Primitive Social Condition of the Latins.—With this brief introductory sketch of the various races that inhabited Italy in historical or prehistorical times, we may now revert to the Latins, with whom we have at present more particularly to do. What was the extent of their civilization, or how far their social organization had proceeded when they finally settled in the "broad plain" (Latium, connected probably with ldtus, broad; teitus, a side; Gr. plates; Eng. flat) that stretches westward from the Alban hills to the sea, may be conjectured, but cannot be positively ascertained. We know. indeed, that long before they had set foot in Italy, before even they had branched off from their Hellenic brethren, they lied ceased to be mere nomads, or wandering sliep. herds. The evidence of this fact lies in their language. Not only do the names of the oldest Latin nations, as the siceli ("the sickle-bearers" or " reapers"), and the osci, or opsel ("field-laborers"), clearly prove the antiquity of Italian husbandry; but the oldest agricultural terms are actually common to both Latins and Greeks (e.g., Lat. eller, Gr. (sows; Lat. a-ro, aratrum, Gr. aroo arotron; Lat. bigo (a hoc), Gr. laelutino; Lat, hortug, Gr. aortas; Lat. milium, Gr. vieliney Lat. raps, Gr. rephanis; Lat. malra, Gr. malarN; Lat. vinum, Gr. oinos). Moreover, the form of the plow was the same among both peoples, as also their mode of cutting and preparing the grain; many of the usages of social life; the oldest methods of measuring the land; ana the style of their national dress—the Latin tueica, corresponding exactly with the Greek ehiton, while the Latin toga is only a fuller himation. Their method of building was also the same. Such evidence (and it could easily be extended, must be regarded as conclusively showing that before the Latino-Italians entered Italy, they had been accustomed to till the ground, to make wine, to keep gardens, to build houses, and to decently clothe them selves. As to their social organization, less can be said. It appears, however—judging from the general bearing of the most ancient traditions, as also from the features exhibited in historical times—that at a very early period, and from causes of which we are now absolutely ignorant, they had begun to develop the germs of what may be culled "state-life." As among their Hellenic brethren, the original foundation of their social constitution was " households" (Gr. oikiai, Lat. tie/ or pagi, from pa ngere, to "fix" or "drive;" hence "to build"): these, either by ties of blood, or by nearness of locality, were aggregated into clans, and their dwellings formed clan-villages (thus pages, which probably meant at first only a single "household," came, by a natural transition, to denote a collection of households—a hamlet., or a village). Such elan villages were, however, not regarded as independent societies, but as parts of a political canton or community—the civitas or populus. Each canton or ciritas possessed a local, center or place of assembly, where justice was administered at regular intervals, where markets and sports were held, and religious rites celebrated, and which was besides fortified to serve as an asylum or place of refuge for the inhabitants of the open ham lets and their cattle in time of war. Such a center was termed the capitolium, i.e., "the height," from being originally fixed on a height or hill-top, and corresponded to the akra of the Greeks. Round this stronghold of the canton, which formed the nucleus or beginning of the earliest Latin towns, houses gradually sprung up, which in their turn were surrounded by the oppidum ("work," from opus), or the vrb4 ("ring wall," connected with genus, curvus, orb4); hence, in later times, oppidum and urbs became, naturally enough, the recognized designations of town and city. Evidence is not wanting to justify this view of the genesis of the Latin towns. In the ruder and more mountainous districts cf central Italy, occupied by the Mars], 2Equicoli, etc., the system of living only in open villages prevailed down even to the close of the empire, and there the Roman antiquarians found, to their inexplicable surprise, those solitary strongholds with their mysterious ring-walls, which, on the soil of Latium 'proper, expanded into towns, but in the recesses of the Apennines never advanced beyond their original design.
The sites of the oldest of these cantonial centers or primitive towns in Latium are to be sought for on the slopes of the Alban hills, where the springs are freshest, the air most wholesome, and the position most secure. Tradition (which makes Alba Longa the oldest seat of a Latin community) is here in accordance with natural probability.* On the same slopes lay Lanuvium, Aricia, and Tusculum, to the great antiquity of which ancient tradition bears testimony in many ways: on the cffshoots of the Sabine range, in the east of Latium, stood Tibur and Praeneste; in the plain between the Sabine and Alban ranges, Gabii, Labici, and Nomentum; on or near the coast, Lauren t= and Lavinium; and on the isolated hills overlooking the Tiber (the boundary between Latium and Etruria), the frontier town of Rome. How many cantons were originally in Latium, it is neither possible nor important to know. Tradition mentions 30 sovereign or politically independent communities (with Alba Longa at their head), which formed the famous Latin league. The historical order of their constitution is a
point regarding which we are equally ignorant, hut there is reason to believe that the Roman canton, or at least its capital, the town of Rome, was among the latest political organizations of the Latins. The history and fortunes of this canton we now proceed briefly to trace.
