THE EARLIEST HISTORY.

The Roman history goes back to Latium, and through Latium to Troy.

Since Dio Chrysostom has started the question, whether Troy ever

existed at all, a vast deal has been written on the subject; and also

upon this other point, whether Æneas came to Italy. The treatise of

Theodore Ryckius[40] about it is particularly well known. He deems the

arrival of Æneas to be historical, in opposition to Bochart, who is one

of the last highly gifted French philologists,[41] and at all events

is superior to him in discernment. Bochart’s hypothesis concerning the

influence of the Phœnicians, is doubtless carried too far. No one,

however, will now any more put the question thus; but one must ask,

has the legend that the Trojans came to this coast any historical

foundation? and, moreover, has the legend arisen among the Greeks, and

passed over to Italy; or is it a native Italian tradition which cannot,

at least by us, be traced back to Greek sources? If the latter be the

case, some truth must surely be at the bottom of it, and the less one

takes these ancient accounts in their literal meaning, the more are

they found to partake of possibility.

There is no question but that in the earliest times there were in

Greece two peoples who were very nearly akin, but still distinct from

each other; so much so that they did not understand each other’s

language, as Herodotus positively asserts. One of these languages as

opposed to the other was considered as barbarous; and yet, when looked

upon from a different point of view, they may be said to be both of

them closely related. There are still several living languages which

stand in a similar degree of affinity,--the Polish and the Bohemian,

the Italian and the Spanish, and, although we may not find the

relationship to be so close, the Polish and Lithuanian. The two last

languages are as wide as heaven and earth asunder; yet for all that

they have a characteristic similarity. The grammar of both has the same

development, the same peculiarities; the numerals are nearly the same;

a great many words are common to both. These languages are therefore

branches of the same stock, and yet the Poles do not understand the

Lithuanians. Now this is the manner in which we solve the question so

often mooted concerning the difference or identity of the Greeks and

the Pelasgians. When Herodotus says that they were different, we must

after all believe him; yet, on the other hand, he places the Hellenes

and Pelasgians again side by side. The two nations cannot therefore be

of different race.

In the earliest times, when the Greek history is yet veiled to us in

impenetrable mystery, the greater part of Italy, perhaps the whole

eastern shore of the Adriatic sea, Epirus, Macedon,[42] the southern

coast of Thrace, the Macedonian peninsulas, the islands of the Ægean,

and also the coasts of Asia Minor to the Bosporus were inhabited by

Pelasgians.[43] The Trojans also are to be looked upon as Pelasgians.

That they were no barbarians is the opinion of all the Greeks, as we

also see already from Homer; their abode is quite in the Pelasgian

country; their names are Greek. They are in close conjunction at

one time with the Arcadians, another essentially Pelasgian people,

then with the Epirots, then also with the Thessalians; and Æneas,

according to one tradition, goes to Arcadia and dies there, according

to another into Epirus, where Helenus settles. Thus, in like manner,

we find in Pindar, in the poem on Cyrene, Aristæus, a Pelasgian hero

from Arcadia, together with the Antenorides. The connexion of the

Pelasgians with the Trojans extends very far. Samothrace in particular

is the metropolis of Ilium; Dardanus comes from Arcadia, but passes

through Samothrace, and from thence, married to Chryse, goes to Troas.

The Samothracians, according to one of the grammarians, are a Roman

people, acknowledged to be of kindred race with the Romans; that is

to say, with the Troio-Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. This connexion has no

other source but the common relationship between the Tyrrhenians,

Trojans, and Samothracians. According to some accounts, Dardanus comes

from Tyrrhenia to Troas; according to others, the Trojans come to

Tyrrhenia. In the temple, and in the mysteries of Samothrace, there

was a gathering point of many men from all quarters;[44] and it was

for a great part of the world at that time as the Caaba of Mecca, the

grave of the prophet at Medina, or as the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Samothrace and Dodona were for the Pelasgian races, what perhaps to the

Hellenic world Delphi and Delos were. The distance of a considerable

portion of those who are linked together by a common origin ought not

to have much stress laid upon it in a case like this, as it is such as

not to hinder the Mahometan from making the pilgrimage to the sacred

spot.

