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.
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.