See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.
{1954}
"LATIN NAME," The.
"We must … explain what was meant in the sixth century of
Rome [third century B. C.] by the 'Latin name.' … The Latin
name was now extended far beyond its old geographical limits,
and was represented by a multitude of flourishing cities
scattered over the whole of Italy, from the frontier of
Cisalpine Gaul to the southern extremity of Apulia. … Not
that they were Latins in their origin, or connected with the
cities of the old Latium: on the contrary they were by
extraction Romans; they were colonies founded by the Roman
people, and consisting of Roman Citizens: but the Roman
government had resolved that, in their political relations,
they should be considered, not as Romans, but as Latins; and
the Roman settlers, in consideration of the advantages which
they enjoyed as colonists, were content to descend politically
to a lower condition than that which they had received as
their birthright. The states of the Latin name, whether cities
of old Latium or Roman colonies, all enjoyed their own laws
and municipal government, like the other allies; and all were,
like the other allies, subject to the sovereign dominion of
the Romans. They were also so much regarded as foreigners that
they could not buy or inherit land from Roman citizens; nor
had they generally the right of intermarriage with Romans. But
they had two peculiar privileges: one, that any Latin who left
behind him a son in his own city, to perpetuate his family
there, might remove to Rome, and acquire the Roman franchise;
the other, that every person who had held any magistracy or
distinguished office in a Latin state, might become at once a
Roman citizen."
_T. Arnold,
History of Rome,
chapter 41._
LATINS, Subjugation of, by the Romans.
See ROME: B. C. 339-338.
LATIUM.
THE OLD LATINS.
"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 4,000 feet, which is separated from
the main chain of the Apennines by the ancient territory of
the Hernici, the table-land 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 highlands 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. … 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,' 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."
_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 3._
See, also, ITALY, ANCIENT.
LATT, OR LIDUS, The.
See SLAVERY: MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.
LATTER DAY SAINTS, Church of.
See MORMONISM: A. D. 1805-1830.
LAUD, Archbishop, Church tyranny of.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1633-1640.