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Various - "Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917"

Frank Richard Stockton - "The Stories of the Three Burglars"

Edward Bulwer Lytton - "The Disowned, Complete"

Percy Keese Fitzhugh - "Roy Blakeley"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)


Culture of Grain


Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals.
The usual grain was spelt (-far-);(8) but different kinds of pulse,
roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated.


Culture of the Vine


That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the first time
into Italy by Greek settlers,(9) is shown by the list of the festivals
of the Roman community which reaches back to a time preceding the
Greeks, and which presents three wine-festivals to be celebrated in
honour of "father Jovis," not in honour of the wine-god of more
recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the "father deliverer."
The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as
levying a wine-tax from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various
versions of the widely-spread Italian story which affirms that the
Celts were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their coming
to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the
grape and of wine, are indications of the pride of the Latins in
their glorious vine, the envy of all their neighbours. A careful
system of vine-husbandry was early and generally inculcated by the
Latin priests. In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme
priest of the community, the -flamen- of Jupiter, had granted
permission for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a
Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new wine, until the priest
had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks. The early
prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not
only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial
ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated
as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the
gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes; just as, to introduce
the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the
offering of grain undried.


Culture of the Olive


The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and certainly
was first brought to Italy by the Greeks.(10) The olive is said to
have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean
towards the close of the second century of the city; and this view
accords with the fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy
in the Roman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the
vine. The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans
is shown by the vine and the olive-tree which were planted in the
middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake.


The Fig


The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was
probably a native of Italy. The legend of the origin of Rome wove
its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which
stood near to and in the Roman Forum.(11)


Management of the Farm


It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed
generally the labours of husbandry: it is not probable that slaves
or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of
the ordinary farm. The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow;
horses, asses, and mules served as beasts of burden. The rearing
of cattle for the sake of meat or of milk did not exist at all as
a distinct branch of husbandry, or was prosecuted only to a very
limited extent, at least on the land which remained the property of
the clan; but, in addition to the smaller cattle which were driven
out together to the common pasture, swine and poultry, particularly
geese, were kept at the farm-yard. As a general rule, there was no
end of ploughing and re-ploughing: a field was reckoned imperfectly
tilled, in which the furrows were not drawn so close that harrowing
could be dispensed with; but the management was more earnest than
intelligent, and no improvement took place in the defective plough
or in the imperfect processes of reaping and of threshing. This
result is probably attributable rather to the scanty development
of rational mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers
to use and wont; for mere kindly attachment to the system of tillage
transmitted with the patrimonial soil was far from influencing the
practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such
as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows,
may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently
developed--Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion
of the theory of agriculture. Welcome rest followed diligent and
judicious labour; and here too religion asserted her right to soothe
the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and
for freer human movement and intercourse. Every eighth day (-nonae-),
and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went
to town to buy and sell and transact his other business. But rest
from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several
festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion
of the winter sowing (-feriae sementivae-): during these set times
the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only,
but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.

Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was
cultivated in the earliest times. The next heirs had no protection
against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift
who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he
were a lunatic.(12) Women moreover were in substance divested of
their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member
of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to
retain the estate within the clan. The law sought to check the
overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in
the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference
of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the
creditor, partly, in the case of a simple loan, by the rigour of the
proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy;
the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its
object but very imperfectly. No restriction was imposed by law on
the free divisibility of property. Desirable as it might be that
co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage,
even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving
such a partnership open at any time to any partner; it was good that
brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do
so was foreign to the liberal spirit of Roman law. The Servian
constitution moreover shows that even in the regal period of Rome
there were not wanting cottagers and garden-proprietors, with whom
the mattock took the place of the plough. It was left to custom and
the sound sense of the population to prevent excessive subdivision
of the soil; and that their confidence in this respect was not
misplaced and the landed estates ordinarily remained entire, is
proved by the universal Roman custom of designating them by permanent
individual names. The community exercised only an indirect influence
in the matter by the sending forth of colonies, which regularly led
to the establishment of a number of new full hides, and frequently
doubtless also to the suppression of a number of cottage holdings,
the small landholders being sent forth as colonists.