This old stock of the Pelasgians which we may trace as far as Liguria,

and which also dwelt on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, vanishes

in the age of history as a component part of nations; but it consisted

originally of a number of tribes which bore different names. A very

wide spread name for that portion which was settled in Epirus, and

in the southern part of modern Italy, as far as Latium and the coast

of the Adriatic Sea, was that of Siculians (_Siculi_); also Vituli,

Vitelli, Vitali, Itali, from the last of which Italy takes its name.

Notwithstanding the wide spread of these Siculian or Italian names,

_Italia_ in the earliest times does not seem as at present to have

designated the country to the foot of the Alps. It is indeed possible

that the changes which followed upon the immigration of northern races

severed the sea-coast from Etruria, and confined the name _Italia_ to

the country south of the Tiber, or rather, south of Latium. Yet this is

only a supposition, though it is certain that Italy was once bounded

on the north by a line from the Garganus on one side to Terracina on

the other; and that the name, which had been restricted to within yet

narrower limits in the times after Alexander the Great, before the

sway of Rome had begun, was again extended to that wider range. It is

probably of this earlier Italy that Pliny says, that it was _querno

folio similis_,--a remarkable example of the manner in which Pliny

wrote. He speaks at one time in his own name, and at another he gives

excerpta. Yet his excerpta are unfortunately as little weighed by him

in historical matters as in those of natural history. This statement he

has without doubt taken from Timæus, with whom also the comparison of

Sardinia to a sandal or a foot-print originates. That in his own time

Italy could not by any means be so described, entirely escaped Pliny’s

notice.

In the south of Italy, the earliest inhabitants were also called

Œnotrians and Peucetians; in the north, without doubt they were

likewise called Liburnians; and on the coasts of Latium, Tyrrhenians.

Whether the settlements on the coast north of the Tiber were the

remnants of an expelled people, or perhaps mere colonies, can no longer

now be ascertained; yet there appear in the middle of Italy, besides

those people which were akin to the Greeks, some of a different kind

by whom the former indeed were crushed. It seems that those migrations

of the different races came about in the same manner as those in

modern history. The people which directly precipitates itself upon the

Siculians in Latium, and the Italians in Southern Italy proper, partly

expelling, and partly absorbing and assimilating them, are the Opicans

(_Opici_), a mixed race, which in fact as Opicans exists only in a

few places, but is again absorbed by another people, and produces new

tribes. They are the same whom we meet with under the name of Apulians;

for the terminations, _-icus_ and _-ulus_ are equivalent. The Italian

population therefore ends in Apulia; though it reaches in appearance

as far as into Messapia, where part only of the Italians maintained

themselves in an isolated settlement. Moreover they were in Samnium,

Campania, and on the borders of Latium as Volscians and Æquians.

These Opicans were in their turn pushed forward by the Sabines

(Sabellians), who called themselves aborigines, and traced their

source from the highest Alps of Abruzzo near Majella and Gran Sasso

d’Italia. Cato in a somewhat extraordinary manner makes them come

from Little Amiternum. Whether the Sabellians and Opicans were about

as distinct from each other as the Gauls and Ligurians; or in a less

degree, like the Celts and Cymri; or whether they belonged to the

same stock, and were only politically separated; are questions which

we cannot solve. The ancients knew not, nor did they care much about

it. When we want to see at any rate where no historical light is to

be had, the mind’s eye is dimmed like that of the body when it is

violently strained in the dark. Varro indeed distinguishes the Sabine

from the Oscan language; but as he was very little of a judge of the

earlier languages, in the sense in which we should apply the term to

W. von Humboldt, we have also very little reason to rely upon any

of his statements concerning the relationship of languages. From a

general analogy, I conceive that the tide of emigration must have set

in in several streams, and that thus the Sabines also may have been

carried down from the higher north by its first rush. Yet this is mere

conjecture.

The Umbrians may have belonged to the same stock as the Opicans. I

would not lay too great a stress on the resemblance of names; the

races which are nearest akin to each other have very often the most

dissimilar names, and those which are the most remote quite similar

ones. Thus the Getæ and the Goths were for a long time mistaken for

the same people. Fifty years ago, it was the general belief in Ireland

and Scotland that the Fir-Bolgs[45] were the old Belgians; yet this is

false, and they are a Danish colony, as a very well-informed Englishman

wrote to me. If I had no other reasons but the names, I should

hesitate to pronounce for the identity of the Opicans and Umbrians. But

Philistus called the people which overcame the Siculians in Latium,

Ombricans, and the affinity of the languages may also be clearly made

out from what remains of them.

