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

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


Art


Lastly, what holds good of real life is true also of its counterfeit
in jest and play, which everywhere, and especially in the earliest
period of full and simple existence, do not exclude the serious,
but veil it. The simplest elements of art are in Latium and Hellas
quite the same; the decorous armed dance, the "leap" (-triumpus-,
--thriambos--, --di-thyrambos--); the masquerade of the "full people"
(--satyroi--, -satura-), who, wrapped in the skins of sheep and
goats, wound up the festival with their jokes; lastly, the pipe,
which with suitable strains accompanied and regulated the solemn
as well as the merry dance. Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
close relationship of the Hellenes and Italians come to light so
clearly as here; and yet in no other direction did the two nations
manifest greater divergence as they became developed. The training
of youth remained in Latium strictly confined to the narrow limits
of domestic education; in Greece the yearning after a varied
yet harmonious training of mind and body created the sciences of
Gymnastics and Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by
individuals as their highest good. Latium in the poverty of its
artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized
peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its
religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of
these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of
which history has not again to show. In Latium no other influences
were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and
strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful
ascendency of beauty, to minister to the fair boy-friend with an
enthusiasm half sensuous, half ideal, and to reanimate their lost
courage with the war-songs of the divine singer.

Thus the two nations in which the civilization of antiquity
culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they
were in origin identical. The points in which the Hellenes excel
the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more
brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he
was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of
self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own
gods, form the rich treasure of the Italian nation. Both nations
underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development;
it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the
Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii
and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve
like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes. It was in fact the
most peculiar and the best feature in the character of the Greek
people, that rendered it impossible for them to advance from national
to political unity without at the same time exchanging their polity
for despotism. The ideal world of beauty was all in all to the
Greeks, and compensated them to some extent for what they wanted
in reality. Wherever in Hellas a tendency towards national union
appeared, it was based not on elements directly political, but
on games and art: the contests at Olympia, the poems of Homer,
the tragedies of Euripides, were the only bonds that held Hellas
together. Resolutely, on the other hand, the Italian surrendered
his own personal will for the sake of freedom, and learned to obey
his father that he might know how to obey the state. Amidst this
subjection individual development might be marred, and the germs
of fairest promise in man might be arrested in the bud; the Italian
gained in their stead a feeling of fatherland and of patriotism
such as the Greek never knew, and alone among all the civilized
nations of antiquity succeeded in working out national unity in
connection with a constitution based on self-government--a national
unity, which at last placed in his hands the mastery not only over
the divided Hellenic stock, but over the whole known world.




Notes for Book I Chapter II


1. Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound;
as -theotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino- and -dasiihonas platorrihi
bollihi-.

2. The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between
the Iapygian language and the modern Albanian; based, however, on
points of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory
in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is
involved. Should this relationship be confirmed, and should the
Albanians on the other hand--a race also Indo-Germanic and on a par
with the Hellenic and Italian races--be really a remnant of that
Hellene-barbaric nationality traces of which occur throughout all
Greece and especially in the northern provinces, the nation that
preceded the Hellenes would be demonstrated as identical with
that which preceded the Italians. Still the inference would not
immediately follow that the Iapygian immigration to Italy had taken
place across the Adriatic Sea.

3. Barley, wheat, and spelt were found growing together in a wild
state on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west from Anah
(Alph. de Candolle, Geographie botanique raisonnee, ii. p. 934).
The growth of barley and wheat in a wild state in Mesopotamia had
already been mentioned by the Babylonian historian Berosus (ap.
Georg. Syncell. p. 50 Bonn.).

4. Scotch -quern-. Mr. Robertson.

5. If the Latin -vieo-, -vimen-, belong to the same root as our
weave (German -weben-) and kindred words, the word must still, when
the Greeks and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to
plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably
in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed
that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not
reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted
with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the
preparation of linseed-oil. Hemp probably became known to the
Italians at a still later period than flax; at least -cannabis-
looks quite like a borrowed word of later date.