Landed Proprietors


It is far more difficult to perceive how matters stood with landed
property on a larger scale. The fact that such larger properties
existed to no inconsiderable extent, cannot be doubted from the
early development of the -equites-, and may be easily explained
partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself
could not but call into existence a class of larger landowners
in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of
the persons belonging to the several clans and participating in
the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile
capital to Rome. But farming on a large scale in the proper
sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we
afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed
during this period. On the contrary, to this period we must refer
the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called
fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common
people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner
must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable
to farm in person, or even his whole estate, into little parcels
among his dependents to be cultivated by them, as is the general
practice in Italy at the present day. The recipient might be the
house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his
position was that which subsequently went by the name of "occupancy
on sufferance" (-precarium-). The recipient retained his occupancy
during the pleasure of the granter, and had no legal means of
protecting himself in possession against him; on the contrary, the
granter could eject him at any time when he pleased. The relation
did not necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person
who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor; but such
a payment beyond doubt frequently took place and may, as a rule,
have consisted in the delivery of a portion of the produce. The
relation in this case approximated to the lease of subsequent times,
but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of
a fixed term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character
on either side and the legal protection of the claim for rent depending
entirely on the lessor's right of ejection. It is plain that it
was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could
not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom
consecrated by religion; and this was not wanting. The institution
of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond
doubt rested fundamentally on this assignation of the profits of
the soil. Nor was the introduction of such an assignation dependent
on the abolition of the system of common tillage; for, just as
after this abolition the individual, so previous to it the clan
might grant to dependents a joint use of its lands; and beyond
doubt with this very state of things was connected the fact that
the Roman clientship was not personal, but that from the outset
the client along with his clan entrusted himself for protection
and fealty to the patron and his clan. This earliest form of Roman
landholding serves to explain how there sprang from the great
landlords in Rome a landed, and not an urban, nobility. As the
pernicious institution of middlemen remained foreign to the Romans,
the Roman landlord found himself not much less chained to his land
than was the tenant and the farmer; he inspected and took part in
everything himself, and the wealthy Roman esteemed it his highest
praise to be reckoned a good landlord. His house was in the country;
in the city he had only a lodging for the purpose of attending to
his business there, and perhaps of breathing the purer air that
prevailed there during the hot season. Above all, however, these
arrangements furnished a moral basis for the relation between the
upper class and the common people, and so materially lessened its
dangers. The free tenants-on-sufferance, sprung from families of
decayed farmers, dependents, and freedmen, formed the great bulk
of the proletariate,(13) and were not much more dependent on the
landlord than the petty leaseholder inevitably is with reference to
the great proprietor. The slaves tilling the fields for a master
were beyond doubt far less numerous than the free tenants. In all
cases where an immigrant nation has not at once reduced to slavery
a population -en masse-, slaves seem to have existed at first only
to a very limited amount, and consequently free labourers seem to
have played a very different part in the state from that in which
they subsequently appear. In Greece "day-labourers" (--theites--)
in various instances during the earlier period occupy the place
of the slaves of a later age, and in some communities, among the
Locrians for instance, there was no slavery down to historical times.
Even the slave, moreover, was ordinarily of Italian descent; the
Volscian, Sabine, or Etruscan war-captive must have stood in a
different relation towards his master from the Syrian and the Celt
of later times. Besides as a tenant he had in fact, though not
in law, land and cattle, wife and child, as the landlord had, and
after manumission was introduced(14) there was a possibility, not
remote, of working out his freedom. If such then was the footing
on which landholding on a large scale stood in the earliest times,
it was far from being an open sore in the commonwealth; on the
contrary, it was of most material service to it. Not only did it
provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many
families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties;
but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and
free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and
rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance
furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization,
without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state
may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who
knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield
the plough.


Pastoral Husbandry


Ground under pasture was not affected by the distribution of the
land. The state, and not the clanship, was regarded as the owner
of the common pastures. It made use of them in part for its
own flocks and herds, which were intended for sacrifice and other
purposes and were always kept up by means of the cattle-fines; and
it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them
out upon the common pasture for a moderate payment (-scriptura-).
The right of pasturage on the public domains may have originally
borne some relation -de facto- to the possession of land, but no
connection -de jure- can ever have subsisted in Rome between the
particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the
common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the
--metoikos--, but the right to use the common pasture was only
granted exceptionally to the --metoikos-- by the royal favour.
At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but
a subordinate place in the national economy generally, for the
original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the
conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed
immediately as arable land among the clans or at a later period
among individuals.


