped more closely from year to year in a network of Roman fortresses and roads. The Samnites were already on both sides surrounded by the Roman meshes ; already the line from Rome to Luceria severed north and south Italy from each other, as the fortresses of Norba and Signia had formerly severed the Volsci and Aequi ; and Rome now rested on the Arpani, as it formerly rested on the Hernici. The Italians could not but see that the freedom of all of them was gone if Samnium succumbed, and that it was high time at length to hasten with all their might to the help of the brave mountain people which had now for fifteen years singly sustained the unequal struggle with the Romans. CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 477 The most natural allies of the Samnites would have interven- been the Tarentines ; but it was part of that fatality that Jjj^ the hung over Samnium and over Italy in general, that at this tines, moment so fraught with the destinies of the future the decision lay in the hands of these Athenians of Italy. Since the constitution of Tarentum, which was originally after the old Doric fashion strictly aristocratic, had become changed to a complete democracy, a life of singular activity had sprung up in that city, which was inhabited chiefly by mariners, fishermen, and artisans. The sentiments and conduct of the population, more wealthy than noble, dis- carded all earnestness amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation of spirit on the one hand, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim on the other. It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and ancient renown was at stake, to mention that Plato, who came to Tarentum some sixty years before this time, according to his own statement saw the whole 389. city drunk at the Dionysia, and that the burlesque farce, or "merry tragedy" as it was called, was created in Tarentum about the very time of the great Samnite war. This licentious life and buffoon poetry of the Tarentine fashionables and literati had a fitting counterpart in the inconstant, arrogant, and short-sighted policy of the Tarentine demagogues, who regularly meddled in matters with which they had nothing to do, and kept aloof where their immediate interests called for action. After the Caudine catastrophe, when the Romans and Samnites stood opposed in Apulia, they had sent envoys thither to enjoin both parties to lay down their arms (434). This 320. diplomatic intervention in the decisive struggle of the Italians could not rationally have any other meaning than that of an announcement that Tarentum had at length 478 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n resolved to abandon the neutrality which it had hitherto maintained. It had in fact sufficient reason to do so. It was no doubt a difficult and dangerous thing for Tarentum to be entangled in such a war ; for the democratic develop- ment of the state had directed its energies entirely to . the fleet, and while that fleet, resting upon the strong com- mercial marine of Tarentum, held the first rank among the maritime powers of Magna Graecia, the land force, on which they were in the present case dependent, consisted mainly of hired soldiers and was sadly disorganized. Under these circumstances it was no light undertaking for the Tarentine republic to take part in the conflict between Rome and Samnium, even apart from the at least trouble- some feud in which Roman policy had contrived to in- volve them with the Lucanians. But these obstacles might be surmounted by an energetic will ; and both the con- tending parties construed the summons of the Tarentine envoys that they should desist from the strife as meant in earnest. The Samnites, as the weaker, showed themselves ready to comply with it ; the. Romans replied by hoisting the signal for battle. Reason and honour dictated to the Tarentines the propriety of how following ^ip the haughty injunction of their envoys by a declaration of war against Rome ; but in Tarentum neither reason nor honour characterized the government, and they had simply been trifling in a very childish fashion with very serious matters. No declaration of war against Rome took place; in its stead they preferred to support the oligarchical party in the Sicilian towns against Agathocles of Syracuse who had at a former period been in the Tarentine service and had been dismissed in disgrace, and following the ^example of Sparta, they sent a fleet to the island a fleet which would 314. have rendered better service in the Campanian seas (440). The peoples -of northern and central Italy, who seem to have been roused especially by the establishment of the CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 479 fortress of Luceria, acted with more energy. The Accession Etruscans first drew the sword (443), the armistice of Etruscans ^403 having already expired some years before. The to the Roman frontier-fortress of Sutrium had to sustain a two 3^' jjj years' siege, and in the vehement conflicts which took plaee under its walls the Romans as a rule were worsted, till the consul of the year 444 Quintus Fabius Rullianus, 310. a-4eader who had gained experience in the Samnite wars, not only restored the ascendency of the Roman arms in Roman Etruria, but boldly penetrated into the land of the Etruscans proper, which had hitherto from diversity of language and scanty means of communication remained almost unknown to the Romans. His march through the Ciminian Forest which no Roman army had yet traversed, ar\d his pillaging of a rich region that had long been spared the horrors of war, raised all Etruria in arms.. The Roman government, which had seriously disapproved the > rash expedition and had when too late forbidden the daring leader from crossing the frontier, collected in the greatest haste new legions, in order to meet the expected 'onslaught of the whole Etruscan power. But a seasonable Victory at and decisive victory of Rullianus, the battle at the ^J^ 1 " Vadimonian lake which long lived in the memory of the lake, people, converted an imprudent enterprise into a celebrated feat of heroism and broke the -resistance of the Etruscans. Unlike the Samnites who had now for eighteen years maintained the unequal struggle, three of the most power- ful Etruscan towns Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium ' consented after the first defeat to a separate peace for three hundred months (444), and after the Romans had once 310. more beaten the other Etruscans near Perusia in the following year, the Tarquinienses also agreed to a peace of four hundred months (446) ; whereupon the other 308. cities desisted from the contest, and a temporary cessation of arms took place throughout Etruria. 480 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Last cam- While these events were passing, the war had not been ? n aigns r 311 suspended in Samnium. The campaign of 443 was con- Samnium. fined like the preceding to the besieging and storming of several strongholds of the Samnites ; but in the next year the war took a more vigorous turn. The dangerous position of Rullianus in Etruria, and the reports which spread as to the annihilation of the Roman army in the north,- encouraged the Samnites to new exertions ; the Roman consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus was vanquished by them and severely wounded in person. But the sudden change in the aspect of matters in Etruria destroyed their newly kindled hopes. Lucius 'Papirius Cursor again - appeared at the head of the Roman troops sent against the Samnites, and again remained the victor in a great and 309. decisive battle (445), in which the confederates had put forth their last energies. The flower of their army the wearers of the striped tunics and golden shields, and the wearers of the white tunics and silver shields were there extirpated, and their splendid equipments thenceforth on festal occasions decorated the rows of shops along the Roman Forum. Their distress was ever increasing ; the struggle was becoming ever more hopeless. In the follow- 308. ing year (446) the Etruscans laid down their arms ; and in the same year the last town of Campania which still adhered to the Samnites, Nuceria, simultaneously assailed on the part of the Romans by water and by land, sur- rendered under favourable conditions. The Samnites found new allies in the Umbrians of northern, and in the Marsi and Paeligni of central, Italy, and numerous volunteers even .from the Hernici joined their ranks ; but move- ments which might have decidedly turned the scale against Rome, had the Etruscans still remained under arms, now simply augmented the results of the Roman victory without seriously adding to its difficulties. The Umbrians, who gave signs of marching on Rome, were intercepted by CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 481 Rullianus with the army of Samnium on the upper Tiber a step which the enfeebled Samnites were unable to prevent ; and this sufficed to disperse the Umbrian levies. The war once more returned to central Italy. The Paeligni were conquered, as were also the Marsi ; and, though the other Sabellian tribes remained nominally foes of Rome, in this quarter Samnium gradually came to stand practically alone. But unexpected assistance came to them from the district of the Tiber. The confederacy of the Hernici, called by the Romans to account for their country- men found among the Samnite captives, now declared war against Rome (in 448) more doubtless from despair than 306. from calculation. Some of the more considerable Hernican communities from the first kept aloof from hostilities ; but Anagnia, by far the most eminent of the Hernican cities, carried out this declaration of war. In a military point of view the position of the Romans was undoubtedly rendered for the moment highly critical by this unexpected rising in the rear of the army occupied with the siege of the strong- holds of Samnium. Once more the fortune of war favoured the Samnites ; Sora and Caiatia fell into their hands. But the Anagnines succumbed with unexpected rapidity