6. Thus -aro-, -aratrum- reappear in the old German -aran-
(to plough, dialectically -eren-), -erida-, in Slavonian -orati-,
-oradlo-, in Lithuanian -arti-, -arimnas-, in Celtic -ar-, -aradar-.
Thus alongside of -ligo- stands our rake (German -rechen-), of
-hortus- our garden (German -garten-), of -mola- our mill (German
-muhle-, Slavonic -mlyn-, Lithuanian -malunas-, Celtic -malin-).

With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was
a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely
pastoral husbandry. If it was the possession of cattle, and not of
land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard
of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture
was of later introduction, but that it was at first conducted on
the system of joint possession. Of course a purely agricultural
economy cannot have existed anywhere before the separation of
the stocks; on the contrary, pastoral husbandry was (more or less
according to locality) combined with it to an extent relatively
greater than was the case in later times.

7. Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection
of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during
the earliest epoch of culture. Thus the gods in Italy immediately
concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch,
Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301),
in Greece Demeter (Plutarch, Conjug. Praec. init.); in old Greek
formulas the procreation of children is called --arotos--(ii.
The Family and the State, note); indeed the oldest Roman formof
marriage, -confarreatio-, derives its name and its ceremony from
the cultivation of corn. The use of the plough in the founding of
cities is well known.

8. Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any
can be shown to be certainly related; -lancea-, although doubtless
connected with -logchei-, is, as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps
borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards.

9. Even in details this agreement appears; e.g., in the designation of
lawful wedlock as "marriage concluded for the obtaining of lawful
children" (--gauos epi paidon gneision aroto--, -matrimonium
liberorum quaerendorum causa-).

10. Only we must, of course, not forget that like pre-existing
conditions lead everywhere to like institutions. For instance,
nothing is more certain than that the Roman plebeians were a growth
originating within the Roman commonwealth, and yet they everywhere
find their counterpart where a body of -metoeci- has arisen alongside
of a body of burgesses. As a matter of course, chance also plays
in such cases its provoking game.




CHAPTER III

The Settlements of the Latins



Indo-Germanic Migrations


The home of the Indo-Germanic stock lay in the western portion of
central Asia; from this it spread partly in a south-eastern direction
over India, partly in a northwestern over Europe. It is difficult
to determine the primitive seat of the Indo-Germans more precisely:
it must, however, at any rate have been inland and remote from
the sea, as there is no name for the sea common to the Asiatic and
European branches. Many indications point more particularly to the
regions of the Euphrates; so that, singularly enough, the primitive
seats of the two most important civilized stocks, --the Indo-Germanic
and the Aramaean,--almost coincide as regards locality. This
circumstance gives support to the hypothesis that these races also
were originally connected, although, if there was such a connection,
it certainly must have been anterior to all traceable development
of culture and language. We cannot define more exactly their original
locality, nor are we able to accompany the individual stocks in the
course of their migrations. The European branch probably lingered
in Persia and Armenia for some considerable time after the departure
of the Indians; for, according to all appearance, that region has
been the cradle of agriculture and of the culture of the vine.
Barley, spelt, and wheat are indigenous in Mesopotamia, and the
vine tothe south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea: there too
the plum, the walnut, and others of the more easily transplanted
fruit trees are native. It is worthy of notice that the name for
the sea is common to most of the European stocks--Latins, Celts,
Germans, and Slavonians; they must probably therefore before their
separation have reached the coast of the Black Sea or of the Caspian.
By what route from those regions the Italians reached the chain
of the Alps, and where in particular they were settled while still
united with the Hellenes alone, are questions that can only be
answered when the problem is solved by what route--whether from
Asia Minor or from the regions of the Danube--the Hellenes arrived
in Greece. It may at all events be regarded as certain that the
Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the
north.(1)

The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central
mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can
still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely
historical times. Less is known regarding the route which the Latin
migration followed. Probably it proceeded in a similar direction
along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first
Sabellian stocks began to move. The stream only overflows the heights
when the lower grounds are already occupied; and only through the
supposition that there were Latin stocks already settled on the coast
are we able to explain why the Sabellians should have contented
themselves with the rougher mountain districts, from which they
afterwards issued and intruded, wherever it was possible, between
the Latin tribes.