Handicrafts


While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted
occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to
accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of
urban life in that emporium of the Latins. In fact eight guilds of
craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of king Numa, that
is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time
immemorial. These were the flute-blowers, the goldsmiths, the
coppersmiths, the carpenters, the fullers, the dyers, the potters,
and the shoemakers--a list which would substantially exhaust the
class of tradesmen working to order on account of others in the very
early times, when the baking of bread and the professional art of
healing were not yet known and wool was spun into clothing by the
women of the household themselves. It is remarkable that there
appears no special guild of workers in iron. This affords a
fresh confirmation of the fact that the manufacture of iron was of
comparatively late introduction in Latium; and on this account in
matters of ritual down to the latest times copper alone might be
used, e.g. for the sacred plough and the shear-knife of the priests.
These bodies of craftsmen must have been of great importance in
early times for the urban life of Rome and for its position towards
the Latin land--an importance not to be measured by the depressed
condition of Roman handicraft in later times, when it was injuriously
affected by the multitude of artisan-slaves working for their
master or on his account, and by the increased import of articles
of luxury. The oldest lays of Rome celebrated not only the mighty
war-god Mamers, but also the skilled armourer Mamurius, who understood
the art of forging for his fellow-burgesses shields similar to the
divine model shield that had fallen from heaven; Volcanus the god
of fire and of the forge already appears in the primitive list of
Roman festivals.(15) Thus in the earliest Rome, as everywhere,
the arts of forging and of wielding the ploughshare and the sword
went hand in hand, and there was nothing of that arrogant contempt
for handicrafts which we afterwards meet with there. After the
Servian organization, however, imposed the duty of serving in the
army exclusively on the freeholders, the industrial classes were
excluded not by any law, but practically in consequence of their
general want of a freehold qualification, from the privilege of
bearing arms, except in the case of special subdivisions chosen
from the carpenters, coppersmiths, and certain classes of musicians
and attached with a military organization to the army; and this may
perhaps have been the origin of the subsequent habit of depreciating
the manual arts and of the position of political inferiority assigned
to them. The institution of guilds doubtless had the same object
as the colleges of priests that resembled them in name; the men of
skill associated themselves in order more permanently and securely
to preserve the tradition of their art. That there was some mode
of excluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be
met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protective steps
against inferior manufactures. There is no aspect, however, of
the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is
so scanty as that of the Roman trades.


Inland Commerce of the Italians


Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the
earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves.
Fairs (-mercatus-), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly
markets (-nundinae-) were of great antiquity in Latium. Probably
they were at first associated with international gatherings and
festivals, and so perhaps were connected in Rome with the festival
at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this
purpose to Rome every year on the 13th August, may have embraced
at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business
in Rome and of purchasing what they needed there. A similar and
perhaps still greater importance belonged in the case of Etruria
to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps
near Montefiascone) in the territory of Volsinii; it served at the
same time as a fair and was regularly frequented by Roman traders.
But the most important of all the Italian fairs was that which was
held at Soracte in the grove of Feronia, a situation than which
none could be found more favourable for the exchange of commodities
among the three great nations. That high isolated mountain, which
appears to have been set down by nature herself in the midst of the
plain of the Tiber as a goal for the traveller, lay on the boundary
which separated the Etruscan and Sabine lands (to the latter
of which it appears mostly to have belonged), and it was likewise
easily accessible from Latium and Umbria. Roman merchants regularly
made their appearance there, and the wrongs of which they complained
gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.

Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traffic were carried on at these
fairs long before the first Greek or Phoenician vessel entered the
western sea. When bad harvests had occurred, different districts
supplied each other at these fairs with grain; there, too, they
exchanged cattle, slaves, metals, and whatever other articles were
deemed needful or desirable in those primitive times. Oxen and
sheep formed the oldest medium of exchange, ten sheep being reckoned
equivalent to one ox. The recognition of these objects as universal
legal representatives of value or in other words as money, as well
as the scale of proportion between the large and smaller cattle,
may be traced back--as the recurrence of both especially among the
Germans shows--not merely to the Graeco-Italian period, but beyond
this even to the epoch of a purely pastoral economy.(16) In
Italy, where metal in considerable quantity was everywhere required
especially for agricultural purposes and for armour, but few of its
provinces themselves produced the requisite metals, copper (-aes-)
very early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second
medium of exchange; and so the Latins, who were poor in copper,
designated valuation itself as "coppering" (-aestimatio-). This
establishment of copper as a general equivalent recognized throughout
the whole peninsula, as well as the simplest numeral signs of
Italian invention to be mentioned more particularly below(17) and
the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as traces of this
earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while
they still had the peninsula to themselves.


