The History of Rome, Book I - Theodor Mommsen
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26
Localities of the Oldest Cantons
These cantons accordingly, having their rendezvous in some
stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the
primitive political unities with which Italian history begins. At
what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium,
cannot be determined with precision; nor is it a matter of special
historical interest The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold
of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the
freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be
first occupied by the new comers.
Alba
Here accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between
the Alban lake (-Lago di Castello-) and the Alban mount (-Monte
Cavo-), extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded
as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of
Rome as well as of all the other Old Latin communities; here, too,
on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium,
Aricia, and Tusculum. Here are found some of those primitive works
of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization and
seem to stand as a witness to posterity that in reality Pallas
Athena when she does appear, comes into the world full grown. Such
is the escarpment of the wall of rock below Alba in the direction
of Palazzuola, whereby the place, which is rendered naturally
inaccessible by the steep declivities of Monte Cavo on the south,
is rendered equally unapproachable on the north, and only the two
narrow approaches on the east and west, which are capable of being
easily defended, are left open for traffic. Such, above all, is
the large subterranean tunnel cut--so that a man can stand upright
within it--through the hard wall of lava, 6000 feet thick, by which
the waters of the lake formed in the old crater of the Alban Mount
were reduced to their present level and a considerable space was
gained for tillage on the mountain itself.
The summits of the last offshoots of the Sabine range form natural
fastnesses of the Latin plain; and the canton-strongholds there
gave rise at a later period to the considerable towns of Tibur and
Praeneste. Labici too, Gabii, and Nomentum in the plain between the
Alban and Sabine hills and the Tiber, Rome on the Tiber, Laurentum
and Lavinium on the coast, were all more or less ancient centres
of Latin colonization, not to speak of many others less famous and
in some cases almost forgotten.
The Latin League
All these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign,
and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation
of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors. Nevertheless
the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of
language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself
in an important religious and political institution--the perpetual
league of the collective Latin cantons. The presidency belonged
originally, according to the universal Italian as well as Hellenic
usage, to that canton within whose bounds lay the meeting-place of
the league; in this case it was the canton of Alba, which, as we
have said, was generally regarded as the oldest and most eminent
of the Latin cantons. The communities entitled to participate in
the league were in the beginning thirty--a number which we find
occurring with singular frequency as the sum of the constituent
parts of a commonwealth in Greece and Italy. What cantons originally
made up the number of the thirty old Latin communities or, as with
reference to the metropolitan rights of Alba they are also called,
the thirty Alban colonies, tradition has not recorded, and we can
no longer ascertain. The rendezvous of this union was, like the
Pamboeotia and the Panionia among the similar confederacies of the
Greeks, the "Latin festival" (-feriae Latinae-), at which, on the
"Mount of Alba" (-Mons Albanus-, -Monte Cavo-), upon a day annually
appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was
offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the "Latin god"
(-Jupiter Latiaris-). Each community taking part in the ceremony
had to contribute to the sacrificial feast its fixed proportion
of cattle, milk, and cheese, and to receive in return a portion of
the roasted victim. These usages continued down to a late period,
and are well known: respecting the more important legal bearings
of this association we can do little else than institute conjectures.
From the most ancient times there were held, in connection with
the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assemblies of the
representatives of the several communities at the neighbouring
Latin seat of justice at the source of the Ferentina (near Marino).
Indeed such a confederacy cannot be conceived to exist without
having a certain power of superintendence over the associated body,
and without possessing a system of law binding on all. Tradition
records, and we may well believe, that the league exercised
jurisdiction in reference to violations of federal law, and that
it could in such cases pronounce even sentence of death. The later
communion of legal rights and, in some sense, of marriage that
subsisted among the Latin communities may perhaps be regarded as
an integral part of the primitive law of the league, so that any
Latin man could beget lawful children with any Latin woman and
acquire landed property and carry on trade in any part of Latium.