Extension of the Latins in Italy


It is well known that a Latin stock inhabited the country from
the left bank of the Tiber to the Volscian mountains; but these
mountains themselves, which appear to have been neglected on occasion
of the first immigration when the plains of Latium and Campania
still lay open to the settlers, were, as the Volscian inscriptions
show, occupied by a stock more nearly related to the Sabellians
than to the Latins. On the other hand, Latins probably dwelt in
Campania before the Greek and Samnite immigrations; for the Italian
names Novla or Nola (newtown), Campani Capua, Volturnus (from
-volvere-, like -Iuturna- from -iuvare-), Opsci (labourers), are
demonstrably older than the Samnite invasion, and show that, at the
time when Cumae was founded by the Greeks, an Italian and probably
Latin stock, the Ausones, were in possession of Campania. The
primitive inhabitants of the districts which the Lucani and Bruttii
subsequently occupied, the Itali proper (inhabitants of the land of
oxen), are associated by the best observers not with the Iapygian,
but with the Italian stock; and there is nothing to hinder our regarding
them as belonging to its Latin branch, although the Hellenizing of
these districts which took place even before the commencement of
the political development of Italy, and their subsequent inundation
by Samnite hordes, have in this instance totally obliterated the
traces of the older nationality. Very ancient legends bring the
similarly extinct stock of the Siculi into relation with Rome. For
instance, the earliest historian of Italy Antiochus of Syracuse
tells us that a man named Sikelos came a fugitive from Rome to
Morges king of Italia (i. e. the Bruttian peninsula). Such stories
appear to be founded on the identity of race recognized by the
narrators as subsisting between the Siculi (of whom there were
some still in Italy in the time of Thucydides) and the Latins. The
striking affinity of certain dialectic peculiarities of Sicilian
Greek with the Latin is probably to be explained rather by the old
commercial connections subsisting between Rome and the Sicilian
Greeks, than by the ancient identity of the languages of the Siculi
and the Romans. According to all indications, however, not only
Latium, but probably also the Campanian and Lucanian districts,
the Italia proper between the gulfs of Tarentum and Laus, and the
eastern half of Sicily were in primitive times inhabited by different
branches of the Latin nation.

Destinies very dissimilar awaited these different branches. Those
settled in Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Campania came into contact
with the Greeks at a period when they were unable to offer resistance
to their civilization, and were either completely Hellenized, as in
the case of Sicily, or at any rate so weakened that they succumbed
without marked resistance to the fresh energy of the Sabine tribes.
In this way the Siculi, the Itali and Morgetes, and the Ausonians
never came to play an active part in the history of the peninsula.
It was otherwise with Latium, where no Greek colonies were
founded, and the inhabitants after hard struggles were successful
in maintaining their ground against the Sabines as well as against
their northern neighbours. Let us cast a glance at this district,
which was destined more than any other to influence the fortunes
of the ancient world.


Latium


The plain of Latium must have been in primeval times the scene of
the grandest conflicts of nature, while the slowly formative agency
of water deposited, and the eruptions of mighty volcanoes upheaved,
the successive strata of that soil on which was to be decided the
question to what people the sovereignty of the world should belong.
Latium is bounded on the east by the mountains of the Sabines and
Aequi which form part of the Apennines; and on the south by the
Volscian range rising to the height of 4000 feet, which is separated
from the main chain of the Apennines by the ancient territory of
the Hernici, the tableland of the Sacco (Trerus, a tributary of the
Liris), and stretching in a westerly direction terminates in the
promontory of Terracina. On the west its boundary is the sea, which
on this part of the coast forms but few and indifferent harbours.
On the north it imperceptibly merges into the broad hill-land
of Etruria. The region thus enclosed forms a magnificent plain
traversed by the Tiber, the "mountain-stream" which issues from
the Umbrian, and by the Anio, which rises in the Sabine mountains.
Hills here and there emerge, like islands, from the plain; some
of them steep limestone cliffs, such as that of Soracte in the
north-east, and that of the Circeian promontory on the south-west,
as well as the similar though lower height of the Janiculum near
Rome; others volcanic elevations, whose extinct craters had become
converted into lakes which in some cases still exist; the most
important of these is the Alban range, which, free on every side,
stands forth from the plain between the Volscian chain and the
river Tiber.