before troops despatched from Rome, and these troops also gave seasonable relief to the army stationed in Samnium : all in fact was lost. The Samnites sued for peace, but in vain \ they could not yet come to terms. The final decision was reserved for the campaign of 449. Two Roman consular 305. armies penetrated the one, under Tiberius Minucius and after his fall under Marcus Fulvius, from Campania through the mountain passes, the other, under Lucius Postumius, from the Adriatic upwards by the Biferno into Samnium, there to unite in front of Bovianum the capital ; a decisive victory was achieved, the Samnite general Statius Gellius was taken prisoner, and Bovianum was carried by storm. - The fall of the chief stronghold of the land terminated VOL i 31 482 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Peace with " the twenty-two years' war. The Samnites withdrew their Sammurn, g arr j sons f rom g ora an( j Arpinum, and sent envoys to Rome to sue for peace ; the Sabellian tribes, the Marsi, Marrucini, Paeligni, Frentani, Vestini, and Picentes followed their /example. The terms granted by Rome were tolerable; I ' / ' ' ' ' V. cessions of territory were required from some of them, from the Paeligni for instance, but they do not seem to have been of much importance. The cc^iuil alliance was re- 304.1 newed between the. Sabellian tribes and the Romans (450). and with Presumably about the same time, and in consequence doubtless of the Samnite peace, peace was also made between Rome and Tarentum. - The N two cities -had not indeed directly opposed each other in the field. The "~ Tarentines had been inactive spectators of the long contest- between Rome and Samnium from its beginning to its close, and had only kept up hostilities in league with the Sallentines against the Lucanians who were allies of Rome. In the last years of the Sarrmite war no doubt they had shown some signs of more energetic action. The position of embarrassment to which the ceaseless attacks of the Lucanians reduced them on the one hand, and on the other hand the feeling ever obtruding itself on them more , urgently that the complete subjugation of Samnium would endanger their own independence, induced them, notwith- standing their unpleasant experiences with Alexander, once more to -entrust themselves to a condottiere. There came at their call the Spartan prince Cleonymus, accompanied by five thousand mercenaries ; with whom he united a band equally numerous raised in Italy, as well as the contingents of the Messapians and of the smaller Greek towns, and above all the Tarentine civic army of twenty-two thousand men. At the head of this considerable force he compelled the Lucanians to make peace with Tarentum and to install a government of Samnite tendencies ; in return for which Metapontum was abandoned to them. The Samnites were i AGAINST ROME . 483 still , in arms when this occurred ; there was nothing to prevent the Spartan from coming to their aid and casting the weight of his numerous army and his military skill into the scale in favour of freedom for the cities and peoples of Italy. But Tarentum did not act as Rome would in similar circumstances have acted ; and prince Cleonymus himself was far from being an Alexander or a Pyrrhus. He was in no hurry to undertake a war in which he might expect more blows than booty, but preferred to make common cause with the Lucanians against Metapontum, and made himself comfortable in that city, while he talked of an expedition against Agathocles of Syracuse and of; liberating the Sicilian Greeks. Thereupon the Samnites made peace ; and when after its conclusion Rome began to concern herself more seriously about the south-east of the peninsula in token of which in the year 447 a 307. Roman force levied contributions, or rather reconnoitred by , order of the -government, in the territory of the Sallentines -^the Spartan condottiere embarked with his mercenaries and surprised the island of Corcyra, which was admirably situated as a basis for piratical expeditions against Greece and Italy. Thus abandoned by their general, and at the same time' deprived of their allies in central Italy, the Tarentines and their Italian allies, the Lucanians and Sallentines, had now no course left but to solicit an accommodation with Rome, which appears to have been granted on tolerable terms. Soon afterwards (451) even 303. an incursion of Cleonymus, who had landed in the Sallentine territory and laid siege to Uria, was repulsed by the inhabitants with Roman aid. The victory of Rome was complete ; and she turned it Consolida- te full account. It was not from magnanimity in the con- j! on of the querors for the Romans knew nothing of the sort but rale in from shrewd and far-seeing calculation that terms so moderate were granted to the Samnites, the Tarentines, 484 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n and the more distant peoples generally. The first and main object was not so much to compel southern Italy as quickly as possible to recognize formally the Roman supremacy, as to supplement and complete the subjugation / of central Italy, for which the way had been prepared by the military roads and fortresses already established in Campania and Apulia during the last war, and by that means to separate the northern and southern Italians into two masses cut off in a military point of view from direct . contact with each other. To this object accordingly the next undertakings of the Romans were with consistent energy directed. Above all they used, or made, the oppor- tunity for getting rid of the confederacies of the Aequi and the Hernici which had once been rivals of the Roman single power in the region of the Tiber and were not yet quite set aside. In the same year, in which the peace with 304. Samnium took place (450), the consul Publius Sempronius Sophus waged war on the Aequi ; forty townships surren- dered in fifty days ; the whole territory with the exception of the narrow and rugged mountain valley, which still in the present day bears the old name of the people (Cicolano), passed into the possession of the Romans, and here on the northern border of the Fucine lake was founded the fortress Alba with a garrison of 6000 men, thenceforth forming a bulwark against the valiant Marsi and a curb for central Italy ; as was also two years afterwards on the upper Turano, nearer to Rome, Carsioli both as allied communities with Latin rights. The fact that in the case of the Hernici at least Anagnia had taken part in the last stage of the Samnite war, furnished the desired reason for dissolving the old relation of alliance. The fate of the Anagnines was, as might be expected, far harder than that which had under similar circumstances been meted out to the Latin communities in the previous generation. They not merely had, like these, CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 485 to acquiesce in the Roman citizenship without suffrage, but they also like the Caerites lost self-administration ; out of a portion of their territory on the upper Trerus (Sacco), moreover, a new tribe was instituted, and another was formed at the same time on the lower Anio (455). The only 299. regret was that the three Hernican communities next in importance to Anagnia, Aletrium, Verulae, and Ferentinum, had not also revolted; for, as they courteously declined the suggestion that they should voluntarily enter into the bond of Roman citizenship and there existed no pretext for compelling them to do so, the Romans were obliged not only to respect their autonomy, but also to allow to them even the right of assembly and of intermarriage, and in this way still to leave a shadow of the old Hernican confederacy. . No such considerations fettered their action in that portion of the Volscian country which had hitherto been held by the Samnites. There Arpinum and Frusino became subject, the latter town was deprived of a third of its domain, and on the upper Liris in addition to Fregellae the Volscian town of Sora, which had previously been garrisoned, was now permanently converted into a Roman fortress and occupied by a legion of 4000 men. In this way the old Volscian territory was completely subdued, and became rapidly Romanized. The region which separated Samnium from Etruria was penetrated by two military roads, both of which were secured by new fortresses. The northern road, which afterwards became the Flaminian, covered the line of the Tiber ; it led through Ocriculum, which was in alliance with Rome, to Narnia, the name which the Romans gave to the old Umbrian fortress Nequinum when they settled a military colony there (455). The southern, afterwards the 299. Valerian, ran along the Fucine lake by way of the just mentioned fortresses of Carsioli and Alba. The small tribes within whose bounds these colonies were instituted, the Umbrians who obstinately defended Nequinum, the 486 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS Renewed - outbreak ' of the Samnite- Etruscarr war. 217. 187. 171. 502. 493. 486. 171. Aequians who once more assailed Alba, and the Marsians who attacked Carsioli, could not arrest the course of Rome : the two strong curb-fortresses were inserted almost without hindrance between Samnium and Etruria. We have already mentioned the great roads and fortresses instituted for per- manently securing Apulia and above all Campania : by their means Samnium was further surrounded on the east and west with the net of Roman strongholds. It is a significant token of the comparative weakness of Etruria that it was not deemed necessary to secure the passes through the Ciminian Forest in a similar mode by a highway and corresponding fortresses. The former frontier fortress of Sutrium continued to be in this quarter the terminus of the Roman military line, and the Romans contented themselves with having the road leading thence to Arretium kept in a serviceable state for military purposes by the communities through whose territories it passed. 