The History of Rome, Book I - Theodor Mommsen
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Italian History
We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history
of the city of Rome. Although, in the formal sense of political
law, it was the civic community of Rome which gained the sovereignty
first of Italy and then of the world, such a view cannot be held
to express the higher and real meaning of history. What has been
called the subjugation of Italy by the Romans appears rather,
when viewed in its true light, as the consolidation into an united
state of the whole Italian stock--a stock of which the Romans were
doubtless the most powerful branch, but still were only a branch.
The history of Italy falls into two main sections: (1) its internal
history down to its union under the leadership of the Latin stock,
and (2) the history of its sovereignty over the world. Under the
first section, which will occupy the first two books, we shall have
to set forth the settlement of the Italian stock in the peninsula;
the imperilling of its national and political existence, and
its partial subjugation, by nations of other descent and older
civilization, Greeks and Etruscans; the revolt of the Italians
against the strangers, and the annihilation or subjection of the
latter; finally, the struggles between the two chief Italian stocks,
the Latins and the Samnites, for the hegemony of the peninsula, and
the victory of the Latins at the end of the fourth century before
the birth of Christ--or of the fifth century of the city. The second
section opens with the Punic wars; it embraces the rapid extension
of the dominion of Rome up to and beyond the natural boundaries of
Italy, the long status quo of the imperial period, and the collapse
of the mighty empire. These events will be narrated in the third
and following books.
Notes for Book I Chapter I
1. The dates as hereafter inserted in the text are years of the
City (A.U.C.); those in the margin give the corresponding years
B.C.
CHAPTER II
The Earliest Migrations into Italy
Primitive Races of Italy
We have no information, not even a tradition, concerning the first
migration of the human race into Italy. It was the universal
belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as elsewhere, the first
population had sprung from the soil. We leave it to the province
of the naturalist to decide the question of the origin of different
races, and of the influence of climate in producing their diversities.
In a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of
any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population
of a country were autochthones or immigrants. But it is incumbent
on the historical inquirer to bring to light the successive strata of
population in the country of which he treats, in order to trace,
from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of
civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races
less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher
standing.
Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and
presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of
civilization. The results of German archaeological research lead
to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany
and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those
lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps
of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and fishing,
making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves
with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with
agriculture and the use of the metals. In India, in like manner, the
Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population
less susceptible of culture. But in Italy we neither meet with
fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the
Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains;
nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto
pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed
skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what
is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity. Nothing has
hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that
mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of
agriculture and of the smelting of the metals; and if the human
race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of
that primitive stage of culture which we are accustomed to call
the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared.
Individual tribes, or in other words, races or stocks, are the
constituent elements of the earliest history. Among the stocks which
in later times we meet with in Italy, the immigration of some, of
the Hellenes for instance, and the denationalization of others,
such as the Bruttians and the inhabitants of the Sabine territory,
are historically attested. Setting aside both these classes, there
remain a number of stocks whose wanderings can no longer be traced
by means of historical testimony, but only by a priori inference,
and whose nationality cannot be shown to have undergone any radical
change from external causes. To establish the national individuality
of these is the first aim of our inquiry. In such an inquiry,
had we nothing to fall back upon but the chaotic mass of names of
tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical tradition,
the task might well be abandoned as hopeless. The conventionally
received tradition, which assumes the name of history, is composed
of a few serviceable notices by civilized travellers, and a mass
of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been combined with
little discrimination of the true character either of legend or
of history. But there is another source of tradition to which we
may resort, and which yields information fragmentary but authentic;
we mean the indigenous languages of the stocks settled in Italy from
time immemorial. These languages, which have grown with the growth
of the peoples themselves, have had the stamp of their process
of growth impressed upon them too deeply to be wholly effaced
by subsequent civilization. One only of the Italian languages is
known to us completely; but the remains which have been preserved
of several of the others are sufficient to afford a basis for
historical inquiry regarding the existence, and the degrees, of
family relationship among the several languages and peoples.
In this way philological research teaches us to distinguish three
primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that
which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main
branches,--the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the
Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong.
Iapygians
As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information. At the
south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian
peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language(1) have been
found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect
of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition
also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks.
Statements deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the
conclusion that the same language and the same stock were indigenous
also in Apulia. What we at present know of this people suffices
to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians,
but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned
to them and to their language in the history of the human race. The
inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected
that they ever will be, deciphered. The genitive forms, -aihi- and
-ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek --oio--,
appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic
family. Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants
and the avoiding of the letters m and t as terminal sounds, show
that this Iapygian dialect was essentially different from the
Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects.
The supposition of an especially close affinity between the Iapygian
nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent
occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions,
and in the surprising facility with which that people became
Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this
respect of the other Italian nations. Apulia, which in the time
of Timaeus (400) was still described as a barbarous land, had in
the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek,
although no direct colonization from Greece had taken place;
and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various
indications of a similar tendency. With the recognition of such
a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the
Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means
goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a
rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least
in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result
be attainable.(2) The lack of information, however, is not much
felt; for this race, already on the decline at the period when
our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and
disappearing. The character of the Iapygian people, little capable
of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees
well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds
probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical
autochthones of Italy. There can be no doubt that all the primitive
migrations of nations took place by land; especially such as were
directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea
only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's
time wholly unknown to the Hellenes. But if the earlier settlers
came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin
of mountains from their stratification, the historical inquirer
may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards
the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy; and it is just
at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the Iapygian
nation.