Here settled the stock which is known to history under the name
of the Latins, or, as they were subsequently called by way of
distinction from the Latin communities beyond the bounds of Latium,
the "Old Latins" (-prisci Latini-). But the territory occupied
by them, the district of Latium, was only a small portion of the
central plain of Italy. All the country north of the Tiber was to
the Latins a foreign and even hostile domain, with whose inhabitants
no lasting alliance, no public peace, was possible, and such armistices
as were concluded appear always to have been for a limited period.
The Tiber formed the northern boundary from early times; and neither
in history nor in the more reliable traditions has any reminiscence
been preserved as to the period or occasion of the establishment
of a frontier line so important in its results. We find, at the
time when our history begins, the flat and marshy tracts to the
south of the Alban range in the hands of Umbro-Sabellian stocks, the
Rutuli and Volsci; Ardea and Velitrae are no longer in the number
of originally Latin towns. Only the central portion of that region
between the Tiber, the spurs of the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and
the sea--a district of about 700 square miles, not much larger than
the present canton of Zurich--was Latium proper, the "plain,"(2)
as it appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte
Cavo. Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously flat.
With the exception of the sea-beach which is sandy and formed in
part by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is everywhere
broken by hills of tufa moderate in height though often somewhat
steep, and by deep fissures of the ground. These alternating
elevations and depressions of the surface lead to the formation
of lakes in winter; and the exhalations proceeding in the heat of
summer from the putrescent organic substances which they contain
engender that noxious fever-laden atmosphere, which in ancient
times tainted the district as it taints it at the present day. It
is a mistake to suppose that these miasmata were first occasioned
by the neglect of cultivation, which was the result of the misgovernment
in the last century of the Republic and under the Papacy. Their
cause lies rather in the want of natural outlets for the water;
and it operates now as it operated thousands of years ago. It is
true, however, that the malaria may to a certain extent be banished
by thoroughness of tillage--a fact which has not yet received its
full explanation, but may be partly accounted for by the circumstance
that the working of the surface accelerates the drying up of the
stagnant waters. It must always remain a remarkable phenomenon,
that a dense agricultural population should have arisen in regions
where no healthy population can at present subsist, and where the
traveller is unwilling to tarry even for a single night, such as
the plain of Latium and the lowlands of Sybaris and Metapontum.
We must bear in mind that man in a low stage of civilization
has generally a quicker perception of what nature demands, and a
greater readiness in conforming to her requirements; perhaps, also,
a more elastic physical constitution, which accommodates itself
more readily to the conditions of the soil where he dwells. In
Sardinia agriculture is prosecuted under physical conditions
precisely similar even at the present day; the pestilential atmosphere
exists, but the peasant avoids its injurious effects by caution in
reference to clothing, food, and the choice of his hours of labour.
In fact, nothing is so certain a protection against the "aria cattiva"
as wearing the fleece of animals and keeping a blazing fire; which
explains why the Roman countryman went constantly clothed in heavy
woollen stuffs, and never allowed the fire on his hearth to be
extinguished. In other respects the district must have appeared
attractive to an immigrant agricultural people: the soil is easily
laboured with mattock and hoe and is productive even without
being manured, although, tried by an Italian standard, it does not
yield any extraordinary return: wheat yields on an average about
five-fold.(3) Good water is not abundant; the higher and more
sacred on that account was the esteem in which every fresh spring
was held by the inhabitants.


Latin Settlements


No accounts have been preserved of the mode in which the settlements
of the Latins took place in the district which has since borne
their name; and we are left to gather what we can almost exclusively
from a posteriori inference regarding them. Some knowledge may,
however, in this way be gained, or at any rate some conjectures
that wear an aspect of probability.