1 The high-spirited Samnite nation perceived that such a peace was more ruinous than the most destructive war ; and, what was more, it acted accordingly. The Celts in northern Italy were just beginning to bestir themselves again after a long suspension of warfare ; moreover several Etruscan communities there were still in arms against the Romans, and brief armistices alternated in that quarter with vehement but indecisive conflicts. All central Italy was still in ferment and partly in open insurrection ; the for- tresses were stilt only in course of construction ; the way between Etruria and Samnium was not yet completely closed. Perhaps it was not yet too late to save freedom ; 1 The operations in the campaign of 537, and still more plainly the formation of the highway from Arretium to Bononia in 567, show that the road from Rome to Arretium had already been rendered serviceable before that time. But it cannot at that period have been a Roman military road, because, judging from its later appellation of the " Cassian way," it cannot have been constructed as a via con su la ris earlier than 583 ; for no Cassian appears in the lists of Roman consuls and censors between Spurius Cassius, consul in 252, 261, and 268 who of course is out of the question and Gaius Cassius Longinus, consul in 583. CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 487 but, if so, there must be no delay ; the difficulty of attack increased, the power of the assailants diminished with every year by which the peace was prolonged. Five years had scarce elapsed since the contest ended, and all the wounds must still have been bleeding which the twenty-two years' war had inflicted on the peasantry of Samnium, when in the year 456 the Samnite confederacy renewed the struggle. 298. The last war had been decided in favour of Rome mainly through the alliance of Lucania with the Romans and the consequent standing aloof of Tarentum. The Samnites, profiting by that lesson, now threw themselves in the first instance with all their might on the Lucanians, and suc- ceeded in bringing their party in that quarter to the helm of affairs, and in concluding an alliance between Samnium and Lucania. Of course the Romans immediately declared war ; the Samnites had expected no other issue. It is a significant indication of the state of feeling, that the Samnite government informed the Roman envoys that it was not able to guarantee their inviolability, if they should set foot on Samnite ground. The war thus bega'n anew (456), and while a second 298, army was fighting in Etruria, the main Roman army traversed Samnium and compelled the Lucanians to make peace and send hostages to Rome. The following year both consuls were able to proceed to Samnium ; Rullianus conquered at Tifernum, his faithful comrade in arms, Publius Decius Mus, at Maleventum, and for five months two Roman armies encamped in the land of the enemy. They were enabled to do so, because the Tuscan states had on their own behalf entered into negotiations for peace with Rome. The Samnites, who from the beginning could not but see that their only % chance of victory lay in the combination of all Italy against Rome, exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent the threatened separate peace between Etruria and Rome; and when at last their general, 488 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Gellius Egnatius, offered to bring aid to the Etruscans in their own country, the Etruscan federal council in reality agreed to hold out and once more to appeal to the decision of junction of arms. Samnium made the most energetic efforts to place the troops th ree ar mies simultaneously in the field, the first destined coalition in for the defence of its own territory, the second for an Etruria. invasion of Campania, the third and most numerous for 296. Etruria; and in the year 458 the last, led by Egnatius himself, actually reached Etruria in safety through the Marsian and Umbrian territories, with whose inhabitants there was an understanding. Meanwhile the Romans were capturing some strong places in Samnium and breaking the influence of the Samnite party in Lucania ; they were not in a position to prevent the departure of the army led by Egnatius. When information reached Rome that the Sam- nites had succeeded in frustrating all the enormous efforts made to sever the southern from the northern Italians, that the arrival of the Samnite bands in Etruria had become the signal for an almost universal rising against Rome, and that the Etruscan communities were labouring with the utmost zeal to get their own forces ready for war and to take into their pay Gallic bands, every nerve was strained also in Rome; the freedmen and the married were formed into cohorts it was felt on all hands that the decisive crisis was 296. near. The year 458 however passed away, apparently, in 295. armings and marchings. For the following year (459) the Romans placed their two best generals, Publius Decius Mus and the aged Quintus Fabius Rullianus, at the head of their .army in Etruria, which was reinforced with all the troops that~could be spared from Campania, and amounted to at least 60,000 men, of whom more than a third were full burgesses of Rome. Besides this, two reserves were formed, the first at Falerii, the second under the walls of the capital. The, rendezvous of the Italians was Umbria, towards which ,the roads from the Gallic, Etruscan, and Sabellian territories CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 489 converged ; towards Umbria the consuls also moved off their main force, partly along the left, partly along the right bank of the Tiber, while at the same time the first reserve made a movement towards Etruria, in order if possible to recall the Etruscan troops from the main scene of action for the defence of their homes. The first engagement did not prove fortunate for the Romans ; their advanced guard was defeated by the combined Gauls and Samnites in the" district of Chiusi. But that diversion accomplished its object. Less magnanimous than the Samnites, who had marched through the ruins of their towns that they might not be absent from the chosen field of battle, a great part of the Etruscan contingents withdrew from the federal army on the news of the advance of the Roman reserve into Etruria, and its ranks were greatly thinned when the decisive battle came to be fought on the eastern declivity of the Apennines near Sentinum. Nevertheless it was a hotly contested day. On the right Battle of wing of the Romans, where Rullianus with his two legions fought against the Samnite army, the conflict remained long undecided. On the left, which Publius Decius commanded, the Roman cavalry was thrown into confusion by the Gallic war chariots, and the legions also already began to give way. Then the consul called to him Marcus Livius the priest, and bade him devote to the infernal gods both the head of the Roman general and the army of the enemy ; and plunging into the thickest throng of the Gauls he sought death and found it. This heroic deed of despair on the part of one so eminent as a man and so beloved as a general was not in vain. The fugitive soldiers rallied ; the bravest threw themselves after their leader into the hostile ranks, to avenge him or to die with him ; and just at the right moment the consular Lucius Scipio, despatched by Rullianus, appeared with the Roman reserve on the im- perilled left wing. The excellent Campanian cavalry, which 490 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n ' ( fell on the flank and rear of the Gauls, turned the I jicalej the Gauls fled, and at length the Samnites also gave way, their general Egnatius falling at the gate of the camp. Nine thousand Romans strewed the field of battle ; but dearly as the victory was purchased, it was worthy of such a sacrifice. The army of the coalition was dissolved, and with it the coalition itself; Umbria remained in the power of the Romans, the Gauls dispersed, the remnant of the Samnites still in compact order retreated homeward through the Abruzzi. Campania, which the Samnites had overrun during the Etruscan war, was after its close re-occupied Peace with with little difficulty by the Romans. Etruria sued for peace Lna 294. m t ^ ie following year (460) ; Volsinii, Perusia, Arretium, and in general all the towns that had joined the league a'gainst Rome, promised a cessation of hostilities for four hundred months. Last But the Samnites were of a different mind ; they pre- struggles of pare( j f or tne j r hopeless resistance with the courage of free Sammum. r men, which cannot compel success but may put it to shame. When the two consular armies advanced into Samnium, in 294. the year 460, they encountered everywhere the most desperate resistance ; in fact Marcus Atilius was discomfited near Luceria, and the Samnites were able to penetrate into Campania and to lay waste the territory of the Roman colony Interamna on the Liris. In the ensuing year Lucius Papirius Cursor, the son of the hero of the first Samnite war, and Spurius Carvilius, gave battle on a great scale near Aquilonia to the Samnite army, the flower of which the 16,000 in white tunics had sworn a sacred oath to prefer death to flight. Inexorable destiny, however, heeds neither the oaths nor the supplications of despair ; the Roman conquered and stormed the strongholds where the Samnites had sought refuge for themselves and their property. Even after this great defeat the confederates still for years resisted the ever-increasing superiority of the CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 491 enemy with unparalleled perseverance in their, fastnesses and mountains, and still achieved various isolated advan- tages. The experienced arm of the old Rullianus was once more called into the field against them (462), and 292. Gavius Pontius, a son perhaps of the victor of Caudium, even gained for his nation a last victory, which the Romans meanly enough avenged by causing him when subsequently taken to be executed in prison (463). But there was no 291. further symptom of movement in Italy ; for the war, which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name. The 293. Samnites doubtless < turned with longing eyes towards Tarentum, which alone was still in a position to grant them aid; but it held aloof. The same causes as before occasioned its inaction internal misgovernment, and the passing over of the Lucanians once more to the Roman party in the year 456 ; to which fell to be added a not un- 298. founded dread of Agathocles of Syracuse, who just at that time had reached the height of his power and began to turn his views towards Italy. About 455 the latter established 299. himself in Corcyra whence Cleonymus had been expelled by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and now threatened the Taren- tines from the Adriatic as well as from the Ionian sea. The cession of the island to king Pyrrhus of Epirus in 45 9 295. certainly removed to a great extent the apprehensions which they had cherished ; but the affairs of Corcyra con- tinued to occupy the Tarentines in the year 464, for 290. instance, they helped to protect Pyrrhus in possession of the island against Demetrius and in like manner Aga- thocles did riot cease to give the Tarentines uneasiness by his Italian policy. When he died (465) and with him the 289. power of the Syracusans in Italy went to wreck, it was too late; Samnium, weary of the thirty-seven years' struggle, had concluded peace in the previous year (464) with the 290. Roman Consul Manius Curius Denjatus, and had in form renewed its league with Rome. On this occasion, as in 492 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n 304. the peace of 450, no disgraceful or destructive conditions were imposed on the brave people by the Romans; no cessions even of territory seem to have taken place. The political .sagacity of Rome preferred to follow the path which it had hitherto pursued, and to. attach in the first place the Campanian and Adriatic coast more and more securely to Rome before proceeding to the direct conquest of the interior. Campania, indeed, had been long in subjection ; but the far-seeing policy of Rome found it needful, in order to secure the Campanian coast, to establish two coast-fortresses there, Minturnae and Sinuessa 295. (459)j the new burgesses of which were admitted according to the settled rule in the case of maritime colonies to the full citizenship of Rome. With still greater energy the ex- tension of the Roman rule was prosecuted in central Italy. As the subjugation of the Aequi and Hernici was the immediate sequel of the first Samnite war, so that of the Sabines followed on the end of the second. The same general, who ultimately subdued the Samnites, Manius 290. Curius broke down in the same year (464) the brief and feeble resistance of the Sabines and forced them to uncon- ditional surrender. A great portion of the subjugated territory was immediately taken into possession of the victors and distributed to Roman burgesses, and Roman subject-rights (civitas sine suffragio) were imposed on the communities that were left Cures, Reate, Amiternum, Nursia. Allied towns with equal rights were not estab- lished here; on the contrary the country came under the immediate rule of Rome, which thus extended as far as the Apennines and the Umbrian mountains. Nor was it even now restricted to the territory on Rome's side of the mountains ; the last war had shown but too clearly that the Roman rule over central Italy was only secured, if it reached from sea to sea. The establishment of the Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out CHAP, vi AGAINST ROME 493 of the strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the 289 - northern slope of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain, not immediately on the coast and hence with Latin rights, but still near to the sea, and the keystone of the mighty wedge separating northern and southern Italy. Of a similar nature and of still greater importance was the founding of Venusia (463), whither the unprecedented number of 291. 20,000 colonists was conducted. That city, founded at the boundary of Samnium > Apulia, and Lucania, on the great road between Tarentum and Samnium, in an uncommonly, strong position, was destined as a curb to keep in check the surrounding tribes, and above all to interrupt the com- munications between the two most powerful enemies of. Rome in southern Italy. Beyond doubt at the same time the southern highway, which Appius Claudius had carried as far as Capua, was prolonged thence to Venusia. Thus, at the close of the Samnite wars, the Roman domain closely compact that is, consisting almost exclusively of communities with Roman or Latin rights extended on the north to the Ciminian Forest, on the east to the Abruzzi and to the Adriatic, on the south as far as Capua, while the two advanced posts, Luceria and Venusia, established towards the east and south on the lines of communication of their opponents, isolated them on every side. Rome was no longer merely the first, but was already the ruling power in the peninsula, when towards the end of the fifth century of the city those nations, which had been raised to supremacy in their respective lands by the favour of the gods and by their own capacity, began to come into contact in council and on the battle-field ; and, as at Olympia the preliminary victors girt themselves for a second and more serious struggle, so on the larger arena of the nations, Carthage, Macedonia, and Rome now prepared for the final and, decisive contest. APPENDIX THE PATRICIAN CLAUDII [This paper, which was subjoined to the first English edition of the History as exhibiting the grounds that had induced Dr. Mommsen to modify the views which he had embodied in the text of the earlier German editions regarding Appius Claudius the decemvir and Appius Claudius the censor, may retain a place here for its intrinsic interest. It was read at the sitting of the Prussian Academy on March 4, 1 86 1, and was subsequently included among the author's Romische Forschungen. I have given it almost entire. TR.] The patrician clan of the Claudii, probably one of the gentcs maiores, played a leading part in the history of Rome for five. hundred years. Our object in this inquiry is to arrive at a proper estimate of its political position. We are accustomed to regard this Claudian gens as the very incarnation of the patriciate, and its leaders as the champions of the aristocratic party and of the conservatives in opposition to the plebeians and the democrats ; and this view, in fact, already pervades the works which form our authorities. In the little, indeed, which we possess belonging to the period of the republic, and particularly in the numerous writings of Cicero, there occurs no hint of the kind ; for the circumstance that Cicero in one special instance (ad Fam. iii. 7, 5), when treating of the persons of Appius and Lentulus, uses Appietas and Lentulitas as what they were superlative types of the Roman nobility, by no means falls under this category. It is in Livy that we first meet with the view which is now current. At the very beginning of his work the Claudii are introduced as ft\tfamilia superbissima ac crudelissima in pkbem Romanam (ii. 56), and throughout the first decad, whenever an ultra aristocrat is needed, a Claudius appears on the stage. For instance, the very first consul of this name, Appius Claudius consul in 259, is contrasted with the gentle Servilius as vehementi^ ingenii vir (ii. 23 seq.), and it was no fault of his that on the secession of the plebs to the Sacred Mount the quarrel was not decided by arms (ii. 29). The next consul of this gens, in 283, vehemently opposes the Publilian law as to the election of the tribunes of the plebs by the tribes, while his colleague on this occasion a Quinctius vainly counsels moderation (ii. 56). The third consul C. 496 APPENDIX . Claudius, in 294, unreasonably obstructs the law for preparing a national code, which his colleague of the Valerian gens had shortly before his glorious death promised to the people (iii. 19) ; and although this C. Claudius, as compared with the still more hateful decemvir Appius, plays a mediating and conciliatory part, he afterwards in the dispute regarding the conubium contends for the most extreme aristocratic view (iv. 6). The son of the decemvir, who was military tribune in 330, although there is nothing to be told about him, is not allowed to pass without mention of his hereditary hatred towards the tribunes and the plebs (iv. 36). The same character is ascribed on different occasions to the grandson of the decemvir, who was military tribune in 351 and perhaps consul in 405 (iv. 48, v. 2-6, 20); and in the discussions on the Licinio-Sextian laws a detailed defence of the government of the nobility is placed in his mouth (vi. 40, 41, comp. vii. 6). Lastly, on occasion of the censorship of Caecus the annalist once more sums up the roll of the Claudian sins (ix. 34). The Claudii are treated in a similar style by Dionysius on these same occasions and a number of others : it is needless to enumerate here the several passages, or to dwell on the speeches in the senate attributed to them, so intolerable from their insipid wordiness. The authors of the time of Tiberius, Valerius Maximus and Velleius, naturally indulge in no invectives against the Claudian house j but Tacitus again speaks, just like Livy and Dionysius, of the vetus atque insita Claudiae familiae superbia (Ann. i. 4) ; and Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars ( Tib. 2) says still more expressly, that all the patrician Claudii, with the exception of the tribune of the people P. Clodius, had been conservative (pptimates] and the most zealous champions of the standing and power of the patriciate as opposed to the plebs. These testimonies add no strength to the proof. The later Romans derived their views of men and things under the republic entirely from Livy that remarkable writer, who, standing on the confines of the old and new periods, still possessed on the one hand the republican inspiration withput which the history of the Roman republic could not be written, and, on the other hand, was sufficiently imbued with the refined