These changes of the population, in which the earlier inhabitants are

dislodged by another tribe, and the latter by some other one in its

turn, make the history of the old Italian nations so indescribably

obscure and difficult for us. At a time which we cannot fix with

chronological certainty, in what was afterwards called Latium, which,

however, perhaps bore this name from the earliest times, there existed

a population of Siculians. The memory of it was preserved at Tibur,

where according to Cato part of the town was called Siculio.[46] There

are also elsewhere very many allusions in ancient authors, which

place it beyond doubt that this people once existed there. Under

the same name we find it in Southern Italy, and in the island which

is to this day still called after them. According to one tradition,

Sicelus came from Latium to the Œnotrians; according to another, the

Siculians under different names were driven from their old abodes by

the Opicans or Ombricans, and removed to that island. This migration

is merely indicative of the combinations of those who tried to explain

the contemporary existence of the same people in Latium and in Sicily.

Possible it is, but it is also possible that it took quite a different

direction. It is certain that in Homer’s time there were Siculians

in Southern Italy; to prove which fact there exists a passage from

Mnaseas, a pupil of Aristarchus, a learned grammarian and historian,

whom the scholiast of the Odyssey quotes. He also says, that Echetus in

Epirus was prince of the Siculians, so that he likewise acknowledged

this name in those parts. From his explanation, we see that the poet of

the Odyssey, when speaking of Siculians, does not mean the inhabitants

of Sicily, a country concerning which he was in the dark; but those of

Southern Italy, or the Pelasgians of Epirus.

The Siculians are the same as those whom Cato calls _Aborigines_.

This name is interpreted γενάρχαι, ancestors; or also, wanderers,

_aberrigines_; and likewise those who are from the very beginning,

_ab origine_. The nominative singular, according to the Latin idiom,

must have been _aboriginus_. There was a tradition that Latium

had originally been inhabited by _Autochthones_; but Cato and C.

Sempronius[47] said, that the aborigines had emigrated from Achaia,

by which was meant the whole of the Peloponnesus, then named by the

Romans Achaia. Others called the different places which were formerly

termed Siculian, Argive; and Cato had done that with regard to Tibur

itself. Argos and Larissa are Pelasgian names, which we meet with

wherever there are Pelasgians;--Argos probably meaning town, and

Larissa borough. As long as the Peloponnesus was Pelasgian, it was

called Argos; even so was Thessaly. In this meaning the Argives are

Pelasgians, and the Ἀργεῖοι Πελασγοί are in the old tragedy always named

in conjunction. The one was most likely the general, and the other the

special appellation.

Hesiod says of Latinus, πᾶσι Τυῤῥηνοῖσιν ἀγακλειτοῖσιν ἀνάσσει.

All that we know of the Latins is this, that they had a number of

towns from Tibur to the river Tiber. How far they extended in the

earliest time to the Liris is lost in obscurity. Cato (in Priscian)

says, that the plain of the Volscians formerly belonged to the

aborigines; certainly all the towns along the coast were at an early

period Tyrrhenian, as Antium, Circeii, and many others. At that time,

therefore, the name of Latium spread far, and so late as immediately

after the Roman kings, even to Campania; it having been first limited

in consequence of the great popular migrations soon after the expulsion

of the kings. Hesiod of course refers to the earlier time. In the

treaty of Rome with Carthage, the coast beyond Terracina, probably as

far as Cumæ, was called Latium, and the inhabitants Latins.

By the Greeks the Pelasgian inhabitants of the whole western coast of

Italy were called Tyrrhenians; by the Latins, _Turini_, _Tusci_, i. e.

_Tusici_ from _Tusus_, or _Turus_; for _s_ in the ancient language

stands for _r_, as in _Fusius_ for _Furius_.

We must bear well in mind that the Pelasgians and Aborigines are

one and the same people. If we look over the legends of nations, we

repeatedly find the same stories told in different ways which are

entirely opposed to each other. The story of a Jew who takes ruthless

revenge upon a Christian, as we know it from Shakspeare, in a Roman

novel shortly before his time, is found just reversed, so that the

Christian wants to cut off the flesh from the Jew. The migrations

of the Goths, according to some, proceed from Scandinavia to the

south; according to others, from the south to Scandinavia. Wittikind

says that the Saxons had come out of Britain into Germany; the usual

account makes them out to have been invited thither from Germany.