Clan-Villages


The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number
of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation
of the earliest "rural wards" (-tribus rusticae-). Tradition
informs us as to the -tribus Claudia-, that it originated from
the settlement of the Claudian clansmen on the Anio; and that the
other districts of the earliest division originated in a similar
manner is indicated quite as certainly by their names. These
names are not, like those of the districts added at a later period,
derived from the localities, but are formed without exception from
the names of clans; and the clans who thus gave their names to
the wards of the original Roman territory are, so far as they have
not become entirely extinct (as is the case with the -Camilii-,
-Galerii-, -Lemonii-, -Pollii-, -Pupinii-, -Voltinii-), the very
oldest patrician families of Rome, the -Aemilii-, -Cornelii-, -Fabii-,
-Horatii-, -Menenii-, -Papirii-, -Romilii-, -Sergii-, -Voturii-.
It is worthy of remark, that not one of these clans can be shown to
have taken up its settlement in Rome only at a later epoch. Every
Italian, and doubtless also every Hellenic, canton must, like the
Roman, have been divided into a number of groups associated at once
by locality and by clanship; such a clan-settlement is the "house"
(--oikia--) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the --komai--
and --demoi-- originated among them, like the tribus in Rome. The
corresponding Italian terms "house" -vicus-or "district" (-pagus-,
from -pangere-) indicate, in like manner, the joint settlement
of the members of a clan, and thence come by an easily understood
transition to signify in common use hamlet or village. As each
household had its own portion of land, so the clan-household or
village had a clan-land belonging to it, which, as will afterwards
be shown, was managed up to a comparatively late period after the
analogy of household--land, that is, on the system of joint-possession.
Whether it was in Latium itself that the clan-households became
developed into clan-villages, or whether the Latins were already
associated in clans when they immigrated into Latium, are questions
which we are just as little able to answer as we are to determine
what was the form assumed by the management on joint account,
which such an arrangement required,(4) or how far, in addition to
the original ground of common ancestry, the clan may have been based
on the incorporation or co-ordination from without of individuals
not related to it by blood.


Cantons


These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as
independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political
community (-civitas-, -populus-). This first presents itself as an
aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language,
and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal
redress and to united action in aggression and defence. A fixed
local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton
as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in
other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their
villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint
settlement in the strict sense--a town. It must, on the contrary,
have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of
justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members
of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and
amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves
and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in
the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was
not at all or but scantily inhabited. Ancient places of refuge,
of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present
day on the tops of several of the hills in the highlands of east
Switzerland. Such a place was called in Italy "height" (-capitolium-,
like --akra--, the mountain-top), or "stronghold" (-arx-, from
-arcere-); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of
one, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold and were
afterwards surrounded with the "ring" (-urbs-, connected with
-urvus-, -rurvus-, perhaps also with -orbis-). The stronghold and
town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of
gates, of which the stronghold has as few as possible, and the town
many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three.
Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which
prevailed in Italy anterior to the existence of towns: a constitution,
the nature of which may still be recognized with some degree of
clearness in those provinces of Italy which did not until a late
period reach, and in some cases have not yet fully reached, the
stage of aggregation in towns, such as the land of the Marsi and
the small cantons of the Abruzzi. The country if the Aequiculi,
who even in the imperial period dwelt not in towns, but in numerous
open hamlets, presents a number of ancient ring-walls, which,
regarded as "deserted towns" with their solitary temples, excited
the astonishment of the Roman as well as of modern archaeologists,
who have fancied that they could find accommodation there, the
former for their "primitive inhabitants" (-aborigines-), the latter
for their Pelasgians. We shall certainly be nearer the truth in
recognizing these structures not as walled towns, but as places of
refuge for the inhabitants of the district, such as were doubtless
found in more ancient times over all Italy, although constructed
in less artistic style. It was natural that at the period when the
stocks that had made the transition to urban life were surrounding
their towns with stone walls, those districts whose inhabitants
continued to dwell in open hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts
and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone. When
peace came to be securely established throughout the land and
such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were
abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations.