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REGAL ROME:

AN INTRODUCTION TO ROMAN HISTORY.

BY

FRANCIS W. NEWMAN,

PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

LONDON:

TAYLOR, WALTON, AND MABERLY,

UPPER GOWER STREET;
AND IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW.

 

185

Lo

 
 

LONDON :
PRINTED BY JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR,

LITTLE QUEEN STRELT, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

5b 380

Ms.
PREFACE.

In the last twenty years, so much has been laid
before the English public concerning the early Ro-
mans, that but few words of introduction are here
needed.

Engraved monuments existed from the beginning
of Roman story, but they could yield only frag-
mentary information, not continuous narrative. The
actual writing of history came so late, that to re-
cover the early events was an arduous attempt. The
writers, in fact, had no critical experience, and were
patriotically credulous, even when they aimed at
truth. Nor only so, but the aristocracy falsified
their family records through vanity, and the Senate
garbled their own decrees through party-spirit.

Cicero and Livy were extremely well aware of the
untrustworthiness of the ancient Roman tales; but
iv PREFACE.

they treated them with the same respect as the reli-
gious mythology, and would have feared to damage
patriotism by too irreverent a criticism. The mo-
derns, when a keen zeal for classical study was re-
newed, were for a long time seduced by the tone of
the ancient authorities, into a far more entire belief
than that of the Augustan age. Perizonius, accord-
ing to Niebuhr, eminently took the lead towards a
sounder view. But no commanding genius was
needed for this: the matter is plain enough to dili-
gent talent. Bayle and Beaufort, knowing nothing
of Perizonius, followed in the same course, and a
severe shock was given to undiscriminating faith.

Sir Walter Raleigh had shown how false were
the military annals of Rome even in the second
Punic war; but it was reserved for Niebuhr to de-
molish effectually all trust in the detailed accounts
of Rome’s martial successes. It is now clear that
the historians thought it a patriotic duty to con-
ceal defeats, or to invent victories which would wipe
them out.

A right understanding of the Agrarian laws dates
only from Heyne, who, in the first French Revolu-
tion published a tract in proof that these laws never

touched private, but only public, land. In fact, this
PREFACE. Vv

is so plain in Plutarch and Appian, that it is hard to
understand how earlier critics deceived themselves.
Although Niebuhr acknowledges himself indebted to
Heyne on this subject (vol. ii. p. 133, #rn.), yet from
Niebuhr’s language elsewhere, the opinion has gone
abroad that he originated this view, and that it needed
the deep insight of a rare genius.

I will not conceal, that my strong difference from
the conclusions of Niebuhr has been a great impulse
to the publication of this small volume: but if I were
writing in Germany and not in England, no apology
would be needed for the avowal. Niebuhr’s erudition
and untiring ingenuity have given a vast impulse to
inquiry : Roma}. history is better written, in conse-
quence of his labours: but his successors are very
far from tying themselves to his results.

Niebuhr often expresses much contempt for mere
incredulous criticism and negative conclusions; and
he probably would little value the compliment, that
he has aided us to get rid of fable and false theory.
Yet, wisely to disbelieve, is our first grand requisite,
in dealing with materials of mixed worth. When
this has been accomplished, a hypothesis to connect
and complete the events which remain, may be ven-

tured, and is often convincing. But while we hold
vi PREFACE.

fast an erroneous tradition, the more subtly we pur-
sue its consequences, the worse does our falsehood
become.

In attempting to reconstruct the picture of most
ancient Rome, much aid is gained from the singular
adherence of the Romans to precedent and form in
the development of their constitution. This often
enables the modern critic to read the ancient state of
things, as the print in a rock shows to a geologist the
nature of the leaf which marked it.

The learned reader will understand that to acknow-
ledge obligations would be on the part of the writer
an absurdity in such a subject. The only originality
which can be here pretended, is that of having come

with a fresh mind to old discussions.
CONTENTN.

Parr I.—ALBAN ROME.

Page

Crap. 1—Eannrrsr Itary anp Tamuom .............. 1
ss HTap Tavww Tawaoaae 0... 000 16
» TI1.—Boume sprore NuMs .. .............0........ 28 4

Parr II.—SABINE ROME.

Cusp. IV. —TusSABIRRE li siciidiniiin 46 5
V.—SABINE INSTITUTIONS IN ROME ............ 64 7
ss VI—Sapwwo-Romanw Dymasry .................... 82

Parr I11.—ETRUSCO-LATIN ROME.

CHap. VII.—ON THE ETRUSCANS ....ccovvvviiviiniinnnnn 95
a VILL —Tipaquin var BipER ............c0i iiss 116 §
i IX.—REiex or Servius Tuirivs ............... 138 §
X~TARQUIN THE PROUD ..............cioiuiinss 160 “I

X1.—Coxcrupixe REFLECTIONS .................. 168
 
WS

SAT
0) RA

PART: L

ALBAN ROME.

CHAPTER 1

EARLIEST ITALY AND LATIUM.

Itavy, from the earliest times, whether by its intrinsic
~ beauty, or by its high serviceableness, attracted to-
wards itself tribe after tribe from the north-west and
north. Hence, at the highest period to which we can
ascend, a great variety of population existed on the
soil; and the pressure of migration seems generally
to have been southward. What enthusiasm for Italy
her “fatal beauty” is apt to excite in English visitors,
we all know : more remarkable is it, that the ancient
historian Dionysius*, a Greek who had surveyed the

* Dion. i. 36. Compare Spalding’s Italy, vol. i. p. 29, etc.
B
2 EARLIEST LATIUM.

world of the Mediterranean widely, writes concerning
the Italian peninsula with a high-wrought admiration
which equals that of Englishmen.

The district of Italy with which we are here prin-
cipally concerned, was less favoured by nature than
most other parts. The country of the Latins is in
great measure now uninhabitable from malaria; indeed
Cicero pronounced on Romulus the singular pane-
gyric, that “he chose for his city a spot, which in a
pestilent region was salubrious®*.” It is generally
believed that this unhealthiness was far less in more
ancient times, when Latium was thickly planted with
towns, the number of which is apt to seem incredi-
ble. The highlands however are reported to be quite
healthy, and the malaria on the lowlands is feared
only in the dry season. The grass is luxuriant in
spring and winter, and there is a good proportion of
rich arable land. The extent of the Latin sea-coast,
from the mouth of the Tiber to Circeii, is about fifty
miles ; the breadth of Latium from the coast to the
Sabine Hills is estimated at thirty miles at most.
Within this area, before the dawn of history, many
Latin cities flourished in more than one confedera-
tion ; and we are accustomed to think of them as of
pure race; yet there is reason to believe that many
mixtures of population had already occurred. To

. * Cic. de Rep. ii. 6.

+ Campagna di Roma: Penny Cyclopedia.
I Latium : Penny Cyclopedia.
OLDEST ITALIANS. 3

elucidate this dark subject a little, we must cast a
wider glance over the inhabitants of Italy.

Two nations are mentioned as dwelling in the
earliest times to the north and south of Latium, one
or both of whom seem to answer to the notion of Ab-
origines :—the UnmBrians and the Oscans. The Um-
 brians were regarded by the Romans as a truly pri-
maval Italian race; who at one time held possession

of all Lombardy and Tuscany, reaching perhaps into
Latium. The Oscans, (in Greek, Opikes,) under
' various names,— Volscians, Ausones*, Auruncans,—
| appear as a principal people of Southern Italy, who
‘in historical times press from Campania northward
into Latium. Their position on the peninsula, unless
they came by sea, would suggest that they must have
‘entered it still earlier than the Umbrians. What
are the relations of the Umbrian and the Oscan
languages, has not been very satisfactorily settled,
| although documents of both remain to ust. In the

I % Ausones is understood to be another form of Awrunes, preferred
| by Greek writers; Aurunci the Latinized form of Aurunes. But
| whether Ausonians and Oscans are coextensive terms, or one is genus
| and the other species, is uncertain. The language of all seems to
{ have been called Oscan.
| The celebrated Eugubine inscriptions are supposed to be in the
| Umbrian language: those of Bantia and Abelld are in the Oscan.
| Various single words have been explained, and many of the forms of
| verbs and nouns detected. The Umbrian is characterized by a love
| of terminating words with the letter 7, which appears also in the
: Oscan to have been commoner than in Latin.

On the ancient Italian languages the reader will do well to consult

Prichard’s Physical History of Mankind, vol. iii.

22

 
4 SABINES.

opinion of Lepsius, these two tongues pervaded the
greater part of Italy, and were allied by perceptible
affinities.

The extant remains of the Oscan show enough in
common with Latin, to suggest the belief that they
were sister-tongues, though mutually quite unintelli-
gible. The Oscan has often r final in substantives,
where the Latin has s, and begins its interrogatives
with p instead of gu. In the latter point, it sides
with the Greek and the Welsh, against the Latin and
the Erse.

A single sentence reported by Dionysius* from
Zenodotus of Troezen, has led the moderns to believe
that the SaBiNE people, another fruitful stock of
Italian population, was merely a branch of the Um-
brians; but whether the relation of the two should
be compared to that of high and low Germans, or
rather to that of Germans and Scandinavians, remains
very uncertain.

A third and highly important element was added
to Italy by colonization from the Grecian seas, to
which Italy was indebted for letters and arts. The
colonists are referable to three classes,—Hellenes or
true Greeks,—Pelasgians,—and Etruscans.

The earliest pure GREEK colony in Italy, which
history reports, is the town of Cum in Campania, |

* Zenodotus says, that indigenous Umbrians were driven out of
the country of Reate by the Pelasgians, and in their new abode were
called Sabines. Dion. ii. 49.
PELASGIANS. 5

and the date even of this is too high to be fixed*.
But it is unreasonable to doubt that there were many
other settlements unnoticed by historians; for the
sea-coast had numerous Greek namest in Roman
times, and various cities practised Greek religious
ceremonies. Indeed, both in arts and in religion,
southern Etruria seems to have been pervaded with
Greek influences, to an extent scarcely possible with-
out the intermixture of true Hellenic inhabitants;
and similar phenomena will presently appear in the
accounts of earliest Rome.

The Prrascians are a very enigmatical people,
who have occasioned controversies still unsettled.
That there was in Italy a very sensible Pelasgian
element, is attested too strongly to deny; but the ad-
mission of it Is apt to be a barren truth. Dionysius
reports numerous Pelasgian settlers in the interior and
on the eastern coast, and appears to regard them to
have set foot on Italy from that side: yet as they were
in Greece a seafaring and scattered people, it would
~ be unreasonable to limit their visits or their settle-
ments to any one shore. The Roman poets used the

* Spalding acquiesces in B.C. 1030; p. 47. Clinton is silent.

+ Servius ad An. x. 179, quotes a mysterious statement from the
Origines of Cato, that the region of Pisa in Etruria, before the
Etruscans occupied it, was held by ¢ Zeufones quidam, Grace
loquentes.” It is impossible to judge what allowance to make for
Cato’s credulity. Mr. Clinton’s comment is curious; (F. H. vol. i.

Pp. 97, 1848;) viz. that they were “doubtless some Pelasgic tribe.”

Indeed he adduces the passage in proof that the Pelasgians spoke
Greek.
  

6 EARLIEST ITALY.

name to include all the inhabitants of ancient Greece, |
of whatever race; with much the same vagueness as
we now say Britons and British of all the inhabitants |
of our islands. If all our history were lost, an inter-
minable controversy might be propagated in distant
times on the relation of the English to the British,
if learned men neglected to observe how national
names, which at first are very limited in application,
—as Pelasgian, Italian, Teuton, Alleman, Frank,
Briton,—tend to grow into a generic and compre-
hensive use. In fact, we know positively that a great
change took place in the meaning of the name Pelas-
gian, between the periods of Homer and of Aschylus.
In the poems of Homer we read of Argos in Thes-
saly, as distinctively Pelasgian; in contrast to which
Homer calls Argos in Peloponnesus Ackean. But
Aschylus and the poets who follow him conceived of
Peloponnesian Argos as emphatically the metropolis
of the Pelasgian nation, the dwelling-place of  Pe-
lasgus” himself*. In the same spirit Herodotus
identifies all the oldest fixed population of Greece
with Pelasgians, though Homer always uses Pelasgian

* Possibly we can even trace this opinion to a misinterpretation
of the Cyclopian buildings of Mycene. Since the citadel of Athens
was fortified by a people called Pelasgians, the treasury of Atreus
was referred to the same people; whence may have arisen the preci-
pitate inference, that the oldest inhabitants of Argos were Pelasgians.
Myr. Kenrick (Philol. Mus. vol. i. p. 626) has treated Herodotus’s
“testimony” to the Pelasgianism of all Greece, as utterly worthless.
To this T understand Grote also to accede ; vol. ii. p. 347.
PELASGIANS, 7

as an epithet specific to certain tribes. No test is
imaginable, by which Herodotus can have ascertained
that the Tonians had once been Pelasgians, but had
changed into Hellenes: on the other hand, we can
safely trust his testimony, that the only Pelasgian
people to whom he could appeal,—viz. certain tribes
near Thrace, — talked a language quite unintelli-
gible to the Greeks. In Italy, no town is more
decidedly attested to have been a Pelasgian founda-
tion, than Agylle in southern Etruria, and from it
we seem to have a relic of the Pelasgian tongue.
It is an inscription of two lines, in Greek letters,
scratched round a small black pot, as follows* :—

MINIKEOYMAMIMA®YMAPAMAISIAIGIIIYPENAI
EOEEPAISIEEITANAMINIOYNASTAFHEAE®Y.

This is neithé: Latin nor Greek nor Umbrian nor
Oscan. It is equally certain that it is not Etruscan ;
since in that tongue harsh unions of consonants
abound, while in this the distribution of vowels is as
well proportioned as in the Negro-languages: more-
over none of the well-known Etruscan words here
occur. Since then the piece of pottery was found in
a Pelasgian city, we must abide with Lepsius in the

* Lepsius; and Dennis’s Etruria, vol. ii. p. 55. Vol. ii. p. 138,
Mr. Dennis gives,—from an old tomb near Siena, opened in 1698,
but long since closed and lost,—the following fragment of an Alpha-
bet, which is probably Pelasgic: ABCDEGIHOIKLMNEO. The
seventh letter, apparently, has been miscopied from some equivalent
of y (Hebrew Van).
8 EARLIEST ITALY.

conclusion, (until disproved,) that these two lines are;
Pelasgian, and that the people who bore the name
were utterly unintelligible to Etruscans and to Latins,
to Umbrians, Oscans, and Greeks. All that we know
concerning them converges to the belief that they
were closely akin to the Trosans; and while reject-
ing nearly all the rest of Niebuhr’s speculations con-
cerning them, we may well accept his conjecture,
that the migrations of the Pelasgians by sea from the
coast of Troas to Sicily and Italy, carrying with them
their Penates and their religious worship, generated
the poetical legends concerning Zneas and others.
Indeed it can scarcely be doubted, that the worship
of the Penates and Palladium of Lavinium, which
ZAneas was supposed to have conveyed thither, was
strikingly similar to ceremonies practised on the north
and north-east coast of the Agean.

Of the Pelasgian tribes known in historical Greece,
those who dwelt in Lemnos, Samothrace, and on the
side of Athos were marked by the epithet Zyrsene or
Tyrrhene ; which means Etruscan®: and our inability
to explain this epithet with certainty, causes much
embarrassment. We are not even sure, whether the
title Tyrsene is to be translated as a Greek adjective,
to mean, (as Dionysius interpreted it with much plau-
sibility,) “skilled in building Zowers.” nor, if we
hesitate to unite in one people two different national

* Especially Thucyd. iv. 109. Herod. i. 57. Add Sophocl. Inach.
Frag.
TYRSENES. 9

names, do we know on which of the two our incre-
dulity ought the rather to fasten itself. If indeed
we conceive of the double name Tyrsene-Pelasgian
as analogous to Anglo-Saxon, or Cimbro-Teuton, we
may speculate concerning the fusion of two races,
nearer or more distantly related. But in truth we
have here no materials that will sustain any edifice
of theory at all; and hence the endless disagreements
of the learned. Appellations given by the vulgar to
foreign tribes deserve no confidence whatever. Alge-
rines and Syrians are often called Turks, the gipsies
(an Indian tribe) are entitled Zgyptians and Bohe-
mians, the natives of North America Indians; while
the ruling dynasty of China, and the pastoral tribes
on the north of Persia, are confounded under the
name of Zartars*. Who does not know the infinite
license with which the word Scythian was used in anti-
quity? nor was less vagueness given to Pelasgian and
to Tyrsene. By learned quotations it is satisfactorily

demonstrated that Tonians and Aolians were Pelas-
~ gian; Selli or Helli were Pelasgian, Helli were Hel-
lenes, and Hellenes were Dorians;—therefore (we
presume) Dorians were Pelasgian; moreover, Thes-
salians and Siculians, (Enotrians and Latins, were all

* Two different and remote nations were called in ancient times
Iberians, one in Georgia, one in Spain: so the Albanenses of Spain
are unconnected with the Albanians of Georgia, the Albans of Italy,
or the Albanians of modern Greece. In Africa, we call two wholly
diverse nations Berbers; the one on the upper Nile, the other on
the highlands of Atlas. Further see Latham’s Tacitus, p. xlix.

B 3
oe

10 : ETRUSCANS.

Pelasgian*. On the other hand it is complained by
Dionysiust that Etruscans, Latins, Oscans, Bruttians
were all confounded by the Greeks under the name
Tyrrhene: and he may be the better trusted, since he
calls this extension of the name “an error occasioned
by distance of place,” and builds no theory upon it.
Indeed we have before our eyes in a line of Euripides}
an undeniable proof, that the extreme south of Italy,
the territory of Rhegium, was popularly included in
Tyrsenia; when he speaks of the monster Skylla, as
“ dwelling on Tyrsene soil.” The Pelasgians of Mount
Athos may have been called Tyrsene, from some con-
nexion with southern Italy, or (as Mr. Clinton holds§)
they may have been really Tyrsenes, but improperly
called Pelasgians.

The Erruscans are a third people, confessedly
foreign in Italy, yet sharply contrasted with the
Pelasgians, in religion and manners at least, even if
the language of the latter be deemed still in mystery.
The ancients in general believed unhesitatingly, that
the Etruscans came by sea from Lydia. Of remain-
ing authors, only Dionysius denied their relationship

* See Prichard’s Ph. H.: Niebuhr: Goettling: Mure’s Literature
of Greece, Spalding’s Italy, ete.

t+ Dionys. i. 25, 29.

1 Eur. Med. 1342, 1359.

§ Clinton and Prichard are self-consistent, who treat Pelasgian as
equivalent to old Greek, and think that the Pelasgians whom Hero-
dotus could not understand had become barbarized : but it is truly
difficult to gain any consistent view from Niebuhr.
SICULIANS. Tn

to the Etruscans; and his dissent has been made the
basis of a new theory by Cluver, Freret, and Heyne,
whom Niebuhr, Miiller, and Géttling have followed.
This subject will need farther discussion below. It
suffices here to observe, that Prichard and Dennis
have vindicated the popular belief of the Lydian
origin, and that the Etruscans were undoubtedly far
advanced in all the arts of peace and war beyond the
other Italian states. When we begin to get glimpses
of their internal state, we find the river Tiber to be
their southern boundary.

But to return to Latium. In addition to the
Umbrian, Oscan, Sabine, and sea-borne population,
a nation called Sicurians came in. This people had
spread along the eastern coast of Italy, from north
to south ; one hranch only of them crossed the Apen-
nines and settled in Latium, who seem to have been
the true progenitors of those known to us as the
Latin nation. At least another portion of them,

which had been driven into Sicily by.the Oscans*,
and gave to that island the name it still keeps, used
(with very slight change) the words cubitus, patina,
carcer, leporis, catinus, mutuum, gelu, campus, nepotes,
in the same sense as the Latins did, and said Valentos
as the genitive of Vales (Valens)t. The presumption

* Thucyd. vi. 2.

+ These details are made out by XK. O. Mueller, (Etrusker, p. 12,)
in part from fragments of comedies written by Sicilian Greeks, who
have admitted native Siculian words into their dialect.
12 ANCIENT LATINS.

therefore is, that their whole language was funda-
mentally Latin; though the tongue of Latium itself
was destined to receive still farther changes from new
immigrants. For according to the accounts collected
by Dionysius, the Siculians there were afterwards
conquered by another people, who seem to have de-
scended from the Apennines. Who they were, is
quite uncertain ; but after such an outline of events,
we must expect to find a very great mixture in the
ultimate Latin language, even if the Siculian when
it entered Latium could be supposed a really pure
and primitive tongue.

It is credible that the last-named immigration is
that which brought about a distinction between the
Prisci Latini (or Ancient Latins)* and the other
Latins ; who apparently can be nothing else than the
Latins who adhered to Alba Longa as their leader.
Whether Alba was or was not the city built, or at
least occupied, by the invaders, it is as clear as any-
thing in those times, that there was an Alban league
separate from that of the Ancient Latins: and it was
afterwards fancifully imagined that the number of
states was always exactly Zhirfy. This idea is likely

* Pliny (Nat. Hist. 8, 9) in recounting the towns (or rather
nationalities ?) which have perished, seems to discriminate the
Ancient Latins, under the name of Latii clara oppida, from the
Alban cities, which he gives in alphabetical order. Niebuhr’s punc-
tuation, which makes the populi Albensesinclude the thirty-one which
follow, is probable enough of the writer whom Pliny copied; but had
Pliny so understood it, he would not have counted fifty-three in all.
 

LATIN LEAGUES. MU NTUsE RS

WN A

to have grown out of the fact, that before the Puc
wars, the Romans had established thirty colonies which
they called Latin. The number thirty and its mul-
tiples recur in these early tales, in a way which
betrays the working of fiction: in two instances only
is it certainly historical,—in the thirty Latin colonies,
and in the thirty curies of the early Roman state.
In all the other instances the evidence is inadequate,
and the number is more likely to be due to the
ingenuity of the writer than to the truth of fact.
Nothing indeed is here more suggestive, than the
pains which even modern critics take to increase the
number of instances in which thirty shall pass as
historical.

At a very early period, the Latin towns grew up
into free and well-organized confederations, and had,
no doubt, gained varied political experience, such as
was accumulated also in republican Greece; although
in Latium no Miletus or Athens arose as a centre of
fine art and of literature. For the necessities of war,
the Latins appear to have elected a dictator from time
to time, who may, like a Greek orparnyos adrorpdrwp,
have been temporarily despotic; but otherwise, their
states were strictly republican. It is to the Latin
element, which finally gained the ascendancy in Rome,
that the moderns, justly as it seems, impute the saga-
city at length manifested by the Romans in organiza-
tion and government. No serfs nor clients are believed
to have existed in Latium proper. The commonalty
14 ANCIENT LATINS.

were all full citizens of the state, and practically skilled
in that co-operation for self-government, on which all
political freedom has everywhere depended. Even
when forced to migrate, they appear to have known
how to order their internal organization, to recognize
their divisions into tribes, elect their tribunes, sanction
their own marriages and testaments, and thus sustain
their nationality even when conquered. We shall
hereafter see, that by such means the Plebeians of
Rome, nearly as the Greeks in Turkey, were a nation
within a nation.

Among the arts of the Latins we are able to name
that of peculiarly strong fortification. The massive
walls of Preeneste and Tusculum, Ferentinum and Ala-
trium, still draw the traveller's admiration. Norba,
Cora, Signia, Arpinum, Tibur, Palestrina, Atina, Ter-
racina, and other places have likewise ruins of what
has been called “Cyclopian” architecture; which in
Latium is said to be always polygonal*. From the
similarity of this style of building to that which is
called Cyclopian and Pelasgian in Greece, it has been
inferred that all such building is of vast antiquity
and is the actual work of a Pelasgian people: but the
vanity of this inference is manifested by the fact, that
this polygonal structure was employed by the Romans
themselves in late times, whenever they desired pecu-
liar strength, or the material was favourable to such

* W. R. Greg on the Cyclopian Remains: Memoirs of the Man-
chester Literary and Philos. Society, vol. vi. 1842.
CYCLOPIAN MASONRY. 15

a style. A part of the Appian, the Salarian and the
Valerian Ways is found to rest on polygonal substruc-
tions. At Ferentinum of the Hernici a platform of
horizontal stone-courses rests on an irregular but well-
fitted polygonal basis, which might have been judged
the work of a much earlier age; yet a deeply cut
inscription informs us that both were erected by the
same magistrates, Hirtius and Lollius, probably in the
lifetime of Cicero*.

We may then dispense with the inquiry, as histori-
cally unimportant, whether, as some still maintaint,
the Pelasgians first brought this art of building into
Italy: for, whoever originated it, the Romans, the
Latins and the Etruscans were capable of learning it,
‘and did practise it; nor can any great age be ascribed
to a building, merely because of its polygonal or Cy-
clopian style. indeed Signia in Latium was a colony
planted by Tarquin, the last king of Rome, and its
Cyclopian walls are fairly to be imputed to him.
Finally, the practice of this art of fortification ena-
bled the Latin cities long to maintain their separate
independence, and at a later period was one of the
principal means by which the Romans upheld their
frontier garrisons in the midst of half-subdued and
oppressed races.

* Bunbury on Cyclopean Remains in Central Italy : Classical Mu-
seum, vol. ii.

+ Dennis, in his Etruria, vol. ii. p. 284, refers the walls of Cosa to
the Pelasgians.
16 ALBAN ROME.

CHAPTER II
THE LATIN LANGUAGE.

IN aiming to learn what and who the Latins were,
we cannot dispense with inquiring what relation their
language bore towards that of other known surround-
ing nations.

It is universally agreed among the learned that the
Latin language is one of a large group, technically
called Indo-European, to which the German, the
Greek, the Welsh, and the Irish belong. The pre-
valent opinion moreover regards the two last tongues,
(which are grouped together under the name of
Keltic,) as peculiarly remote members of the family ;
and teaches that the Latin is far more closely related
to Greek and to German, than to the Irish or Welsh.

The closer the question is examined, the more per-
haps will it appear, that the discussion of it is embar-
rassed by the fact, that the Latin is a very composite
language. That the old Latins were at least a double
people, is implied in every ancient account; and it
might be reasonable to think that large masses of
LATIN LANGUAGE. 17

words were taken up into the same tongue (whatever
it was primitively) from Siculians, Umbrians, or per-
haps Oscans, Greeks, and Sabines, if not from Pelas-
gians and Etruscans. So much a priori. But on
actually comparing the Latin vocabulary with that of
Greeks, Germans, and Kelts, a far closer similarity
to the Keltic shows itself. To discuss the subject
fully, might occupy a treatise; and I shall content
myself with producing certain select vocabularies.
They suffice to establish that at least one of the
stocks of population out of which the mixed Roman
people was made up, spoke a tongue so much akin
to Welsh and Gaelic, that we are justified in extend-
ing the term Keltic to embrace this Italian tribe.
The only point left at all uncertain, is, whether the
oldest Latin itself, or only some of its affluents, was
the Keltic influence.

I have endeavoured, in the Classical Museum
(vol. vi. p. 821) to establish that the Latin of Cicero
abounds with intrusive Keltic elements; and, espe-
cially, that the Sabines used a vocabulary which was
akin to the Gaelic: and the argument seems to be
unassailable except by admitting a relation so close
between the oldest Latin and the Keltic, as to imply
a recent divergency from a common stock. Yet any
recent divergency seems inconsistent with the intense
grammatical oppositions between Latin and the Keltic
tongues as we know them. Will it be said, that the
old Gauls may have had a grammatical system far more
18 LATIN LANGUAGE.

closely approximating to Latin than we could guess
from examining Irish and Welsh? and that in those
days there was possibly even in Irish and Welsh less
grammatical divergency than now from the speech of
Latium? Such hypotheses are perhaps impossible to
disprove. On the ground however that they have no
presumption in their favour and no evidence, it seems
necessary for the present to reject them; which
drives us to the conclusion, that much of the Keltism
which appears in the Latin vocabulary, even when it
is not of Sabine introduction, is an after-infusion.
At present I assume that the Umbrians and Sabines
may both be called Kelto-Italian: indeed, that the
Umbrians were in some sense Kelts, is a very old
opinion*. The primitive Latin,—whatever was its
truest nucleus,—if nearer to Greek and Sanscrit
than to the Keltic tongues, must have Keltized
itself by imbibing Umbrian. That much Greek and
Sabine was also taken up, no one can doubt: so
that we seem to have four languages at least com-
pounded into the Latin. About a Pelasgian or
Etruscan infusion we have no means of conjecturing
usefully.