The league may have also provided a federal tribunal of arbitration
for the mutual disputes of the cantons; on the other hand, there
is no proof that the league imposed any limitation on the sovereign
right of each community to make peace or war. In like manner
there can be no doubt that the constitution of the league implied
the possibility of its waging defensive or even aggressive war
in its own name; in which case, of course, it would be necessary
to have a federal commander-in-chief. But we have no reason to
suppose that in such an event each community was compelled by law
to furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any
one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even
against a member of the league. There are, however, indications
that during the Latin festival, just as was the case during the
festivals of the Hellenic leagues, "a truce of God" was observed
throughout all Latium;(5) and probably on that occasion even tribes
at feud granted safe-conducts to each other.
It is still less in our power to define the range of the privileges
of the presiding canton; only we may safely affirm that there is
no reason for recognizing in the Alban presidency a real political
hegemony over Latium, and that possibly, nay probably, it had no
more significance in Latium than the honorary presidency of Elis
had in Greece.(6) On the whole it is probable that the extent of
this Latin league, and the amount of its jurisdiction, were somewhat
unsettled and fluctuating; yet it remained throughout not an
accidental aggregate of various communities more or less alien to
each other, but the just and necessary expression of the relationship
of the Latin stock. The Latin league may not have at all times
included all Latin communities, but it never at any rate granted
the privilege of membership to any that were not Latin. Its
counterpart in Greece was not the Delphic Amphictyony, but the
Boeotian or Aetolian confederacy.
These very general outlines must suffice: any attempt to draw the
lines more sharply would only falsify the picture. The manifold play
of mutual attraction and repulsion among those earliest political
atoms, the cantons, passed away in Latium without witnesses competent
to tell the tale. We must now be content to realise the one great
abiding fact that they possessed a common centre, to which they
did not sacrifice their individual independence, but by means of
which they cherished and increased the feeling of their belonging
collectively to the same nation. By such a common possession the
way was prepared for their advance from that cantonal individuality,
with which the history of every people necessarily begins, to the
national union with which the history of every people ends or at
any rate ought to end.
Notes for Book I Chapter III
1. I. II. Italians
2. Like -latus- (side) and --platus-- (flat); it denotes therefore
the flat country in contrast to the Sabine mountain-land, just
as Campania, the "plain," forms the contrast to Samnium. Latus,
formerly -stlatus-, has no connection with Latium.
3. A French statist, Dureau de la Malle (-Econ. Pol. des Romains-,
ii. 226), compares with the Roman Campagna the district of Limagne
in Auvergne, which is likewise a wide, much intersected, and uneven
plain, with a superficial soil of decomposed lava and ashes--the
remains of extinct volcanoes. The population, at least 2500
to the square league, is one of the densest to be found in purely
agricultural districts: property is subdivided to an extraordinary
extent. Tillage is carried on almost entirely by manual labour,
with spade, hoe, or mattock; only in exceptional cases a light
plough is substituted drawn by two cows, the wife of the peasant
not unfrequently taking the place of one of them in the yoke. The
team serves at once to furnish milk and to till the land. They
have two harvests in the year, corn and vegetables; there is no
fallow. The average yearly rent for an arpent of arable land is
100 francs. If instead Of such an arrangement this same land were
to be divided among six or seven large landholders, and a system
of management by stewards and day labourers were to supersede the
husbandry of the small proprietors, in a hundred years the Limagne
would doubtless be as waste, forsaken, and miserable as the Campagna
di Roma is at the present day.
4. In Slavonia, where the patriarchal economy is retained up to
the present day, the whole family, often to the number of fifty
or even a hundred persons, remains together in the same house under
the orders of the house-father (Goszpodar) chosen by the whole
family for life. The property of the household, which consists
chiefly in cattle, is administered by the house-father; the
surplus is distributed according to the family-branches. Private
acquisitions by industry and trade remain separate property.
Instances of quitting the household occur, in the case even of men,
e. g. by marrying into a stranger household (Csaplovies, -Slavonien-,
i. 106, 179). --Under such circumstances, which are probably
not very widely different from the earliest Roman conditions, the
household approximates in character to the community.