culture of the Augustan age to work up the older annalsj which were uninteresting in conception and rude in composition, into an elegant narrative written in good Latin. The combination of these qualities produced a book which is still as readable now as it was well-nigh two thousand years ago, and this must be reckoned no mean praise ; but the annals of Livy are no more a history in the true sense of the term in the sense in which Polybius wrote history than the annals of Fabius. A certain systematic aim is observable in his work ; but that aim is not historical, tracing the causes and effects of things ; it is poetical, demanding a narrative unbroken by historic doubts, and requiring representative men and more particularly leading champions of the political parties. Thus he needed, by way of contrast to the liberal-conservative Valerii, a prototype of the proud patrician clans ; and, if he and in like manner Dionysius whether after the precedent of some earlier annalist, or of APPENDIX 497 their own choice (a point to which we shall hereafter advert) have used the Claudii for this purpose, their representations must not be held as absolutely binding on the historical inquirer. Materials for a revision of their judgment in this respect are not wholly wanting : in fact, from the honesty with which Livy reproduces the positive accounts which lay before him, most of the materials of this nature have been preserved by him, while Dionysius with his affectation of critical sagacity has in this instance effaced every trace of the genuine truth. Among the general characteristics of the Claudian gens nothing strikes us so much as the fact, that no notable patrician clan has given to the community so few famous warriors as the Claudian house, although it flourished for so many centuries. Suetonius 1 records among the honours of the clan six triumphs and two ovations ; of the former four can be pointed out with certainty, viz. that of Appius Crassus over the Picentes in 486, that of Gaius Nero over Hasdrubal in 547, that of Gaius Pulcher over the Istrians and Ligurians in 577, and that of Appius Pulcher over the Salassi in 6 1 1 ; of the latter one, viz. that of Appius over the Celtiberians in 580 ; the missing triumph or missing ovation was perhaps that of the dictator in 392. But, as is well known, there was not among the Romans one general in ten triumphators ; and of the triumphs just named one alone commemorated an important military success the gain of the battle of Sena by the two consuls M. Livius and C. Nero ; the latter, moreover, belonged to a collateral branch of the patrician house little spoken of in the republican period, the Claudii Nerones. Among the Claudii proper there is not a single soldier of note, and it can be proved that the most important of them did not owe their reputation to their services in the field. How far different was the case with the noble houses of equal standing with the Claudii, such as the Fabii, Aemilii, Cornelii ! On the other hand, no gens of the Roman nobility displayed so much activity in science and literature from the earliest times as the Claudian house. From the decemvir Appius Claudius proceeded, as is well known, the Roman code of law, which, as the oldest Roman book, as modelled after the laws of Solon, and as including the earliest calendar that was publicly promulgated, exercised in a literary and scientific point of view the deepest and most permanent influence. To the achievements of the censor Appius Claudius in this respect we shall return. Even in subsequent times, when culture was general, there are various evidences that the patrician Claudii con- tinued to have at heart the interests of science. I may refer to the different aedileships of men of this gens, which form epochs in the history of the theatre ; to the adept in the Greek mysticism who was contemporary with Cicero, Appius Claudius consul in 700, and his Eleusinian Propylaeum, the votive inscription of which has been recently found ; 2 and to the emperors Tiberius and Claudius, both of 1 Tib. i : Patricia ffns Claudia duodetriginta consulates, dictaturas quinque, censuras se/Hem, triumphos sex (or seftem), duos crvationes adepta est . . . 2 Corp, Inscr. Lat. I. n. 619. VOL. I 32 498 APPENDIX whom cherished a deeper interest in philology and archaeology than is common with princely dilettanti. It will be allowed that neither of these observations tells exactly in favour of the current view of the Claudian family. The aristocratic party at all times set a higher value on martial prowess than on mental gifts ; democracy on the contrary, and above all the Roman democracy down to a late age, sought its sphere in the Forum beyond the reach of the sword, and found powerful levers in science and art. How is all this reconcilable with thzfamilia superbissima ac crudelissima in plebem Romanam ? And various other considerations might be adduced. The statement that the Claudii only migrated to Rome in the sixth year after the expulsion of the kings is not merely untrust- worthy as to date, but decidedly at variance with the requirements of republican state law ; moreover the Claudian gens, which gave its name to a Roman tribe, and which appears at an early date in the Fasti, cannot possibly have migrated to Rome at so recent a period. But, apart from the date, the fact itself of the migration of the Claudii from Sabina is attested by a highly credible family tradition ; and it is a surprising circumstance that this same patrician clan, which was almost the only one to preserve and to value the recollection of its having come from abroad, should have furnished the champion of the native patricians. The Claudii, too, were almost the only patrician gens which had a counterpart of the same name and of kindred origin among the old plebeian nobility ; l for that more than a mere nominal kinship was assumed to exist between the patrician Claudii and the plebeian Marcelli, is attested by the competing claims of the two houses in the case of heritages passing to gentiles (Cic. de Orat. i. 39, 176). One would think that this relation must have con- stituted a connecting bond between the patrician Claudii and the plebs rather than the reverse. But general considerations of this sort do not determine the matter. The question depends on the political position which the prominent men of the Claudian gens took up, and by which they determined that of the whole clan, so far as in the case of the latter we can speak of such a position at all. Now of such prominent men the Claudian clan in the earlier centuries of the republic produced two, Appius the Decemvir and Appius the Censor : of the other Claudii of this epoch we know, laying aside idle inventions, just about as much as we know of the Egyptian kings their names and their years of office. We shall have to treat accordingly in the first instance of the two former, and then to subjoin what is to be said regarding the far less important Claudii of later regular history. The accounts given in the annals which have reached us regarding the Ap. Claudius who was consul in 283 and decemvir in 303 can certainly make no claim to historical credibility, and are still more corrupted and disfigured than other accounts of the same epoch. Authors, who record under the year 284 the death of the man who was decemvir twenty years afterwards, will receive credit from nobody 1 The Veturii alone were in the same position. APPENDIX 499 when they report his speeches in the Forum and the senate and the history of his impeachment. Yet the most important facts relating to the origin of the Twelve Tables are as little doubtful as the Twelve Tables themselves ; and in this case it is not difficult to separate a historical kernel from the loose tissue of fable. First of all, it is clear and undisputed that the committal of the public law to writing was a measure directed against the patrician magistrates and consequently against the patrician government itself. Moreover, it is no less certain that the decemvirs were not all patricians. For, if there is anything good and reliable in what has been handed down to us, the list of magistrates is so ; and we know also the patrician clans sufficiently to be certain that, while the decemvirs first nominated were all patricians, of those elected in 304 at least the three described by Dionysius (x. 58) as plebeian, and probably two others or, in other words, one-half were plebeians. The circumstance that Livy in his narrative itself says nothing of the quality of the members of this college, and afterwards in a speech (iv. 3) calls all the decemvirs patricians, is of no moment. Niebuhr, who did not fail to see the conclusive force of the evidence in favour of the plebeian character of a portion of the second decemvirs, supposed (and Schwegler assents to his view) that the first and second decemvirate were different in kind, the former being an extraordinary legislative commission, the latter a college of archons organized as a permanent institution and composed of both orders. But this hypothesis is opposed to all tradition, as well as to all probability ; the two sets of magistrates occurring in so close succession, both occupied with the preparation of the legal code, and both comprehended under the same title decemviri consulari imperio legilnts scribundis in the roll of magistrates, must have been in constitutional law homogeneous. Consequently nothing remains but the hypothesis that the decemvirate stood open from the first to both orders ; and this view is necessarily demanded by the analogy of the military tribunate consulari potestate. For the essential features the substitution of a larger number of magistrates for the pair, and the assigning to these magistrates not the title and rank of consul with the relative honours (right to celebrate a triumph and to carry images of ancestors), but only delegated consular power are common to the military tribunate and the decemvirate ; and, as the military tribunate was notoriously organized in this way just in order to make the supreme magistracy, but