In the following tables, E stands for Erse or Irish,
G for Gaelic or Highland Scotch, W for Welsh, B for
Breton. The student should know that the Erse and
the Gaelic are only dialects of one language, but
Welsh and Breton are decidedly different from both.

* Prichard, Phys. H. vol. iii.
NUMERALS. 19

For uniformity, I have ventured to write in the
Welsh words v, dk, and f—where the common dic-
tionaries write f, dd, and ff. Observe also that mh,
Il are sounded as v, yA (i. e. ¢hl with the soft guttural
ch of the Germans). :

Latin. Welsh. Gaelic. olic Greek.
One Uno Un Aen Hen
Two Duo Dau Do Duo
Three Tri Tri Tri Tri
Four Quatuor Peduar  Keathair Pisur, Petor
Five Quinque Pump Kuig Pempe
Six Sex Chwech Se Hex

Seven Septem ~~ Saith Secht Hepta
Eight Octo Wyth Ocht Octo

Nine Novem Naw Noi Ennea
Ten Decem Deg Deich Deka
Twenty  Viginti =~ Ugain Fichid Veikosi
Hundred Centum Cant Kett Hecatonta
Thousand Mille Mil Mile Chilio.

In these numerals, we may note that the Greek is
more remote from Latin than is either Keltic tongue,
as to the numbers 1, 7, 9, 20, 100, 1000; more
remote than Gaelic as to 4, 5, 6, (observing that the
initial S in Sex is a more marked feature than the
final #,) while barely in the numbers 2 and 8 has it
appreciable superiority to Gaelic.

Equally do the Saxon and German numerals recede
more from Latin than the Gaelic does. Nor in fact
of all the Indo-European tongues has any so near a
likeness to the Latin as the Gaelic has.
20 LATIN

LANGUAGE.

To save room, the Latin words are not translated :

the crude forms are given.

Tellur...... E. teallur
Peres ...... W. G-. tir
Solo ...... W. syl
Mar ...... G. muir
Amn G.. amhain
‘W. avon
Lacu .... G. loch
Boni ..... ‘W. fynnon
E. fionns
Mont... W. mwnt
G-. monadh
Palud ,..... G. poll
Stagno ... G. stang
Tuto... .. G. lathach
‘W. llutrod
Cale (Zeme) W. calch
G. caile
Pulver ... W. pylor
Vento...... W. gwynt
Procella ... W. brochell
Jwe......... W. llug
G. lleus
Aurora ... W. gwawr
Flamma ... W. B. flamm
fon G. lnan
Sol 0... ‘W. heul
G.* seul ?
Puteo...... W. pydew
Vieo ...... ‘W. gwic
Horto...... G. gort

 

Lima ......

Auro

Argento ...

Stanno ...
Plumbo ...

.. W. tredd
.. G. eorna

G. seagal
G. faob
G. grainne
G. fal
B. falch
G. searr
G. ramh
W. rhwyd
G. roth
‘W. echel
G. aisil
G. car
G. carbad
G. liomhan
G. squab
‘W. ysgol
(G. sgalan, scaf-
Jold)
‘W. funen
W. fasg
B. furch
'W. fust

G. or

‘W. ariant
G. airgiod
G. staoin

W. plwm

* That the Gaelic once had Seul is inferred, partly from the
analogy of the Welsh Heul, partly from the word Solus, light,

(oeras ?) Suil, the eye, ete.
secane

KELTO-LATIN VOCABULARY.

G. bo

W. bittolws, bull ;
bittail, buffalo

W. gafr

G. gabr

G. cabrach

‘W. carw

G. damh (m) -

B. demm

.. G. fiadh, deer

W. cidws, goat
G. reithe
‘W. hyrdh (pl)

... G. buabhal

G. biast

 

Divitiee ...

Gallo

sears

21
‘W. llaeth
G. bliochd

'W. defaid, sheep ;
and defod,
wealth

%* Initial F and P is liable to vanish in Erse, sometimes in gram-
matical regimen. So Athair, Tasg, Uircean, for Pathair (pater), Piasg
(pisci), Puircean (porco).

+ Hedo was Fedo in the Sabine: so Arena was Fasena. This

may illustrate the preceding note.
RD LATIN LANGUAGE.

 

Caput ...... G. cap, top Vir... G. fear
Bucea...... 'W. boch W. gwr
Barba...... B. W. barf Virtut...... G. feart
Collo ...... G. coll Viragon ... W. gwraig
Cluni ...... W. B. clun and | Virgon ... B. guerch
Llyn G, uraich
Ungui...... G. ionga Deo......... ‘W. Dew
Ben......... ‘W. aren (pl.) G. Dia
Labio ...... G. liob Divino ... W. dewin
Dent ...... B. W. dant Die 2... G. di
Dorso ...... G. druim W. dydh
Cruy ...... G.  cruachann, B. deiz
hawnch Czlo i... G. ceal
Axilla ...y W. asgell, wing Fini ..... W. fin
Als ...... } G. achlais, armpit | Ora......... W. or
Noc.......: G. foc Hospes ... W. osb

It is believed, that although as to a fraction of
these words the Greek and the German languages
also admit of being compared to the Latin, yet the
closer the attempt is made, the more decided will the
superior proximity of the Keltic appear. It must
farther be remembered that in all probability the
German tongues have themselves a dash of Keltic,
and that the same thing is more than possible con-
cerning the Greek.

The argument in favour of the belief that much
of the Keltic in Latin has been intruded, admits of
being greatly strengthened by showing in numerous
instances that a word is isolated in Latin, while in
Keltic it is obviously one of a family. I reserve a
table that concerns military words, till I come to the
Sabines; and now only annex a supplementary voca-
KELTO-LATIN VOCABULARY.

23

bulary, in order of the alphabet, of other Latin words
which have close similarities in sound and sense in

Keltic.

Acer
Alo
Altus
Anima
Arduus
Blandus
Bonus
(duonus)
Brevis
Caballus*
Cezcus
Calvus
Calleo
Callidus
Camurus
Canus
Candidus
Céno
Capio
Carus
Caries
Caulis
Caussa
Cavus
Cedo
Cella
Celo
Certus
Cestus
Cista
Clarus

Claudo
Claudus
Colo
Columen
Com, Con
Comis
Copia
Coquo
Crassus
Creo
Cresco
Crudus
Crux
Cubo
Culcita®
Cuneus

¢ Cupa

Cura
Curtus

Elementum
Fallo
Fenestra
Ferus
Firmus
Flaccidus
Flamma
Flos

Fluo

Fremo
Frigus
Frons
Gratia
Juvenis
Imus
Incolumis*
Leetus
Latus
Laudo
Laxus
Lenis
Licet
Linea
Limi
(oculi)
Lis
Malus
Mollis }
Mando
Manus
Medius
Merus
Merx
Meto
Misceo
Mitis
Minuo
Modus
Molo
Moneo

Mores
Morior
Mora
Mucus
Mutus
Muto
Non
Ne
Nebula
Nee
Necto
Nego
Nemo
Nota
Nudus
Pannus
Par
Pars
Paries
Pario
Peto
Pons
Porta
Portus
Porto
Precor
Pretium
Probo
Pungo
Purus
Purgo

* The derivation of these is visible in Gaelic.
24 LATIN LANGUAGE.

Quies Secrutor Tener Vastus
Quisquilize Securus Tenuis Vates
Rapio Severus Timeo Velum
Raucus Siccus Torreo Ver
Rego Sitis Trans Verus
Rigeo Sobrius Tumeo Vidua
Rodo Stolidus Tumulus Vilis
Ruga Stultus Tumultus Viridis
Salto Succus Ultra Vita
Salus Summa Usus

Salvus Superbus Ve!

Scribo Taceo Vanus

A fraction of the last list has words in Greek that
correspond, and are so widely diffused that they are
not the less Latin for being Keltic. Yet even such
are generally closer to Keltic than to Greek. Thus
Canus and Candidus are explained by Cando in Latin,
and by the simple root kale (I burn) in Greek: yet
the Greek has nothing so close in sound as the Welsh
Cann, white, Cannaid, shining bright.

It may be proper here to remark, that we have
abundant means of ascertaining that the Keltic words
were not introduced into Welsh by the Roman con-
quest of Britain. In a large number of instances
the words are members of families in Welsh, and are
nearly isolated in Latin. Moreover, the similarities
of Gaelic to Latin are generally more striking than
those of Welsh, although the Gaelic races were at
that time in Ireland and were never attacked by the
Romans.

That Latin is a true composite, we sometimes see
MIXED LANGUAGES. 25

indicated by its mingling similar words that have been
moulded differently by the genius of different tongues.
To explain this, it suffices to observe that any foreigner,
on considering the words father and paternal, will dis-
cern that we have imported the latter; for it ought
to be at least father-nal, if it were of home-growth*.
Similarly, “ Law, Loyal and Legal,” denote a compo-
site language. So we find

Lat. Porcus, Verres, Aper,

W. Porch, A.S. Berga or Bearh, Eng. Barrow, Boar,

Dutch, Beer-schwyn, Germ. Eber.

In a variety of instances Latin words retain only
secondary meanings, where the primary ones are ma-
nifest in the Keltic. Sometimes the Latin is evi-
dently corrupt or broken. Thus monile, a necklace,
is from the Gaelic fail-muineil, or seud-muineil, the
word muineal meaning the Neck. (Monile, I classify
as Sabino-Latin.) So Incolumis, unharmed; from W.
or B. coll, loss, damage ; and Colo, to cultivate, where
G. has the older sense coil, to clip; which is seen also
in kohotw and culter.

If more knowledge should be gained of the Um-
brian tongue, (which perhaps is to be hoped,) it may
lead to a more decided agreement among learned men
concerning the composition of the Latin. Yet one of
two results appears inevitable. Either the old Latin
was naturally more akin to Gothic and Greek, but

* By a similar argument, Meyer has pointed out a Keltic infusion
in the German tongues.

C
26 LATIN LANGUAGE.

has received two successive infusions of Keltic,—first,
a quasi-Welsh infusion from the Umbrians, and se-
condly, a quasi-Gaelic infusion from the Sabines,—to
be hereafter pointed out: Else, the original Latin, as
well as the Sabine, was prevailingly Keltic in voca-
bulary, whatever may be thought of its grammatical
relations. In either case we must allow that between
the Kelts and some very significant ingredient of the
Latin population, independently of the Sabines, no
great chasm existed.

At the same time it must be added, that isolated
words appear in Latin which denote also German in-
fluence. Such, for instance, are negligo, which is to
be compared with nachlassen, and exhibits the Ger-
man nach, after,—a particle unknown to Latin. Such
is prehendo, related to the noun kand. Such again
are reciprocus and recupero or recipero, incorporating
the German riick, back*. Such perhaps are interimo,
intereo, where inter has not its Latin sense “between,”
but represents the wnfer, “under,” of the Germans.
But as far as I am able to judge, the Teutonic infu-
sion is so superficial, that it may have been picked up
by some Italian tribe in their northern passage, before
they reached Italy and settled in Latium: it by no
means implies that any portion of the Latin, or even

* These derivations of negligo, reciprocus, recipero are due to the
acuteness of my learned colleague Professor Key. Reciprocus must
have meant, Backward and Forward: Recupero is from Paro.
GREEK ELEMENT ? 27

of the Italian, population was Teutonic. Nor are we
certain that such Teutonisms may not also have been
Umbrian or Oscan.

On the other hand the difficulty would be extreme
of judging, from internal evidence, whether many
Greek words in Latin are native or imported; as
Ovis, Ovum, Ager, Bos, Ago, etc. Here, especially
since the grammatical systems are more akin, we
have to abide by the rule of regarding common words
as original to both tongues, except where the contrary
definitely appears. Indeed, since we otherwise know
that Greeks did settle on the coast of Etruria and
Latium before the population of historical Rome was
formed, we are not here tempted to lean on the
evidence of language in proof of that fact. Never-
theless, we have no ground to think that any masses
of Greek population went deep into the country, so
as to affect the names by which the peasants called
~ homely things: and to speak generally, the Greek
influence was probably confined to matters of Religion
and of Art.

The Latin talked in the Punic wars is known to
have had Oscan peculiarities which were afterwards
lost, especially d final annexed to the ablative. This
circumstance suggests that, besides the languages
already named, there was an Oscan element in the
early Latin. Some inquirers indeed treat the Oscans
as the “ Aborigines” of Latium, who were never ex-
terminated by the various tribes superimposed.

c?
28 ALBAN ROME.

CHAPTER III
ROME BEFORE NUMA.

A cruster of hills, which were anciently counted as
seven, lies on the east bank of the Tiber, below its
junction with the Anio. Some of these were the site
of villages or towns at a period much earlier than
that which is commonly called Roman; and the
changes of name in the Tiber itself seem to testify
to changes of inhabitants. It was successively called
Rumon¥*, Albula, Thybris, and finally Tiberis. We
may assume that the first name was Aboriginal, —
perhaps Oscan; and that with it the name of
Rome itself was connected. The Latins believed
Rome to be a foreign word; at least they imagined
that it had another sacred name, which might not be
mentioned. Albula is apparently Latin. Thybris is
in form Greek, and carries the mind to a time when
the Capitoline Hill was occupied by a city called
Saturnia, and the Janiculum, across the Tiber, by a

* Servius.
EARLIEST OCCUPANTS OF THE SITE OF ROME. 29

Greek town called Antipolis*. In the same period a
Greek colony was settled on the Palatine, the leader
of which a later age named Evander. Arcadia was
assigned as his country; whether because Palatium
sounded like to the Arcadian town Pallantium, or
rather because of the festival called the Lupercalia;
which was traced to his institution, and was thought
to have a likeness to the feast of Lyceea, as celebrated
in Arcadia. The worship of Hercules at the ¢“ Great-
est Altar” is unhesitatingly pronounced by Livy to
be Greek; and when he adds that this was the only
foreignt ceremonial which Romulus adopted, it is evi-
dent that he does not speak without discrimination.
Moreover, the hereditary priesthood of the Potitii
and Pinarii, ¢/hich continued into historical times,
in connection with this worship of Hercules, is quite
in accordance with Greek customs, but apparently
foreign to Italy. In fact, seven different fortresses
seem at this time to have been placed on the site of
Rome, surrounded by small villages ; for a feast called
the Septimontiumi was ascribed by Roman anti-

* Plin. N. H. iii. 9. Dionysius calls this town Anea; but that
seems to be a fiction, intended to connect it with Aneas.

+ The Etruscans evidently are not considered by Livy foreign to
the people of Romulus.

f Varro (apud Becker, p. 125) : © Ubinunc Roma, Septimontium.”
On this whole subject of the Septimontium and Roma Quadrata,
Becker has collected the evidence and brought it to a focus: Antiqq.
vol. i. See also Mommsen, (Tribes of Rome,) who tries to make out
further details.
30 SEPTIMONTIUM.

quarians to this primitive era; a feast, celebrated, as
its name implies, by a union of the inhabitants of
seven hills. Roman principle forbade the disuse of
ancient religious ceremonies; and in consequence the
montani and pageni in Rome kept up their sacred
rites in conventicles* of their own, down to the age
of Cicero. There appear in strictness to have been
only six montes, which are recounted as the Palatine,
the Germalus, the Velia, the Fagutal, the Oppian,
and the Cispian. To these was added the fortified
village (pagus) of Sucusa, afterwards called the
Suburra. The other pagi were unwalled villages, or
rather parishes, said to have been twenty-three in
number ; but this seems to be a mere invention, in-
tended to make the montes and pagi together exactly
thirty. Twenty-four ancient chapels, called Argean,
distributed through these districts, involuntarily re-
mind us of Argos; and if the word pagus+t itself is not
certainly Greek, several things to be afterwards named
may lead to the opinion that a strong Grecian in-
fluence was at work in this primitive ‘ amphictiony.”

Under the freest institutions political parties and
discontents are inevitable, nor were the Latins with-
out them. Their colonies, strictly so called, were sent
out by public authority, and retained a fixed relation
of some kind towards the mother city; but migra-
tions and settlements made by discontented and am-

* Conventicula, Cic. Pro Dom. 28. + mwdyos, a hill.
ALBAN SECESSION. 31

bitious chieftains owned no such allegiance. Accord-
ing to the account which the later Romans believed,
in the eighth century before the Christian era, an
Alban secession established itself on the Palatine
Hill, where was the colony of Evander; the leaders
of the secession were called by later ages Remus and
Romus or Romulus. The names are evidently made
from that of Rome itself, nor is there a single fact
concerning either of these personages which has the
slightest pretence to be called historical. Romulus
is to Alban Rome, what the name Pharaoh is to
ancient Egypt,—a gathering up into one name of the
kings or captains who through the whole period exer-
cised government there. Romulus was believed by
Roman antiqtaries to have founded Rome with Etrus-
can ceremonies; which were retained to the latest
times in founding Roman colonies. The rites con-
sisted in harnessing a cow and bull to a plough and
driving it round the limit; carefully turning every
clod inward*. A belt of ground was consecrated,
and in the midst of it the city-wall was erected. In
the centre of the town a square and level surface was
reserved, built round with massive stone; and within
it was dug a pit, into which first fruits of all useful

* Plutarch. Romul. 11. Servius in Virg. Zn. v. 755. The plough
had a brazen share, which was taken off at the part where there was
to be a gate, to avoid consecrating the passage of the gate. The
founder was incinctus ritu Gabino, his toga partly used as a veil to
his face, and partly tucked round him.
32 LATIN AUGURY.

things were cast, and solemnly covered up : this square
was afterwards called Roma Quadrata*. Since Roman
antiquarians are likely to have known, if such a
structure might have been Latin, it seems necessary
to believe that it was exclusively Etruscan. Indeed
as the early Greeks reverenced, and the later ones de-
spised, Egypt and Egyptian religion, so do the Ro-
mans seem to have been affected towards Etruria.
The Latins, like other Italian nations, were profound
believers in augury. At a much later time the move-
ments of their armies, and their acceptance of a gene-
ralt, was dependent on the flight of birds, which were
supposed to indicate the will of the gods. That a
popular assembly, which met in the open air, should
be liable to mental impressions from so striking a
phenomenon as an eagle flying down into the midst of
them,—or from other behaviour of powerful birds in
a half-wild country, where they have little dread of
man,—cannot at all astonish us. A belief in augury
becomes ridiculous and monstrous, when it is metho-
dized as in later Rome ; when the domestic fowl has
supplanted the eagle and vulture, and the solitary

* Festus, p. 2568, Miiller; Varro apud Solinum, 1, 17. [The re-
ferences from Becker’s Antiqq.]—Plutarch (Rom. 11) represents the
mundus (or pit) as in the Comitium. He also seems to suppose
Roma Quadrata to mean the whole of Palatine Rome, the form of
which is a rude quadrilateral : so Dionysius and others. Dio Cassius
(Fragm. Vales. 3, 5) hints that rerpdywros Pdun is older than
Romulus.

+ Festus: Pretor ad Portam.
ETRUSCAN TRADERS. 33

poulterer, watching his hencoop, reports how many
morsels fall on the pavement from the chicken’s mouth.
But the augury of barbarous days was the fruit of
natural feeling, not merely * of hereditary artifice : and
in accordance with simpler notions, Romulus was be-
lieved to have been favoured with a sight of twelve
vultures all at once, when he consulted the gods con-
cerning the foundation of his city. His wall ran round
the Palatine Hill, and enclosed very little beyond it+.
A street at the bottom, called the Tuscan street, was
by some referred to this era, when (they said) it was
occupied by the soldiers of a Tuscan Lucumo, Ceeles
Vibenna, who assisted Romulus in war.

As far as we can judge concerning so dark a period,
Tuscans (or Etruscans) were attracted to Rome by
two different causes,—as traders, and as mercenary
soldiers. So was it with Greeks among neighbouring
barbarians. The nation which is superior in art fur-
nishes an abundance of petty merchants who sell its
wares to the ruder neighbours : thus a Tuscan street

* Yet that there was something hereditary in it, is justly argued
from the fact, that no barbarians of modern days are known to divine
by augury.

t Tacitus (Ann. xii. 24) describes the line of the old wall. Becker
suggests a slight change of stopping, so as to make the description
end with “forumque Romanum.” As it began from “forum Boa-
rium,” the line to join the two points is evident. Niebuhr and Bun-
gen, by putting the Curis Veteres farther off, make the line of the
wall deviate on the north-east far beyond the Palatine. Becker, and
Bunbury (Classical Museum vol. iii. p. 343), hold to the less para-
doxical view.

cS
34 ETRUSCAN MERCENARIES.

naturally rose in earliest Rome from the shops of
Tuscan merchants, who learnt so much of the Latin
tongue as was needed for trade, and thought more
about a good bargain for their stock, than about
political position. Such dealers introduced Tuscan
fashions in dress, especially* the foga, and the bulla
in the community at large, and all the trappings of
royalty. In course of time their descendants formed
a small part of the fixed population of Rome, and
may be compared to the uérowkor, or resident aliens, at
Athens. Ultimately, it is to be presumed, they were
swallowed up in the Roman Plebs.

At the same time the superior armour of the Etrus-
cans, and their Greek or Carian mode of fighting,
made them, while Rome was poor and low in art,
valued as mercenary troops. Ceeles Vibenna seems
to be a personage without a date, the type of every
leader of Etruscan condoitieri. But such bodies, ex-
cept where they make political revolutions, leave little
permanent impression on a state: nor is anything dis-
tinetly known concerning their agency in this period.

But there is perfect unanimity among the ancients,
as to the principle on which the rapid rise of Ro-
mulus’s colony depended. Walls having been erected
sufficient for defence, free reception was given to all
who chose to come and claim it. The forms under
which this was done remind us of Greek customs, if

* The names were Latin ; perhaps in strictness introduced by the
Sabines.
THE ASYLUM. 35

indeed we may trust the tale*. A lofty and steep hill
lay to the north-west of the new Rome. Its back had
a depression in the centre; the two heights on each
side were afterwards called the Citadel and the Ca-
pitol. From the Capitol the whole hill was called Ca-
pitoline : the rock of the Citadel was abrupt, and was
named the Tarpeian. In the depression between, or
the descent from it, a spot was consecrated, and called
by the Greek name asylum : whoever fled to this was
received, as a claimant of hospitable protection, to
whom the walls must not remain closed. Whether
such formalities have been correctly reported to us, is
of very little importance: that the policy herein im-
plied was systematically followed in the whole period
of kingly Rome, seems beyond reasonable doubt, and
¢

to be a clue to the whole course of events. To the
same policy Thucydides ascribes the early aggrandize-
ment of Attica. Defeated chieftains from all parts of
Greece flocked thither, with their retinues, as to a

* My friend Dr. W. Thne, in an ingenious paper (Class. Mus.
vol. iii. p. 190) regards the whole as an invention founded on a mis-
take concerning the “jus exulandi.” Alban Rome must indeed have
been misrepresented to us, if neighbouring states made treaties with
it, that each should receive into citizenship those citizens of the other,
who, to avoid something disagreeable at home, chose to go into ba-
nishment. Is it not more conformable with rude times, that such
things should happen, (as the story tells,) without a treaty, than in
consequence of one? To object that an Asylum was a Greek and
not a Latin custom, is to assume that there was no Greek religion
among the primitive villagers of the Septimontium ; while all the

notices of ante-Sabine religion in Rome have a prevailing Grecian
aspect.
36 POLITICAL REFUGEES.

safe refuge; and brought their numbers, experience
and skill in the arts of war or peace. Livy indeed calls
the principle “familiar to the founders of cities ;”
and undoubtedly it conduces to material prosperity.
To harbour criminals is quite a separate matter, and
in our days is an odious idea, when criminals are the
dregs of society. Not so political offenders. Holland
and England have long gloried in protecting those
whom the despots of neighbouring communities have
judged to deserve punishment; and the arts and
wealth of both countries have been increased by the
industry and ingenuity of refugees. Hydria in
Greece, though a barren rock unnoticed by antiquity,
shot up into sudden greatness by giving a home and
a free port to those who suffered by Turkish tyranny;
and if any causes were at work to disorder the Latin
or Etrurian cities, it is easy to believe that refugees
may have rapidly aggrandized early Rome. In that
stage of rudeness indeed, it may be taken for granted
that no distinction would be made between criminals
and innocent men ; the mixed multitude is not likely
to have been much purer than the later Romans
represented it; yet there is an undeniable superiority
in such a mass of outlaws in rude over civilized times.
Where all men carry arms and each has to defend
himself, personal conflicts are of daily occurrence :
the perpetrators of bloodshed are often among the
best men of the community; and if made outlaws,
may prove very valuable citizens to the foreign town
INJUSTICE TO FOREIGNERS. 37

which welcomes them. Alban Rome was clearly a
robber-city ; yet we do not know it to have been
stained with blood-thirsty treachery like the Mamer-
tines of Messene. She is rather to be compared to
the petty cities of early Greece, when they practised
piracy without scruple, and gloried in it.

This stage of human society rises out of an imma-
ture morality difficult at first to understand. We are
apt to imagine, that men ready to shed blood for the
gratification of their cupidity, can have no virtues at
all : but this is an illusion similar to that of supposing
that a man who finds his sport in slaying innocent
animals is altogether savage. A line, not wholly
arbitrary, is drawn between our own and foreign
nations, as between men and brutes, which admits of
cultivating many virtues in high perfection towards
countrymen, while we disown all moral rights of the
stranger. Unhappily, this immature morality pro-
pagates itself to a very late stage. Nations called
Christian and glorying in the gentleness of civiliza-
tion, are often execrably cruel and unjust even towards
one another, and much more towards those whom
they call barbarians. In early Greece and Rome, as
in early Germany, the same principles were practised
and avowed without disguise. No one criticized
them ; all in turn were ready to act upon them ; and
every successful warrior was honoured by his own
people, however great had been his injustice to the
foreigner. :
38 WOMEN-STEALING.

The received tale represents (what is every way
likely) the mass of those who flocked to Rome as
consisting of males; in consequence of which they
resorted to violent means for carrying off young
women from the neighbouring tribes. This, if not
true, is well invented. No measure could be more
natural on their part; none more intensely resented
by the neighbours. The details of the story belong
to popular imagination, and need not be repeated ;
but the chief cause for hesitating to adopt it in out-
line, is, that it seems to allow too limited a period
of existence to Alban Rome, and forces us to begin
and end the tale in a still shorter time than a single
reign. Had this been true, no tradition of anything
ante-Sabine could well have come down to us; Ro-
mulus would have been no more to the Romans than
Evander was. On the contrary, it seems that Alban
Rome lasted long enough to enlarge her boundaries,
and occupy the Tarpeian rock and the Capitol with a
separate fortification. If women-stealing was occa-
sioned by the opening of the asylum, it must have
been a long-continued habit, and not a single act
perpetrated at the festival of Consus*. If then we
may so tell the story, the Roman freebooters in a
series of years by this unendurable offence, (the

* The Consualia; afterwards made into the Ludi Romani. Livy
translates Consus into Neptunus Equestris. If this is correct,
(Tlooeid@y Tmmios,) we have another mark of the prevalence of Greek
religious notions at Rome in this era.
FIRST VICTORIES OF ROMULUS. 39

atrocity of which has cast their mere robberies into
oblivion,) brought on themselves the hostility of
neighbouring towns, of which Cenina, Antemnz,
and Crustumerium are specified. But by Roman
prowess, (according to accounts which practise syste-
matic falsification in military affairs,) all these ene-
mies were signally defeated: the king of Ceenina
was slain by the hand of the Roman king, who in
gratitude consecrated the trophies of his foe to Jupiter
Feretrius. In a later war he vows a temple to Jupiter
Stator. In each case we are reminded of Greek
religion. What else is Jupiter Stator than Zevs
oradaios? And is not Zeds Pepérpios, to whom
the trophies (rpémaia) of enemies are offered, more
in harmony with Greek notions and the Greek idiom,

than J upiter’ Feretrius with those of Latium*? To
. * Plutarch (Marcellus viii), hints at the Greek influences at this
time at work in Rome, when he gives the derivation of Feretrius
from the ¢péperpor or bier on which the trophies were carried. Fere-
trum appears to be a borrowed word, not formed within the Latin, and
found only in poetry. Livy, in telling the story, prefers to use
Serculwm. Plutarch’s description of the spolia opima here, as in his
Romulus, shows them to be identical with the Tpdmaia by which he
renders them. Ts it by accident, that when Marcellus wins the spolia
opima, the Senate sends a golden bowl, in thankfulness, Zo the

Pythian Apollo? Tt seems as if such an event reminded them of
Greek religion,

Dionysius justly regards ®epérpios as equivalent to Tporaiodyos or
SkvAopdpos, ii. 34, but when he adds a third equivalent “Preppepérys,
he overdoes his work.