The Pelasgians near the Hymettus near Athens are represented to have

come from Tyrrhenia to Athens, and from thence to Lemnos; in another

tradition, the Tyrrhenians go from the Meonian coast to Italy. Thus

Cyrene, according to one legend, is colonized from Thera; in another,

Thera rises out of a clod of earth from Libya. In the earlier account,

the Symplegades were in the Eastern Sea, and the Argo sails through

them on her voyage out; in the later, they are in the Western Sea, and

impede the progress of the Argo on her voyage home. This exchange of

polarity is manifested also with regard to the aborigines. In spite

of etymology, Dionysius so calls the people which, issuing from the

interior of the country, conquered the ancient inhabitants. Varro did

the same, and yet worse than Pliny. He had read an immense deal; but

learned he ought not to be called on account of his confusedness.[48]

Varro knows about the close alliance of two of the Latin nations,

but he makes a jumble of every thing; the aborigines are for him the

conquering, and the Siculians the conquered people. Then, following

Hellanicus, he brings over the aborigines from Thessaly; yet they

then migrate from the Upper Anio to the Upper Abruzzo, whither they

are driven by the Sabines. This tradition has a local and plausible

character; for there were many small towns to be found there: large

cities, on the contrary, such as the Etruscans possessed, are always

a proof of immigration, as the immigrating people rather settles in

a few considerable places. Trent and several other cities are large

Lombard colonies. Dionysius may be excused, as he relies on Varro’s

authority; the latter alone is answerable for the mistake. Here also

the designation of the people, the conquering and the conquered one, is

confounded.

The conquerors were probably called Cascans. This name Servius has

preserved from Saufeius, a grammarian who seems to belong to the first

century of the Christian era. They are also met with under the name

of Sacranians, and to this the expression in Dionysius refers, that

it had been a ἱερὰ νεότης. Part of the people which under the name of

Opicans and Oscans inhabited the interior of Italy, or was more likely

pushed down from the north, and wedged in between the old Pelasgian

places, settled in the Apennines round the lake Fusinus (at present

called Celano), towards Reate. Their chief town was called Lista: they

bordered on the Siculians, who inhabited the country as far as beyond

Tibur. There was a legend concerning them, that in the war with the

Sabines, who had already taken from them Reate, and were driving them

before them further and further, they had made a vow of a _ver sacrum_.

This custom of the Italian nations when evil times befel them, was kept

up also among the Romans. It was vowed to consecrate to the gods all

cattle, in short, all that should be produced in the ensuing spring;

and to send out in colonies the male children born at that period, as

soon as ever they were grown up: the produce was either to be offered

up, or redeemed. Thus devoted, the Sacranians marched against Latium,

and subjected to themselves the Siculians. In Latium they settled among

the old inhabitants, and became united with them into one people, which

received the name of _Prisci Latini_; for, the Cascans must also have

been called _Prisci_. To take _Prisci Latini_ in Livy for _Old Latins_

would be an absurdity: he has borrowed the formula of the declaration

of war by the Fetiales, in which the expression first occurs, from the

ancient rituals; it goes back to the time of Ancus Marcius, whilst

before that of Tarquin the Proud, there were certainly no Latin

colonies which we may suppose to have been placed in opposition to the

rest of the people. _Prisci Latini_ stands for _Prisci et Latini_, as

the Latin language always expresses two necessary contra-positions, or

two notions inseparably combined, by an immediate juxtaposition of the

two words. The earliest Romans made as little use of cement in their

language, as in their buildings. Brissonius has very clearly shown

this, and has thereby fixed the formula _Populus Romanus Quirites_;

only that he goes too far when he asserts that _Populus Romanus

Quiritium_ had never been said, which has been justly controverted

by J. F. Gronovius. In the same manner, _patres conscripti_, instead

of _qui patres, quique conscripti sunt_; and in legal forms, _locati

conducti_, _emti venditi_, &c. _Priscus_ and _Cascus_ mean in after

times very old, quaint, as Gothic or old Franconian, do in German;

hence we have _casce loqui_, _vocabula casca_.--These conquerors spoke

Oscan; and from the fusion of their language with the Siculo-Pelasgian

arose that extraordinary medley which we call Latin, in which the

grammar in some measure, but still more the etymology, contains such

a considerable Greek element; a subject on which O. Müller has made

those fine enquiries in the first volume of his Etruscans. The ancient

Oscan language still exists in some old monuments: in Pompeii and

Herculaneum, there are a couple of inscriptions, and the tablet of

Bantia (Oppido) may be fully interpreted. Of the two elements in Latin,

that which is Greek and that which is not, the latter agrees with the

Oscan language. All the words which refer to agriculture, domestic

animals, fruits, &c., are either Greek or akin to Greek. We evidently

see a conquered agricultural people, and a conquering one from the

mountains which was not engaged in agriculture.