not the highest honours of that magistracy, accessible to the plebeians, the decemvirate cannot well be conceived otherwise than common from the first to both orders. The fact that the first college consisted exclusively of patricians is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, but agreeable to all analogy ; the military tribunate in like manner, although always common in law, remained practically for many years in the hands of the patricians. Lastly, Livy himself narrates the course of the matter as if the plebs had demanded at first a commission composed of plebeians, and then one in which the two orders were to be mixed (iii. 9, $ ; iii. 31, 7 plebeiae leges), and yet the ten commissioners were at last chosen from the patricians : placet creari decemviros admis- Soo APPENDIX cerenturne plebei, cont rover sia aliquamdiu fuit ; postremo concessum patribus, modo ne lex Id Ha de Aventino aliaeqne sacral ae leges abrogarentur (iii. 31). It is easy to see how the older view has here been not really altered, but merely obscured by the omission of the circumstance that the plebeians carried their demand for the appoint- ment of a mixed magistracy. What was true of the election, viz., that patricians only were fixed upon, was erroneously referred to the institution itself an error which might be the more readily excused, as the point related not to a magistracy that was often to recur, but to a college -which was to finish within its year of office the compilation of the code for which preparations had long been making, and con- sequently was to be elected only once. If we reflect on these surely-established facts, first, that the obtain- ing of a written body of law was in itself a severe defeat of the nobility, and secondly, that men of both orders might be and were placed on the legislative commission and the eligibility of the plebeians to the supreme magistracy was in its case first legally and practically recognized, it is plainly preposterous to make the head of the decemvirate the leader of the patrician party. This, however, is what Livy has done ; but that the older annals, characterized by less of literary taste and by a more vivid realization of the matters which they narrate, did not give any such version, may be proved from his own pages. He introduces his narrative of the second decemvirate by the remark that a new spirit had possessed Appius and the furious patrician had all at once become a mob-courtier (plebicola, iii. 33) that, surrounded by the leading men of the plebs, the Duellii and Icilii, he had appeared in the Forum, and had by vile demagogic arts carried his re-election for the next year and the nomination of men of little standing as his colleagues (iii. 36). By this view Livy thence- forth abides on the whole, although he now and again falls back on the earlier, representing the decemvirs for instance as afterwards appearing with a retinue of young patricians and perpetrating their deeds of violence under its protection (iii. 37). This new spirit, which is alleged to have strangely taken possession of Appius at the close of 303, is evidently none other than that which has been eliminated from his character by the misrepresentations of later historians but is ascribed to him by the earlier annals generally, and alone befits the part that he played the spirit of a patrician demagogue who ends as a tyrant to patricians as well as plebeians. How much in the story of his fall is historical, and what may have been the real incidents of the process of Verginia the murder of Siccius seems to have been a late addition cannot of course be ascertained, and is a matter of comparative indifference ; but the import of that story of Verginia, given in Diodorus and consequently proceeding from P^abius, may be easily perceived, and is significant enough, even should it be an invention. The unjust judicial sentence pronounced in his own personal interest, not in that of his order, the coming forward of the complaisant accommodating retainer, the greedy lust from which the burgher-maiden only saves her honour in death APPENDIX 501 these are all well-known traits in the picture of the ancient tyrannus ; and, in fact, the charge of usurping the tyrannis is brought up very distinctly in many passages by Livy against the second decemvirs generally (iii. 36 ; decem regum species erat, c. 32 ; id vero regnum haud dubie videri, c, 39 ; decem Tarquinios. The emperor Claudius also speaks of decemvirale regnum on the Lyons Tables, i. 33). There was certainly good reason also for placing the demagogic gens of the Icilii in the foreground both at the second election of Appius and at the catastrophe. The oldest annals, written in a patrician spirit, showed at this point when they were compelled to relate the momentous victory of the plebs over the nobility by an instructive example, what fruit the people themselves derived from such a success of the popular party ; how every demagogue naturally turns into a tyrant ; how the honest plebeian, who had helped to place Appius in the judgment seat, himself suffered most at the hands of the judge ; and how the plebs, thoroughly cured of its blindness by such consequences of its own act, took up arms against the self-constituted tyrant, was brought back by its true aristocratic protectors, the Valerii and Horatii, to that old constitution which could alone give happiness, and at length received from them as a free gift the real prize for which the plebs had contended, but which the demagogues who had turned tyrants had neglected to confer the completion of the legal code. This no doubt is not history ; but it approaches nearer to the reality than the well-written but ill-concocted epideixis of Livy. Respecting Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 442, consul in 447 and 458, the accounts are both more trustworthy and more copious. Niebuhr has already formed a judgment substantially correct regarding him, and I have in my History of Rome given a short sketch of him, in the main outlines of which I have no occasion to make any change, although, in consequence of my not then possessing an insight into the very peculiar character of the traditional accounts of the Claudii, there are various misapprehensions in the details. He was not only no representative of conservative tendencies, but a decided revolutionist, although he employed the forms and handles furnished by the con- stitution for the purpose of overthrowing it. Let us briefly review the accounts handed down in regard to him. First of all, the story of his blindness has perhaps arisen solely from the misunderstanding of a surname. That the current story, which represents him as struck with blindness by Hercules on account of a sacrilegious offence committed in his censorship of 442, is absurd in reference to a man who was twice afterwards consul, has long been seen ; and it is also evident that the version of Diodorus (xx. 10), according to which he feigned himself blind in order that he might have a suitable pretext for keeping aloof from the senate which was hostile to him, is simply a second absurdity which has arisen out of a perception of the first. The view now usually adopted, that Appius had grown blind in his old age, is inconsistent with the Capitoline Fasti, which already under 442 register him as Ap. Claudius C. f. Ap. n. Caecus ; for, as they distinctly specify surnames acquired after entering on office as such 502 APPENDIX (recording, for instance, in the very case of his colleague, C. Platifiits C. f. C. n. qui in hoc honore Venox appellatus est), their compilers appear to have regarded Caecus as a simple cognomen, and the fact of his being blind at all is thus rendered doubtful. It is possible, indeed, that they may either have fallen into an error or may have wished in this way to avoid those absurdities of the older annals, and that the current hypothesis may still be the truth ; certainty is not on such a question to be attained. Of the martial deeds of Appius there is little to tell. Although he was once dictator, twice consul, and twice praetor, and took the field against the Samnites and Etruscans, and although his activity fell within the epoch of Rome's greatest military glory, yet he never triumphed. He built a temple to Bellona ; but it is well known that man not unfrequently pays the most zealous homage to the divinity that scorns him. The really significant activity of Appius belongs to the field of civil life. In particular, that speech of the venerable old man who had long retired from all state affairs, which vanquished the first Greek diplomatist that appeared in the Roman senate, and at a decisive moment gave fresh courage and power to the Roman govern- ment the speech against Pyrrhus remained indelibly engraven on the memory of posterity. This result was partly due to the fact that it was the first speech which, so far as we know, was committed to writing in Rome at least Cicero, who read it, had no doubt of its genuineness. Nor have we any reason to regard his poetical " say- ings " (sententiae), which Panaetius had read, as spurious ; they were maxims of a general nature, such as that " he who gets a sight of a friend forgets his grief" (Prise, viii. 18), and the well-known saying, " every one is the architect of his own fortune " (Sallust, de Ord. Rep. \. i) ; when Cicero called them Pythagorean, he was undoubtedly thinking of the pseu do- Pythagorean " Golden Words," and this oldest Latin poem must in fact have been formed under the influence of such Greek collections. He is said also to have introduced the practice of writing the r between two vowels instead of the earlier s (Dig. i. 2, 2, 36), and to have banished the use of z, 1 doubtless bringing the writing into conformity with the pronunciation. The same bold and far-seeing spirit of innovation, which is^discernible in his literary activity, marks also his political career ;. and it is remarkable how he in this respect walks in the steps of his great-great-grandfather, the decemvir. The publication of the legis actiones, which was carried out by