5. The Latin festival is expressly called "armistice" (-indutiae-,
Macrob. Sat. i. 16; --ekecheipiai--, Dionys. iv. 49); and a war
was not allowed to be begun during its continuance (Macrob. l. c.)
6. The assertion often made in ancient and modern times, that
Alba once ruled over Latium under the forms of a symmachy, nowhere
finds on closer investigation sufficient support. All history
begins not with the union, but with the disunion of a nation; and
it is very improbable that the problem of the union of Latium, which
Rome finally solved after some centuries of conflict, should have
been already solved at an earlier period by Alba. It deserves to
be remarked too that Rome never asserted in the capacity of heiress
of Alba any claims of sovereignty proper over the Latin communities,
but contented herself with an honorary presidency; which no doubt,
when it became combined with material power, afforded a handle for
her pretensions of hegemony. Testimonies, strictly so called, can
scarcely be adduced on such a question; and least of all do such
passages as Festus -v. praetor-, p. 241, and Dionys. iii. 10,
suffice to stamp Alba as a Latin Athens.
CHAPTER IV
The Beginnings of Rome
Ramnes
About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of
moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the
right, lower on the left bank. With the latter group there has been
closely associated for at least two thousand five hundred years the
name of the Romans. We are unable, of course, to tell how or when
that name arose; this much only is certain, that in the oldest
form of it known to us the inhabitants of the canton are called not
Romans, but Ramnians (Ramnes); and this shifting of sound, which
frequently occurs in the older period of a language, but fell very
early into abeyance in Latin,(1) is an expressive testimony to the
immemorial antiquity of the name. Its derivation cannot be given with
certainty; possibly "Ramnes" may mean "the people on the stream."
Tities, Luceres
But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the bank
of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a
trace has been preserved of the fact that that body arose out of
the amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the
Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth--in other
words, out of such a --synoikismos-- as that from which Athens
arose in Attica.(2) The great antiquity of this threefold division
of the community(3) is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the
Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, regularly
used the forms -tribuere- ("to divide into three") and -tribus-
("a third") in the general sense of "to divide" and "a part," and
the latter expression (-tribus-), like our "quarter," early lost
its original signification of number. After the union each of these
three communities--once separate, but now forming subdivisions of
a single community--still possessed its third of the common domain,
and had its proportional representation in the burgess-force and
in the council of the elders. In ritual also, the number divisible
by three of the members of almost all the oldest colleges--of the
Vestal Virgins, the Salii, the Arval Brethren, the Luperci, the
Augurs-- probably had reference to that three-fold partition. These
three elements into which the primitive body of burgesses in Rome
was divided have had theories of the most extravagant absurdity
engrafted upon them. The irrational opinion that the Roman nation
was a mongrel people finds its support in that division, and its
advocates have striven by various means to represent the three
great Italian races as elements entering into the composition of
the primitive Rome, and to transform a people which has exhibited
in language, polity, and religion, a pure and national development
such as few have equalled, into a confused aggregate of Etruscan
and Sabine, Hellenic and, forsooth! even Pelasgian fragments.
Setting aside self-contradictory and unfounded hypotheses, we may
sum up in a few words all that can be said respecting the nationality
of the component elements of the primitive Roman commonwealth.
That the Ramnians were a Latin stock cannot be doubted, for they
gave their name to the new Roman commonwealth and therefore must have
substantially determined the nationality of the united community.