The temple to Feretrius was nothing but a very small chapel. Tts

ruins were to be seen in Dionysius’s time, and the longer side measured
less than fifteen feet.
40 JUPITER FERETRIUS.

Feretrius a temple was built on the summit of the
Capitoline® to Stator another on the northern edge of
the Palatine and within the walls of primitive Rome.
// In the same era the festive solemnity called a Tri-
74 umph, 1s said to have been introduced, which combined
7" the barbarous haughtiness of Rome with the Greek
pride in trophies. In substance, it was a religious

  

procession designed to commemorate a victory, and
it stood in connection with the same Jupiter Feretrius
to whom the trophies were dedicated. The most
noble captives and the spoils taken in war went first
towards the Capitol. The king, with garlands of bay
round his temples, walked next. His troops followed,
arranged in detachments, singing some national ditty
to the God of victory, or uttering off-hand sayings of
praise and sarcasm concerning the generalt. When
they reached the Capitol, a sacrifice was offered before
the temple of Jupiter Feretrius; the trophies or spoils
were presented to the god, and the captives were
pitilessly beheaded. In later times, when the spoils
of war became more costly, the pomp of a triumph

¥ Dionys. ii. 34.

+ The sarcasms against the general irresistibly remind us of the
mopmal of the Greeks, with whom such freedom of speech was
allowed in their processions, that moumela took the sense of “ri-
baldrous invective.” The Greek word most nearly equivalent in
sense to Triumphus is ours: but in sound the representative is
6plapBos, a song to Bacchus. With the latter, Benfey connects
3100pauBos: but the primitive thought is very uncertain. The
Latin word is evidently foreign, if only on account of the pk; yet
A TRIUMPH. 41

was immensely increased, and the general rode in a
four-horse triumphal car. The old sculptures how-
ever preserved the traditionary belief that Romulus
had marched on foot.

Under the Republic several Roman generals to
whom the Senate refused a triumph, marched of their
own authority up the Alban Mount, and so celebrated
the solemnity without leave. From this circumstance
it has been inferred that the custom was borrowed
from the Latins, and that the Alban Mount was its
primitive and appropriate place. Undoubtedly re-
joicings of this kind are so natural, as to make it
probable enough that the Latins had something of
the kind; but no new strength is added to this pro-
bability by tke fact under notice. Outside of the
city, the general had full power over his troops. To
select the Alban Mount as a substitute for the Capi-
toline was a natural resource, because the place be-
came sacred from the time of its desolation; and
Jupiter Latiaris had a temple there, at which the
Consuls every year offered sacrifice.

this cannot have come from B of the Greeks. Either of two primi-
tive ideas might serve to explain the word: (1.) Marching to a
dancing step. If 6plauBos meant a particular pace or step, 8.00-
pauBos might be a double step: and this is nearly Benfey’s notion.
In that case OupapBos, 6ptauBos might remind us of the northern
Tramp. (2.) It may mean shouting with joy,—Io! Triumphe !—If
80, we may think of Trumpet. The French tromper, “to deceive,”
may also seem primitively to have meant “to brag,” &ralovetew.
From the Latin triumphus comes fo trump in card-playing.
42 GREEK RELIGION.

It has appeared that many of the notices of public
religion in this era have something of a Greek colour.
Hercules and the Lupercalia, Hereditary Priesthood,
the Asylum, Equestrian Poseidon, Zeus Stadaios and
Tropaiouchos, to say nothing of such names as the
Agonian hill and the Argean chapels,—more nearly
remind us of Greece. And this has a greater appear-
ance of reality, because it is not worked up by a
Dionysius, who might have had an argument to serve
by it, but comes out piecemeal and as it were of itself.
Not that any real identity of religion with Greece
is to be inferred from these things: indeed within
Greece itself it is hard to say that Dorian and Ionian
religion were identical; but the similarity is some-
thing more than accident®, and implies that religious
notions fundamentally Greek exercised great force
in Rome, before the Sabines introduced the great
revolution to which we shall presently proceed.

As the people of Romulus looked solely to warlike
achievements for wealth or well-being, a large popu-
lation was a primary need; hence not only were those
received who came voluntarily, but the inhabitants
of neighbouring towns who proved unable to resist,
were often transferred in mass to Rome, according to
the policy of Syracusan or Assyrian tyrants, where
they were received as citizens on equal terms. This,

* Herodotus tells us of Greek religion practised by the Gelonians
in Scythia, who lived with the Budinians.
ADOPTION OF CITIZENS. 43

in the opinion of Plutarch*, above all things for-
warded the aggrandizement of the city. We are not
however to suppose that within Rome itself there was
democratic equality. That the relations of Patron
and Client can yet have subsisted in any such for-
mality as Cicero believed, is scarcely credible: but
we may be sure, that martial ability was the first
source of honour, and that trusty companions gathered
round brave leaders, who became the chief men of
the State. Foreigners would be admitted on the
same footing ; their chieftains becoming chief men in
Rome, their followers a mere populace. In Sabine
times the adoption of new citizens was made a so-
lemnly religious act; and when Rome at length
became a clogs aristocracy, she showed herself very
niggardly as to bestowing the rights of citizenship.
She gave but seldom, and then, for the most part,
only imperfect rights. But during the kingly period,
the aristocracy had little or nothing to lose politically,
and had much to gain in a military sense, by free
adoption of brave men ; and although we cannot have
documentary proof concerning Alban Rome, the spirit
which survived to the end of the monarchy assures us
that the primitive policy, when no one religion domi-
neered, cannot have been less liberal.

The later Romans loved to conceive of their State
as organized with all dignity and sage wisdom under
Romulus. Hence they give us a systematic account

* Romul. 16.
44 THREE ROMULIAN TRIBES.

of his Senate, and the divisions of the nation which
he established. That he had some kind of Council,
may be believed ; but no detail can be trusted. That
in this earliest period the Roman territory was divided
into three tribes, called Tities, Ramnes, Luceres,
whence three squadrons of horse were drawn as the
king’s body-guard,—is highly probable. The three
names, as Varro states*, were Tuscan; and the anti-
quity of this division led to its being retained in name,
although (as far as we can find) it was already a shadow
in the reign of the elder Tarquin. But that the thirty
Curies of Rome came down from this Romulian pe-
riod, is not to be believed ; for by the testimony of all
the ancients, the names of the Curies were Sabine;
and it will afterwards appear, that they probably formed
part of a system which introduced a larger number of
tribes.

In the opinion of Tacitus, Romulus was a despotic
king : but Tacitus is a bad authority concerning the
beginnings of nations. We must perhaps rest in the
general probability, that the successive heads or kings
of Alban Rome, (however many are concealed under

* On the authority of Volumnius, who wrote Tuscan Tragedies ;
Varro de Lingua Lat. v. 9. The attempted derivation of Tities from
Titus Tatius and Ramnes from Romulus, appears to me an exceed-
ingly weak foundation for thinking that the Tities were Sabines, the
Ramnes Latins, and the Luceres Etruscans. Goettling feels the dif-
ficulty involved, when Tullus Hostilius brings in so many Alban Pa-
tricians ; for if they must needs be added to the Ramnmes, it will

make that tribe too powerful. To me the whole idea appears with-
out a basis. See also on the reign of Numa.
AUTHORITY OF THE KING. 45

the name of Romulus,)—as captains of a people to
whom warlike interests were all in all,—exercised a
severely despotic discipline with high approbation, as
long as they were successful in war, and just in the
partition of spoil: and that, though no written law
defined the rights of the king, and no precedents can
have grown up to give strength to a senate, yet brave
and turbulent men, with arms in their hands, knew
how to prevent their leader’s authority from degene-
rating into tyranny. The sway of an Arab chieftain
is a familiar modern example of this sort of sove-
reignty.

Such is the best idea to be gathered concerning
Alban Rome, which rose as a city formidable to all
the neighbours by the free development of a military
system, under chieftains perhaps not less scrupulous
than in other rude and warlike nations. But the first
definite fact in their relations with foreigners which
may be rested on as certain, is, the fall which they
encountered from the grave and severe Sabines of
Cures, an equally brave and more systematically dis-
ciplined race.
46

PART UW.

SABINE ROME.

CHAPTER 1V.
THE SABINES.

TrE Sabines were an important branch of the great
central people of Italy; and as they dwelt between
the Tiber and the Anio (or Teverone), they almost
touched on Rome. They were closely akin to the
Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians in the south; to the
Marsians and Picenians in the north-east; and down
to imperial times were celebrated for austere simpli-
city of taste and uncorrupt rustic manners. In many
respects similar to the Dorians of Greece, (insomuch
that they readily admitted the fiction* that they were

* Dionys. ii. 49. Plut. Rom. 16.
SABINE CLANS. 47

a Lacedemonian colony,) they were proud of living in
unwalled villages, as men who had sufficient defence
in warlike weapons. The highlands of the Apennines
appear as their natural home: only in the fruitful
Campania did one branch of the nation become ener-
vated by sloth and luxury. Goettling has well cha-
racterized their earliest social system by the term
patriarchal. In it each Family, or rather, in a wider
sense, each Clan, was in some sense a separate State,
and the nation was a Confederacy of Clans, which
had little unity except for the purposes of war. Every
clan had religious ceremonies peculiar to itself, and
could make laws to regulate the conduct of its own
members: hence in process of time many clans gained
marked peculidrities of dress or habits, which they
made a pride of retaining, even when they were all
swallowed up in the great community of Latin Rome.
Each individual of the clan bore its name, out of
~ which afterwards rose consequences more important
than could have been foreseen.

The state of society in which the oldest Sabines
lived, it has been ingeniously observed *, seems to have
originated the Homeric conception of a Cyclops,—a
fierce and arbitrary being, who dwells on the tops of
hills and tends his flocks, responsible to no one, but
“ giving laws to his children and to his wife.” Slavery
had no general existence, but every noble family had

* Goettling (Sabiner, §. 8). Not but that the Sicanians were a
nearer type, at least in geography. See Diodor. v. 6.
48 PATRON AND CLIENT.

dependents permanently attached to it, who were called
its Clients. It was a system of high, but kindly aris-
tocracy. The client, like the Russian serf, was at-
tached to his Patron or lord as to a father and a friend.
The whole clan was in theory, or rather in feeling, a
single large family, accustomed to yield the guidance
of all external affairs to its leader, as absolutely as
Arabs to their sheikh. When we have the most posi-
tive assurances that every father in Sabine Rome pos-
sessed power of life and death over his grown-up son;
and that the father might sell him into slavery, and
resume his rights over him twice, if twice set free;
we must be prepared to believe in the high authority
of the chieftain over the serf. Yet as all the dignity
of the Patron depended on the number and well-being
of his Clients; as their swords and their properties
were his to use on every great exigency; it is not
to be looked on as poetical fiction that he zealously
cared for their physical welfare, and by kindly inter-
course sustained their loyal sympathies. This effect was
ascribed by later writers to the influence of religious
oaths which bound the parties together; but, inde-
pendently of religion, a Sabine chief had little more
temptation to oppress his client, than to be cruel to
his son. Both of them crouched before his anger,
both of them rejoiced in his greatness and pomp. To
each was assigned his appropriate external comforts:
custom and public opinion regulated the payments
made by the cultivator; and the hardy peasant was
ORIGIN OF CLIENTAGE. 49

satisfied with so little, that he must have been a cruel
lord indeed who grudged that little.

* Many modern writers seem unable to conceive such
a relation of lord and serf, except where it is founded
on conquest by foreigners; yet there are instances to
the contrary so clear, that to impute a conquest is
gratuitous. A future generation, on learning how
peasants in the Scotch Highlands have been driven
off the soil by the representatives of the chieftains
for whom their fathers’ broadswords won it, will be
in danger of mistaking these free, hardy and much-
injured men for a conquered and inferior race. And
in fact there is not only a very great similarity, in
the relations between a Chief of the Gaelic clans and
his vassals, t¢ those between a Sabine Patron and
his Client*, but, insofar as language is any test of

* The meaning of the word Client is uncertain, though Patron, its
correlative, is so clear. Niebuhr thinks it is for Cluens, “ hearing,”
that is, “ obeying.” But cluo in Latin does not mean fo hear, much
less Zo obey ; but, to be spoken of, to be renowned.—Ihne believes
that Cliens is identical with Colonus ; and certainly the Clientes have
strong likenesses to the Coloni of the declining empire.—I however
suspect that the Gaelic Clann, Cloinne, children, is the root, answer-
ing to Patronus: the “clan” of a Highland chief means, his “chil
dren,” and they are his clientes. The only objection to this is, that
Patron is not Gaelic; for the Gaels say Athair for Pater. We may
however believe that the P was specially lost by the northern branch
of Kelts in this word, as in Uire, Tasg for Puirc, Piasg; porcus, piscis.
The Welsh correlative to the Gaelic clann is plant, offspring ;—with
initial P for Gaelic C, as in so many other words :—and the final #
suggests that the Sabines may have said Clant or Client. [Inow find

in Dennis's Etruria that Clas in Etruscan is believed to mean filius
or natus.]

D
50 LANDLORD AND TENANT.

blood, it would appear that the Sabines and the Gaels
are of nearer kindred than Irish and Welsh. The
patriarchal authority is not easily abused to griping
and heartless covetousness in the rude days, when
chief and clansman live in daily sight of one another,
as in an Arab tribe; when men are valuable for bravery
and devotedness, and not only for the rent which they
pay ; and when the arts of life are so little advanced,
that the great use of wealth is to maintain a more
gorgeous retinue. But when with the progress of art
and political developement, the chief covets the land
for the sake of rent and not of men, and a custom
has hardened into law which enables him to appear as
owner of the soil, the relation of Patron to Client is
liable to become one of antagonism, and frequently of
bitter hostility, as in republican Rome.

That the Sabine Patron was to his Clients, in an
economical and commercial sense, as Landlord to
Tenants*, appears an a priori certainty. Two pro-
positions are undeniable:—that the Patron did not
need to labour for his own subsistence ;—and, that
the land was the sole source of annual income to the

* T am indebted for this view to my friend Dr. William Thne, now
of Liverpool. In his able book, “Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der
Romischen Verfassungs Geschichte,” he has shown a mind that
penetrates to the bottom of scholastic controversies, and remarkably
fresh in dealing with what seemed to have been exhausted. While I
have fundamentally adopted what is his view concerning the Clients,
I perhaps shall be found not quite to agree with his working out of
it in detail : yet I hardly think he will feel any strong objections.
RESERVED RENT. 51

chieftains collectively. Revenues from manufactures
or houses, from customs and excise, even from mines,
quarries, or salt-works, are not to be thought of, in
such a stage of society, as anything but a very rare
exception. If the Patron lived, without labour, from
the labour of others, whether as shepherds or as
husbandmen, who else can these others have been but
his clients? - And this the Greeks felt, when they ex-
pressed the word clients by mé ara.

When Attus Clausus the Sabine came from Re-
gillus to Rome at the beginning of the republic, at
the head of a clan of five thousand fighting men*,
he received lands for his followers on Roman soil,
where they were made the nucleus of the Claudian
Tribe. In a few years he must have become a poor
man, or at least dependent on the yearly earnings
of his sword, unless some rent from his clients had
been reserved for him. Whatever wealth in silver
and copper, in stuff and in cattle, he may have
brought with him, must soon have been dissipated,
unless the land itself replenished them. So long as
a purely agricultural or pastoral state subsisted, the
children of clients naturally became clients to the
same patron or his representative. The younger
branches of the patron’s family,—brothers, nephews,
and cousins,—no doubt, were welcome at the table
of the head of the clan, and formed his most de-
voted body-guard. Such a state of things was fa-

* So Dionysius (v. 40) estimates them.
D 2
52 TWO ORDERS IN THE STATE.

miliar in the middle ages, and in Homeric Greece.
Thus the whole nation split itself into two parts,
Nobles and Populace,—or Patricians and Plebeians*;
although it is probable that the Sabine patrician,
like Laertes or the elder Cato, never felt that disdain
for personal service in agriculture which charac-
terized a feudal gentleman. For a patrician Cincin-
natus to hold the plough, was rare and strange; but
such a deed excited pity or admiration, with certainly
no shade of contempt. Such were the simple Sabine
virtues which later Rome praised, but had no desire
to imitate.

The sharp contrast of Nobles and Serfs naturally
forbade intermarriage between the two orders : nobles
of course intermarried only with nobles. But in
time this grew into positive law; so that in a later
stage, religious objections are pretended against allow-
ing the Patrician, if willing, to give his daughter in
marriage to a Plebeian, or accept a Plebeian daughter
as his son’s wife. It is true, that the religious objec-
tions turn on the assumption that the Plebeian has
different sacred rites from the Patrician; which is
probably interpreted to mean, that the Patrician
practised Sabine ceremonies, while the Plebeians, in
that period, were "predominantly Latin and retained
Latin religion. But the reluctance was really based

* This is said by Cicero of Romulus, and may be safely applied at
least to the Sabino-Roman system: “ Habuit plebem in clientelas
principum deseriptam.” De Rep. ii. 8.
SABINE MARRIAGE. 53

on aristocratic haughtiness; nor can we doubt the
sharp division of noble from vulgar families among
the Sabines themselves.

Marriage among the Sabines was a ceremony of
extraordinary sanctity, and its result rather para-
doxical. The bride was by it given “into the hand”
of her bridegroom, so as to fall (according to the
Roman lawyers) into the condition of his daughter.
Thus every husband, married with Sabine ceremonies,
possessed the same power over the life of his wife,
as a father over that of his child. The wife became
a partaker of all the sacred rites of the clan, and
inherited (on her husband’s death) as a daughter.
But for valid marriage it was requisite that both
parties should be possessed of patrician auspices ; for
in devotion to this art they even surpassed the Latins :
and the attendance of an augur even in a private
family was essential to the due celebration of marriage.

The Sabines were indeed a remarkably religious
nation. Their morality was sharply defined, emi-
nently positive and overruling to the whole outward
conduct. They knew how to die for duty, and saw
duty as the enforcement of God. Like the North
American savage, they had great power of self-devo-
tion, high dignity and self-respect, and a generally
pervading sternness. Yet their religion cannot be
called a cruel one: such atrocities as the burying
alive of Vestal Virgins were mere exceptions. It
was on its purely religious side unusually simple and
54. SABINE RELIGION.

pleasing : but its morality had a strong dash of un-
reasoning superstition. That it treated foreigners as
a natural prey, is no more than may be said of all
ancient religion. Like every system which makes
more of Obedience than of Truth, it was capable of
degenerating into punctilious observances, while neg-
lecting great moralities: and this was its odious
aspect in later Rome ;—where it held its ground, un-
changed in form by the progress of knowledge. In
common with the Latins, the Sabines held auguries
to be the peculiar mode of access to the divine will;
and for all ordinary matters of importance, public or
private, they watched the flight of birds.

A frugal hardy people, living solely by an unim-
proved agriculture or natural pasture, with uncorrupt
healthy habits, on the highlands of Italy, may double
its numbers every thirty years, and will rapidly experi-
ence a redundancy of men. Hence, every half-century,
a restless pushing onwards of the highland tribes,
sure, though slow, like the downward movement
of the glacier. This it was which in the course of a
few centuries brought the Sabines and their kindred
along the whole Italian peninsula, and occasioned so
many changes and mixtures of population. In fact,
this was an ordinary process with most nations, and
« among many of the Barbarians and of the Greeks*”
migrations to find new abodes by the sword were
methodized and consecrated by religion.

* Dionys. i. 16.
A SACRED SPRING. 55

If we can believe our informants, a Sacred Spring
was proclaimed ; during which whatever was born
belonged to the national god, or to some particular
god. All the children were dedicated and set apart
as sacred ; and when they attained a full military age,
were sent out as under the divine guidance to win
for themselves new abodes, whether peacefully or by
conquest : after which they became a wholly indepen-
dent people. In this manner many of the Italian
nations arose, with new distinctive names.—To us it
may appear wonderful, that a rude people who had
begun to suffer from excessive numbers, could bear
to wait some five-and-twenty years before migrating :
and unless there is some inaccuracy or confusion in
the account, ,we seem forced to infer that the Sacred
Spring was held at fixed intervals, whether there was
or was not a felt redundancy of numbers; and even
so, it must have been held very often, to be any
adequate relief. It however appears, that (on what-
ever grounds) a particular branch of the Sabines was
dedicated to the god of the spear, whom they called
Quirinus, and themselves Quirites. Ancient authors
represent them as settled at Cures, before they in-
vaded Rome. Opinions were divided, whether the
name Quirites came from Cures, or from the Sabine
word curis, quiris, a spear: but until it is shown
that Cures cannot also have come from the same
root, there is no proved disagreement in the two
explanations. ‘We happen here to have a clue, which
56 THE PRIMITIVE QUIRITES.

the Romans had not. The Gaelic language has nu-
merous words in common with the Latin; and gives
us Coir, [sounded Quir,] a spear; Curaidh, a warrior;
the similarity of which to Quir and Quirite sets at
rest the question what Quirite meant. As to Qui-
rinus, he was worshipped under the emblem of a
spear, like the Scythian Mars; for the Sabines, rather
perhaps from the low state of the arts than from
religious principle, used no images of the gods. De-
dicated to this Quirinus, the Quirites or warriors
probably needed no such affront as the rape of their
women, to bring their arms against Alban Rome ; but
at least when thus assailed, they came forth under
their patron god to take just vengeance on the people
of Romulus.

Several traits in the description of those early
Sabines deserve notice, as connecting their manners
with Keltic nations. They bore the oblong Gaulish
or Ligurian shield, named Scufum; a broadsword,
Gladius, and a leathern helmet, Galea ;—all of them
words peculiar® to the Gaelic and Erse. The Sabines
moreover, like the Gauls, wore heavy gold bracelets
or other ornaments, as the Agathyrsians in Herodotus.

No details of the war between the Romulians and
the Sabines can be received as historical ; but several
broad results are clear. The Sabines took by storm

* T do not believe that scutwm comes from okies.
+ Concerning the Gauls, besides the well-known desériptions in
Livy and Virgil, see Diodor. v. 27, for details.
SABINE CONQUEST OF ROME. 57

the Capitol, and the citadel or Tarpeian rock, on the
two ends of the Capitoline Hill. They established
their own principal abode on the northern hill which
was from them called the Quirinal. They united
themselves into a single state with Rome; but gave
to Rome an entirely new stamp, from Sabine religion
and Sabine political institutions. Religion and Po-
litics were in fact but one: all public acts were reli-
gious ; all magistracy, and eminently the royal office,
was sacred: nay every “warrior comrade” was a sacred
person, as will more fully appear in the character of
the Roman Patricians. This domination of Sabine
institutions can only be ascribed to their superior
force, and assures us that Rome was virtually con-
quered by them*. The resistance of the Romans
seems to hate been stubborn enough to buy good
terms from the conquerors; who wisely judged that
it was better to have them as comrades and equals
(Cives), than carry on a dangerous war of extermina-
tion or attempt to turn them into vassals: but the
equality was tendered and accepted under the con-
dition, that Sabine institutions should henceforth be
the groundwork of the State; only those old religions
at special sanctuaries being retained, which common
piety forbade to neglect. Thus not only were the
Romulian temples and the rites of the old montani
and pagani respected, but Jupiter Indiges was wor-

* Thne states this outright; Niebuhr runs close to it, i. p. 292.
(transl.)

D3
58 INCORPORATION OF THE ROMANS.

shipped on the banks of the Numicius, and the Pe-
nates at Lavinium. The three Tuscan tribes, Tities,
Ramnes, Luceres, also retained their names in the
organization of the squadrons of horse.

Concerning the personality of Titus Tatius, the
alledged king of these Sabines, nothing can be said.
His pretended joint-reign with Romulus, seems to be
a legend adapted to veil the Sabine conquest: nor is
there any fact concerning him that can be confidently
believed, although we cannot doubt that the Qurites
had really a king when they established themselves at
Rome, who may possibly have been called Tatius.

The ultimate prevalence of the Latin over the Sa-
bine tongue in Rome itself, even before the monarchy
was extinct, testifies how small an element the Sabines
were in the whole Roman population. It may even
suggest, that like the Normans in England, the lower
Sabines who had been mere clients before the con-
quest, often rose into nobles or patricians in Rome,
and that the rest by intermarriage with native Roman
plebeians gave birth to a progeny, which in Sabine
estimate had no claim to the sacred auspices and
other nuptial ceremonies. Much obscurity rests on
the question, whether the plebeian Sabines in Rome,
who were clients in the strictest sense, had or had
not admission to Sabine religion, from which we
know that the plebeilans in Rome who were not
Sabine were excluded. To some sacred rites they
must have been admissible, since the connexion of
AN INTERREGNUM. 59

Client and Patron was ratified by religion. The whole
difficulty however vanishes, if we believe that in two
or three generations the remaining clients of the
Sabine patricians had “lost caste” (as a Hindoo
would express it) by intermarriages with the older
population.

Although, before long, the distinction of Romulian
and Sabine was lost in Rome, yet at first, it is cre-
dible, they dwelt principally in their own quarters.
The name of the Quirinal Hill seems to mark it as a
special abode of the people of Quirinus; but we have
no reason to imagine that any legal regulation kept
the two races apart.

A difficulty here occurs, which perhaps cannot be
solved, but ought to be noticed. How is it, that
the patriarckal Sabines had a fixed and energetic
royalty ? The formalities of an Interregnum, (which
will presently be detailed,) are so emphatically Sabine,
that they cannot have been borrowed from Rome ;
nor can they have grown up into so severely rigid a
system in a small number of reigns. It seems requi-
site to select one of two hypotheses. That the patri-
archal system was fully developed, before the royalty
existed, must in any case be assumed: then we
may suppose, either, 1. that elective royalty, with all
the formalities of the interregnum, grew up to matu-
rity at Cures, and was naturally transferred to Rome
at the election of Numa: or, 2. if we receive Cicero’s*

* De Rep. ii. 12.
60 SABINE LANGUAGE.

statement to the letter, that an interregnum was
a wholly new thing in the time of Numa, and un-
heard of among other nations, we must suppose
that it did not spring up so perfect all at once, but
gradually took its fixed shape by the repeated prece-
dents at the elections of the Sabino-Roman kings;
who, as will afterwards be said, were probably far
more numerous than the three names,—Numa,
Tullus, Ancus,—which alone the distant tradition
has preserved for us.

On the authority of Zenodotus of Troezen, a his-
torian of the Umbrians, Dionysius tells us that the
Sabines were once called Umbrians, namely, as long
as they lived among that people; from which it is
inferred that they were a branch of the Umbrian race.
Other ancient writers are silent on the subject, and
the inference appears extremely weak. Admitting it
as true, there must still have been a very great differ-
ence of dialect between the language of the Eugubine
Tables and that which the later Romans called Sa-
bine: indeed everything that passes for Umbrian
abounds in the letter », which as in the Elean and
Spartan dialect of Greek, exterminates final s; while
the Sabines are said to have often used s for r, as in
Fasena for Arena. Perhaps such antiquated forms
as Asa for Ara, Lases for Lares, are strictly Sabine.