From henceforth the trace of the tradition is lost to us, being

effaced by the account of the Trojan immigration. This legend has no

authenticity whatever, and is merely a later figment to express the

relationship between the Trojans and the Latins as Pelasgians. The

story of a Trojan colony is found on so many points of Italy, that it

is by mere chance that this legend has been more definitely fixed upon

Latium; and it was fostered by the wide circulation of the Greek poems,

which spread much farther than we generally think.

Among the Romans the legend of the Trojan settlement is comparatively

ancient. Nævius, in his poem on the Punic war, gave it already at

considerable length; and the Ilians pleaded it with the Romans in their

wars against Seleucus Callinicus. If any one should feel inclined to

treat these accounts of the foundation of Rome by Æneas seriously,

we cannot follow him: some traditions in them have a very national

character, but the distance of time is too great between the events

and those who described them. Nævius wrote from 950 to 980 years

after the period at which the destruction of Troy is generally fixed.

It is little known how very much Virgil changed the old legend of

the settlement of Æneas in Latium, in which as a poet he was fully

warranted; for its features were rude and harsh, as that Latinus had

fallen in the war against Æneas, and that Lavinia, first betrothed

to Æneas, and then refused, became the prize of the conqueror. The

oldest tradition besides speaks of the settlement as a very small one.

According to Nævius, Æneas arrived with one ship only; and the tract

of land assigned to him consisted, as Cato stated, of not more than

seven hundred _jugera_. Suppose this to have been true, how could any

remembrance of it have lasted after nine hundred years?

The original tradition is that Æneas had first lived for three years

in a small town called Troy; then, that taking a higher flight, he

had founded Lavinium, and thirty years afterwards Alba; and that the

three hundredth year after Alba, was that of the building of Rome.

This regular progression of the numbers betokens a field which is not

that of history. Three thousand years also were certainly fixed as the

duration of Rome. There are two different numerical systems in these

legends:--the Etruscan with a sæculum of a hundred and ten years, and

the Greek, or the Tyrrhenian, in which the sæculum consisted of thirty

years. This number thirty had at all times considerable weight on

account of the period of the revolution of Saturn, which according to

the then existing opinion, as Servius records, was completed within

thirty years. Thirty common years constituted among the Greeks a

Saturnian, and a hundred Saturnians a grand year. With this the scale

of numbers from the foundation of Lavinium to the building of Rome is

connected. The earliest Alban history is a nonentity, as the sagacious

Dodwell (de Cyclis, diss. X.) has already shown, who indeed on other

occasions only too often spoils by his subtleties what he has well

begun. The chronology of the Alban-kings in Dionysius, for instance, is

mere absurdity and forgery, the names of them being patched together in

every possible way. This forgery, as we see from Servius, was committed

in a later age by a freedman of Sylla, L. Cornelius Alexander of

Miletus, who readily found acceptance at a period when people were glad

to have histories of those times of which nothing could be known.

Alba, on the Alban Lake, was in my opinion the capital of the ruling

conquerors. It is not accidental that it bears the same name as the

town on the Lake Fucinus, from whence the Sacranians had issued. When

they were obliged to yield their abode to the Sabines, they founded

the Alba again on the banks of a lake; as the Pœni did a New Carthage,

the Milesians a New Miletus on the Black Sea, and as is so frequently

the case in the New World. This Alba Longa is therefore the seat of

the Cascans or Sacranians, and the older Latin towns which lay within

its territory have probably had a double fate. Some may have derived

part of their population from the immigrants; others may have been

subjected without receiving colonies. We find in tradition that these

Latin towns had been thirty in number, all of them colonies of Alba,

a tradition which is contradicted by the other, which states all of

them to have been originally Argive. Both of these might be maintained

in this sense, that an ἀποδασμός of the dominant race had settled in

each of the towns. Be this as it may, Alba had thirty boroughs (δῆμοι)

which belonged to the town as immediate dependencies or cantons: these

are the _populi Albenses_ which I have discovered in Pliny. It is not

to be doubted, but that the Albans were to their dependencies as the

_populus_ of Rome to the _plebs_, or as Rome in later times to Latium.