his clerk Cn. Flavius, beyond all doubt at his suggestion by some indeed it was attributed to himself (Dig. /. c.) was virtually the publication of a revised and enlarged code. The Twelve Tables, indeed, were in substance a regulation of civil procedure ; and the object in both cases, as in all similar instances, was to emancipate the humble burgess from dependence on the caprice of the aristocratic magistrate and on 1 Mart. Cap. i. 3, 261, Kopp. : 2 idcirco Appius Claudius detestatur, quod dentcs mortui dunt cxprimitur imitatur, where we should perhaps read dentis morsits. Appius, it is probable, only assigned (or was alleged to have assigned) this as a reason for the banishment of the 2 from the language and writing. APPENDIX 503 the advice of the no less aristocratic men of lore, by means of a written code accessible to all. The same remark applies to the Fasti, which at that time were still in the main what the name indicates, a list of court days : as the calendar had been an integral part of the Twelve Tables, it now became a part of the legal directory of Flavins, and was diffused along with the latter in the form of a book. A mere notice may suffice for the innovations of Appius in ritual matters ; viz. , the transference of the public worship of Hercules in the Forum Boarium from the gens of the Potitii to the charge of public slaves, and the ejection of the guild of tibicines from the temple of Jupiter, which in the following year led to the well-known quarrel so happily ended by the jocose diplomatic intervention of the Tiburtines and the yielding of the senate. The conversion of the burgess -qualification hitherto in force from landed property into a money-rating was materially modified by the successor of Appius in the censorship, the great Quintus Fabius ; but enough of his innovations remained both as regards the comitia tribute. and the comitia centuriata, but more especially the latter, to associate the censorship of Appius with perhaps the most material constitutional change which ever took place in republican Rome. The nomination of sons of freed men as senators, the omission to purge the senatorial and equestrian rolls of disreputable and infamous individuals, and the election, at the suggestion of Appius, of his clerk Cn. Flavins the son of a freedman to a curule office ; the spending of the moneys accumulated in the treasury, without the previous sanction of the senate, on magnificent structures called a thing hitherto unheard of after the builder's name ; the Appian aqueduct and the Appian highway ; lastly, his prolongation of the censorship beyond the legal term of eighteen months ; are each and all measures diametrically opposed to Roman conservatism and to Roman reverence for the constitution and for use and wont, and belonging to the most advanced demagogism measures which savour more of Cleisthenes and Pericles than of a statesman of the Roman commonwealth. "Such a character," Niebuhr aptly remarks, "would not surprise us in the history of Greece ; in that of Rome it appears very strange." It is not my intention at present to do more tfran merely to indicate these several undertakings of Appius, which in general are sufficiently well known, and which could not be adequately estimated without lengthened and minute explanation. I shall only advert to a general opinion regarding the character of his proceedings in the censorship, and to an isolated notice which has not hitherto been correctly apprehended. The opinion to which I refer is that of Fabius, pre- served by Diodorus (xx. 36). He says under the year 444-5, "One of the censors of this year, Appius Claudius, on whom his colleague was entirely dependent, disturbed many matters of use and wont, for, gratifying the multitude, he troubled himself little about the senate." The notice to which I refer occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 2). In enumerating the injuries done by the Claudii to the commonwealth, he says, Claudius Drusus, statua sibi diadcmata ad Appi Forum posita^ 504 APPENDIX Italiam per clientelas occupare temptavit. According to the order in which this statement occurs, it falls between the decemvirate and the first Punic war. It has at all times, and very justly, excited extreme suspicion ; few perhaps will be inclined with Niebuhr to hold it, simply as it stands, as historical, and to see in this Claudius Drusus an otherwise totally unknown tyrant of Italy. The name in fact is demonstrably corrupt, not only because Claudii Drusi do not occur elsewhere, but more especially because Suetonius after discussing the paternal ancestors of the emperor Tiberius passes on to the maternal and treats minutely of the Livii Drusi and of the origin of that cognomen. He could not but have noticed so singular a coincidence of the two families in the possession of a cognomen anything but frequent, had that name of Claudius Drusus been the real one ; while on the other hand the subsequent occurrence of the cognomen Drusus might lead a copyist to anticipate it at the wrong place. How the passage should be amended, I know not ; * in point of fact beyond all doubt no other can be meant here but Appius Caecus ; for he not only falls in point of time exactly within the requisite epoch and is the only one of all the Claudii against whom such a charge as that indicated by Suetonius is rationally conceivable, but the Forum Appii, the present Foro Appio between Treponti and Terracina not far from Sezza, was itself, like the Appian way, a work of his situated in the middle of that immense embankment of hewn stone carried across the Pomptine marshes, in the construction of which, as Diodorus says, Appius exhausted the treasure of the state and left an eternal monu- ment to his name. To him alone could the idea occur of having a statue erected to himself at this otherwise inconsiderable place ; and it is further easy to understand how the at that time novel institu- tion of a market village along the highway, and the naming of it after its originator, might give rise to the allegation that, its founder designed to bring all Italy under his power by forming client-com- munities. Valerius Maximus also assigns to Caecus plurimas clientelas (viii. 13, 5)- The portrait of Caecus, as it has just been sketched, is delineated in our tradition in strong, clear, mutually harmonious lines. At the same time it must be added that it strictly suits only Appius as censor ; in the two consulships which he held after his censorship and in his other later activity we encounter nothing more of that vehemently revolutionary spirit. It must probably be assumed that he himself in his later years abandoned the career on which he had entered at first, and became reconciled in some measure to the existing conservative government if not, we do not see how he could have ended otherwise than like the Gracchi or like Caesar. But though this be granted, it is clear that Appius Caecus was not, any more than the decemvir Appius, an appropriate representative of the strict aristocratic party ; and Livy, when he treats Caecus in this light, has certainly assigned to him a part most incongruous to his character. It is necessary, not in order 1 Perhaps it ran thus : Caecus rursus statiia sibi diademata ad Appi Forum posita Italiam per clientelas occupare tentptavit. APPENDIX 505 to complete our view of Caecus, but in order to perceive the character of Livy and of that mode of writing history which he represents, that we should dwell for a moment on the false colours with which this Claudius like all the rest has been overlaid. I do not include in this category the statement that the builder of the temple of Bellona placed in it the escutcheons of his ancestors with a list of the curule offices filled by each (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 3, 12, where this is erroneously referred to the consul of 259) ; aristocratic pride is very compatible with the character of a Pericles, and Caesar with all his clemagogism boasted of his descent from Venus. But the view given of the censor- ship of Appius, as we read it in Livy (ix. 29, 30, 33, 34), is very strange, not so much on account of the occasional attacks on the " inborn arrogance" of the Claudii, "that family destined by fate to quarrel with the plebs " (ix. 29, 33), as because all his palpably demagogic measures are passed over in silence a silence which is the more evidently intentional, seeing that the most important of these, the enrolment of persons who had no landed property in the tribes, is afterwards mentioned incidentally under the censorship of Fabius (x. 7)- It is no less remarkable that Livy (x. 15) represents Appius Caecus as again heading the opposition to the Ogulnian law of 454, which abolished the last substantial privilege of the patricians as respected the great priestly colleges ; and here, at the close of the whole strife between the orders, once more contrasts him as the incarnation of patricianism with the figure of the pure plebeian hero Decius Mus. Nor is this even enough. At the consular elections for 485 the same Appius is said to have attempted unconstitutionally to bring in a second patrician, Q. Fabius Rullianus, as consul along with himself, and the project is said to have been thwarted solely by the loyal magnanimity of the said Fabius (x. 15). A different, but analogous stoiy is given by Cicero (Brut. 14, 55) ; according to which Caecus in the capacity of interrex presiding at the elections (he rilled this office according to Livy, x. II, in 455 on which occasion, how- ever, as the first interrex he could not have conducted the election and according to his elogium on two other occasions unknown to us) is said to have rejected the votes given for a plebeian consular candidate, and thus to have led the tribune of the people, M'. Curius, to propose a further restriction of patrician privileges. That these evidently kindred stories are highly incredible, is plain to every one conversant with the matter ; how is it possible that, at a time when the patricians had been divested almost without resistance of the