Respecting the origin of the Luceres nothing can be affirmed, except
that there is no difficulty in the way of our assigning them, like
the Ramnians, to the Latin stock. The second of these communities,
on the other hand, is with one consent derived from Sabina; and
this view can at least be traced to a tradition preserved in the
Titian brotherhood, which represented that priestly college as
having been instituted, on occasion of the Tities being admitted
into the collective community, for the preservation of their
distinctive Sabine ritual. It may be, therefore, that at a period
very remote, when the Latin and Sabellian stocks were beyond question
far less sharply contrasted in language, manners, and customs than
were the Roman and the Samnite of a later age, a Sabellian community
entered into a Latin canton-union; and, as in the older and more
credible traditions without exception the Tities take precedence
of the Ramnians, it is probable that the intruding Tities compelled
the older Ramnians to accept the --synoikismos--. A mixture
of different nationalities certainly therefore took place; but
it hardly exercised an influence greater than the migration, for
example, which occurred some centuries afterwards of the Sabine
Attus Clauzus or Appius Claudius and his clansmen and clients to
Rome. The earlier admission of the Tities among the Ramnians does
not entitle us to class the community among mongrel peoples any
more than does that subsequent reception of the Claudii among the
Romans. With the exception, perhaps, of isolated national institutions
handed down in connection with ritual, the existence of Sabellian
elements can nowhere be pointed out in Rome; and the Latin
language in particular furnishes absolutely no support to any such
hypothesis.(4) It would in fact be more than surprising, if the
Latin nation should have had its nationality in any sensible degree
affected by the insertion of a single community from a stock so
very closely related to it; and, besides, it must not be forgotten
that at the time when the Tides settled beside the Ramnians, Latin
nationality rested on Latium as its basis, and not on Rome. The new
tripartite Roman commonwealth was, notwithstanding some incidental
elements which were originally Sabellian, just what the community
of the Ramnians had previously been--a portion of the Latin nation.
Rome the Emporium of Latium
Long, in all probability, before an urban settlement arose on the
Tiber, these Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, at first separate,
afterwards united, had their stronghold on the Roman hills, and
tilled their fields from the surrounding villages. The "wolf-festival"
(Lupercalia) which the gens of the Quinctii celebrated on the
Palatine hill, was probably a tradition from these primitive times--a
festival of husbandmen and shepherds, which more than any other
preserved the homely pastimes of patriarchal simplicity, and,
singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the other
heathen festivals in Christian Rome,
Character of Its Site
From these settlements the later Rome arose. The founding of a city
in the strict sense, such as the legend assumes, is of course to
be reckoned altogether out of the question: Rome was not built in
a day. But the serious consideration of the historian may well be
directed to the inquiry, in what way Rome can have so early attained
the prominent political position which it held in Latium--so
different from what the physical character of the locality would
have led us to anticipate. The site of Rome is less healthy and
less fertile than that of most of the old Latin towns. Neither the
vine nor the fig succeed well in the immediate environs, and there
is a want of springs yielding a good supply of water; for neither
the otherwise excellent fountain of the Camenae before the Porta
Capena, nor the Capitoline well, afterwards enclosed within the
Tullianum, furnish it in any abundance. Another disadvantage arises
from the frequency with which the river overflows its banks. Its
very slight fall renders it unable to carry off the water, which
during the rainy season descends in large quantities from the
mountains, with sufficient rapidity to the sea, and in consequence
it floods the low-lying lands and the valleys that open between the
hills, and converts them into swamps. For a settler the locality
was anything but attractive. In antiquity itself an opinion was
expressed that the first body of immigrant cultivators could scarce
have spontaneously resorted in search of a suitable settlement to
that unhealthy and unfruitful spot in a region otherwise so highly
favoured, and that it must have been necessity, or rather some
special motive, which led to the establishment of a city there.
Even the legend betrays its sense of the strangeness of the fact:
the story of the foundation of Rome by refugees from Alba under
the leadership of the sons of an Alban prince, Romulus and Remus,
is nothing but a naive attempt of primitive quasi-history to explain
the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so
unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome
with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess
to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very
ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss; but
it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing
the special relations of the locality to propose a positive conjecture
not regarding the way in which the place originated, but regarding
the circumstances which occasioned its rapid and surprising prosperity
and led to its occupying its peculiar position in Latium.
Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory
Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the Roman
territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnae, Fidenae, Caenina,
and Gabii lie in the immediate neighbourhood, some of them not five
miles distant from the Servian ring-wall; and the boundary of the
canton must have been in the close vicinity of the city gates.
On the south we find at a distance of fourteen miles the powerful
communities of Tusculum and Alba; and the Roman territory appears
not to have extended in this direction beyond the -Fossa Cluilia-,
five miles from Rome. In like manner, towards the south-west, the
boundary betwixt Rome and Lavinium was at the sixth milestone.
While in a landward direction the Roman canton was thus everywhere
confined within the narrowest possible limits, from the earliest
times, on the other hand, it extended without hindrance on both
banks of the Tiber towards the sea. Between Rome and the coast there
occurs no locality that is mentioned as an ancient canton-centre,
and no trace of any ancient canton-boundary. The legend indeed,
which has its definite explanation of the origin of everything,
professes to tell us that the Roman possessions on the right bank of
the Tiber, the "seven hamlets" (-septem pagi-), and the important
salt-works at its mouth, were taken by king Romulus from the Veientes,
and that king Ancus fortified on the right bank the -tete de pont-,
the "mount of Janus" (-Janiculum-), and founded on the left the
Roman Peiraeus, the seaport at the river's "mouth" (-Ostia-). But
in fact we have evidence more trustworthy than that of legend, that
the possessions on the Etruscan bank of the Tiber must have belonged
to the original territory of Rome; for in this very quarter, at
the fourth milestone on the later road to the port, lay the grove
of the creative goddess (-Dea Dia-), the primitive chief seat of
the Arval festival and Arval brotherhood of Rome. Indeed from time
immemorial the clan of the Romilii, once the chief probably of all
the Roman clans, was settled in this very quarter; the Janiculum
formed a part of the city itself, and Ostia was a burgess colony
or, in other words, a suburb.
The Tiber and Its Traffic
This cannot have been the result of mere accident. The Tiber was
the natural highway for the traffic of Latium; and its mouth, on
a coast scantily provided with harbours, became necessarily the
anchorage of seafarers. Moreover, the Tiber formed from very ancient
times the frontier defence of the Latin stock against their northern
neighbours. There was no place better fitted for an emporium of the
Latin river and sea traffic, and for a maritime frontier fortress
of Latium, than Rome. It combined the advantages of a strong position
and of immediate vicinity to the river; it commanded both banks of
the stream down to its mouth; it was so situated as to be equally
convenient for the river navigator descending the Tiber or the
Anio, and for the seafarer with vessels of so moderate a size as
those which were then used; and it afforded greater protection from
pirates than places situated immediately on the coast. That Rome
was indebted, if not for its origin, at any rate for its importance,
to these commercial and strategical advantages of its position,
there are accordingly numerous further indications, which are
of very different weight from the statements of quasi-historical
romances. Thence arose its very ancient relations with Caere, which
was to Etruria what Rome was to Latium, and accordingly became Rome's
most intimate neighbour and commercial ally. Thence arose the unusual
importance of the bridge over the Tiber, and of bridge-building
generally in the Roman commonwealth. Thence came the galley in the
city arms; thence, too, the very ancient Roman port-duties on the
exports and imports of Ostia, which were from the first levied only
on what was to be exposed for sale (-promercale-), not on what was
for the shipper's own use (-usuarium-), and which were therefore
in reality a tax upon commerce. Thence, to anticipate, the
comparatively early occurrence in Rome of coined money, and of
commercial treaties with transmarine states. In this sense, then,
certainly Rome may have been, as the legend assumes, a creation
rather than a growth, and the youngest rather than the oldest among
the Latin cities. Beyond doubt the country was already in some
degree cultivated, and the Alban range as well as various other
heights of the Campagna were occupied by strongholds, when the Latin
frontier emporium arose on the Tiber. Whether it was a resolution
of the Latin confederacy, or the clear-sighted genius of some
unknown founder, or the natural development of traffic, that called
the city of Rome into being, it is vain even to surmise.