At the mention of Alba, few are proof against the prejudice by which

I also was beguiled for a long time, that so very much of the history

of Alba is lost, that one can only speak of it in connexion with the

Trojan or anti-Trojan times; as if every thing said of it by the

Romans were based upon delusion and errors of judgment. Indeed, the

foundation of Alba by Ascanius; the whole series of the Alban kings

with the years of their reigns; the story of Numitor and Amulius; the

account of the destruction of the town; all this does not belong to

history. Yet the historical existence of Alba is for all that not in

the least to be doubted, nor have the ancients ever had a doubt about

it. The _sacra Albana_, the _Albani tumuli atque luci_ bear witness

to it. Ruins do not indeed exist any more; yet the situation of the

town in the valley of Grotta Ferrata is still to be traced at this

day. Between the lake and a long ridge of hills, near the convent

Palazzuolo, one still sees even now the rock below towards the lake

completely scarped, evidently by the hand of man, so that on that

side an attack on the town was impossible; on the other side, on the

summit, stood the Arx. That the Albans had the dominion over Latium is

a tradition which we may deem authentic, as it rests on the authority

of Cincius.[49] The Latins occupied afterwards the spot and the temple

of Jupiter. The accounts also that Alba had shared with the thirty

towns the flesh of the sacrifices on the Alban mount, and that the

Latins after the fall of Alba, had themselves chosen their magistrates,

are glimpses of history. The exceedingly ancient Emissarius is still

preserved, and through its vault a canal was drawn, _fossa Cluilia_. In

this vault, beneath the centroni, we have still a traceable work, more

ancient than any Roman one. Yet that Alba was the capital; that it had

the dominion over Latium; that its temple of Jupiter was the central

point of the nations under its rule; and the _gens Silvia_ the reigning

family, is all that can be said about Alba and the Latins of that time.

It is not to be doubted, that the number of the Latin towns was really

thirty, as well as that of the Alban boroughs. This number afterwards

is again met with in the later Latin towns, and in the thirty Roman

tribes; and it is also at the bottom of the account of Lavinium’s being

founded by thirty households, in which the union of the two races may

be traced.[50] The account that Lavinium was a Trojan colony, and

afterwards abandoned, but again restored by Alba; that, moreover, the

sanctuary could not be transferred from thence to Alba; however much

it may bear the stamp of antiquity, is after all merely an adaptation

of the Trojan and the native tradition. For, Lavinium is nothing else

but a general name for Latium, as Panionion for Ionia. _Latinus_,

_Lavinus_, _Lavicus_ are one and the same name; as Servius also

acknowledges. Lavinium was the central point of the Prisci Latini, and

without doubt there existed in earlier times, when Alba had not yet the

rule over Lavinium, a communion of worship in Alba and Lavinium; as

afterwards in Rome at the temple of Diana in the Aventine, and at the

Roman and Latin holidays on the Alban mount.

The characters therefore in the Trojan legend are thus to be analysed.

Turnus is no other than Turinus, the Τυῤῥηνός of Dionysius; Lavinia,

the beautiful maiden, is the name of the Latin people; perhaps they are

so distinguished as the inhabitants of the coasts are more especially

called Tyrrhenians, those of the interior country, Latins. As the

Latins after the battle at the Regillus, are found together with thirty

towns in the league with Rome, we cannot doubt but that the number of

those towns, of which the dominion belonged in the earliest times to

Alba, was also thirty. Only there were not always the same towns in

this league; many afterwards perished, others were received in their

stead.

Here the same instinct of substituting the fallen off members of

political organizations is at work, which is to be perceived every

where so long as institutions quietly go on in accordance with the

old traditionary forms, and not with the actual wants of the times.

Thus also in the twelve Achæan towns, in the seven Frisian maritime

provinces, when one is ruined, the number is made up by splitting

another. Where once a fixed number exists, although a unit may fall

off, it is not given up, but it is always renewed. We may add, that

the state of the Latins lost in the west, and gained in the east; we

therefore take Alba as having thirty boroughs, and the thirty Latin

towns as a state which at first was in league with Alba, and was

afterwards subjected to its sovereignty.