last privileges of their order, and when the plebeians had had their title to share in the consulship not only constitutionally secured ever since men could remember, but also long confirmed by usage, the idea of such a restoration should have entered the mind of a mature statesman? And these accounts, in themselves more than suspicious, are coupled with the names of men than whom none could have been selected more unsuitable. The crazy patrician, who brings forward those prepos- terous projects, is no other than the censorial demagogue Appius Caecus who was for good reasons at bitterest feud with the ruling con- 506 APPENDIX servative party ; and the person, whom he unconstitutionally selects as his colleague for 458, is no other than Fabius Rullianus, who had checked the unbounded demagogism of Appius on succeeding him in the censorship. We might be disposed to recognize in this one of those singular political conversions which have occurred at various epochs in the history of the world. But, as abrupt transition from one party- extreme to another and renegade arrogance have at no time been regarded as specially honourable, and as so much is said about Caecus more especially in the way of censure, such a change of sides, which must have produced the greatest sensation, would certainly have been prominently noticed in the accounts. But we nowhere meet with any hint of the sort : on the contrary, we have seen even the censorship of Appius, clearly as it bears on the face of it the stamp of demagogism, divested as far as possible of any such character in the narrative of Livy. To this falls to be added the spirit of perversion and invention hostile to the Claudii, noticed at the outset as pervading the older annals generally. The delineation of the character of Caecus towards whom the ninth and tenth books of Livy exhibit various traces of an altogether peculiar hatred cannot be separated from the history of the trial and suicide of Appius Claudius, consul in 283, as told by Dionysius and Livy, which has been demonstrated to be a pure lie foreign to the earlier annals by the mention of the same man in the Capitoline Fasti twenty years later ; from those constantly recurring consular and senatorial speeches of Claudii hostile to the people ; from that irrational misrepresentation of the decemvir ; or, generally, from the whole class of anti-Claudian stories. Nothing remains accordingly but the hypothesis that the anti-popular anecdotes attached to the demagogue Caecus turning, it may be remarked, throughout on easily invented trifles and nowhere affecting his leading and well-known actions have been designedly perverted or invented. It thus appears that at a pretty early period a pencil not merely hostile generally to the Claudii, but specially assailing them as the hereditary foes of progress and of democracy, has been at work in the Roman annals, and has caricatured its portraits with more good-will than judgment. Who it was that wielded it, can only be guessed inferentially. That the earliest annalists, and Fabius in particular, knew nothing of these lies, is clear from what we have said above. On the other hand they cannot well have originated with Livy ; this far from honourable species of libel concealing itself under the falsifying of documents is by no means consistent with the morally pure character of his work, and besides there was no ostensible ground for it in his case. For, when Livy wrote the first decad, there remained no man of note belonging to the main stock of the patrician Claudii, and probably none of them remained at all except the son of P. Clodius, who was utterly insignificant and was ruining himself by reckless debauchery ; the collateral branch of the Nerones was then obscure, Tiberius the future emperor was still a boy. Further, it is far from credible that Dionysius, whose books are evidently pervaded by the same tendency, and who professes to give us antidemocratic speeches APPENDIX 507 of the Claudii even in numerous cases when Livy is silent, should have in this matter rested solely on Livy and invented in a similar spirit what he did not find there. Besides, if the notice in Cicero's Brutus has been correctly estimated above, this series of falsifications must have already existed in Cicero's time; but the "Claudian arrogance" was certainly not yet at that time generally recognized and familiar, otherwise assuredly Cicero would not have allowed so suitable a handle for invective against his mortal enemy Clodius wholly to escape him. Lastly, these falsifications bear on the face of them the stamp of a democratic origin. Putting together all these indications, we may at all events suggest a name to which the suspicion of having set afloat these plebeian libels on the Claudian house may not without warrant be attached. It is that of Licinius Macer. Macer was, as is well known, a contemporary of Cicero, senior to him by a few years (tribune of the people in 68 1, he died, after having served the praetorship, in 688), a notorious democrat and the author of ill written and not much read annals, which however, it can be shown, formed a main authority both with Livy and with Dionysius. I have shown in my Chronologic that this man, who had been legally condemned for extortion and probably on that account committed suicide, was not only a thief, but at the same time a thoroughly shameless falsifier. It is true that nothing is known of any special quarrel between him and the patrician Claudii ; but all the latter were, in the period of Sulla and the subsequent times, in the oligarchic camp and most decidedly opposed to Macer and his party, and we may perhaps even point out the individual who specially attracted the hatred of the democrats. Few of the acts of Gaius Claudius consul in 662 are recorded ; but his extraordinary influence in the state is more than once (Cic. pro Plane. 21, 51, Brut. 45, 166) prominently referred to in so striking a manner, that we may certainly recognize him as one of the leaders of the senate at this time, and one who may be presumed accordingly to have been specially obnoxious to the party of progress. Until further investigation shall confirm or remove this suspicion resting on the credibility of Macer and the annalists who derived their accounts from him, we may be allowed to regard it as a reason for cautiously receiving whatever is connected with his authority, especially seeing that it affects a man whose reputation is not thereby rendered worse than it is already. It remains that we cast a glance at the Claudii of the later purely historical times, and their political position. This, however, need not detain us long. For that there was no clan-policy at all in the sense which not a few modern historians associate with the term, the inquiry which we have just concluded shows by an instructive example ; the far-famed Claudian policy would seem, from that review, to have been nothing else than a caricature invented by a partisan falsifier of history. In the sixth and seventh centuries the Claudii had no remarkable prominence ; the good and bad qualities which pretty uniformly marked the Roman oligarchy characterized them also, and there are few of the numerous men of this family known to us in the later times 5o8 APPENDIX of the republic, as to whom we can tell more than their names and titles. Of course the Claudii of this period were, like the rest of the clans of the high nobility, generally found in the conservative camp ; yet no notable champion of the oligarchy appeared among them, while there were various men who professed oppositionarsentiments or milder views leaning to the popular side. This is especially the case with all those, of whose characters any sketches or even any isolated vivid traits have been preserved. The well-known stories regarding P. Pulcher consul in the first Punic war, who audaciously killed the sacred fowls at Drepana 'and, in defiance of the senate, nominated Glicia his former clerk as dictator, indicate great insolence doubtless, but not aristocratic arrogance ; they rather betoken that pride which disregards traditional views and class-prejudices and is in fact truly democratic. In the nominati9n of Glicia, which excited the utmost horror in all genuine patricians for centuries, he was, beyond doubt, influenced by the recollection that his ancestor Caecus had introduced his clerk Flavius into the senate. C. Pulcher, when censor in 585, prevented his colleague Ti. Gracchus from depriving the freedmen by censorial authority of their right of suffrage, because, as he affirmed, none could be deprived of that right without a decree of the people (Liv. xlv. 15) a course which was very proper and highly com- mendable, but not specially oligarchic. Appius Claudius, consul in 6 1 1 , is known as one of the most conspicuous promoters of the agitation of the Gracchi ; he himself along with the two Gracchi, the elder of whom was his son-in-law, presided over the execution of the scheme of reform as a commissioner for the distribution of lands. As to the tribune of the people P. Clodius, the adopted son of the plebeian Fonteius, it is hardly necessary to prove that he at least was no pearl of conservatism. If, therefore, the very moderate measure of historical truth and importance, which lies at the root of the hypothesis of a hereditaiy family policy, is to be in future brought to bear on the case of the Claudii, it will be well at least utterly to abandon the current tradition, and to regard this patrician house not as the defenders of an obdurate aristocracy, but as the predecessors of the Gracchi and of Caesar. In this respect the Claudii were justly called to ascend, in combination with the Julian house, the imperial throne, and even on that throne they did not wholly forget the traditional policy of their clan ; for it is only in the light of that traditional policy that we can rightly understand why Tiberius and Claudius declined the title of Imperator, and various similar traits. END OF VOL. I y. D. & Co. Printed ly R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.