Ristou of Rome during the Earliest or Regal Period.—According to the myth of Romulus, Rome was an offshoot from Alba Longa, and to the biography of that hero we refer the reader for an outline of the ancient legend; but the most rational view of the city's origin is that which is suggested by a consideration of its site. It probably sprang into existence as a frontier defense against the Etruscans, and as an emporium for the river-traffic of the country; but whether it was founded by a common resolve of the Latin confederacy, or by the enterprise of an individual chief, is beyond the reach even of conjecture. The date fixed upon for the commencement of the city by the for mation of the viz., April 21, 753 B.C., is, of course, perfectly valueless in its precision. We know and can know nothing whatever on the point. The three "tribes," Ramnians, Titles, and Luceres, who appear in the Romuleian legend as the constituent parts of the primitive commonwealth, suggest the idea that Rome (like Athens) arose out of a synoikismos or amalgamation of three separate cantons; but Mommsen rejects as " irrational " the common opinion that these cantons represent different races, and that the Romans were a " mongrel people," made up of Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans, with perhaps a dash of Hellenic and imaginary " Pelasgie" blood in their veins! The existence of a Sabine element, represented by the Tities, is indeed admitted; but ita introduction is thrown hack to a period long anterior to the foundation of the city, when the Roman clans were still living in their open villages, and nothing of Rome existed but its " stronghold " on the Palatine. Nor is there anything to indicate that it materially affected the Latin character, language, polity, or religion of the commonwealth which was subsequently formed.
The motives which probably led to the building of Rome also led to its rapid devel opment, so that the great peculiarity of the Roman, as compared with the other Latin cantons, is the pronduence which its urban life assumed in the earliest period. No doubt the Roman continued to manage his farmIn the cantonal territory; but the insalu brity of the Campagna, as well as the advantages of river-traffle, and the necessity for watchfulness imposed upon all frontier towns in rude ages, must ever have acted _as an inducement to hint to take up his residence as much as possible in the city. The con sequence was that the Roman became essentially a "citizen," while the other Latins remained essentially " rustics." So markedly is this the case, that the beginnings of Roman bistory—if the ancient legend may be so designated—are mainly records of its urban expansion and political growth. That the Palatine hill was the oldest portion of the city is attested by a variety of circumstances. Not only does it hold that rank in the Romuleian legend, but on it were situated the oldest civil and religious institutions. The Romuleian myth of the establishment of an asylum on the Capitoline (see CAPITOL) for homicides and runaway slaves, with all its famous consequences—the Rape of Sabine Women, the wars with the Latins of Cmnina, Antemnm, and Crustumerium, but especially with the Sabines of Cures under their king Titus Tatius, the tragic fate of Tarpeia, and the fine feminine valor of the ravished maidens, who had learned to love their captors, is historically worthless; except, perhaps, so far as it shows us how from the beginning the Roman burghers were engaged in constant feuds with their neighbors for the aggrandizement of their power. The entire history of the "regal period," in fact, has come down to us in so mythical and legendary a form, that we cannot feel absolutely certain of the reality of a single incident. That such personages as Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martins, Lucius Tarquinius Prism's, Servius Tullius, and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, ever existed, or, if they did, that the circumstances of their lives, their institutions, their conquests, their reforms, were as the ancient narrative describes them, are things'which no critical scholar can believe. The destruction of the city records by the Gauls, when they captured and burned Rome in the 4th c. B.C., deprived the subsequent chroniclers of authentic information in regard to the past, and forced them to rely upon treacherous reminiscences, on oral tradition, on ballads, and on all the multifarious fabrications of a patriotic fancy, that would naturally seek compensa tion for political disaster in the splendor with which it would invest its primeval history. The utmost reach, therefore, to which our knowledge can attain, is to form some idea—mainly by inference from the institutions that we find existing in later times— of the course that social and political progress followed in the Roman commonwealth.