Finally both peoples long retained the institutions of a very strong patriarchal organization. Women, children and slaves were subject to the potestas of the family patriarch. He gave the members of his household in marriage, assigned the properties— there are but shadowy traces of clan-ownership, and testamentary rights are highly developed—and he, with his family council, meted out punishment for crimes committed within the family, and in the earlier day at least, directed the vendetta of the family against those who had committed a wrong against him or his. While the villages were still small, there were few opportunities for community action, whether judicial or legislative, so long as the patriarchal customs were respected.
City States.—At an early day these numerous communities belonging to a wide-spread tribe began to aggregate to a few favoured centres where cities grew up. Such cities soon over shadowed the villages and endangered the existence of the Latin tribal organizations. It is likely that raids from across the Tiber and from the Sabine and Volscian hills emptied the more ex posed villages that could not well be fortified, drove the populace to more defensible villages, and in the case of places like Praeneste, strongly situated near the natural road between Etruria and Campania, trade of a lucrative kind also attracted settlers. It was in this way that some six city-states gradually grew up in Latium to take the place in each case of several villages. The growth of such cities in these circumstances naturally required stronger and more efficient governments, a better army organiza tion, the building of walls or at least defensible earthen mounds with protecting pickets.
Kings.—At Rome the coalescing of three villages with their 3o curiae may date from the 8th century B.C. And here, since the threats of Etruscan raiders from Veii and Caere added much to the difficulty of governing communities that are not wholly homo geneous, elective princes holding office for life seem for a while to have displaced the customary annual magistrates. Tradition held that of these early princes Romulus (q.v.), Hostilius and Ancus Marcius were Latins, but that Titus Tatius (the prince of a Sabine group) and Numa Pompilius (q.v.) were Sabine in origin, while Tarquinius Priscus was said to be the son of a Corinthian adventurer who had first settled in Tarquinium and married an Etruscan woman, and Servius Tullius was an Etruscan chief by the name of Mastarna.
There is nothing unreasonable in this tradition, and since the art of writing was already known, the names may well have sur vived from early times on inscriptions of public buildings, treaties and tombs. The tradition regarding Servius Tullius was at least derived from Etruscan documents of an early date. (See the speech of the Emperor Claudius, Dessau, Ins. Lat. Sel., 212.) History, however, need not take seriously the numerous legends preserved by Livy regarding the wars and deeds of these kings. Villages near Rome which naturally dwindled to insigni ficance under the attractive power of a neighbouring city left traces of themselves in abandoned walls; and picturesque legends grew up to account for their annihilation, but most of them had decayed several centuries before history was written.
Etruscan Kings.—The Etruscan (see ETRURIA) house of the Tarquins seems to be more tangible. Tradition places their rule in the latter half of the 6th century B.c., at a time in fact when we know that Etruscan princes were making conquests south ward as far as Capua, when Etruscan art and Greek objects of art carried by Etruscans came into Rome as they did into Praeneste, Velitrae, Ardea, Satricum' and other Latin towns, when Rome received a stone ring-wall enclosing a remarkably large area and ceased to use the Forum cemetery for burial— since that now was included within the ring—and when Rome's rulers began to reach out for the control of the larger part of Latium.
The Etruscan adventurers, employing methods like those of the Normans who ruled the Sicilian cities in the 12th century, had come by sea to govern and exploit the unorganized communities of the Villanovans some two centuries before. Different families had secured control of most of the districts of Tuscany, had forti fied their various cities, trained their subjects into effective armies as well as into obedient tenants and serfs, had developed farm ing by improved methods of planting, draining and irrigation, had exploited the copper and iron mines of Etruria and organized a flourishing industry in metal work with which they attracted Phoenician and Greek traders and had even entered actively into maritime commerce.' Whether the Tarquins actually seized Rome by force or mi grated to Rome and secured control by political devices we do not know. Under them Rome and Latium underwent very re markable changes. An extensive wall' of almost 6m. was built to enclose an area that would readily house 200,000 inhabitants living in low small houses. There could hardly have been so many inhabitants when the enclosure was made ; and indeed the walls, in order to make use of natural escarpments and to include outlying shrines, probably took in many undeveloped tracts. We cannot be sure that the regal wall extended as far out as the so called Servian wall, despite the existence of very old remains in the gardens of the "Villa Spithoever." Tombs of the 4th century within the area seem to prove at least that the sacred pomerium did not extend so far, even if the fortifications did. Nevertheless the regal city was remarkably large when compared with other Italian cities, and its size points to a builder who was intent upon extensive projects of development. The Tarquins certainly opened the city to the currents of Mediterranean commerce now being attracted westward by Etruscan prosperity. Tradition plausibly holds that a port was used at the mouth of the Tiber as early as the 6th century; Greek and Etruscan articles came 'Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, i., 235 (1918).