In attempting to judge for ourselves of the Sabine
 

KELTO-SABINE WORDS. 61

language, we have as data, 1. certain words reported
to us by the ancients as Sabine and not Latin,—or
not without some modification ; 2. words which we
may probably conjecture to be originally Sabine,
though incorporated with the tongue, first of Rome
and hence of all Latium: viz. various politico-religious
or military words. Both sets appear to me to indicate
that the Sabines were Keltic, and Kelts nearer to the
Gaelic or Erse than to the Welsh branch. Although
the subject cannot be here fully treated, illustrations
may be given from the latter source. The letters
G. W. stand for Gaelic and Welsh.

MILITARY AND POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS WORDS, MANY OF
WHICH ARE LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN SABINE.

Arma ...... G. arm Caterva ... W. catorva, —
Gladius ... G.¢:laidheamh cad torva, bat-
W. cleddyv tle-troop
Lamina ... W. llavn Catapulta*—G. cath tabhal,
G. laun battle-sling
Telum ...... G. tailm Sagitta ... G. saighead
(root Tal, cut) Parma...... ‘W. parvais
Bast E. astas, astal Plum... W. pilwrn
Hos ile ‘W. aseth, asethol | Lorica...... G.. luireach
“U Germ. ast Balteus ... G. balt
Galea ...... E. galia Murus..... W. mur
Scutum ... G. sgiath Meenia...... 'W. maen, «
Tragula ... E.treagh,aspear; stone
trident or fish- | Vallum ... W. gwal
spear G. fal, and balle
Cohors...... G. gort (enclosed | Preeda ...... ‘W.praidh,akerd;
place) booty

 

* The Greek derivation from mdAAw is highly doubtful.
62 KELTO-SABINE WORDS.

Spolia ...... G. spuill

Torquis ... W. torch
Monile ... G. fail-muineil
Corona ... G. W. coron
Catena...... ‘W. cadwen
Carcer...... 'W. carchar
ng } 'W. torva, tyrva

Numerus... W. niver
Gloria ...... G. gloir

.. W. canwriad

.. W. cader, strong,
caer, castle

Cuspis....... G. cusp, a Fkibe,

cuspair, a

marksman

Rex........ G- righ
Populus ... W. pobl

G-. pobull

E. pobal?
Senatus ... G. seanadh
Quirit...... G. curaidh
Quiris ...... G. coir

Curia ...... French cour
G. euirt, court
Tribus...... G. treubh
W. trev, village
and, its land

Tex. G. lagh, and
dlighe

Faz... W. fas, a band
or fastening ;
whence  fasg,

bundle

 

 

Jag G. dior, suitable,
becoming

KE. deas and dior

(ives comrades and

equals ?
W. cyvu, fo unite

in equality

Plebs ..... W. plwyf and
laws; cf. Aads

Ritus ...... W. rhaith? (oath
and law) rhei-
thio, (Zo esta-
blish a rule)

Ordo ...... ‘W. urdh

Seculum ... W. sicl, a¢ wind,
a round

Bulla ...... G. bulla

Pogp W. twyg

Pallium ... G. peall, shaggy
hide

Carmen ... G. gairm, a pro-
clamation

Amtruo ... W.amtroi, toturn
round

Augur, probably from auca,
a bird (in Gaulish)
and cur, care (in
Welsh) G. curam

Tripudium, from tir, earth,
and put, to push,
ie. strike? Gaelic.

Repudium, from put, to push

Faustus ... W. fawdus, jfor-

tunate, faw bril-
liant, fawd, good
luck.
SABINE AKIN TO GAELIC? 63

In the Classical Museum (before referred to) I have
tried to show that these names of warlike and political
things are native to Keltic, while very few of them
bear marks of being native to Latin. I have also

essayed to explain some other known Sabine words
by the Gaelic or Gaulish.
64 SABINE ROME.

CHAPTER V.
SABINE INSTITUTIONS IN ROME.

THE most prominent institution was undoubtedly the
SENATE; which nevertheless exercised only a small
part of the power which it attained after the extinc-
tion of royalty. Indeed it was originally subjected
to certain restrictions, marks of which remained to
the very latest times.

As in Homeric Greece we see the King consult his
Council on all great occasions; as also the German
chieftain or King did not dare to determine on peace
or war without sounding his leading warriors; so
from the beginning did the Latin and Sabine kings
need a Senate or Great Council. This was the first
element and witness of constitutional freedom, al-
though only in the germ. The forms and regulations
of the Roman Senate, we must regard as Sabine,
because we can trust nothing of what is said con-
cerning the Senate of Romulus, The Sabino-Roman
King called to his Senate whomever he pleased ; but
PRIMITIVE SENATE. 65

those whom he had once summoned, took their place
permanently: hence his power was comparable to that
of an English sovereign, who calls any subject at will
to the House of Peers. Yet public opinion restricts
the use of this prerogative. A king invested with it
will indeed often* pass by persons who might have
been made senators; but he cannot insult the Senate
by bringing low people into it, unless he is prepared
like Tarquin the Proud, Sulla, or Julius Cesar, to
trample down decorum and precedent. Thus prac-
tically a Roman Senate represented the highest
aristocracy, at least as truly as does an English
House of Peers. But its deliberations and action
were not as free; for it was oppressed by the majesty
of the King’s presence, and in this respect was more
like our Privy Council. Tet us conceive how an
English House of Lords would debate, if it never
met, except with the King to preside. His speech
would be first heard. No one would dare to reply,
until invited by name. None but he could originate
any measure, or dictate to what business the House
should proceed. Such were the limitations, under
which, to the latest period of the Republic, the Ro-
man Senate was subjected: for the Consuls and
Pretors who held it, retained all the symbols and
forms of the old sovereignty.

* See Festus, Prateriti Senatores; which suffices to prove that
Niebuhr’s theory of the old Roman Senate having been elected by
the Curies, is quite untenable.
66 MONARCHY ELECTIVE.

The other Sabine institutions of Rome are ascribed
in the common histories to king Numa. In fact,
the first king of this race who reigned in Rome is
said to have been slain prematurely at Lavinium,
whither he went to offer sacrifice, as the consuls in
later times to the sacred Penates. The story admits
not of criticism. It may be true: but when the only
result of it is a renewing of the treaty between Rome
and Lavinium, we find a gap which is ill supplied by
the fiction of Romulus’s jealousy or justice. On the
death of the king the State returned to its first ele-
ments: magistracy had vanished and needed to be
reconstructed.

Nothing is more characteristic of Sabino-Roman
notions, than the phenomena seen at an Interregnum,
which was in fact a “ Provisional Government” me-
thodized and limited by precedent. With us, the
death or resignation of an elective king would seem
so far from a reason why all other magistrates should
resign, that it would rather lead them to exercise
extraordinary powers, especially with the view of
appointing a successor. Nevertheless, the death of a
king or even of a prime minister dissolves a cabinet:
and in a democracy like the United States, the death
of a President®* might leave the country without a

* To avoid this, the Vice-President steps into the President’s
place. But if the Vice-President were likewise to die soon after, the
country would be without any supreme executive. Becker (Rom.
Antt. Interregnum) excellently develops this subject.
FORMS OF ELECTION. 67

government, until a new President had been elected.
Perhaps this is the nearest analogy which modern
society affords. The chief officers of Rome under
the king were the Warden of the City and the Cap-
tain of the Horse; who were probably originally
appointed by the king’s single will, and therefore lost
their powers by his death*. In consequence, politi-
cal life was temporarily annihilated; the State-machine
had stopped, and needed to be wound up by a force
from without: which, however, resided in the col-
lective aristocracy.

Whether under such circumstances the Senate was
able (without a presiding officer) to vote at all, we do
not know. They certainly could not pass a decree
(senatiis consultum, decretum): they possibly might
express the sentiment (as an auctoritas), that it was
“ expedient for the Patres to put forward an Interrex.”
(See Liv. iii. 40.) Whether the Senate did or did
not thus vote, the warrior-chiefs certainly assembled
for the purpose, summoned by no magistrate, and
by proceedings, the details of which are unknown,

* Under the earlier kings, it cannot be proved that there were any
questors. Liydus speaks of Tullus as creating such officers, but it
is probable that he mistook the well-known duwmwiri for qusestors.

+ The formula was, “ Patricii (or Patres) coeunt ad prodendum
interregem.” It is not certain whether in creating an Interrex, the
patricians voted by Curies, or as individuals, but the word “ coire,”
and the uniform absence of the term curiatim, suggests, that they
met as unorganized units, exactly as in a voluntary public meeting in
England.
68 INTERREGES.

selected a Provisional Magistrate with due augural
observances. The Interrex thus put forward,”
‘summoned the Quirites to their legitimate assembly,
and presided over the creation of a new chief magis-
trate. Such is the rudest theory. But in practice,
the first Interrex always held the election of a second ;
and the second, or one afterwards, proceeded to the
election of ordinary magistrates. At least, under the
republic it became a constitutional rule that there
must be a second interrex. It may be conjectured
that the first election was too tumultuous, or at least
too unceremonious, for Sabine scrupulosity: it per-
haps was like the rude modern process of adopting a
chairman. But the second interrex was actually
elected by a formal and constitutional voting. During
the early period, the Quirites strikingly manifested
the great principle that the Nation is the source of
the royal power, by the formula of decision: ““ The
People orders Numa Pompilius or Ancus to be king.”

In this way, not political power only, but religious
consecration also, was vested in the Patrician Quirites
as its ultimate earthly possessors: in fact, they re-
tained the religious element of authority, centuries
after they had lost the political. The Roman king,
or after him the consul, is justly called a “sacerdotal”
officer; but he was not* the fountain of sanctity to

* Tt is wonderful that Rubino, in his learned and striking treatise
on the Romish Constitution, should rest so much on the opposite
assumption. According to him, all sanctity in Rome was ¢rans-
SOURCE OP POWER AND SANCTITY. 69

the State: far from it. On the contrary, the primi-
tive People (Populus), the Sabine Quirite chieftains, .
—afterwards called Patricians in contrast to the new
Plebeians,—were themselves the fountain of sanctity
even to the king and consul. The Roman formula
in the case of an Interregnum, was: “The Auspices
come back to the Patricians (patres):” the effect of
which is peculiarly striking, when by reason of some
flaw in the auspices, all the magistrates have resigned.
For upon such loss of sacred virtue an unfailing cure
is found in getting the auspices fresh from the foun-
tain, that is, from the bosom of the patrician society,
which was prior to the State and was the parent of
all State religion, as well as of State authority.

But although the power of the king was thus con-
fessedly a derived one, it was very energetic. The
warriors who conferred it on him were stern discipli-
narians, and were accustomed alike in their families
and in the State to a rigorous enforcement of obedi-
ence®*. As long therefore as a king used his power
for public objects, he was in appearance despotic;
and eminently so while acting as military leader.
Although custom, and not written law, regulated his
proceedings, yet to the important step of declaring
missive, and came down from some primitive source hidden in an-
tiquity ; (ch. i) With equal overstraining, he calls the royalty
‘ the fountain of all right, private or public ;”—p. 121.

* The Tartar sovereigns, successors of Jenghis Khan, were elected ;

yet after election, were eminently despotic. This rises out of military
necessities in a conquering nation.
70 THE THIRTY CURIES.

war he needed the consent of his Senate, and possibly
(on great occasions at least) he sought that of the
general assembly of the Quirites also. The Senate, as
. we have said, was chosen by him, but was not on that
account a mere dependent body; since it undoubtedly
contained all his chief nobles, who were not removable
from it; and it enjoyed high public consideration.
Just so at present, the Sultan of Turkey, though in
theory despotic, asks advice of his Council, as well
as of his Cabinet, in matters which involve war or
peace.

The mode of voting in the general assembly was
peculiar, and marks the more complicated political or-
ganization of the Italian than of the Grecian nations.
The Quirites were divided into thirty corporations,
called Curies (Courts?), and the vote of each was
decided separately, and reported by the officer of
each, called a Curio: after which, the majority of the
Curies* decided the vote of the whole assembly. It
was not a deliberative body. No individual was free
to speak in it. Only the king or his representative
might address them; after which he asked them to
reply Yes or No on the matter which he laid before
them. And this circumstance must have given to

* See the antique formula in Livy, i. 32. Dionysius represents
the people as possessing the right of declaring war and peace, from
the time of Romulus downward. He also introduced immense
confusion, by positively declaring that the Curiate assembly was a
democratic and indeed plebeian body. The opposite now appears an
axiom to us; but Niebuhr was the first to clear up this point.
INFLUENCE OF THE SENATE IN AN ELECTION. 71

the Senate a very high influence in the election of a
king. For the Curies cannot have suggested who
was to be admitted as a candidate. The names needed
to be presented by the Interrex, and it will hardly
be imagined that he was empowered to follow his
own judgement in the matter. He must have first
held the Senate, and from its deliberations have
decided on the name* to be proposed. If the Curies
had ever refused the person thus nominated, we can
only conjecture that the Senate must have fixed on
a second; and so on, until there was agreement.
In such a relation of the Senate and the Assembly,
the sovereignty belongs in theory to the latter: only,
to avoid confusion and secure for it an unembarrassed
action, a Presiding Council was an essential organ.
We see nearly the same phenomena among ourselves,
wherever there is a numerous voluntary Society, and
a small Committee to manage its affairs. But while,
as compared to the Senate, the Curies must be called
a democratic body, they did not include all the po-
pulation, but at most only Householders; in which
aspect, they were called Patrest, or, fathers of fami-
lies. As a legislative assembly, they constituted the
Populus, or Nation; and during the early reigns
contained the mass of the true Quirites or warrior
comrades, who associated on terms of equality.

* This indeed is Plutarch’s representation of Numa’s election.
Dionysius agrees to it.
+ So Horat. Quinque bonos solitum Variam dimittere pares.
72 THE POPULACE.

All who were not included among the Patres, were
called Plebs or populace, and a large part of these
were related, as clients*, to particular patrician fa-
milies. The Sabine chiefs, we may take for granted,
like Appius Claudius afterwards, brought in their
clients with them. Though it is probable that Alban
Rome had no similar institution, still, when the
Roman nobles were introduced into the thirty Curies
with Sabine religious rites, the tendency to assimila-
tion must have been overpowering, and the Sabine
principle was sure to predominate. So far therefore
as the country population was concerned, who were
or became custom-paying tenants, an attempt would
be made to extend the principle of clientage to all.
In Rome itself there was at every time, despised
and dreaded by the nobility, a mass of rabble, who,
gaining their livelihood as artizans or petty shopmen,
paid no court to the great. These were a part of the
plebs or populace, yet (if the above is correct) were
not clients. On the other hand, after the Sabine
institutions had taken root, the sons of country
tenants would (as in England) migrate to the town,
from the unexpansiveness of rural industry; and

* Niebuhr denies that “Clients were Plebeians.” Perhaps this
is either a truism or a falsehood, according as we define the word
Plebeian. But when Niebuhr asserts, against Dionysius (ii. 10), who
is confessedly the chief authority in this matter, that the children
of clients were under legal mecessity to take up their father’s
clientage, it amazes me that he is followed by Goettling and Becker.
Such a notion involves the history in inextricable confusion.
VICISSITUDES OF CLIENTAGE. 73

continuing (in Sabine fashion) to pay court to the
head of their clan, they would be the nucleus of a
growing clientage established in Rome, the more
acceptable to the patricians resident there, from its
nearness to their persons. In the course of time it
might be predicted that some estrangement would
take place between the patricians and their country
clients, if the former addicted themselves to a town
life, and became mere exacters of rent. Nevertheless,
the tie was knit afresh by military enterprise; for it
can hardly be doubted that at this stage of the
Roman state, every patron went out to war attended
by his own clients; so that the Patrons virtually were
to the King as feudal barons, who furnished each his
contingent of froops to the royal army.

Whether in these early times the Patrician had
power to eject his dependents from their land, was
perhaps a question not as yet mooted : no one dreamed
of such an act, any more than in feudal England.
The Patrician coveted followers, still more than pay-
ments. Rent also was in all probability fixed by cus-
tom, as in modern Italy, not by competition ; and the
peasants in general approximated more nearly to free
and loyal cultivators than to serfs bound to the
soil. Some distinction may possibly have been made
between the genuine Sabine clients and the older
country population; but on such topics we are left
to conjecture. At any rate, we know no other times
than these, from which the later Romans can have

E
74 TEMPORARY SABINE ASCENDANCY.

drawn their ideal of the sacred and beautiful union of
Patron and Client ; an ideal, which however heightened
in the retrospect by fond regrets, is not likely to have
been wholly founded on fiction. At the same time,
whenever conquered land was granted to a Patron
and his Clients, we cannot doubt that the clients held
directly of the State, and could not be ejected at the
will of the patron.

The Sabino-Roman state was thus fundamentally
aristocratic, although its military tendencies placed at
its head a king with ill-defined power. The story or
legend represents the first king who was elected in
Rome, to have devoted his whole reign to the task of
blending Sabines and Romans into one nation, by in-
troducing Sabine ordinances into every part of politi-
cal and indeed of social life. With a view to this, the
Romans were admitted into the Sabine Curies, with
the usual religious rites, and hereby became ““Quirites”
—warriors dedicated to Quirinus, or to the goddess
whom a later age called Juno Quiritis. Every Cury
had its own Hall, (which was properly called Curia,)
in which it assembled; and tables were there spread
with offerings to this goddess. There was no historian
to record what to us would be so interesting,—how
the difficulty of conflicting language was settled ; in
what tongue the deliberations of the Senate went on;
and by what means the ascendancy of the Sabines
was upheld, until the foreign institutions had become
rooted in their new soil. The course however of the
MILITARY TRIBES. 75

Sabine language at Rome seems to have been, on a
smaller scale, like that of the Normans in England.
Its flood was not broad and deep enough to retain its
own tinge when diluted by the Latin. In each suc-
ceeding century the predominance of the Latin race
became more decided in Rome ; and the descendants
of the Sabines,—even when of pure blood, as may
sometimes have happened,—lost their mother-tongue,
just as our Norman barons talked the vulgar Saxon.
Nevertheless, on all the public institutions of Rome
marks of the Sabine vocabulary were left, which, by
Roman preeminence, became ultimately fixed on the
speech of Latium and of Italy.

Besides the division of the Patrician body into thirty
Curies, the whole country was divided into Tribes, of
uncertain number, the purpose of which seems to have
been principally military. The word Tribe was far
spread in Western Europe. It is found among the
Umbrians, where the Tribus Sappinia (Liv. xxxi. 2.)
was a district of the country. The distant Gaels say
Treubh for a clan or family : the old Welsh laws used
Tref for a township or village with its surrounding
district. Under these circumstances it may seem
doubtful whether we ought to look to the Latin for
its origin. If indeed we judge by Latin alone, the
word means a division,—whether of the people or of
the land* ; which is the explanation given by Miiller

* The Hebrew word for a tribe, as the Irish Pobal (people), from
meaning a collection of families, passed over into the sense of a dis-

E 2
76 NAMES OF THE EARLY TRIBES.

and Mommsen: possibly it was a word already com-
mon to Sabines and Latins; and at any rate its mean-
ing was not dissimilar to that of the English parish.
The names of the early tribes which alone have
come down to us, are as follows: 1. Amilia, 2. Ca-
milia, 3. Cornelia, 4. Fabia, 5. Galeria, 6. Horatia,
7. Lemonia, 8. Menenia, 9. Papiria, 10. Pollia, 11.
Popilia, 12. Pupinia, 13. Romilia, 14. Sergia, 15. Ve-
turia, 16. Voltinia. Though it is possible that these
are as early as the reign of the elder Tarquin, it 1s
hardly imaginable that the Sabines established them
all at the first moment of their power in Rome. Some
of them may have been added by Tullus Hostilius
and some by Ancus, as the territory of Rome ex-
panded. A Tarquinia tribus was possibly introduced,
when Tarquin migrated into Rome with his clan, du-
ring Ancus’s reign, as a Claudia tribus under similar
circumstances three generations later. All the names
of these tribes, except Lemonia, are visibly connected
with those of patrician clans; and from the beginning
they must have included patricians with their clients.

trict. So the Greek d7uos, which perhaps etymologically meant a
band (= deauos) from déw. So Town has been traced to Tie. If it
were certain that Tribus were vouds, derived from Tribuo = réuw,
we might account division to be the primitive sense of Tribus. But
then Tributum ought to mean anything divided or awarded ; whereas
it means the soldiers’ money paid by the Tribe. This suggests that
Tribus is the root, from which Tribuo also comes, and that the proper
meaning of the verb is “to furnish pay to soldiers:” cf. the use of
xopnyew. Contribuo and Distribuo often bear the sense of Tribus.
FEUDAL SOLDIERY. v7

These Sabino-Roman tribes superseded in fact the
three old Tuscan tribes of Tities, Ramnes and Lu-
ceres; the names of which were nevertheless retained
for good luck, and given peculiarly to the king’s
cavalry. :

Concerning the organization of the infantry in these
times, we know nothing positive; but as it may be
assumed that each Patrician went at the head of his
own Clients and younger relations, the army was vir-
tually divided into Genfes or Clans. This is essen-
tially feudal ; and if the view is correct, it must have
immensely aided to sustain the nobility against the
high power of the king. The Tributum, or war-tax*,
seems not to have existed before Servius Tullius. Ne-
vertheless, the. king had the absolute prerogative of
awarding the spoil, as we see by the later power of
the consuls; and when it was abundant and honour-
ably divided, he secured popularity thereby. More-
over the successive conquests of Rome gradually gave
the king a great preponderance of clients, and enabled
him to re-organize the army at his pleasure. Even in
the earliest days he had his permanent body-guard,
and the tenants of the crown-lands must of course
have been clients of the crown. Of crown-estates
indeed we know nothing from the historians; but it
is manifest of itself and from the known phenomena
in the early stage of every agricultural and settled

* So soon as it existed, the plebeian townsmen would certainly be
made to pay: yet all agree that the City Tribes date from Servius.
78 QUIRITARIAN LAND.

nation, that the king’s ordinary expenses must have
been defrayed by rent from crown-estates; though
we need not exclude the idea of yearly gifts, settled
by custom, from all the landed property. While
this simple arrangement lasted, there appears little
want of Finance Officers of the Crown ; nor have we
any proof that they arose until the later stage of the
monarchy.

No land could be recognized as properly Quirite,
and entitled to the full rights of Roman law, unless
it was ready to furnish and support soldiers for the
king; and therefore was registered under one of the
Tribes. At least, this appears as an immoveable
principle in later Rome. In consequence, none but
a Quirite could buy Quiritarian land. Whether a
client could have been allowed to purchase a patron’s
rights, we have no means of determining: and per-
haps the question would have been as idle, as to
ask whether a Russian serf may buy the estate of
a nobleman. No poor man was able to get rich by
industry. The booty of war was his best chance;
but the share of this which fell to the lot of common
men was small, and the habits of a successful soldier
are never parsimonious. It is not clear how early
the name Quirite was applicable to a Plebeian. Ori-
ginally, it may seem certain, that admission to the
Curies, with dedication to Quirinus and Juno Quiritis,
was essential : but from the reign of Servius all the
soldiers of the national army were Quirites and Cives
TRIBUNALS. 79

(warrior comrades); after which there cannot have
been any legal bar to their holding land in Quirita-
rian ownership.

Concerning the administration of justice, thus much
may be gathered. The king, as afterwards the consul
or praetor, ordinarily judged in person concerning
civil suits. Criminal cases of a grave nature it was
either his duty or his privilege to transfer to the
decision of “Two Men’ appointed by himself. Thus
when Horatius has slain his sister, king Tullus is
represented to say: “I constitute a Bench of Two
Men, according to the law.” Nor even so, did the
Quirites trust their lives to the king’s judges; but if
condemned, they were allowed to appeal to the tri-
bunal of the ¢iational assembly, which in theory pos-
sessed the sovereign right of acquittal or of mercy,
but practically would ¢fford a jury to the party en-
dangered. Some have questioned whether any but Pa-
tricians possessed the right of appeal : but if the life of
a client had been threatened, it would appear to have
been the duty and right of his patron to appeal in his
name. However, while the purely judiciary rights
of the king were thus limited, he possessed,—besides
absolute authority over life and death while com-
manding the army,—a power of arbitrarily punishing,
not his officials only, but all citizens, for any neglect
of duty and service. This made it a terrible thing to
incur his displeasure: to murder a sister may have
been less perilous, than to contest his authority.

’
80 CHURCH UNDER STATE.

Finally, the king of Rome, as those of Etruria
and of early Greece, was also the supreme religious
officer; and this is indeed the only character which
legend ascribed to Numa Pompilius. But whatever
Numa may have instituted in Rome, it cannot for a
moment be admitted that he originated principles of
religion strange to the Sabines. His task was, not,
to create—but, to enact—their modes of worship
and their politico-religious ceremonial. On religious
questions he judged authoritatively, as the Pontiffs
in later times; but it was understood that their de-
cisions were made by precedent,—certainly not by
their arbitrary will: and in every doubtful case which
involved religion, a king was expected to ask advice
of the professional augurs. In making war and peace,
or ratifying treaties, precedents were sought from the
Setiales, or sacred heralds. Thus, even in her most
infantine state, Sabine Rome showed the germs of
those peculiarities which at length made her so great :
—high aristocratical feeling, and an intense power
of submitting to discipline: profound veneration for
authority, and a rigid observance of order and prece-
dent: devotion to the national religion, yet subjec-
tion of all religious officers to the State: honour to
agriculture above all trades, and to arms above all
accomplishments. In such a stage of half-developed
morality,—mot to be warlike, is, not to be virtuous;
and not to be devoted to established religion, is, not
to have any deep-seated moral principle at all. As
SPRING OF PROGRESS. 81

long as Rome was subjected to antagonistic forces
from within and from without, she went on prosper-
ing and improving; and wins our sympathy, in spite
of her heartlessness towards foreigners. Nor during
any part of her history was the improvement more
rapid than in the kingly period. Until the fatal
destruction of her elective monarchy, she shoots up
with vigour so astonishing, as to excite a momentary
disbelief: and of this prosperity no better account
can be given, than that it was due to the rigid and
self-devoting virtue of the Sabines, joined to the
organizing genius of the Latins. The Sabine stamp
is the deepest; but it was the kings of Latin blood
or Latin party who gave comprehensiveness to the
institutions, and expanded them to receive new and
new citizens ;—a liberal policy, of which Rome never
had cause to repent.

E 3
82 SABINE ROME.

CHAPTER VI.
SABINO-ROMAN DYNASTY.

‘THREE names of kings in succession are given to
us,—Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Mar-
cius,—as filling a century of early Rome, and bring-
ing about a great development of its power. Where
the sources of knowledge are and were so fragmen-
tary, it must occur to us to doubt whether a conti-
nuous story has not been made out by the ingenuity
of later narrators. Every king is represented to have
greatly enlarged the city; which may excite a sus-
picion, that the names of those only have been pre-
served, who were remembered in some such connec-
tion. A century is not at all too much for the results
brought about; yet three elective monarchs cannot
have reigned so long. But the modern writer is in
these things bound to his ancient guides; for if he
entirely breaks loose from them, he is lost among in-
numerable possibilities.

The great aim of Numa’s administration and laws,
MIXTURE OF THE TWO RACES. 83

according to Plutarch *, was to bring about a thorough
union of Sabines and Romans; and his mode of ef-
fecting it evidently was, to initiate the Romans into
Sabine religion.

Plutarch’s words may deserve in part to be quoted.
“ By establishing for every class of persons (érdoTe
véver) suitable meetings and divine ceremonies, Numa
then first removed from the city the being called and
thought,—one part Sabines, and the other Romans;
and one part Tatius’s citizens, and the other Ro-
mulus’s; so that the distribution of the people be-
came a harmony and a mingling of all with all? lt
is manifest that this object would have been totally
thwarted, had he .put all the Romulians into one
tribe (Ramnes) and all the Sabines into another
(Tities), and assigned to the two a different and re-
pulsive religion, as so many learned men now believe.
As we know that the distinction of Sabine and Alban
did rapidly vanish in Rome, we cannot reject Plu-
tarch’s statement as a dream ; and we may safely rest
in the belief, that both nations were mixed indif-
ferently in the same curies, and in the same tribes.

With the same object, he distributed the artizans
into guilds, without respect to their race, and as-
signed to each its appropriate meetings and religion.
The guilds enumerated by Plutarch are, the musi-
cians, the goldsmiths, the carpenters, the dyers, the
shoemakers, the tanners, the smiths, the potters; and

* Numa, 17.
84 ECCLESIASM.

one more, which included all that have not been
named. We may reasonably conjecture that this
organization had arisen of itself among the Alban
population, and that it embraced the resident Tuscan
artificers; but Numa gave to it the colour of Sabine
religion, and used it to cement the middle classes of
Rome to the Sabine institutions.

By the contrast which the eminently ecclesiastical
stamp of the new dynasty bore to the times which
preceded, a darker shade was cast on them ; and the
people of Romulus was depicted as a lawless and
almost godless populace, because they had not the
Sabine ceremonies nor the stiffness of Sabine aris-
tocracy. So too the Latin form of marriage was
looked on by the Sabines as no marriage at all, and
the people who practised it were despised as degraded
and almost impure.

It may indeed at first cause surprize, that so poor
and thinly peopled a city as the Rome of Numa could
maintain so large a body of sacred persons as the
ancients tell us. Of the eight kinds of priests re-
counted by Dionysius, two indeed are common offi-
cers,—the Curions and the Tribunes of the Celeres
or body-guard. Every Cury had an officer called a
Curion, who must have been needed to perform many
miscellaneous functions, as a sort of Mayor, Recorder,
and Steward to it: his religious character was only
incidental; as is still more obviously the case with the
three captains of the guard. When the three ancient
ry am
{ *

| &
NUMEROUS PRIESTS. \

Romulian tribes had long remained only for SE
arly patrician purposes and for the auspices, Dio-
nysius not unnaturally reckoned the Tribunes of the
Celeres among priests, since all their other functions
had vanished, except that they officiated on certain
occasions. But besides these, six sorts of priests are
ascribed to Numa ;—the Flamens, the Augurs, the
Vestals, the Salians, the Fetials or Heralds at Arms,
and the Pontiffs.

The Flamens belonged to certain gods, especially to
Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus ; the Pontiffs, on the con-
trary, had general duties, and a superintendence over
the whole. They were to the Flamens, as a college of
Cardinals to the Deans of particular cathedrals.—The
Augurs were already a separate class under Numa,
perhaps nearly as the diviners (udvrers) in Greece,
and were consulted even by individuals: but it may
be doubted whether they were, properly speaking,
public officers (publici augures regis wel populi Ro-
mani) until the elder Tarquin, when their importance
to the Comitia and to the Armies was greatly en-
hanced. From the later position of State-Augurs and
Pontiffs it is manifest that the acceptance of such a
post did not withdraw men from eivil life, and there-
fore it is not necessary to suppose that the original
revenues sufficed to maintain the persons who held
the offices. The three high Flamens indeed appear
to have been almost exclusively ecclesiastical, as well
as the four (afterwards six) Vestal Virgins: and these
86 SALTANS AND FETIALS.

were maintained in much dignity. Respecting the
Salians it is difficult to ascertain whether their func-
tions interfered with ordinary employments, but we
may conjecture that they did not. Numa’s college of
Salians,— (called the Palatine, because their treasury
was on the Palatine hill,)—consisted of twelve men
of the best families, who during the first days of
March danced in armour and sang with music to the
honour of Mars Gradivus,—or, as Varro says, of Ma-
murius Veturius*. They are compared by Dionysius
to those whom the Greeks named Curetes, in regard
to the style of their warlike dancing: that the Ro-
mans were reminded of it by the dances of the Gauls
and Spaniards, is manifest by their applying the word
tripudia to the latter. At other times of the year,
we know of no duties which the Salians had to per-
form.

Nearly the same may be said of the Fetials. Even
before Ancus, they constituted a college which he-
reditarily transmitted by memory certain rules and
forms, to be practised in declaring war, in making
treaties, in receiving ambassadors or in demanding
redress. It was but very rarely that any actual ser-
vice was expected of a Fetial; and this service may
have been requited by the honour of the post, so that
a very narrow income sufficed to discharge the ex-

* Plutarch (Numa 13) records an opinion, that the Salians did not
sing to * Veturium Mamurium,” but to ¢ Veterem Memoriam ;” i.e.
to Auld lang syne!
TULLUS HOSTILIUS. 87

penses of the College. Thus on a closer examination
it may seem probable that the Vestals and the Fla-
mens (whom we may compare to nuns and clergy) were
the only persons in early Rome bearing an exclusively
sacred office. Six maiden ladies may live even in
superior style without large expense; and although
the Flamens were in all fifteen, three only of these
were signal in rank and wealthy provision. Thus the
establishments of Numa, however complicated, may
not have involved any great pecuniary burden.
Nevertheless, they were far from acceptable to the
old Romans, who had been adopted into the Sabine
religion by Numa, as forcibly perhaps as the Saxons
into Christianity -by Charlemagne. The next king
whom the records name, Tullus Hostilius, is repre-
sented as of Romulian blood, and decidedly adverse to
Sabine ceremonies. His name survives in the Curia
Hostilia, or oldest senate-house, of which he was the
reputed builder. Its walls stood until they were de-
stroyed by fire in the tumultuous obsequies paid to
the body of Publius Clodius in the last years of the
Republic, (B.C. 53, 52). That the two immediate
successors of Numa were alternately of Latin and of
Sabine descent, has been thought by many to prove
that the law commanded this alternation. We may
well believe, that it was agreed to for the sake of har-
mony, as at English elections parties make such com-
promises : but the law could not command it, without
excluding men of mixed blood from the royal power ;
88 OPPOSED TO SABINE RELIGION.

an enactment quite unimaginable from a legislator
whose aim was to blend the two nations into one.
The supposition moreover invents a gratuitous diffi-
culty in regard to the election of Tarquin. It was
not yet wholly unimportant to Rome, from which race
the king was chosen. The Sabine religion had not
yet become natural and native to the older patrician
race ; and our story attributes to Tullus a systematic
neglect of Numa’s ordinances, until the people were
affected by a general epidemic, under which Tullus
himself suffered. He then undertook to sacrifice to
Jupiter Elicius on the Aventine, according to Numa’s
directions ; but having blundered in the process, was
killed by lightning in his own house. Such was the
crisis which fixed Sabine ceremonies finally on Rome.
To ascertain how much is true in this narrative, is
impossible : but that the occurrence of pestilence
should have firmly established the new religion, if
some neglect of it had preceded, is in itself highly
probable.

But the great event of Tullus’s reign, is, the de-
struction of Alba Longa, the head of so many small
Latin towns. The narrative given of this by Livy is
infected with evident fiction. The Roman and Alban
armies (says he) were assembled for a campaign, and
Tullus invited the Albans to hear him harangue them.
They came without their arms; and while they were
listening, the soldiers of Tullus surrounded them;
seized the Alban dictator and cruelly tore him apart
FALL OF ALBA LONGA. 89

on a charge of treachery; marched off the whole
Alban population to Rome, and destroyed the town
of Alba without resistance. After trickery so astound-
ing, so ruthless, and so successful, Tullus admits the
Alban people without discrimination into the Roman
franchise, and gives them the Ceelian hill at Rome to
inhabit: moreover, to encourage them, he builds a
house there and lives in it himself. The chief families
of Alba are received into the Roman patriciate; and
new legions are made up from the commonalty. With
armies thus reinforced, Tullus feels himself strong
enough to attack the Sabines beyond the Anio¥.

To discern the falsity of this account is far easier
than to divine the truth which it obscures and super-
sedes. For ws two facts only are certain : first, that
Alba was destroyed; next, that numerous Albans be-
come citizens and even Senators at Rome, and were a
highly trustworthy part of the Roman community.
Livy recounts the Tullii, the Servilii, the Quinctii,
the Geganii, the Curiatii and the Cleelii as thus in-
troduced. It seems necessary to infer, either, that
these were the partizans of Rome against their native
country ; or, that the war between Rome and Alba is
wholly a fiction,—as Niebuhr regards it, who believes
that the Ancient Latins, and not the Romans, were
the enemy that destroyed Alba and possessed her ter-
ritory. Without deciding what power destroyed Alba,

* According to Livy, the Sabines were entirely conquered (devicti),
1. 31; yet under Tarquin the first, they appear as powerful as ever.
90 ALBAN PATRICIANS AT ROME.

it is admissible as a theory that her ruin arose as
much from within as from without. If internal sedi-
tions had broken up society ; if that which was twice
a serious threat and incipient action of the Roman
Plebs,—to secede to another country and leave the
Patricians to the mercy of Veians or Volscians,—be-
came a real act with a powerful Alban minority; the
rest of the story would become credible. Rome would
joyfully receive the Alban secession, and perhaps even
undertake to avenge their cause against their native
town : after which, there is nothing to hinder our be-
lieving the substance of Livy’s account. At any rate
Alba vanished from among the states of Latium, and
Rome claimed to succeed into all her rights.
Henceforth the Alban Mount was a sacred place
with the Romans. For the temples of the gods were
of course left standing, and the sacrifices were duly
performed by the refugees established at Rome. In
after times it became a yearly duty of the consuls to
sacrifice there; and on some extraordinary occasions
a successful general who is hindered from triumphing
at Rome, celebrates his triumph on the Alban Mount.
Tullus was succeeded by Ancus Marcius, a Sabine,
whom the historians call the son of Numa’s daughter.
His reign was at least as warlike as that of Tullus,
and was principally occupied against the Ancient
Latins, from whom he conquered many towns and
territory. The Roman story ascribes to him the first
application of legal solemnities to declaring war: but
ANCUS MARCIUS. 91

this seems to be invented, in order to make out for
his reign a more Sabine and religious character than
that of Tullus. For in fact, Livy himself (i. 24) re-
lates the religious formalities with which the Pater
Patratus of the Romans sanctioned Tullus’s compact
with the Latins; and Plutarch represents Numa to
have established the Fetiales. All that we can pro-
bably adopt, is, that as Rome grew greater, she more
anxiously sought to shake off the appearance of being
a mere robber city, and to assume the loftier tone of
right in commencing her wars. Politorium, Ficana,
Telleni, and Medullia are enumerated as Ancus’s Latin
conquests. But besides this, he coveted the sea-coast
of Latium and maritime facilities ; a mark of which is
his building Octia on the mouth of the Tiber. More-
over he encroached on the territory of Veii, an Etrus-
can city beyond the Tiber; took from it the district
called the Meesian Forest, and probably also the Jani-
culan Hill, which he fortified and joined to the city
by a wooden bridge over the Tiber. It was thence-
forth called the ““ Sublician” Bridge (or bridge built
on wooden piles), and was apparently made sacred :
for the priests received the duty of repairing it. This
curious fact guarantees to us, that the name Pontiff
(Pontifex, bridge-maker) does not date from the ear-
liest times.

That Tullus and Ancus each of them added a large
Latin population to the city and State of Rome, is
beyond dispute. The former, as has been stated,
92 NEW LATIN POPULATION IN ROME.

planted Albans on the Celian Hill, (which was sup-
posed to derive its name from Celes Vibenna, the
Etruscan captain,)—and the walls of Rome were
made to enclose this hill. Under Ancus the Aven-
tine also became partially occupied by Latin settlers,
after his conquest of Politorium; and this hill like-
wise was taken into the city. But at a much later
period, when the tribune Icilius passed a celebrated
law*, the Aventine was almost free from buildings:
we must therefore beware of exaggerating the amount
of population at this time transferred to Rome.

In one point the policy of Ancus differed from
that of Tullus,—and this deserves fuller explanation
than we can confidently give ;—he did not introduce
into the Senate, (and possibly not into the Patrician
clans,) the nobility of the conquered Latins. The fol-
lowing theory will at least give a specious interpreta-
tion of acknowledged facts.

On the one hand it is more than possible, (as
hinted,) that the Alban nobles, whom Tullus intro-
duced into full patriciate, were actual partizans of
Rome, and not conquered enemies: and this alone
would entirely account for the different conduct of
Ancus. But this does not suffice to explain the votes
of the Curiate assembly when Tarquin becomes a
candidate for the throne. We may admit that the

* Liv. iii. 31, 32; Dionys. x. 31, 32.
+ Thne ingeniously suggests that some Greek historian misunder-
stood the Roman phrase in civitatem recepti, for in urbem deducti.
THE KING'S OWN ARMY. 93

ennobled Albans would adopt every thing on which
the grandeur of Sabine patricians depended; and
therefore, try to induce the lower ranks of the Albans
(with whatever success) to enter into Sabine clientship
with them,—an institution strange to the Latins. But
many would refuse, and these of course swelled the
numbers of the free plebs; the result of which was soon
visible in the aggrandizement of the royal power.
When Tullus and Ancus went to war, they led out
not only the Patricians with their retainers, but like-
wise the bands of militia attached to the royal estates ;
and it is not to be imagined that they would refrain
from levying troops largely also from the new masses
of Latin plebeians, unattached® to patrician clans.
The king’s own army therefore began sensibly to
grow formidable, in comparison to what we may call
“his barons’ army ;” and all the unattached plebs
was virtually in clientship to the king. When Ancus
introduced so large a mass of new subjects, and added
none of them to the patriciate, discontent arose
among the existing patricians,—who saw their Order
to be sinking in comparison with the Crown,—and
also in the wealthier and noble Latins, who had no
career allowed them in their new country. If so, it
is not wonderful, that a man soon appeared, who

* Niebuhr has the ment of having first brought this whole topic
out into its due prominence; and although he is far too dogmatic
and often reasons very ill, he has hereby aided exceedingly to a
sounder discernment of the state of early Rome.
94 GROWTH OF THE STATE.

knew how to take advantage of the public dissatis-
faction.

But it is undoubted, that under Ancus the State
had grown steadily, as well as rapidly. It had be-
come powerful by sea, as well as by land; and was
already almost without an equal in Etruria as well as
in Latium. Such are the results of fixed law and
stern discipline, combined with that highly energetic
form of government, Elective Monarchy.
95

PART MIL

ETRUSCO-LATIN ROME.

; CHAPTER VIL.
ON THE ETRUSCANS.

Ancus Marcivs was succeeded on the throne of
~ Rome by an Etruscan, named Tarquin. Before we
enter into any of the details concerning the new
king, it is desirable to form a sharper notion of the
Etruscans, and of their land.

Etruria was bounded by the Tiber on the south, by
the Macra (Magra) on the north, and by the Apen-
nines in the interior; being larger than the modern
Tuscany. “The soil” (says Diodorus*) ¢ will bear
everything ; and being well cultivated, yields abun-

* Diodor. v, 40.
96 NAME OF THE ETRUSCANS.

dance of fruits, not only for sufficiency, but for
luxurious enjoyment; so that servants and freemen
alike have their own separate houses. From the uni-
versal fertility of the country, they can always keep
large stores in reserve. For, in short, Tyrrhenia sits
everywhere on open plains, divided by gently sloping
hills serviceable to agriculture, and is moderately
humid, as well in summer as in winter.” In modern
times, Tuscany has been called the garden of Italy;
but this description must perhaps be confined to the
vale of the Arno. In natural fertility, Campania and
Lombardy must fully equal it; but in those ancient
times no part of Italy was so turned to service by
skilful agriculture* as Etruria.

The Etruscans, who conquered their country from
the Umbrians, called themselves Rhasénat, but fo-
reign nations knew them by a name which under
all its varieties points to Twursh or Turch as the
radical element. The Umbrians (judging by the
Eugubine? tables) called them 7wrsci; a word which
the Romans vulgarly softened into 7Zusci or more
politely transposed into Efrusci. Their country must
have been called Etrusia by the old Latins, which,
by a well recognized tendency, became in the standard
Latin Etruria. The mother-city of Etruria,—that
from which they were believed to have spread over
"the land,—though now a mere ruin, still retains the

* Virg. Georg. ii. Sic fortis Etruria crevit.
+ Diongys. i. 30. I Goettling, § 21.
ETRUSCAN CULTURE. 97

name Turchina*, which the Romans made into Zar-
quinii t+, and called its legendary founder Tarchon.
On the other hand, Attic Greeks gave to the people
the name Twppmror (Tyrrheni) almost identical with
Turchini in sound ; while, as usual, the other Greeks
preferred to enunciate it as Tvponvor (Tyrseni), which
nearly preserves the primitive word Tursh.

It is not to be questioned that Tursh or Turch is
the true name of the nation, when we find Umbrians,
Romans, Greeks, and Lydians, to have agreed in so
denoting them. That they called themselves Rha-
séna, is not more wonderful than that the Romans
called themselves Quirites. Such an isolated fact}
is insufficient as a basis for any conclusions what-
ever. %

The Etruscans, in all civilizing art, were exceed-
ingly in advance of the other nations of Italy. They
belong indeed to the era of Pheenicia and of Egypt,
rather than of Greece, although in their later period
they borrowed largely from the plastic skill of Co-
rinth. Their tombs and their magnificent walls still

* Dennis’s Etruria, vol. i. p. 380.

4 The vowel @ in Tarquinii and Tarchon is also found in various
Etruscan inscriptions. Lanzi and Dennis give the forms Tarchnal,
Tarchnas, Tarchi, Tarchisa, etc. Dennis (ii. 44) believes that the
tomb of the Tarquins at Agylla or Ceere has been laid open.

1 For anything that we know, Rhaséna may mean Nobles. If we
were at liberty to assume that the Etruscans, like the Solymi of
Lycia, spoke a language of “Shemitic” relationship, we might con-
jecture that Rhas meant “head,” and that —éne was a mark of
plurality, as in Arabic —in, —in.

FB
98 PRIESTS, LETTERS AND TOMBS.

testify to their luxury and industrial power. Their
fleets commanded the seas, and their heavy-armed
infantry were unmatched on the land, before Rome
existed as a city. Their nobles were priests, as often
in Asia Minor; the ecclesiastical system was ancient
and very peculiar, and the use of letters familiar to
them in very early times. Their alphabet was a
modification of the Pheenician®*, and, what deserves
remark, like all the people of western Asia, they
wrote from right to left. Like the Egyptians, they
loved to cover the inner walls of their tombs with
painting, and besides, to stock them with valuable
pottery and furniture, to such an extent, that the
moderns, though knowing but a few words of their
language, have recovered a surprizing acquaintance
with their daily life. “The internal history of Etru-
? says Mr. Dennist, “is written on the mighty
walls of her cities and on other architectural monu-
ments; on her roads, her sewers, her tunnels, but
above all in her sepulchres. It is to be read on
graven rocks, and on the painted walls of tombs.
But its chief chronicles are inscribed on sarcophagi
and cinerary urns, on vases and goblets, on mirrors

ria,’

* Lanzi and Miiller believe the Etruscan letters to come from
Greek: Giamb. Bruni contends that they came direct from the
Pheenician alphabet. Walpole thinks their form strikingly like the
characters on the “tomb of Midas” in Asia Minor. Mr. Daniel
Sharpe, a high authority in such a subject, decidedly holds that the
Etruscans got their letters from Asia and nof from Greece.

+ Etruria, vol. i. p. xxiii.
CONTROVERTED ORIGIN. 99

and other articles in bronze, and a thousand ef cetera
of personal adornment, and of domestic and warlike
furniture—all found within the tombs of a people
long passed away.” We can have no doubt therefore
of their high cultivation; and this gives zest to the
question, whether it was developed independently on
Italian soil, or imported from Asia.

Their alphabet, written from right to left, imme-
diately suggests a direct transmission from the East:
and the same conclusion follows, the instant it is
admitted that a place so near to the sea as Tarquinii
is their mother-city. That it was so, all antiquity
believed, and the very name is a strong attestation :
for we have seen that Tarquinii is merely another
pronunciation »f Turchina. Again, if the Etruscans
had been a continental people who came from the
north into Italy, they could scarcely have been con-
fined to so very narrow an area; nor could they,
while leaving infinite memorials of themselves within
that small compass, leave none at all anywhere else.
This consideration seems in itself decisive, if we are
left to internal arguments.

Why then have so many able men in modern days
refused to believe that the Etruscans came to Italy
by sea? They have been incredulous that so nume-
rous a population can have been transported in the
small ships of the ancients. Yet why are they to be
thought more numerous than the Greeks of Sicily,
who undoubtedly came thither by long sea voyage ?

F2
100 THE PURE ETRUSCANS

or even than the Greek colonists of Asia Minor and
the neighbouring islands?

It is not to be imagined that all the inhabitants of
Etruria in the days of Tullus Hostilius were of pure
Etruscan blood, or that all the Asiatic Etruscans
arrived by a single trip. The Greek colonization of
Sicily suffices to explain that of Etruria. We may
conceive of a first fleet of Turchines or Etruscans, who
founded the town of Tarquinii, and called it after their
own name. Their success, reported to their home,
would naturally in due time bring a second and a
third colony, till the coast was studded with cities;
but only the oldest city could take the name of the
people. With the increase of their numbers and
strength, they would gradually colonize into the inte-
rior, and by fortifying their towns, secure themselves
against the rude natives; who in process of time were
entirely subdued, and incorporated into a single peo-
ple with them, though probably under political infe-
riority.

Now in fact, such a view is in fundamental agree-
ment with the almost universal belief of the ancients.
From Herodotus downward, they reported Lydia to
be the mother-country of the Etruscans; and though
it is naturally impossible to prove such a fact, nothing
is in evidence that should justly make it suspicious.

Dionysius, alone* of extant authors, rejected it

% Mr. Dennis (vol. i. p. xxxii.) has taken the pains to count up
twenty-two ancient authors who ascribe the origin of the Etrus-
WERE ASIATIC COLONISTS. 101

among the ancients: first, because Xanthus, a valued
historian of the Lydians, did not relate the coloni-
zation : secondly, because the language, religion, laws
and manners of the Etruscans did not resemble those
of the Lydians. But the closer we consider this
negative proof, the less does its weight seem to be.
Is the mere omission of Xanthus to weigh against
the positive testimony of Herodotus? The latter
distinctly assures us, that the Lydians believed the
Etruscans to be their kinsmen, and to have swarmed
from Lydia. Now (it has been well observed) the in-
ventive fancy in nations looks back into the past, not
onwards into the future: they feign forefathers, but
not children ; so that this belief of the Lydians is a
weighty circumptance. If the colonization of Etruria
was a gradual process, having no definite chronology,
it is not very wonderful that Xanthus omitted it.—
Again, the Etruscans landed on Umbrian soil, and
living in the midst of a more numerous Umbrian
(or Umbro-Pelasgian) population, probably suffered
a sensible change in their language. The Lydians
likewise, in nine or ten centuries, had undergone great

cans to Lydia.—As to Livy’s belief (v. 35) that the Rhetians were
Etruscans, his testimony about their language is very vague; yet if
it be accepted, there is no reason to reject his declaration, that the
Rhstians were Tuscan fugitives who escaped to the mountains in the
Gaulish invasion of Lombardy.—Prichard indeed (vol. iii. p. 91)
follows Zeuss in the belief that the Rhetians were a Keltic people.
Dennis (Note to p. xlv.) is disposed to believe Steub has succeeded in
showing many names of places in Rhaetia to be Etruscan,
102 LANGUAGE AND MANNERS.

vicissitudes. After the Persian conquest their man-
ners and character notoriously underwent a vast
change; and by the admixture of Greeks, Mysians,
Carians, Phrygians, Persians, their language also is
certain to have been seriously affected. It is there-
fore not wonderful if in the age of Dionysius they
were unintelligible to Etruscans ;—which is all that
we can receive from this historian’s statement*.
After all, the customs of the Etruscans are conceded
to be remarkably Lydian, or Asiatic, by those who
deny the Asiatic migration. If the two objections
raised by this author are set aside, we must surely
abide by the old opinion that the Etruscans came
from Lydia.

Although the inscription has not been Wiel
even in part, (no small proof in itself that the Etrus-
cans were not European,) it may interest the reader
to have before him the longest extant piece of Etruscan
writing ;—that on the Perusian monument, which is
therefore given at the end of this Chapter.

The great predominance of consonants,—which
must in so many cases have been sounded by the aid
of a very obscure vowel sound, omitted in the writ-
ing,—reminds us of Shemitic languages, by means

% Dennis aptly refers to Strabo’s remarkable words, (xiii. i fine) ;
“The Cibyrates use four languages,—the Pisidian, the Solyman, the
Greek, the Lydian; but of the last there is not even a trace in
Lydia.” Dionysius was Strabo’s contemporary, and but a few years

older; it would therefore seem that he mistook the language then
talked by the Liydians for the tongue of Creesus.
ETRUSCAN PEASANTRY. 103

of which indeed many of the separate words could
be explained. The contrast of this tongue to the two
Pelasgian lines exhibited in the first section, will be
visible to the reader at a glance.

Niebuhr often inculcates that in Etruria the ruling
race was separated from the mass of the people by a
vast chasm; and that the latter were miserable and
degraded serfs. His proofs appear to be extremely
slight*, yet he has been followed by nearly all the
moderns,—apparently because of the intrinsic proba-
bility that this must have been the result of such a
conquest. All that we seem to have a right to infer
from the facts reported, is, that nothing like demo-
cracy was developed in Etruria. The common people
did not concerr themselves in affairs of state: but
this does not indicate that they were subjected to
social oppression, or hindered from rising by inge-
nious industry. The Romans do not appear to have
discerned two languages and two races in Etruria:
we may therefore infer that conquerors and conquered
were blended in one nation.

* In vol. i. p. 121 (transl. 1847) he rests the fact on Dionysius’s
words (ix. 5), “ the most powerful men, leading out their own pea-
santry to war,’—robs éavrdy mevéoras. He adds a sentence, (intended,
it seems, as confirmation,)—that without a multitude of clients whom
they could employ in taskwork, their colossal works could hardly
have been achieved. Yet it surely is an axiom, that no work is
dearer than the forced toil of unintelligent men. The canal of Mo-
hammed Ali, dug by workmen whom he only fed and did not pay,
proved fully as expensive to him as free labour would have heen
while it cost thousands of deaths to the miserable labourers.
104 MASSIVE WALLS.

It is well known that the Romans extended and
secured their dominion by powerfully fortifying their
frontier colonies; but as we have full proof how
strong were the defences of the Etruscan Veii, while
Rome was in infancy, it is unreasonable to attri-
bute the massive walls of Etruria to Roman policy.
Rather, in this very matter they must have copied
the Etruscans. Indeed the Greeks in Sicily, and
the Norman barons in Scotland, appear to have
established themselves by the very same method:
the mason secured, what the soldier had won. But
in this method the Romans succeeded better than
the Etruscans, because they systematically sacrificed
freedom to centralization. Rome alone was to them
the centre of political action. But the Etruscan
colonists, having snapt the tie which bound them to
their original home, were not inclined to submit to
the yoke of Tarquinii or of any single city. Their
leading warriors became barons (Lucumones®) in
every new fortified place, and formed a wide-spread
aristocracy over all Etruria. As in the middle ages
of Europe, foreign war united many petty chieftains
under one leader, who for the time appeared to
foreigners as their king; but in peace the natural
independence of the several states returned. Their
mutual relations remind us more of Greece than of
Rome. Every colony,—or every new fortified town,—

* Qoettling approves of Miiller’s conjecture that this word meant
primogeniti. T
CONGRESSES. 105

seems to have become a new State; yet a brotherly
union was kept up with the other cities. Public Con-
gresses were common; and Etruria, like Carthage,
has a great superiority over the cities of Greek or
Latin race, in avoiding civil wars.

The Etruscan warriors were armed like Homeric
heroes; though the coat of mail was probably com-
moner with the Etruscans. It is not to be supposed
that they owed anything of this sort to the Greeks:
the Carians, Philistines, Egyptians, and Assyrians
long before had all this armour. Since we know
that they fought in phalanx * like the Greeks, we can-
not wonder that they were superior to the rude Um-
brians. Moreover, while advancing into the interior,
the Etruscans never lost the sea-coast and their con-
nexion with the western seas. Tarquinii is celebrated
for its maritime commerce, and, as we have seen,
gave to the Greeks their name for all the Etruscans.
By this channel the elegant arts of Egypt, Pheenicia,
and Asia Minor found their way into Italy, at a time
when Greece proper was still rude; but as soon as
she began to unfold her peculiar genius in sculpture,
moulding, and painting, the Tarquinians imported
her productions and imitated her skill. That the
neighbouring city of Volci emulated Tarquinii in art
and in maritime activity, seems to be attested by the
wonderful remains of its necropolis*.

* Diodor. Excerpt. Maii, xxiii. 1.
1 Volci (or Volcientes, Volcentani) is very rarely named in ancient

F 3
106 SPLENDOUR AND VOLUPTUOUSNESS.

From the union of maritime enterprise, manufac-
turing industry, taste in art, and prowess in war,
which the Etruscans displayed, we might expect, and
we find, great advances in wealth and luxury*. The
splendour of their public pageants was similar to that
of Medieval Europe, and their favourite engravings
testify how large a part of their aspirations was di-
rected towards tasteful and superb entertainments.
In their conception the inhabitants of heaven, like
the Homeric gods, were permanently occupied at the
banqueting table of Jupiter. When their military
spirit was afterwards broken by reverses, they were
reproached by Greeks and Romans as effeminate and
sensual : but both of the accusers, by the operation of
the same causes, have had in turn to bear the same
reproach: where freedom is lost, all material cultiva-
tion suffers this degeneracy. But until the all-ruining
power of Rome had grown up, Etruria, like Greece
and Pheenicia, sent forth civilizing influences, in which
energy was preserved in spite of prevalent voluptuous-
ness. We must at the same time confess, that a shame-
ful custom, ascribed by Herodotus to the Lydian ple-

writers, and has become eminent only from the discoveries of exca-
vators. It lies about eighteen miles N. W. of Tarquinii, on the river
Arminia (or Fiora), and is about seven or eight miles from the sea.
The river is now regarded as unnavigable.

* Diodor. v. 40. The high admiration which he expresses of the
Etruscans, praising their “literature, physiology and theology,” as
well as their arts of war and peace, might soften the terms in which
Niebuhr speaks of the contempt in which the Etruscans were held by
Greeks and Romans ; vol. i. p. 109. trn.
HELLENIC ADMIXTURE. 107

beians, is alluded to by Plautus* as common among
the Etruscans, and gives us a low conception of their
domestic purity : namely, that young girls without
reproof earned their dowries by prostitution, with a
view to marrying respectably. This coincidence more-
over is a strong confirmation of the Lydian origin of
the Etruscans; for, allowing that the arts of peace
and war, costume and games, may have been brought
from Asia by naval commerce, certainly such a cus-
tom as this could not have been so imported.

It is sufficiently clear that Etruscan elements in
Italy were mingled with the other two foreign in-
fluences which we named,—Hellenic and Pelasgian.
In Falerium and Fescennium, contiguous inland towns
of southern Etruria, Dionysius (i. 21) witnesses that
there were not merely Argive spears and shields, he-
ralds like the Greek srjpuxes, temples and sacred cha-
pels, purifications and sacrifices, but many other things
convincingly Hellenic, especially the sacred ministries
in the temple of Here (Juno) at Falerium. The women
who served in the consecrated ground, the basket-
bearing maiden (kavndépos) who has to begin the
rites (vardpyecfar) and the dances of young girls
singing to the goddess, were unmistakeably Hellenic.
Clusium, called Camers before its conquest by the
Etruscans, was said to have been founded by Telema-
chus: and the names of Pyrgi, Pisa and Telamon, as
of the rivers Lynceus and Macres, at once testify to

* Plaut. Cistell. TI. 3,20: Herod. 1.93; also Hor. Od. IIL. x. 12.
108 PELASGIAN ADMIXTURE.

Greek colonies. Nor was this wonderful ; for earlier
than all historical record, Tibur, Formise, Amycle,
Tusculum, are ascribed to the same source of popu-
lation : on the site of Rome itself, once lay the little
Greek town of Evander, and across the Tiber the
fortress called Antipolis on the Janiculum.

Later Greek writers, like the Romans, used the
name Pelasgian with great vagueness: hence it is
often difficult to interpret their statements. Yet it is
on the whole sufficiently clear, that there was a strictly
Pelasgian, besides the Hellenic, colonization into
Etruria. Especially Agylla, afterwards called Ceere,
was, (as above remarked, ) a Pelasgian* foundation. Yet
it is named a colony of Tarquinii; probably in the
Roman sense, after it was forced to submit to Etruscan
sovereignty. That this city kept up close relations
with Greece, is manifested in part by the name of her
sea-port (Pyrgi,) in which was a temple to Eilethyia,
a Greek goddess. Agylla moreover had a store-room
at Delphi, and consulted the Delphian oracle in a time
of distress. The great richness and beauty displayed

* When we read that it was founded by Pelasgians from Thessaly
(Strabo, v. 2, p. 856, Tauchnitz) we have no ground for supposing
there were documents which established this ; hence it is only reason-
able to infer with Niebuhr, that the current notion that Thessaly was
the centre whence the Pelasgians spread generated this phraseology.
The same remark holds as to the migration of these Pelasgians from
the north-east. It was taken for granted that they came by that
course, if they came from Thessaly. So Justin (xx. 1) calls Tarquinii

a Thessalian colony.
+ Strabo v. 2, pp. 365 and 356, Tauchnitz.—This must not be used
HELLENIC RELIGION. 109

in her tombs made her a worthy rival of Tarquinii
and Volei.—Near to Gravisce, the port of Tarquinii,
was shown a place called Regis Villa by the Romans,
where “the Pelasgian king Malxeotes
to have dwelt.

How strong was the Hellenic influence on southern

? was believed

Etruria, is remarkably seen in the two words Haruspex
and Hariolus+t, which are manifestly corrupt Greek.
The Etruscans had strong religious peculiarities of
their own, and it was the special business of the class
called Haruspices to study and transmit orthodox ce-
remonialism. It is then a most signal circumstance
to find these called by a Greek name. As certainly as
the words Bishop and Church, existing among Anglo-
Saxons, prove the influence over England of a religion
developed in Greece, so do the words Haruspex and
Hariolus in Etruria, if indeed these words were known
except in the Pelasgian settlements. But it must not
be overlooked that all the religious innovations in
Rome which are ascribed to the first Tarquin, are pre-
cisely such as a potentate from Corinth or Elis might
equally well have imported; namely, images of the
gods, bloody sacrifices, inspection of the victims, the
joint worship of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, with
splendour in horse-racing and boxing-matches.

in proof that Agylla was Hellenic. King Croesus also had a storeroom
at Delphi, and consulted the God ; yet he was a Lydian.

* Strabo v. 2. p. 365.

t Haruspex evidently is for ieposkdmos, and Hariolus is a Latinized
diminutive of iepebs.
110 ETRUSCAN SUPERIORITY.

On the whole it appears, that north of the Tiber,
the Etruscan influence swallowed up into itself both
the Pelasgian and the Hellenic, so as to produce a
homogeneous result. Hellenic religion and art sen-
sibly modified those of southern Etruria, but only as
afterwards those of Rome. The animating spirit of
institutions and of life lay in the Etruscan element
of society, and worked very vigorously through the
whole district which the moderns name Tuscany. In
fact, we must ascribe it to the early superiority of the
Etruscans, that stray chieftains from among them,
such as Celes Vibenna, are reported to have exerted
power in the Rome of Romulus, and that Rome itself
was founded with Etruscan rites. Just so, a Lydian
Pelops in early Greece, a Hellenic chieftain among
Siculians, a Norman among Gaelic or Saxon Scotch,
readily assumed command.

The ancients believed that the Etruscan dominion
at one time embraced both Lombardy and Campania,
and that in each of the three great districts there
were fwelve Etruscan cities: but in none of the three
can the number twelve be made out. In Etruria
there are more than twelve, in Lombardy and Campa-
nia fewer. In Lombardy, nothing is known beyond
the names of certain towns, Felsima, Melpum in the
Milanese, Adria, Mantua, Ravenna, and perhaps
Verona. These may be conjectured to be rather
factories and garrisons, than native cities, and by
no means imply any government exercised over the
INFLUENCE BEYOND TUSCANY. 111

entire country. Polybius (ii. 17) evidently supposed
that this threefold empire was a great simultaneous
whole. But it was never centralized, and the Lom-
bard towns were overpowered by the Gauls before
any Etruscan influence that we can trace began in
Campania. The Gauls did not cross the Alps till
the reign of Tarquin the elder, and gradually became
masters of Lombardy; they seem to have driven out
a great mass of Umbrian population with the Etrus-
cans. It was probably as a result of this, that in the
year 524 B.C. (if we accept the reckoning of Diony-
sius) an immense host of Etruscans, Umbrians, and
Daunians invaded Campania, and made a formidable
attack on the Greek town of Cuma : whence however
they were repulsed with vast slaughter by Aristo-
demus. This, as far as we know, was the first entrance
of Etruscans into Campania.

The Etruscan language, like the modern Greek,
did not contain the sounds 4 and d. It is generally
asserted also to have been without the sound g; but
it employs both ¢ and %, and the % is often denoted
by Roman g, when Etruscan words are put into
Roman letters. It may therefore be suspected that
the Etruscans had the two sounds, though their
orthography may have been imperfect; especially
112 ETRUSCAN ALPHABET

when it is remembered that the old Romans wrote
C for G in many words. The letter O was certainly
wanting, but they distinguished U from V, which the
Romans did not.

The alphabet collectively may be written

acefhfiklmnprstuvyxyz

In turning Etruscan into Roman letters, we are
used (improperly, according to Mueller) to write f for
v, and ph for f: thus we make that Menerfa, which
was with the Etruscans Menervea, as with the Romans.
But whether the v (Vau, Digamma) had the sound of
English v, or, as in old Latin, that of our w, remains
doubtful. Also, although Mueller does not doubt
that the sounds of English s and z represent the two
forms of S in Etruscan, he is uncertain which form
had the sharp, and which the blunt sound :—a similar
question to that concerning ¢ and %.

Mueller supposes that # is as in Latin, or as Greek
£; x is the guttural ck of the Germans. But Dennis
treats this « as Greek &

The mode of writing the vowels in Etruscan de-
serves attention. It is well known that the old
Hebrew and old Arabic used only three principal
vowel marks, long and short, and that the character
from which the Greek O descended is a consonant in
those tongues,—viz. the Hebrew » ("Ain). The ab-
sence of the letter O in Etruscan is generally regarded
to prove that the language had not the sound: but
CAME DIRECT FROM ASIA. 113

we might as well infer that Hebrew and Arabic had
not the sound, because they have no letter of the
alphabet to represent it. Now Mueller gives nu-
merous instances of words written both in Etruscan
and also in ancient Roman letters, in which the
Etruscan u is turned into Roman o. Thus Aurse is
horse ; thus fukukwm [vukukum ?] is vocucom ; pu-
pluper is popluper ; Krapufi [Krapuvi?] is Grabovei.
The natural inference is, that the Etruscan had the
two sounds o and %, but, having adopted the alphabet
of a Syro-Arabian people, had no character for O.
Moreover the letter O itself is in Etruscan used as
equivalent to ©, and therefore could not be adopted
in its Greek sense.

The tendency ef this is to Smengthen the argument
of those, who derive the Etruscan alphabet direct
from Asia.

It may also appear, that they did not always learn
their Greek names from mouths that spoke the purest
Greek. Else why should they make ITepaevs, IToav-
vewkns, Oeris, Tyhedos, into Ferse, Fulnike, Oelus,
Oclafe, when the Etruscan had p and ¢?

The inscription on the Perusinian monument is
given by Mueller (p. 61) as edited by Vermiglioli.
The writing is said to be very clear. The division of
words (says Mueller) seems to be arbitrary, except
where a point is placed. In the copy here given, v, f
are written for the Etruscan letters which Vermiglioli
denotes by f, ph. Also 0 x z are written, as better
114 PERUSINE INSCRIPTION.

than the arbitrary th, ch, {. (For the x, however,
Dennis would write z.)

BROAD SIDE OF THE PILLAR, TWENTY-FOUR LINES.

eulat. tanna. larexul | amevayr lain. velbinas e |

st la afunas zlel ed car | texan fuslers tezns teis |
rasnes ipa ama hen napr | X11 velbina Ouras aras pe |
ras cemulmlezcul zuct en | ezci epl tularu |

aulesi. velbinas arxznal cl | ensi. 6. ils cuna. cenu. e |
ple. felic. larbals afunes | clen Gunculbe |

Salas. yiem fusle. vel@ina | hinfa cape municlet mazu |
naper. srancal 01 flasti v | elbina. hut. naper. penexs |
maz. acnina. clel. afuna. vel | Ginam leraxinia. intimame
7 enl. velBina xias atene | tezne. eca. velbina. Ouras. 6 |
aura helu tezne rasne cei | tezns teis rasnes xtmbs p |
el Buias cuna afunam ena | hen naper cienl harcutuse.

NARROW SIDE, TWENTY-TWO LINES.

velbinas | atena xuc | i. enezci. ip | a. spelane |

i. fulumy | fa spelbi | rencbi est | ac vel@ina |

ac lune | tunuresc | unexea xuc | © enezci. ab |
wmics afu | nas. penbn | a. ama velb | ina. afun |
Ouruni. ein | xeriunac x | a. 0il Quny | wlll. ix. ca |
cexaxt yux | e.

Dennis gives the following list, as the total of our
Etruscan knowledge; vol. i. p. 45.

Aesar, deus Burros, poculum
Agalletor, puer Balteus

Andas, Boreas Capra vo bi atin Tatty
Anhelos, aurora Cassis . .

Antar, aquila Celer ..

Aracos, accipiter (fepara) Capys, falco

Arimos, simia Damnus, equus

Arse verse, averte ignem Drouna, principium

Ataison, vitis Falando, ccelum (Valando ?)
SHORT VOCABULARY. 115

Gapos, currus
Hister, Iudio
Iduare, dividere
Idulus, ovis

Ttus, idus

Lana, XAawa ?
Lanista, carnifex
Lar(6), dominus
Lucumo, princeps

Mantisa, additamentum
Nanos, vagabundus
Nepos, luxuriosus ?
Rasena, Etrusci
Subulo, tibicen

Ril avil, vixit annos
Clan, filius?

Sec, filia ?

The letters G D and O are not here excluded from
Etruscan. But it seems clear, that the terminations
of these Etruscan words have been Latinized, and
probably therefore the spelling. Even this does not
account for the B in Burros, Balteus, Subulo; and
Balteus, as Sabine and Gaelic, is not likely to have
been native in the Etruscan.

¢
116 ETRUSCO-LATIN ROME.

CHAPTER VIII
TARQUIN THE ELDER.

IN passing from the reign of the Sabine Ancus to that
of the Etruscan Tarquin, the moderns have imagined
that there is a chasm to overleap, which the rhetorical
historians of antiquity ill conceal. They have thought
that the disparity in the power and wealth of Rome is
too great to have been produced from within: hence
the suspicion that Tarquin the First was strictly a
conqueror of Rome: and it must be admitted that
the vanity of the later Romans would certainly have
obscured the conquest, if, like Alexander to the Per-
sians, the invader proved a sagacious prince, who tried
to develope, not to destroy, their nationality.

On the other hand, there is nothing in the facts
which remain to us that forces us to adopt this theory.
As to the imagined chasm, it in part depends upon an
exaggerated view of Tarquin’s greatness as compared
with Ancus, in part on modern fictions concerning
the constitution. It appears safer therefore to tell the
ORIGIN OF TARQUIN. 117

tale of the Tarquins with the least possible deviation
from the outline which the Romans believed.

The account given by Livy and Dionysius of the
origin of the elder Tarquin, is simple, natural, every
way credible: and if we reject it, we can put nothing
into its place. He derived his birth from Corinthian
parents, who had settled at Tarquinii in Etruria: a
later age confidently, but it seems erroneously, named
his father Demaratus®*. The belief of his Corinthian
origin testifies at any rate to the persuasion, that the
influences introduced into Rome by Tarquin were half
Greek in character. He married an Etruscan lady of
rank, named Tanaquil; but finding his Corinthian
blood to hinder his rise, he migrated to Rome, where
he heard that ne impediments on this score would
annoy him.

In a later stage of national growth, to be a foreigner
is a fatal obstacle to advancement. So is it in England,
and in all the old countries of Europe: but not so in
Russia, nor in America; nor was it so in the Middle
Ages. Early Athens and early Rome were careless
about the race of a brave man; though each city in
its later period became fastidious. With perfect dis-
cernment of this, Livy and Dionysius attribute to
Tarquin the sentiment, that “a new city” like Rome,
will look only to personal merit. Tarquinii, as other

* Since the Romans did not know the native name of Tarquin
himself, it is unlikely that they knew that of his father. Demaratus
was a well-known Corinthian emigrant to Etruria, in early times.
118 MIGRATION OF TARQUIN.

Etrurian towns, was so far advanced in art, as to have
attained pride in its own superiority and contempt of
“outside barbarians.” No stronger cause was needed
for 2 man like Tarquin to remove to Rome. He mi-
grated with a great troop of friends and retainers;
who were hospitably received in Rome, and esta-
blished there under the name of the Gens Tarquinia*,
or Clan derived from Tarquinii. This circumstance
makes it improbable that any Roman clan hitherto
had been notoriously Etruscan. He is said to have
brought great wealth with him. Livy tells us, that
he speedily obtained the friendship of king Ancus by
his personal accomplishments; the nature of the case
may have suggested to Dionysius that he ingratiated
himself by rare presents, as also by his eminent war-
like service. We can scarcely be wrong in believing
his account, that Tarquin received an allotment of
land for his whole clan, with admission into the Qui-
rite patricians. Such in fact was the parallel history
of the first Appius Claudius. Moreover, the state-
ment of Dionysius is intrinsically credible, that the
Tarquinian Clan so reinforced the Roman armies, as
sensibly to contribute to Ancus’s successes against the
Latins ; in which case it would have earned for itself
estates in Latium, which the rude justice of the Qui-
rites would gladly sanction. We do not know enough
of the condition of Etruria to judge, whether Tana-

* In Cicero De Rep. ii. 25, the Gens Tarquinia appears.
1 Dionys. iii. 48.
TARQUIN’S FIRST RISE. 119

quil, on whom the Romans seem to have bestowed
the Latin name of Caia Cecilia*, may have retained
a right to the rents of Tarquinian estates even while
an absentee at Rome. But considering the general
advances of commerce and art in Tarquinii, and the
necessarily high standard which landed rents then as-
sume in a limited territory, we see no disproof of such
a theory. If it be admitted as possible, that Tarquin
even in Rome continued to enjoy the revenues and
connection, as well as the name, of an Etruscan Lu-
cumo, it may make the rest of the story still more
intelligible.

An Etruscan, of Corinthian birth, was likely to pos-
sess an extent of geographical and political infor-
mation, which myst have been surprizing to a rigid
Sabine; and as his warlike skill is also highly com-
mended, there is nothing absurd in the statement,
that Ancus made him by will governor of his children.
As nothing turns upon it, this appears like a genuine
tradition. On the death of Ancus, a new king was
to be elected; but no precedent existed for any one
offering his name as a candidate for the royal power.
It has appeared from the account in Plutarch, and by
the nature of the case, that it was the Senate’s duty
to suggest a name to the Interrex; after which the
Interrex asked the Curies, “ Will you, or will you not,
have such a one for your king ?”” But it was not pro-
bable that the Senate would name an Etruscan: Tar-

* Varro in Niebuhr.
120 THE LESSER CLANS.

quin therefore (as the Romans called the head of the
Gens Tarquinia) resolved upon the innovation of soli-
citing votes, a thing previously unheard of among the
Sabines. A party in Rome whom he chiefly tried to
win over, were either already called, or were shortly
after called, the Lesser Clans. On their position be-
fore his election there may be some uncertainty.

If Livy were our only guide, we might possibly
imagine that the Lesser Clans were already patricians,
though none of their members were yet called into
the Senate. Such an anomaly would suggest, that
they had been Etruscan, and that their foreign
tongue had been the impediment to summoning them
to council; but that when, after some generations,
they all talked Latin, discontent arose at the restric-
tion, and their votes in the Curies supported the
candidate for the throne who promised to abolish it.
And this might at first seem the easiest explanation
of the events*.

But Livy’s account, though obscure, contains, that
that the name “Lesser Clans’ was not given till after
their elevation by Tarquin. Probably then he meant
the same thing as Dionysius expressly declares, and
which we must be content to follow.—Both historians
agree that Tarquin courted the plebs, and was suc-
cessful by their favour. Yet it must not be inferred,

* T have above suggested that the very name * Gens Tarquinia”
goes to prove that no clan of Rome at that time was regarded as
Etruscan: which would be another objection to this theory.
ELECTION OF TARQUIN. 121

that the plebs had any vote in the Curies; but we
know well in England, how great an influence the
earnestly expressed desire of the unenfranchised masses
exercises on the votes of Parliament; and we need
not doubt that a like effect would be produced on the
Curies by the warm zeal of powerful Latin chieftains,
whose disaffection to a new king might weaken the
State. In every rapidly advancing community, whe-
ther kingly Rome or republican North America, the
movement party is apt to be the stronger. To the
whole Latin interest, as well as to the Etruscan,
Tarquin, as a foreigner, was more trustworthy than
an old patrician could have been. His personal ac-
complishments, wealth, and bravery, recommended
him to the Curiesy and if, at this period, he promised,
upon his election, to move for adopting a large body of
distinguished men of foreign origin into the patriciate,
it is possible (as already hinted) that this very pro-
mise may have been equally acceptable to the existing
patrician body, if they saw that by retaining a powerful
class unenfranchised, and therefore in direct depen-
dence on the Crown, the king was becoming formi-
dable to the interests of their Order. The election
of Tarquin under such circumstances is not so violent
an innovation, as to need the theory of a foreign
conquest. That the usual formalities of the Interreges
were observed, is stated by Dionysius, and perhaps is
rightly assumed. Certain it is, that the Etruscan
became king, and that no Roman suspected any de-
G
122 SHOW OF FORCE AT ELECTIONS.

corous and legal rite to have been wanting in his
enthronement.

If it be admitted that his personal canvassing and
the pledges which he gave before election, or demon-
strations of warlike force, made perhaps by his par-
tizans, were a breach® of Sabine propriety, yet this
must not be confounded with the violence of conquest.
There is much between the two. Let us remember
how William the Norman was first crowned king of
England. He had a claim to the crown by birth,—
though a very bad one: his immediate rival fell in
the battle of Hastings; the nearest heir was an inca-
pable youth: William was an energetic man, whom
warriors would not be ashamed to follow. A compro-
mise took place, and he was received as king.—In the
elections of Poland it is notorious how many votes
were won by the possession of powerful retinues. No
doubt, an election so obtained weakens constitutional
morality, and prepares worse times in the future.
Indeed the breach of precedent once established at
Tarquin’s elevation, is the probable reason, that hence-
forward the succession of the throne was seized and
not waited for. This result was less likely to follow -
from an avowed conquest, than from such a smaller
innovation as Livy narrates.

* Tt is not credible that there was any law to enact that the king
must be alternately Sabine and Romulian, (which would of course
make the election of an Etruscan absolutely unlawful;) for such a
law would have practically prohibited the fusion of the two races.
NEW PATRICIANS AND SENATORS. 123

As King, Tarquin could bring before the Curies
the proposal to admit his partizans into the patriciate ;
and the Curies, who had just elected him with a fore-
knowledge of his intentions, were not likely to refuse:

but it must be carefully observed, that it lay entirely
with them to admit or refuse admission. On the
contrary, the King had equally unquestioned right to
call any patrician into his Senate (or Privy Council).
Whether he could place a plebeian there, is perhaps
a question of mere curiosity; for it would seem that
such a proceeding would have been too offensive® to
be thought of.—In result, the ancients believed that
the Senate now received ¢ hundred new members,
chosen from the new patricians, who were called the
Lesser Clans. ,

It must be believed that the Latin language was
already talked in the Senate, though not suck a Latin
as we could understand. Had the Sabine tongue
established itself there, the easy fusion of parties
which we trace, would hardly have been possible.
But as our Norman barons became Anglicized in five
or six generations, so was it with the Sabines, when
introduced into a prevailingly Latin community : and
Numa’s measures for blending the two races were
fully successful.

* Under the early republic, we find plebeians in the Senate who
had not held any high magistracy. These must have been introduced
by the favour of some consul or consular tribune: which indicates

that the king would have been thought to exercise a right that
belonged to him, had he brought a plebeian into the Senate.

G 2
124 THE CAVALRY DOUBLED.

Tarquin farther resolved to double his cavalry ;—
as Livy supposed, for purely military reasons; but
the moderns in general refuse this explanation as
superficial. Hitherto, the three squadrons of knights,
named after the obsolete tribes 7ities, Ramnes, Lu-
ceres, had been composed entirely of young patricians.
It was natural to make new squadrons, taken from
the new patricians of the Lesser Clans; and this is
exactly what Tarquin did. In fact, we have reason
to believe that to this circumstance alone we owe
the preservation of the title, Greater and Lesser Clans,
which was perpetuated to the very end of the Roman
republic, although it never had any political signifi-
cance whatever, as far as we can discern. Apparently,
as, for augural good luck, the names of the three
Romulian squadrons and their Tribunes (whom Dio-
nysius* treats only as Priests) were continued to the
last, so were the names of the Greater and Lesser
Clans, when six squadrons were formed: but, to hu-
mour the scruples of the augur Attus Navius, Tarquin
did not introduce three new names, but called them
first and second Tities, first and second Ramnes, first
and second Luceres; the three squadrons named
second, being (as we suppose) composed of the Lesser
Clans.

Whether any deeper policy lay at the bottom of
the augur’s objections, we have no materials for de-
termining. To a Roman augur at any time of the

* Dion. ii. 64.
RELIGIOUS INNOVATIONS. 125

republic it would have seemed an ill omen and a
scandal to alter any number consecrated by augury.
When three names had been transmitted as holy from
unknown antiquity, to add to them (he would urge)
must offend the gods. No doubt at a later time, we
observe that the conservative party, when beaten in
constitutional battle, betakes itself to pretences of
religion in order to save whatever yet can be saved :
but unless there had been a time when such religious
scruples were real, and not pretended, they never
could have been useful screens of political motive.

At any rate, Tarquin was too prudent to give to
opponents any handle of religion against him. He
might rather seem resolved to beat them with their
own weapons, by’adding fresh honour to augury and
fresh splendour to every sacred ceremonial. His reli-
gious innovations, when examined in detail, will not
appear at all calculated to offend Roman scrupulosity,
but rather to gratify taste for art and for gorgeousness.
He introduced sculptured images of the gods, which
the low state of art, rather than principle, had pre-
viously forbidden. The foundation was laid of a splen-
did temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, in which Juno and
Minerva* had their appropriate shrines. The augurs
were probably now first incorporated into public col-

* The name Minerva seems to be Etruscan, though the conception
has been filled up from the Greek Pallas Athene. The names Jupiter
and Junone are pure Latin,—in Sabine, Janus and Jana (¢.e. Dianus
and Diana),—in Etruscan, Tinia and Kupra.
126 NEW SPLENDOUR IN THE STATE.

leges, and thereby invested with their full dignity in
the state. Etruscan haruspices were indeed consulted
by Tarquin, but did not become public officers. They
rather stood outside of the State, like the Pythia of
the Delphic oracle, or perhaps like the diviners of the
Greek republics. Yet as, from this period downward,
the interior of slain victims was occasionally inspected
in Greek fashion, and omens by lightning were inter-
preted by Etruscan rules, the assistance of an Aaruspex
was often necessary. Tarquin also brought-in horse-
races and boxers, instituted the Great or Roman
Games, and built the Circus Maximus for the conve-
nience of spectators. All these novelties are at least
as much Greek as Etruscan, and agree with the belief
that Greek commerce had already largely affected the
taste and religion of southern Etruria. In all his
changes, the new king did but spread Etruscan var-
nish over the rigid framework of Numa.

Similarly he added to the outward pomp of royalty.
According to Dionysius, (iii. 61) he was the earliest
Roman king who assumed the Etruscan insignia of
magistracy,—‘“a golden crown, an ivory chair, a
sceptre topped with an eagle, a crimson robe studded
with gold, and a variegated crimson cloak, such as
the kings of the Lydians and Persians wore, only not
square like theirs, but semicircular. Such garments
the Romans call togas.” He proceeds to tell, that
some ascribed to Tarquin the introduction of the
custom, of having twelve lictors armed with axes to
REGAL INSIGNIA. 127

precede the king. This also he calls Etruscan, but
confesses that some alledged it to have come down
from the beginning of the monarchy.

In fact, it seems necessary to believe this, unless
we regard Tarquin as in the strictest sense conqueror
of Rome; for of all insignia this must have been the
most revolting, if suddenly introduced. Only on the
supposition of its representing supreme military sway,
could it be endured by free men. A barbarous em-
blem, natural and in some sense necessary in a camp
of promiscuous outlaws, was continued and incorpo-
rated with the splendid garb of peace, when order
and art had become victorious in society.

Modern critics in general reject, and with good
reason, the great conquest of Etruria ascribed to Tar-
quin by Dionysius, the only foundation of which per-
haps lay in Tarquin’s assumption of the regal pomp of
Etruria. The only wars attributed to him by Livy
and others, are against the Sabines and against the
Latins ; and Livy never undervalues the military suc-
cesses of Rome.

Tarquin had undertaken the arduous and splendid
task of encircling the city with a stone-wall, but was
interrupted by an attack of the Sabines, and Rome
itself came into no small danger. Yet according to
our historian, the Sabines were not only repelled, but
forced to cede their own town of Collatia as the
penalty of their rashness.

From the Latins this king took the town of Apiolz,
128 MILITARY SUCCESSES.

whence he obtained great booty. Against the Ancient
Latins he had still more decided success, so that the
towns of Corniculum, old Ficulea, Cameria, Crustu-
merium, Ameriola, Medullia, Nomentum, acknow-
ledged the supremacy of Rome, the power and wealth
of which kept perpetually swelling. The stone circuit-
wall was built; several great drains were commenced,
to relieve the marshiness of the forum: an area was
cleared on the Capitol, and substructions laid, to sup-
port the magnificent temple to Capitoline Jupiter
already mentioned.

The drains to which we have alluded, were in every
way an extraordinary undertaking. The greatest of
them remains to this day, and is of such solidity from
the magnitude of the stones, as to have been unaffected
by earthquakes, by frost, or by the effects of vegeta-
tion. From this single fact it has been opined, that
Tarquin must have ruled over all Etruria and Latium,
possessed of immense resources in wealth, and arbi-
trarily disposing of the labour of an enslaved people.
But such inferences are insecure: the work of slaves
is not cheaper than that of freemen. The Etruscans
were accustomed to Cyclopian building: Tarquin
brought the idea with him, and easily obtained skilful
architects and masons. The obvious and great utility
of the work to Rome is likely to have secured the
zealous cooperation of the whole State. It is indeed
wonderful, that those who know the surprizing efforts
of free and second-rate Greek cities, like Selinus in
GREAT WORKS. 129

Sicily, in building magnificent temples, can imagine
slavery to be essential to great public works. At the
same time, Livy does not represent the great drain
as finished in this one reign; but, like the Capitoline
temple, to have been completed only by the second
Tarquin. A later age, out of the magnitude of the
work, was likely to invent the fancy, that it was
executed with great oppression to the people. If all
the records of England were to perish, a future histo-
rian, on surveying our railroads, may perhaps confi-
dently pronounce that they were impossible except
by the taskwork of slaves.

Though the victories and splendour of Tarquin’s
reign have been exaggerated by Dionysius, we cannot
doubt that it was on the whole able and successful.
Its policy was that of the former kings —to enfran-
chise and elevate the new population, and blend it
with the old; in consequence of which, the Sabine
language had shared the fate of the Pelasgian, Etrus-
can and Hellenic, all of which in turn were swallowed
up by the Latin, although probably leaving their
marks upon it. As in England the British and
Norman population were gradually Saxonized, and
a homogeneous race rose out of the fusion, so in
Rome was it with the upper classes, which, by being
received into the patriciate, adopted Sabine religion.
But the impossibility of patrician intermarriage with
those who had different matrimonial ceremonies and
rights, marked off the Plebs of Rome as a separate

G¢ 3
130 LATIN MARRIAGE.

nation from the Patricians, even when both talked
the same Latin tongue. To explain this more fully,
a few words are needed on the Latin matrimonium.
There can be little doubt that the principles of
marriage established in later Rome, when Latin in-
fluences had become dominant in social life, rose out
of the Latin, in contrast to the Sabine customs. In
the Latin practice, the wife never came ‘into the
hand” of her husband, but remained permanently in
her father’s power: in consequence of which, the
father, if offended, might at any time recal his
daughter, and even give her away to another: nor
had the Latin father the same power over his children
as in Sabine law. How the Sabines looked on so lax
a union, may be in part gathered from the singular
phraseology of the later Roman law*, which transfers
to the marriages of those who are not Quirites terms
which must once have been applicable to plebeian
unions. A marriage made with the sacred auspices
1s called connubium, or nuptie legitime, and the wife
is a gusta uxor ; but a marriage valid in law, yet de-
ficient in ceremonial sanctity, is designated ouly as
matrimonium, and the wife is oddly called injusta
uxor (an illegitimate wife?). The name itself of
Matrimony, now so honourable, may of itself indicate
that the domestic morality of the oldest Latins was

* Eisendecher (on Old Roman Citizenship), Hamburgh, 1829,
gives the quotations from Paulus, Modestin, Tribonian; besides
Festus, Varro, Ulpian, Gaius, Boethius, and commoner classics.
‘“ MATRIMONIUM.” 131

less elevated and more barbarous than that of the
Sabines. In the savage or infantine state of human
society, no union between the sexes is ratified until
children are born. Prior to this event, the woman
has no claims on the man; and if they separate with-
out becoming parents of a common offspring, society
has nothing to do with their mutual intimacy, any
more than with an ordinary friendship. But on the
impending birth of a child, the weakness and help-
lessness of woman claims the cares, attentions and
solace of her partner: the society discerns and avows
that she is entitled to a mother’s support, (matrimo-
nium,) stigmatizes the father as unjust, and punishes
him by law, if he neglects the duties contingent on
his paternal character. This is indeed a close descrip-
tion of the present state of sexual morality among
the lower orders of Wales; and the tone of grief and
almost of disgust which pervades a recent Report to
the English Parliament on this topic, may possibly
represent to us the disdain and scorn with which the
rigid Sabines viewed the matrimony of the Latin
plebeians. Whether, in the time of Tarquin, the
plebs of Rome were, in any true moral view, lower as
to these matters than the Sabines, we have no sure
means of knowledge: but it must not be left out of
sight, that to the latest time of Rome a valid mar-
riage was constituted by mere usus or habitual union ;
so that, after all Quirites had gained the right of
sacred nuptial auspices, every wife was in danger of
132 TWO PERMANENT CASTES ARISE.

falling “into the hand” of her husband, unless she
absented herself from his house one day in every
year. This total unimportance of any marriage cere-
mony* must apparently have been part of the same
Latin custom. But the patricians, to the last, looked
on a marriage so formed as less pleasing to the gods.
No man could become a Roman priest,—mo boys or
girls could sing in sacred chorus on the public festi-
vals, unless born of a marriage contracted by holy
bride-cake, (confarreatio,) with religious auspices, sanc-
tioned by an augur and pontiff.

The mass of the Latin population subject to Rome,
no doubt at this time preferred its own ‘common
law: only the chief men were ambitious of admis-
sion into the Curies; and they generally attained this.
But where aristocracy ceased and commonalty began,
society could not unite. The diversity of marriage
cut them apart; and the longer this state of things
endured, the more did they necessarily grow into
two separate races or castes.

As Tarquin rose upon the support of the com-
monalty, so, we have reason to believe, he continued
to the end in the same interests. At least this is the
only conclusion to which the few facts that we know,
—including his tragical end,—direct us. If we can at
all trust a dark passage in Livy, eminently agreeing

* This is still the Zaw in Scotland, and equally comes down from

primitive rudeness. It is now corrected by a practical elevation of
public moral feeling.
ASSEMBLIES OF THE ARMY. 133

with intrinsic probability, already in this reign appeal
began to be made to an embryo assembly, more
democratic than the Curies,—that of the National
Militia, arranged under its banners, with the solemn
attendance of augurs. Of this Livy says¥*, that
under Tarquin the honour of augury and of the
augural priesthood so increased, that nothing went
on in military or civil life, except according to the
auspices; so that the meetings of the people, the con-
vocations of the army, and the highest business of
State was broken up, if the birds did not give assent.”
Unless the army,—i.e. the militia of the nation,—
had some more active function than to listen; unless
it was called on to say Yes or No on some question;
there was no room for dissent of the birds or gods.
We must imagine “hen, that either questions of peace
and war, or questions concerning the choice of offi-
cers or distribution of booty, were brought by this
king before the militia. How his successor modified
and systematized this assembly, we shall afterwards
hear.

At the same time, the course of the history sug-
gests, that Tarquin used very effectually the controul
over the national army, to which we have alluded, as
accruing to the king from the preponderance of ple-
beians in it. They were naturally the king’s direct
dependents, as the proper clients were to the patri-
cians. Tradition likewise spoke of Celes Vibenna

* Livy, i. 36.
134. REORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY.

(too mythical a character to identify) and Mastarna,
as Etruscan leaders of hired troops in the army of
Tarquin. The king’s prerogative allowed his enroll-
ing as many men as he pleased under his banner, as
long as he could pay and feed them from his own
resources or from the plunder of the enemy: and his
power of organizing and marshalling the whole army
was unlimited by law or theory, though hitherto con-
trouled by custom. He now introduced the Greeco-
Etruscan phalanx*, with the round shield (clypeus)
and the metal helmet (cassis), in place of the Sabine
scutum and galea, which were left to the second-class
warriors. He moreover used his absolute military
command to re-distribute the ranks, probably with
the view of attaining that uniformity in armour and
weapons, without which neither the operations of
the Graeco-Etruscan phalanx nor any regular tactics
could be successful. This may have been sincerely
designed as a military, and not at all as a political,
measure; but it had the effect of separating clients
from the side of their patrons, and mixing them in
the plebeian ranks; which finally destroyed the power
of the nobility to offer armed resistance to the king
when the national forces met.—We are disposed to
place this important change in the reign of Tarquin,
both because it aids to explain the hatred which he

* Diod. (Excerp. Maii. xxiii. 1.) witnesses to the fact, that these
were adopted by the Romans from the Etruscans. As to the time
and mode, we must theorize for ourselves.
ASSASSINATION OF TARQUIN. 135

at last incurred with the old nobility, and because,
if it had been part of Servius’s reform, it would so
manifestly have had the purely political aim of strip-
ping the patricians of their dependents, that it must
almost certainly have caused an explosion of civil
war.

It agrees with the theory of Tarquin resting on
Latin partizans, that he chose a Latin for his son-in-
law and most trusted officer. That he retained to the
end the good will of the Latins whom he had ennobled,
is credible ; and that their influence supported the for-
tunes of Servius after the death of Tarquin. But we
cannot doubt that the Greater Clans, the old Sabino-
Albans, had become largely alienated from him. Whe-
ther they had aided at his election, from hoping
that the increase of patricians which he promised
would strengthen their Order against the Crown, or
whether they then gave way to an adverse majority
or to danger from the unenfranchised multitude,—in
either case, they saw the Sabine interests to be sink-
ing steadily. That an unsuccessful constitutional
battle was fought by them, no historian has recorded ;
but one must imagine many struggles of this nature,
before they could be driven to despair and assent to
use violence to their king. Yet such seems to have
been the catastrophe. All antiquity agrees, that the
great Tarquin, after an able and very prosperous reign,
was cut off by an assassination, which was currently
attributed to the sons of Ancus.
136 THE QUZESTORS.

This is perhaps the place to notice a subject, of
which we do not know the true chronology ;—the in-
stitution of the officers called Questors by the Ro-
mans. According to Tacitus*, they were appointed
in the kingly period; and considering the growth of
wealth in the Roman State under Tarquin, it may
seem that it cannot have been later than his reign.
The word Queesitor or Quaestor means inquisitor, exa-
miner. We probably ought to conceive of these offi-
cers, who were two in number, as at first Public Pro-
secutors, or Attorneys General, whose duty was, at
the king’s order, to prosecute any persons who ap-
pealed to the collective Quirites against the execu-
tive power of the king. The most ordinary prosecu-
tion would be a pecuniary one, against those who were
in debt to the King’s exchequer: hence they gradu-
ally came to be considered as merely financial officers.
A later age indeed discriminated the gquesifor, or ex-
traordinary criminal judge, from the guestor, or ordi-
nary and annual finance-magistrate. But in the early
accounts no such distinction is found. The queestors
(manifestly ordinary magistrates) from time to time
appear as Public Prosecutors; and nothing is com-
moner in an infant state than such confusion of duties.

* Annals xi. 22. This is confirmed by Livy, who does not recount
their institution during the republic. His phrase, “ queestores nulli
erant” (Liv. iv. 24) may mean merely that their origin was not be-
yond memory and tradition. On the other hand Plutarch (Public. 12)
is directly opposed to Tacitus.

+ Liv. ii. 41, iii. 24.
PUBLIC PROSECUTORS. 137

The old Questors were not judges. Their appoint-
ment came absolutely from the King, and in fact was
retained by the Consuls, long after the fall of mon-
archy.
138 ETRUSCO-LATIN ROME.

CHAPTER 1X.
REIGN OF SERVIUS TULLIUS.

Un~LEss we are to discard, as totally false, the tradi-
tion that the sons of Ancus instigated the murder of
Tarquin, we ought apparently to regard it as meaning
that a violent faction of the Greater Clans had con-
spired to recover their lost supremacy by this atrocious
means. Hereditary succession had not once been acted
on in Rome; and it is not probable that the sons of
Ancus, if prompted by personal motives, could have
hoped to profit by the crime.

Tarquin’s son-in-law Servius was supposed to be
son of a noble lady of Corniculum, who had been
brought to Rome as a captive. As such, he was a
Latin plebeian there, until ennobled by Tarquin, as we
presume, among the lesser clans. At the time of the
murder, he was, no doubt, Warden of the City, and
as such, had the command of the king’s body-guard.
According to Livy, he without delay seized the op-
portunity, assumed the ensigns of royalty and usurped
SERVIUS SEIZES POWER. 139

the supreme power of the State, without any election,
yet with general approval.

Goettling indeed thinks he has Cicero’s* authority
for believing that Servius, as Warden of the City, as-
sembled the Curies, and proposed his own name to
them for election; and that they actually passed the
formal vote in his favour. But with the death of the
King, if we mistake not, the Warden of the City lost
all his powers. At any rate, to assume the duties of
the Interrex was unprecedented ; and for a magistrate
to propose his own name was at all times regarded
by the Romans as an odiously unconstitutional pro-
ceeding. Perhaps therefore, even if Goettling rightly
interprets this affair, it was not the less regarded as
a usurpation by those who were scrupulous about
law and form. But we have no materials for de-
ciding whether a majority in the Curies at this mo-
ment were likely to wink at a violation of Sabine
propriety.

The bulk of the people cannot have felt scruples.
To them it must have seemed beyond doubt, that the
murder of Tarquin was not an act of private vengeance,
but the outbreak of disappointed faction, aiming at a
reactionary policy. The entire Latin party therefore
looked on it as a blow aimed at themselves, and Ser-

* (licero (De Rep. ii. 21) says: “Non commisit se Patribus, (i.e. says
Goettling, he did not trust the results of a decree of the Senate, and
of an election held by an Interrex,) sed populum de se ipse consuluit ;”’

&e. . .. But Livy says this too; the question is, How soon was it
done ?
140 THE LATIN PARTY FAVOURS HIM.

vius may have sincerely expected to be himself the
next victim, unless he used energetic measures to
avenge his murdered father-in-law. In later times
the Romans felt peculiarly shocked if a consul fell in
battle: if he died during his office, it was ominous:
if he was murdered, even for outrageous cruelty, it
was an appalling enormity. Similar feelings may
have arisen at the tragical fate of Tarquin. Servius
could plausibly insist, that no ordinary election of a
new king could be honourably and safely carried on,
while party-violence so unscrupulous was abroad, and
infected the very patricians ; and it is possible that no
small fraction of the Senate looked on with a passive
satisfaction at Servius’s decisive measures, as needful
to save the State from anarchy.

According to Livy and Cicero, the first act of Ser-
vius was to repel the aggressions of the Etruscans,
that is, of the State of Veii. Livy calls the war
“ opportune ;”’ as though the Roman leader was
anxious to gain some victory and win the hearts of
the soldiers by booty, in order to pave his way to
a legitimate royalty. His campaign was successful
enough to give him popularity and confidence; but if
we follow Livy or even Dionysius, he had a long task
to perform before he chose to risk an election.

It is however quite manifest, that none of our his-
torians had authentic information of the state of feel-
ing in the Senate and in the Curies; nor can we re-
concile Livy with Cicero, except by modes of interpre-
THE CURIES ARE ILLAFFECTED. 141

tation which enable us to make them say* whatever
we please. We are therefore cast upon general pro-
babilities.

The members of a Roman Senate died off so ra-
pidly, that, being replaced at the will of the King, a
strong party,—probably a considerable majority,—
were devoted to Tarquin: but though they would
have supported him or Servius in any ordinary mea-
sure, they can hardly have given more than passive
approval to so serious a matter as a premature or
irregular assumption of royalty.—On the other hand
the Curies, where all the patricians voted, would na-
turally be a more independent body than the Senate ;
and as soon as it is appeared that there was no danger
of anarchy, we might expect from them a louder-ex-
pressed discontent ‘than from the decorous Senate:
especially since in the Curies the young patricians
were contained, whose violence is often stigmatized
by the historians. Such considerations seem to ex-
plain, why Servius felt it dangerous to rest his power
on the Curies. The Lesser Clans had indeed owed
their elevation to Tarquin; but that was a favour
which could not secure permanent gratitude from
their sons to Tarquin’s son-in-law: and there were
probably many Latins, who thought, that if royal

* Thus Patres is at our pleasure rendered, the Senate, or, the Cu-
ries; and Populus is at our pleasure the Curies or the Centuries.
Dionysius, who imagines the Curies to consist of the Plebs, is in this
matter below criticism.
142 THE MILITIA AND THE CENSUS.

power was to be usurped, they had as good a claim as
Servius.

If a part of the Curies was violently disaffected,
and the good will of the rest declining, it was uncer-
tain whether a clear majority would consent to en-
noble more plebeians at Servius’s proposal; so that
this mode of gaining new partizans, which had been
useful to Tarquin, was perhaps impossible to him.
On the other hand, he could trust the plebeians of
Latin blood, if he espoused their cause; and their
martial aid would suffice to make him independent
of the patricians. He therefore selected this line
of policy, from necessity as well as (we may believe)
from preference ; for it was fundamentally the policy
of Tarquin, and it was still more eminently appro-
priate to a chieftain of Latin blood, who in his infancy
had himself been treated as a captive of war at Rome.
The power of the king in the army (if we do not
mistake) had been greatly increased by distributing
the clients among the ranks of the plebeians, through
which in a military sense he was now independent of
his nobles. But it will be observed, that this was
not the growing up of a despotism ; for so long as the
troops were a self-sustained national guard, they were
no small guarantee against tyranny.

Nevertheless, Servius discerned that he could de-
pend on the army to support any measures for lessen-
ing patrician predominance, and raising the plebeian
mass; and he proceeded to perfect the organization
FOUR CITY TRIBES. 143

of it which Tarquin had begun, in a military and in
a constitutional sense. How that king introduced
the Etruscan armour, and the use of the phalanx, and
rearranged the troops, we have hinted above. To his
successor is universally ascribed the enforcement of
a periodical register of property, according to which
he distributed all the citizens into five classes,
and specified the armour which each man should
wear.

All historians agree that Servius first divided the
City into four Tribes, called Suburrana, Palatina,
Esquilina, Collina; which is equivalent to stating
that he laid a war-tax on the city-population. From
these tribes (or parishes) the Capitol and the Aventine*
were excluded. But in fact, it is credible that he is
the author of the Systematic War-taxes, as applied
to all the tribes,—of country equally as of town.
Each tribe (or parish) sent its quota of men to the
army; but besides this, it paid its #ributum (tribe-
money) for the support of these men during the cam-
paignt. Yet in theory it was not so much a tax, as
an advance of capital made for an adventure. In
much later times we find that the money is re-
funded, when the war has been prosperous: and this

* The Capitol seems to have been all public property: the exclu-
sion of the Aventine (Varro apud Goettling, § 91) is not satisfac-
‘torily explained.

+ See Mommsen on the Tribes.

¢ Liv. xxix. 7.
144 ASSEMBLY OF ‘ THE CENTURIES.”

is received, not as a thing new in principle, but as
the honourable fulfilling of duty.

More than five centuries later, historians imagined
that they knew with great accuracy the details of Ser-
vius’s military arrangements; and have hereby occa-
sioned endless trouble to modern ecritics*. A little
before the second Punic War, as far as can be ascer-
tained,—that is, three centuries and a half later,—a
great reform of the Roman Comitia took place. Tra-
dition and written documents gave pretty accurate
information to the age of Cicero, as to the system
which was abolished by the reform: and we may rea-
sonably conjecture, that what was then superseded
was presumed to be exactly the system which Servius
enacted, because there was no record of earlier
changes. If we could fully understand this, we
should know the arrangement of the national mi-
litia at the close of the first Punic war; but to iden-
tify the details of this with the Servian army is
hazardous.

Nevertheless, as to the general principles of his
arrangement, so much is clear. He introduced into
the militia many things, which had little to do with
service in the field, because he wished so to organize
it, as to use its vote for civil purposes. The king, as
supreme in all military affairs, had an undisputed

* Becker (Rom. Antt. vol. ii. p. 203) calls the discussions on this
topic “a little library ;”’—with no small reason, for he proceeds to
enumerate twenty-seven treatises concerning it.
CONVENTION OF THE ARMY. 145

right to convene the army, to take its vote according
to any process which he chose, and to follow its
advice in any matter in which he had a free decision.
Thus he was able to commit to it the election of cen-
turions or of higher officers, or to consult it on the
division of spoil; and possibly, by a strained inter-
pretation, land captured from the enemy might be
cluded in spoil. Moreover, though it was consti-
tutionally expected of the king to consult the Senate
on the question of war and peace, yet if he chose to
consult the army also, it was difficult to blame him.
That Servius brought forward this new assembly
by an unusual exertion of the king’s ordinary pre-
rogative, appears almost certain. A change which
stripped the Curies of their whole political impor-
tance, could not have proceeded from that assembly :
and if it had been carried by force of arms, the Curies
would not have retained their formal and religious
primacy. Their history is in some sense comparable
to that of constitutional monarchy, which has retained
honour while losing power: in another sense we may
compare them to our ecclesiastical bodies. Decency
forbade Servius to consult the army on any matters
which were purely and obviously civil or religious;
and all these were left to the Curies. But in a mar-
tial community like Rome, election of officers, and
division of land and spoil were the topics of most
importance : while admission into the patriciate, tes-
taments, marriages and adoptions, and special ques-
H
146 ELEMENTS OF THE SUFFRAGE.

tions between patricians, were of little concern to the
mass of the plebeians. Not to offend the Curies
needlessly, Servius referred to them every decision of
the army for their confirmation; and allowed them
to reject anything which offended against religion. In
this way, the Curies retained a right of objection on
formal or ceremonial grounds alone, and gradually
sank into an ecclesiastical position.

In Serviug’s new assembly, three elements were
recognized as determining the votes,—age, wealth and
numbers. Every corps was divided into seniors, or
those above the age of forty-six, and juniors, or those
of military age; and an equal number of votes was
given to the two parts, although the juniors must
probably have been three times as numerous as the
seniors. This single principle removed all the worst
dangers of crude democracy, in which the younger
are always able to outvote the elder men.—Again, the
wealthier and better armed classes had far more
centuries allowed them than in proportion to their
numbers; and as the voting was determined by the
number of centuries, the mass of the poor exerted a
very much smaller influence than in a system of uni-
form voting.

So much appears beyond doubt; but what part the
Patricians bore in this assembly, is perhaps an insolu-
ble problem. They cannot have been excluded, else
it would not have been a national assembly ; to decide
any public questions without them, would have been
PATRICIANS IN THE NEW ASSEMBLY. 147

to subject them to vassalage; while if the Curies had
been practically coordinate with the Centuries,—the
one all patrician and the other all plebeian,—the State
would have been rent asunder between the two*.

It seems essential to believe that the first class of
the infantry, to which a great preponderance in voting-
power was given, consisted almost wholly of patricians;
not indeed of patricians as such, but of patricians, as
being the wealthiest part of the community, and the
best armed. Such an arrangement would go far to
satisfy the Curies under the innovation. Their clients
also, voting generally with the inferior ranks, would
count something ; and although even the Lesser Clans
might be far from pleased by the innovation, yet it
was specious enough to damp very vehement indigna-
tion, and avoided to rousé despair.

The only cognizance taken of patricians, as such,
in the new assembly of the Centuries, (as it was
called,) lay in the six squadrons of horse, which,
having received augural consecration, and indeed the
names dating from the Romulian era, could not be
abolished without evil omen. When patricians be-

* Niebuhr thinks that the Patricians had only 6 votes out of 193
in the assembly of centuries,—viz. the six which belonged to the six
sacred patrician squadrons of horse: but it seems manifest that such
a regulation could only belong to a late period of Patrician decrepi-
tude. Peter (Epochen) and Thne (Forschungen, ete.) appear to have
substantial truth, whatever be thought of details. Goettling improves
alittle on Niebuhr, yet takes so directly opposite a view of the six and
twelve squadrons of horse, as may warn us that the materials cannot
conduct acute inquirers to agreement.

H 2
148 EXTENSION OF THE QUIRITARIAN NAME.

came poor,—a common case when all the descendants
of a nobleman were noble,—they might perhaps get a
place in the cavalry; but if they were forced to serve
on foot, they had no other vote than the one which
appertained to their corps, and was cognizable by their
accoutrements. From this time forth, as far as we
can judge, all who voted in the Centuries were called
Quirites ; and the mass of the unarmed populace had
a nominal vote given them, to bring them into the
general franchise.

The assembly of the Centuries preserved to the end
all the symbols of its military origin, and met outside
the city, on the Field of Mars, where it was usual to
review the troops. The two questions of first impor-
tance which we know to have been brought before it
by Servius, were, an Agrarian bill, and the confirma-
tion of his own royalty.

Having ordered all unlicensed occupants to quit
the public undivided land, (that is, the portions of
land which the towns successively conquered had
been forced to cede to the Roman state,) Servius, in-
stead of proposing, as usual, to settle clans upon it,—
in which case the heads of the clan had large rights
reserved to them from the tenants,—brought for-
ward a bill to give equal lots and rights to all who
partook of the division*. Such a bill yielded nothing

* Tiy. i. 46, describes the bill in the same terms as Cicero uses

(Brut. 14, § 57) to vituperate C. Flaminius’s demagogic law ; “agro
capto ex hostibus viritim diviso.” :
AGRARIAN LAW. 149

to patricians, unless they were poor enough to submit
to personal service on the soil. The plebeians who
accepted the land, held directly of the king; and
though probably subject to some customary tax, this
must have been light in comparison to the ordinary
burdens of citizenship. We can hardly doubt, that
this exhibits the Latin, as opposed to the Sabine,
mode of dividing public land.

The agrarian law being passed, he ventured to ask
the assembly in direct words, whether they wished
to have him as king; and the affirmative reply was
unanimous. We must add, that if we rightly inter-
pret Cicero*, he after this carried in the assembly of
the Curies a law confirming his “imperium,” or mili-
tary command ; which, being essentially a sacred and
almost sacerdotal office, needed at all times a special
vote of the Curies.

It is certain that the authority of this assembly was
never disowned ; it only grew obsolete, and was turned
into an empty form, as to all political measures. In
Cicero’s time, its nominal confirmation was still es-
sential, (“for the sake of the auspices,” says hef,)
when only thirty beadles assembled to pass the vote;
without which, the acts of other bodies had no reli-
gious rightfulness. We can compare this to nothing
but the election of an English Bishop by a Dean and
Chapter, after what is called “the permission,” but is
really “the compulsion” of the Crown. Unless the

* De Repub. ii. 21. + In Rullum, ii. 11 and 12,
150 THE CURIES BECOME ECCLESIASTICAL.

Dean and Chapter perform the ceremony, no election
valid in law is possible; yet it has been contrived that
the Dean and Chapter shall exert no choice or judge-
ment at all. With us indeed the parties who are to
give the religious sanction, are severely punishable by
law, if they refuse. The collective Curies could not
be punished; but as their obstinacy (in any matter
involving great public interests) might have caused
civil war, they gave way to the Centuries, nearly as
our House of Lords to the Commons, until their
authority became utterly antiquated. Indeed as to
wills and adoptions and admissions into the patriciate,
the Curies retained their full powers; but whenever
their action is referred to in Livy, (which is not often,)
we hear only of ceremonial and augural reasons urged
by it for rejecting some measure or some election.
And this became a useful tool of party. It appears
clear therefore, that in political matters the exclusively
patrician assembly became a judge solely of form, and
passed over into a part of the merely ecclesiastical
system. This revolution may have gone on gradually
through Serviug’s reign. Under his successor all
public liberty was overthrown; and when out of the
ruins of royalty the republic arose, the Curies had no
life in them to reassert power, and their ceremonial
position was finally settled.

Niebuhr first alledged, that the formula by which
the Curies confirmed any measure, was by the well-
known phrase, “The Fathers give their sanction :”
CAUSES OF THEIR DECAY. 151

and though the question has called forth lively op-
position®, the suffrages of critics appear to be on
Niebuhr’s side.

In regard to the decay of public power in the Cu-
ries, an argument applied by Niebuhr at a much later
era will be of avail here. A large part of the patri-
cians who voted in them were poor men, living at the
table of their richer relatives or withdrawn in obscure
life; and the voting of such an assembly had some-
thing so democratic in it, as to have deceived Diony-
sius into the grave error of confounding the Curies
with the plebs. The Senate under the republic often
talked high of the ascendency of the patricians, but
its real desire was, the ascendancy of the heads of
patrician families. It is then far from improbable,
that the leading Patricians, the actual Senators, pre-
ferred such an assembly as the Centuries,—in which
wealth prevailed, and in which they could command
the votes of their clients,—to the Curies, in which
they were liable to be outvoted by their own younger
relations. But whatever the course of events which
degraded the Curies, it was peaceful and gradual, and
not produced by convulsive force. Indeed no rumour
of political collision between Curies and Centuries at
any time has come down to us, except (according to
Niebuhr’s probably just interpretation) when the law
carried by the Centuries for a Plebeian Consul, B.C.

* See Becker’s elaborate refutation of Rubino’s counter theory ;
Antt. ii. pp. 138 and 315.
152 INCREASED PATRICIAN EXCLUSIVENESS.

366, was refused the sanction of the Curies as irre-
ligious. But the Senate wisely prevailed on the
patricians in the Curies to withdraw an opposition,
which would have brought the State into peril.

But the more the Curies lost in political power, the
more did they cling to their religious formalities, and
the stiffer was their pride in the sacred superiority of
the Patrician. From this period we trace the growth
of that exclusiveness, which closed the doors of the
thirty Curies against meritorious and able Plebeians,
and refused to strengthen a failing Order by con-
tinuing the policy on which it had risen. Once only
henceforth do we read of a large admission of ple-
beians into the patrician ranks, and that is at the
crisis of a dangerous revolution, to supply the seats
in the Senate, desolated by the tyranny of the se-
cond Tarquin. That measure produced an immense
strengthening of patrician power, and a corresponding
weakness in the plebeians, all whose chief men were
drawn off from them; yet it was never again imitated.
The Plebeians learned to be prouder of their Latin
religion and Latin marriage, than of any Sabine cere-
monies ; until at last patricianism sank by natural
exhaustion.

The decisive transition of power, from the Curies to
the Centuries, must have probably hastened another
social revolution very displeasing to the Patricians.

The sons of a Client were not by birth and by
necessity Clients to their father’s Patron, but they
RN

DECAY OF CLIENTSHIP. 153

became Clients by a special religious ceremony. The
Client’s son who succeeded to his father’s tenancy of
land must have been expected by the Patron to enter
into this relation, and if he refused, a positive enmity
was likely to arise. But the new assembly and the
position of Servius towards the Plebeians, held out a
temptation to the country people to keep aloof from
clientship. For on the one hand, the Client could
not use his vote in the Centuries as he pleased ; since
he found that he was expected to support his Patron’s
wishes : on the other, the free Plebeians looked up to
the king as their adequate and all competent Patron,
to whom they could appeal for justice, without paying
court to a Patrician noble.

Servius, according to Dionysius (iv. 25), not being
able to hear all causes himself, was the first king who
appointed royal judges to take cognizance of private
lawsuits. We do not know their Roman title, for
they seem to have had no successors during the early

~ republic; but under Servius, we cannot doubt that

the Plebeians had as easy and direct access to them
as the Patricians. It is then probable, that during
his whole reign, there was a gradual falling off of
country clientage, and a breach began to open between
the farmtenants and the Patrician landlords who felt
their Patronage to be scorned. In proportion as this
went on, the power of the Patricians in the Centuriate
assembly would be weakened, and that of the king
confirmed. -
H 3
154. MAGNITUDE OF THE STATE.

In the narrative of Livy, 80,000 citizens are as-
signed to Servius’s first Census; and this number,
even if conjectural, may seem not incredible, if we
believe that at this time slavery scarcely existed at
Rome, so that the number is in fact that of adult
males in the community. We do not know the extent
of territory which paid allegiance to Servius, but we
know that the city was growing rapidly, on the Vi-
minal and Esquiline, as well as over the Quirinal hill,
and that this king carried forward the pomcerium, and
surrounded the city partly with a moat and rampart,
partly with a wall, so as to give to it a magnitude
which for centuries it did not seek to exceed. As
Ancus surpassed Tullus and was surpassed by Tar-
quin, so under Servius Tullius, we cannot doubt, the
power and greatness of Rome became more and more
consolidated.

To extend the pomecerium, or sacred belt, of the
city, was at all times in Rome a matter of high poli-
tical and religious importance. The first founders of
cities appear to have discerned the necessity of re-
stricting their limits by public law : and their theory
of land, especially of townland, was more just, and
more expedient for the many, than the notions which
have gained currency in modern England. The com-
munity itself decided, by its legitimate authorities,
how large the city should grow; and though at a
later time private convenience triumphed over public
welfare, all the ancients would have agreed that the
THE WALLS OF SERVIUS. 155

State was justified in extending the sacred belt, on
which it was forbidden to build, to any breadth which
the health or welfare of the city seemed to demand.
The pomeerium indeed, as now fixed by Servius, was
of very extended circuit. It included all the Seven
historical hills of Rome; and the space included by
Serviusg’s celebrated rampart would probably always
have allowed large open spaces, conducive to health,
comfort and recreation, had not Rome, to her own
misery and to the world’s millennial decline, become
at length an imperial city to Europe.

Concerning Servius’s wars®, we know little or
nothing. More valuable to Rome than any conquest,
was the accession of the remaining Latin towns.
Indeed, after so many had been conquered by Ancus
and by Tarquin, it might have been hard for the
others to resist: but the policy pursued by Servius
removed all desire to refuse Roman supremacy; for
they saw in Rome itself their own race becoming pre-
dominant. The king was a Latin by birth, and he
had so enfranchised the whole Plebeian body, that it
now exercised under him a full and fair influence.
The little Latin towns needed some powerful leader,
and were always accustomed to confederate: what

* Dionysius attributes to him a twenty years’ war against all
Etruria, which ends in his complete success. The three towns which
first revolted,—Agylla, Tarquinii, and Veii,—were condemned to
lose land for the benefit of newly admitted Roman citizens.—But all
this presupposes that Tarquin was lord of Etruria, and, with that, is
omitted by Livy.
156 ROME, THE HEAD OF LATIUM.

better leading city could they find, than the Rome of
Servius Tullius? When therefore this king courted
their chief men by every act of kindness, he at length
induced the Latins to combine with him in building
at Rome a temple to Diana on the Aventine; which
(as Livy justly observes) was in itself a confession of
Roman supremacy. As we cannot imagine them to
have been tricked into this solemn act, we must infer
that there was at this time an actual league between
Rome and the Latin States, as indeed Dionysius* as-
serts :—a league, in which all found substantial advan-
tage, but in which Rome carried off the chief honour.

None of the ancients ascribe to Servius any rude-
ness, insolence, or cruelty towards the Senate, or
towards any part of the Patricians; or any wanton
endeavour to lower the dignity of this Order. Yet it
is probable, that the more the results of his measures
unfolded themselves, the more manifest it became to
the whole Patrician body that his policy, however ex-
cellent and glorious for the State, was fatal to their
power. At the opening of his reign, he may have
had on his side no small portion of the Patricians;
but after they began to understand the meaning of
their own deeds, and to discover that patricianism

* He says (iv. 26) that the brazen pillar recording the treaty
remained to his day; and if he had stated that he had read and
understood it, this would be quite decisive. But his chief interest
in the treaty seems to have turned on the fact of its being in Greek

characters, which he thought to prove that the Romans were not
barbarians, but a Hellenic people!
3 Ww {
§ 0%

ALIENATION OF THE pamoLaxs. = 157

was sinking and plebeianism rising in’ the scale, we.
must believe that even the Lesser Clans would gra-
dually be offended; would cease to sympathize with
the Plebeians as Latins, and be attracted into a
common interest with the Greater Clans. Indeed, if
we have rightly conjectured the effect of his measures
on the clients, the Patrician Order may have begun
to regard his reign as virtually to them a Latin con-
quest, and a social revolution. When they were in
such a state of mind, the mode in which he originally
seized the royal station would lead them in private to
denounce him as a usurper, and to justify removing
him by force.

We cannot therefore greatly wonder at the cata-
strophe which terminated his reign and life. Lucius
Tarquinius, head of the Tarquinian clan, used the
odium into which Servius had fallen with the Patri-
cians as the means of his own advancement. Apply-
ing himself peculiarly to win the Lesser Clans,—to
whom he could say, that they owed their elevation to
Tarquin, their degradation to Servius,—when he had
succeeded with them, he could securely trust the
aversion borne against Servius by the Greater Clans.
When all was ripe for his attempt, he attacked the
aged king in the Senate house itself, and assassinated
him by the hands of some of his retainers, no one
defending him. This deed of blood is narrated by
Roman history with all the details that make it pa-
thetic and horrible. Tarquin (it is said) was allied
158 ASSASSINATION OF SERVIUS TULLUS.

to Servius by marriage, as Servius to the elder Tar-
quin. A later age, which knew of the wicked tyranny
which followed this base murder, made it still more
odious by filial perfidy. Tullia, daughter of Servius,
(if we believe the tale,) assassinated—first her hus-
band, Tarquin’s brother, and then her sister, Tar-
quin’s wife, in order to effect her union with this
ambitious and fierce man; and after instigating him
to the murder of her father, drove her horses over
Servius’s body as it lay in the open street. One
thing alone seems certain, that the Patricians, as an
Order, were guilty of connivance, and that if few were
actually in conspiracy, none rallied in defence of the
king. If he had been a tyrant, he would have kept
a powerful bodyguard around him; but because, con-
scious of his wise and moderate government, he
trusted himself unarmed among his nobles, he was
butchered unresisting and unavenged.

“ Servius Tullius so reigned,” (says Livy) “that even
to a good and moderate king succeeding him, emula-
tion would have been difficult. But it was an acces-
sion to his glory, that with him constitutional mo-
narchy fell. Mild and moderate as was his rule, yet
even this, because it was the rule of one man, some
authors report that he intended to renounce, had
not domestic crime cut him off.” This report is obvi-
ously only an exaggerated representation of the syste-
matic policy, by which he raised the Plebeians into an
order of the State, and vindicated their just rights.
ETRUSCO-LATIN ROME. 159

CHAPTER X.
TARQUIN THE PROUD.

We have reason to believe, that during the reigns
of Tarquin the Elder and of Servius, the two parties
into which the Roman State was divided consisted of
the Sabino-Romans on the one side and of the Latin
population on the other. The king, as always hitherto
in Rome, threw himself on to the side of Progress,
and successfully elevated the Latins. But the effect of
their absolute triumph under Servius was to break up
that division of parties, and to introduce a totally
new one, previously unknown, which was no longer
a contrast of races, but of order. The Lesser
Clans, which we believe to have been chiefly Latin,
were henceforth cemented in one interest with the
Greater, as Patriclans; and no separation between
them ever again shows itself in Roman history. The
distinction indeed between them was wholly factitious
and nominal ; probably just visible in the fact that out
of the Lesser Clans was formed the second century
160 TARQUIN’S BEGINNINGS.

of horse in each of the old patrician tribes: and this
was enough to sustain the distinction to the latest
times of the republic. But, as Patricians, the Greater
and the Lesser were now one against the Plebeians.

According to Livy, the very first acts of Tarquin
showed his intention to rule tyrannically. He sum-
marily slew the Senators whom he regarded as Ser-
vius’s partizans, and protected his own person with
a formidable bodyguard. He did not seek to obtain
his election from people or Patres. He held in per-
son, without duumwiri or other responsible judges,
trials for capital offences, and wholly refused the right
of appeal from his sentence. In this way he arbi-
trarily put to death or banished numbers of the Sena-
tors, and chose none into their place. Indeed he
seldom assembled the Senate at all, but carried on
public affairs by a domestic cabinet.

This account seems to attribute to Tarquin from
the beginning that which is likely to have arisen
only gradually. When he had slain Servius, who was
on his side? Not the mass of the populace; not
the national army. He cannot have had an attached
military force capable of defying the will of the nation.
It is manifest that he must af first have had a ma-
jority of the Senators and of the Patricians with him,
whose influence supported him until he was firm in
power. To destroy the Servian Parliament was pos-
sibly their great object. The Senate (it must be be-
lieved) aided him with their influence, and established
 

 

REBAR

 

SUCCESSFUL TYRANNY. 161

his bodyguard, to make him independent of the
national militia. Not until by such treason to liberty
they had lost their reputation with the mass of the
nation, could he have become bold enough to attack
the Senators themselves. They had sold themselves
to become tools of his ambition, in the expectation
that he would establish them as the lords of the State;
but after a time they found to their disappointment
that he was resolved to be their master, and that he
proved a far severer one than Servius had been. Then
followed resentment and controversy, alienation with
probably faction and intrigue, which the king sup-
pressed by decisive violence. It is credible that the
thoughtless multitude might at first rejoice, at seeing
retribution come on those whom it regarded as accom-
plices in the death of the good king Servius, and who
had assisted in suppressing the meeting of the Cen-
turies. But when Tarquin’s tyranny had thus cut off
many eminent Patricians, and terrified them all, the
commonalty found too late that they had no longer any
leaders, and that they could not regain their free as-
semblies, if the king did not choose to summon them.

A farther attempt of Tarquin was to turn his alli-
ance with the Latins into an empire, by aid of their
highest nobility. To Octavius Mamilius, chief of
Tusculum, he gave his daughter in marriage, and paid
much court to those whose friendship might serve
him: but to terrify opponents (if we can believe our
hostile historians), he crushed and slew by false accu-
162 RELATIONS WITH LATIUM.

sation and treachery Turnus Herdonius of Aricia,
who inveighed against Tarquin’s tyranny. After thus
displaying his power, he ordered a rendezvous of the
Latin and Roman forces, and there reorganized the
armies, so as to mingle Latins and Romans in the
same companies. Such is the statement given to us:
but perhaps it is a mere exaggeration of the fact, that
Tarquin led the united forces of Rome and Latium
against a dangerous enemy whose name we now first
hear,—the Volscians ; whose wealthy capital of Suessa
Pometia he captured, and made four hundred talents
of silver and gold* from the sale of the booty. The
town of Gabii, which resisted him, was besieged, and
after a tedious war, was captured by treachery and
united to the league.

That the reign of Tarquin in Rome was ruinous to
the Patrician aristocracy, is beyond a doubt: but it
is equally clear that he did not commit the error of
driving the populace into despair and uniting them
in one cause with the Patricians. Indeed, in spite of
all that was afterwards believed concerning him, it
may be doubted whether his reign was not benefi-
cial to the industrial interests of the commonalty
at large. Nero was popular with the mass of the
Roman people; Tarquin also, if he could not win
their affections, yet tried to bribe their interests.
Success in war was a great point with a warlike
people. Out of his share of the spoils of Pometia he

* So Livy, i. 53.
GREAT WORKS OF TARQUIN. 163

began to build a temple to Jupiter on the substruction
of the elder Tarquin. The popularity of this was so
great, that the unpaid work of the masses is said to
have been cheerfully contributed, when the public
money failed (Liv. i. 56). Other important works
are specified,—the making the seats in the Circus,
and finishing the vast Drain, which was begun by
Tarquin the Elder, and probably was under comple-
tion during the entire reign of Servius. Besides this,
the king sent out colonists to the Latin towns of
Signia and Circeii,—and to plant colonies was always
a popular measure with the growing population of
Rome. Signia to this day exhibits the Cyclopian
architecture, which Tarquin, perhaps following Etrus-
can patterns, taught the Romans henceforth to use
in those frontier fortresses, which they intended to
be bulwarks of their empire. Thus all the notices of
him surviving, denote a monarch great in the arts of
peace and war, and reigning beneficially to the mate-
rial welfare of the plebeians, however cruelly violent
to the aristocracy and resolutely bent on crushing
constitutional freedom.

The same policy of humbling the nobility, we may
presume, led him to espouse the cause of country
clients against their patrons, and to favour the prin-
ciple that the client held his land, (subject to what-
ever payments to his patron,) direct from the king;
so that he could not be expelled at the patron’s will.
Certain it is, that when the monarchy vanished, the
164 POLICY OF TARQUIN.

country people suffered severely from it; and had
reason to wish for any king, good or bad, if only
energetic to repress private tyranny. Just so, it is
the policy of the emperors of Russia to enfranchise
the serfs, break their connection with the nobles, and
bring them into dependence on the Crown.—The
course of the history under the republic makes it
probable, that in the reign of the second Tarquin was
consummated the social revolution, which, nearly
everywhere in the country tribes, broke the relation
of clientship, and left to the patricians few clients
except in the town of Rome.

The actual extent of Tarquin’s power we pretty
distinctly learn from a treaty which was made imme-
diately after his expulsion between Rome and Car-
thage; in which it appears that Rome possesses the
seacoast, from the Tiber to Terracina. The Roman
merchants and those of their league are not to
sail into any of the harbours south of Cape Her-
meum ; they are allowed to trade at Carthage and in
Libya westward, as also in Sardinia; and are to have
in Sicily the same rights as the Carthaginians. The
Romans on their part stipulate for the safety of
Ardea, Antium, Laurentium, Aricia, Circeii, Terra-
cina.—This remarkable treaty, preserved to us by
Polybius, (iii. 22) testifies to the high importance
already attained by kingly Rome, and to a very con-
siderable commercial development, under the guidance
of Etruscan genius. Commerce cannot flourish, un-
EXTENT AND OPULENCE OF THE STATE. 165

less property is secure and industry meets its reward.
Nor could it have been worth while to send to Car-
thage such rude produce as the plebeian plough would
raise. Rome must have had Etruscan artizans, and
other skilful hands, whose works were valued in Africa.
Her wealth at this time was not solely plundered from
her weaker neighbours, and her martial successes were
not wholly independent of wealth. At least the forti-
fications of Signia indicate, that the arts of peace
aided the weapons of war.

To the eye of the external observer, the power of
Tarquin was firmly seated, and likely to be durable.
Men who compute the strength of a monarchy by its
wealth and its military force, might have judged it
inferior to none then existing in Italy. Those who
imagine popular movements to be guided by deep
calculations and not by impulse, might have urged
that the people “could gain nothing” by shaking off
an energetic and politic master, in order to subject
themselves to patrician tyrants. But the strength of
a throne is in the affections of a nation, not in argu-
ments of expediency. No one loved Tarquin, or
would risk life and fortune to save him; hence his
greatness had no depth of root, and a private crime
committed by one of his sons most unexpectedly and
easily caused his downfall.

Among the cities of the Latin league, Ardea is
reckoned ; but as it is called a town of the Rutulians,
possibly they were of foreign blood to the Latins.
166 OVERTHROW OF ROYALTY.

For whatever reason,—they refused to admit Tarquin’s
claims of supremacy, as head of the Latin, league;
and were in consequence attacked by him. But while
he was engaged in the siege, his son Sextus perpe-
trated an unendurable outrage against the wife of his
kinsman Collatinus Tarquinius,—the noble Lucretia ;
who is said to have stabbed herself from indignation
and shame. Hereupon her father Lucretius, warden
of the city, her husband Collatinus and his kinsman
Brutus, who was then commander of the bodyguard,
flew to arms, and stirred up the populace against the
dynasty. Tarquin’s murder of Servius and of so
many Patricians now afforded abundant material for
public invective: the corpse of Lucretia, exposed in
the forum, inflamed the passions of the people, and a
formidable army was raised. The gates of the city
were shut against the king; the army at Ardea de-
serted his cause, and he was glad to escape with two
of his sons to Agylla or Caere. Sextus Tarquinius,
the guilty cause of this revolution, is said to have
been slain at Gabi, whither he betook himself.
Such was the sudden termination of Roman royalty.
Tarquin looked indeed to Porsena, the Etruscan lord
of Clusium, and looked to his son in law of Tusculum,
for aid : but neither of them, if victorious over Rome,
was likely to make Tarquin a present of royal power.
That power, having rested on no moral basis, was at
best in an equilibrium of instability ; and being over-
thrown for a moment, was destroyed for ever.
REGAL ROME. : 167

CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS.

Tae current history gives us only six elective kings,—
from Numa to the second Tarquin inclusively,—for a
period during which the most startling changes were
brought about in Roman society. Under Numa is
the effort to cement Sabines and Romulians into one
people with one religion; and under Tullus Sabine
religion finally triumphs. Under Tullus and Ancus
an influx of Latin population takes place; and by the
end of Ancus’s reign the two older races have been
thoroughly blended into the Gentes Majores, and a
new struggle of the Gentes Minores with them is at
hand. These however are brought to equality under
the elder Tarquin ; and behold, under Servius a totally
new Parliament which supersedes the Curies,—an
assembly which has been as it were worn out in only
four reigns. The contest of Patrician and Plebeian
seems already to be commencing. Thus in fact we
have in only five elective reigns three different suc-
168 LIMITS OF TIME.

cessive divisions of the State into an in and out party;
and we know no reason for imagining that the length
of such reigns can have exceeded the average of twelve
or fifteen years. If so, the history from Numa to
Servius inclusively is made out to be under seventy-
five years.

Moreover, the original Sabines were rude warriors
who overpowered a population of robbers; yet by
the times of the first Tarquin the Romans abound
with wealth and art, so as to commence the splendid
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the enormous drain,
of which a part still remains. And this change is
brought about in three elective reigns, or less than
half a century.

The Romans were less sensible of the narrow time
allowed for such developments; because they unhe-
sitatingly received a chronology which assigned 245
years to seven elective kings,—of whom, we must add,
that three perished by a violent death and the last was
prematurely expelled. But we know such a chrono-
logy to be impossible.

Our accounts concerning the three last kings may
be better trusted, from the certain growth of art and
of maritime commerce in that period; whence we
cannot doubt the familiar use of writing for recording
events. But the more distant reigns are of course
less trustworthy ; and it is in them that we may sus-
pect tradition to have failed of preserving the names
of all the kings. The reign of Numa is all but my-
NUMBER OF THE KINGS. 169

thical. To him are ascribed the fundamental religious
institutions ; and his whole history is invented out of
this one thought. Tullus and Ancus may be real
men; but their names cover a large space of time,
during which an enormous internal change took place
in Rome. Far more than three kings must have reigned
in the era which sufficed not only for fusing Sabine
and Roman into a homogeneous population, but for
superinducing a mass of Latins which outnumbered
the Sabino-Romans. If instead of four, we imagine
sixteen elective kings, between Numa and Tarquin the
Proud, this may yield 200 years, a little less than the
208 of the old annalists. The total period allowed by
them would seem not to be at all too much, but the
series of events perhaps forbids such interpolation
later than the elder Tarquin. To recover the history
of the Sabino-Roman kings is obviously impossible ;
and all the public events that we certainly know con-
cerning the period seem to be comprehended in two
sentences ; 1. that the Sabine and Roman nobility be-
came effectually blended into one State and one race,
with one Sabine religion ; and 2. that Rome went on
prospering and acquiring masses of Latin subjects and
citizens. ,

The great cause of the prosperity of the city, was,
that the Kings had headed the movement-party for
enfranchising and elevating the lower classes. Every
liberal measure from an Order of men comes too late.
Upon the destruction of royalty, the lower population
discovered that they had lost their Patron and were

1
170 DEMOCRATIC ROYALTY.

exposed to hundreds of tyrants. All the early history
of the Roman republic is a long struggle of the com-
monalty to regain for itself a powerful Protector: and
after a time, the success of the plebeians was complete.
But Rome continued to conquer; hence, outside of
the plebeians, fresh and fresh masses of subjects lay,
who had no organs of protection, until the Roman
constitution was violently subverted, and Emperors
arose. From these at length the population of the
provinces gradually obtained the gift of Roman citizen-
ship, which ought to have been long before granted by
free Rome, in order to preserve her own freedom. It
was conquest that ruined the later republic, and con-
quest (apparently) also that ruined royal Rome. When
the victories of Ancus and Tarquin enlarged the State
so rapidly, not to have enfranchised the new subjects
would have weakened it from within; yet by enfran-
chising them, Tarquin and Servius produced a discon-
tent in the old citizens which exploded into violence,
and wrecked the constitution under Tarquin the Proud.
If Brutus and Collatinus, instead of abolishing the
royalty, had restored it with all the formalities of in-
terregal election, but with such limitations as expe-
rience suggested, we now see that it would have been
far better for the Plebeians of Rome. The wicked
“deed of Sextus Tarquinius did not need royal power ;
it might have been perpetrated by any man who wore a
sword. But it was attributed to the inherent haugh-
tiness of royal blood, and the question of raising some
one else to the throne was never even moved at all.
 

 

EXCLUSIVE ARISTOCRACY. 171

In consequence, the plebeians were suddenly left
without legal representatives. No man of their body
was capable of holding office, because he was essen-
tially inadmissible to patrician religion. It was soon
manifested, that while excluded from executive govern-
ment, possession of legislative power was a mockery :
unfortunate war forced them to incur debt, and the pe-
nalties of debt were rigorously enforced. Art and skill
migrated from Rome, when her arms could no longer
defend the industrious, and rudeness so great came
on the city of the Tarquins, that sheep and oxen
became the current coin of a community which but
a little before had made a treaty of commerce with
Carthage. Under an exclusive patrician caste Rome
sank more rapidly than she had risen; until tyranni-
cal powers vested in tumultuous tribunes became an
alleviation of the intolerable evils caused by the loss
of the elective king.

For the destruction of the monarchy did not come
in the ripeness of time, when monarchy had finished
its work, and the lower people had gained power of
self-defence. Tt was the explosion of rage against an
institution, because of personal iniquity; and it be-
came the prelude to a century and a half of suffering
to the plebeians. ;

THE END.
 
 
 
 
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