Transmarine Traffic of the Italians


We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence
exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued
independent. The Sabellian stocks remained almost wholly unaffected
by it. They were in possession of but a small and inhospitable
belt of coast, and received whatever reached them from foreign
nations--the alphabet for instance--only through the medium of the
Tuscans or Latins; a circumstance which accounts for their want of
urban development. The intercourse of Tarentum with the Apulians
and Messapians appears to have been at this epoch still unimportant.
It was otherwise along the west coast. In Campania the Greeks and
Italians dwelt peacefully side by side, and in Latium, and still
more in Etruria, an extensive and regular exchange of commodities
took place. What were the earliest articles of import, may
be inferred partly from the objects found in the primitive tombs,
particularly those at Caere, partly from indications preserved in
the language and institutions of the Romans, partly and chiefly from
the stimulus given to Italian industry; for of course they bought
foreign manufactures for a considerable time before they began
to imitate them. We cannot determine how far the development of
handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or
what progress it thereafter made while Italy remained left to its
own resources; it is uncertain how far the Italian fullers, dyers,
tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia
or had their own independent development But certainly the trade
of the goldsmiths, which existed in Rome from time immemorial, can
only have arisen after transmarine commerce had begun and ornaments
of gold had to some extent found sale among the inhabitants of the
peninsula. We find, accordingly, in the oldest sepulchral chambers
of Caere and Vulci in Etruria and of Praeneste in Latium, plates
of gold with winged lions stamped upon them, and similar ornaments
of Babylonian manufacture. It may be a question in reference to
the particular object found, whether it has been introduced from
abroad or is a native imitation; but on the whole it admits of
no doubt that all the west coast of Italy in early times imported
metallic wares from the East. It will be shown still more clearly
in the sequel, when we come to speak of the exercise of art, that
architecture and modelling in clay and metal received a powerful
stimulus in very early times through Greek influence, or, in
other words, that the oldest tools and the oldest models came from
Greece. In the sepulchral chambers just mentioned, besides the
gold ornaments, there were deposited vessels of bluish enamel or
greenish clay, which, judging from the materials and style as well
as from the hieroglyphics impressed upon them, were of Egyptian
origin;(18) perfume-vases of Oriental alabaster, several of them
in the form of Isis; ostrich-eggs with painted or carved sphinxes
and griffins; beads of glass and amber. These last may have come
by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the
import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the
East. Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is
proved by the early use of linen fillets, of the purple dress and
ivory sceptre for the king, and of frankincense in sacrifice, as
well as by the very ancient borrowed names for them (--linon--,
-linum-; --porphura--, -purpura-; --skeiptron--, --skipon--, -scipio-;
perhaps also --elephas--, -ebur-; --thuos--, -thus-). Of similar
significance is the derivation of a number of words relating to
articles used in eating and drinking, particularly the names of
oil,(19) of jugs (--amphoreus--, -amp(h)ora-, -ampulla-, --krateir--,
-cratera-), of feasting (--komazo--, -comissari-), of a dainty dish
(--opsonion--, -opsonium-) of dough (--maza--, -massa-), and various
names of cakes (--glukons--, -lucuns-; --plakons--, -placenta-;
--turons--, -turunda-); while conversely the Latin names for dishes
(-patina-, --patanei--) and for lard (-arvina-, --arbinei--) have
found admission into Sicilian Greek. The later custom of placing
in the tomb beside the dead Attic, Corcyrean, and Campanian vases
proves, what these testimonies from language likewise show, the
early market for Greek pottery in Italy. That Greek leather-work
made its way into Latium at least in the shape of armour is apparent
from the application of the Greek word for leather --skutos-- to
signify among the Latins a shield (-scutum-; like -lorica-, from
-lorum-). Finally, we deduce a similar inference from the numerous
nautical terms borrowed from the Greek (although it is remarkable
that the chief technical expressions in navigation--the terms
for the sail, mast, and yard--are pure Latin forms);(20) and from
the recurrence in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter
(--epistolei--, -epistula-), a token (-tessera-, from --tessara--(21)),
a balance (--stateir--, -statera-), and earnest-money (--arrabon--,
-arrabo-, -arra-); and conversely from the adoption of Italian
law-terms in Sicilian Greek,(22) as well as from the exchange of
the proportions and names of coins, weights, and measures, which
we shall notice in the sequel. The character of barbarism which
all these borrowed terms obviously present, and especially the
characteristic formation of the nominative from the accusative
(-placenta- = --plakounta--; -ampora- = --amphorea--; -statera-=
--stateira--), constitute the clearest evidence of their great
antiquity. The worship of the god of traffic (-Mercurius-) also
appears to have been from the first influenced by Greek conceptions;
and his annual festival seems even to have been fixed on the ides
of May, because the Hellenic poets celebrated him as the son of
the beautiful Maia.