Italians
The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy
tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the
same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of
being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian
nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since
upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is
divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians;
the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and
Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical
times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks
has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic
chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed
an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds
there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they
agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic
and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself.
The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout,
and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally
foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of
their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f
or -h. The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense
with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the
original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date,
which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome.
Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly
dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding
consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in
the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops
even these. In connection with this we find that the middle voice
has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.
Relation of the Italians to the Greeks
These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena
suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as
distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family,
and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest
relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and
the Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the
Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned
early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations
themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word
of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to
every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous
appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and
Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to
the Iapygians or Etruscans.
Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites
Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands
in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects. It is true
that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are
in some degree known to us, and these even in a manner extremely
defective and uncertain. Of the rest some, such as the Marsian
and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable
us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to
classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and
precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception
of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial
Latin, completely disappeared. A conjoint view, however, of the
facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these
dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian
stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to
Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin.
In the pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian
used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages
otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p
is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic
and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and
in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed,
whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little;
and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman
weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved,--a
modification which does not take place in the kindred group of
languages. The genitive of words in -a is in this group as among
the Greeks -as, among the Romans in the matured language -ae;
that of words in -us is in the Samnite -eis, in the Umbrian -es,
among the Romans -ei; the locative disappeared more and more from
the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the
other Italian dialects; the dative plural in -bus is extant only
in Latin. The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in -um is foreign to the
Romans; while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root -es after
the Greek fashion (-her-est- like --leg-so--) has almost, perhaps
altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by
the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from
-fuo-(-amabo-). In many of these instances, however--in the forms
of the cases, for example--the differences only exist in the two
languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide. It
thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent
position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it
bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of
the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian
and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between
the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta.
Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation
of an historical event. With perfect certainty they guide us to
the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages
there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the
Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period,
the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the
western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern
became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans.
When and where these separations took place, language of course
cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope
its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the
earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration
which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines.
On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with
accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree
of culture which the people had reached when these separations took
place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is
nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially
in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the
degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of
the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records
the future will not fail to draw information as to those times
regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.
Indo-Germanic Culture
During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now
separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they
attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary
corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried
along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common
dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it
we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions,
perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the
impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but
also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects
their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are
the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot
be explained either on the principle of an uniform development
in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having
subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess
evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch
in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit
-gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is
the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-,
Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--;
Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture
at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the
Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single
exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit
-yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must
indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated
plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in
the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude
the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances
of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult
in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice
among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and
Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may
all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the
other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians
only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks
they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild
in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain. While,
however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light
is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most
important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly
in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification.
-Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-,
anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is
pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are
thus very ancient; but their more definite application to the field
(-ager-), to the grain to be ground (-granum-), to the implement
which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea
(-aratrum-), to the juice of the grape (-vinum-), had not yet taken
place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it
is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came
to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the
corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it
(Gothic -quairinus-, Lithuanian -girnos-,(4)) received their names
from the Sanscrit -kurnu-. We may accordingly assume it as probable,
that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with
agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but
a very subordinate part in their economy; for had it at that time
held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans,
it would have left a deeper impression upon the language.
On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans
is attested by the Sanscrit -dam(as)-, Latin -domus-, Greek --domos--;
Sanscrit -vesas-, Latin -vicus-, Greek --oikos--; Sanscrit -dvaras-,
Latin -fores-, Greek --thura--; further, the building of oar-boats
by the names of the boat, Sanscrit -naus-, Latin -navis-, Greek
--naus--, and of the oar, Sanscrit -aritram-, Greek --eretmos--,
Latin -remus-, -tri-res-mis-; and the use of waggons and the breaking
in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit -akshas-
(axle and cart), Latin -axis-, Greek --axon--, --am-axa--; Sanscrit
-iugam-, Latin -iugum-, Greek --zugon--. The words that denote
clothing- Sanscrit -vastra-, Latin -vestis-, Greek --esthes--; as
well as those that denote sewing and spinning-Sanscrit -siv-, Latin
-suo-; Sanscrit -nah-, Latin -neo-, Greek --netho--, are alike
in all Indo-Germanic languages. This cannot, however, be equally
affirmed of the higher art of weaving.(5) The knowledge of the
use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a
primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations; and the same may
be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed
as implements or ornaments by man. At least the names of copper
(-aes-) and silver (-argentum-), perhaps also of gold, are met with
in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely have originated before
man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores; the Sanscrit
-asis-, Latin -ensis-, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic
weapons.