The old places of the aborigines were, according to Cato’s important

statement in Dionysius, small villages scattered on the hills. Such

a place lay upon the Palatine, and had the name of _Roma_, certainly

a Greek one. Not far off, there are several other places with Greek

names, Pyrgi and Alsium; nor is it an erroneous supposition that

Terracina had formerly been called Τραχεινή, the rough place, or that

Formiæ is to be derived from ὅρμος, anchorage, roadstead. As certainly

as Pyrgi meant towers, as certainly did Roma the place of strength.[51]

Rome is described as a Pelasgian place where Evander lived, the

founder of learning and civilization. The first step in civilization,

according to the legend, began with Saturn. In the tradition found in

Virgil, which is to be taken quite literally, the first men grew out

of trees (_gensque virum truncis et duro robore creti_). As in Greece

the μύρμηκες were changed into myrmidons, and the stones of Deucalion

into men and women, thus the trees also by some Divine energy grew

men. These half men acquired by degrees human manners, and that they

owe to Saturn. Yet really liberal cultivation they considered to have

originated with Evander, who must not be looked upon as coming from

Arcadia, but as the good man. He was the inventor or teacher of the use

of letters.

Among the Romans, the conviction prevailed that Romulus, the founder

of Rome, had been born of a maiden ravished by a god; that he had been

wonderfully preserved alive, rescued from the floods, and suckled

by a she-wolf. The ancient date of this poetry cannot be doubted.

But did the legend at all times call Romulus the son of Rea Silvia,

or of Ilia? Perizonius has first remarked against Ryckius, that Rea

Ilia never occurred in combination; that Rea Silvia was the daughter

of Numitor, Ilia of Æneas. He is perfectly right. Both Nævius and

Ennius, call Romulus the son of Ilia the daughter of Æneas, as Servius

in his notes on Virgil, and Porphyrion in those on Horace (Carm. 1,

2.), bear witness. Yet it must not thence be inferred, that this was

also a national Roman belief; those poets who were familiar with the

Greeks, might have annexed their legends to the Greek poems. But the

old Romans could not possibly have made the mother of the founder of

their city a daughter of Æneas, whose time was dated 333 or 360 years

earlier. Dionysius says that his narrative, which was that of Fabius,

is found in the sacred songs; it is also consistent with itself. Fabius

cannot, as Plutarch asserts, have borrowed it from a wretched unknown

Greek writer, Diocles. The statue of the she-wolf was erected in 457,

long before Diocles wrote; at least a hundred years before Fabius.

Certainly, therefore, this tradition is the older Roman one, and it

places Rome in connection with Alba. There has lately been a monument

discovered at Bovillæ, an altar which the _gentiles Julii_ erected

_lege Albana_; a religious reference therefore of a Roman family to

Alba. The relation between the two towns goes as far back as to the

founder. The well known legend, with the old poetical details of which

Livy and Dionysius already leave out much, because they were afraid of

accumulating marvels, is the following.

Numitor and Amulius were both of them candidates for the throne.

Numitor is a prænomen; but the name of Amulius says nothing in proof

of his having belonged to the _gens Silvia_; I question therefore if

the old tradition took them for brothers. Amulius, so it is said, had

got possession of the throne, and had made Rea Silvia the daughter of

Numitor, a vestal, in order that the Silvian race might become extinct.

This shows a want of knowledge of public law, as a daughter surely

could not convey gentilician rights. The name Rea Silvia is old, yet

Rea is only a cognomen; _rea femina_ is in Boccaccio, and still to this

day in Tuscany, a woman who has lost her honour. A priestess Rea in

Virgil is ravished by Hercules. Whilst Rea in a grove was drawing water

for a sacrifice, an eclipse of the sun took place, and she fled from a

wolf into a cavern where Mars overpowered her. At her delivery, the sun

is again eclipsed, and the image of Vesta covers its eyes. Livy here

has left out the wonderful part. The tyrant threw Rea with her children

into the Anio: she lost her life in the river; but the river god took

her soul, changed her into an immortal goddess, and made her his wife.

This is now modified by the tale of her imprisonment, which is prosaic

enough to be of later invention. The Anio bore the cradle, just as if

it were a boat, into the Tiber, on which it was drifted to the foot

of the Palatine, the waters being high in consequence of a flood; and

there it was overturned at the root of a fig-tree. The she-wolf takes

the children forth, and suckles[52] them: Mars sends a woodpecker,

which brings them food, and the bird _parra_,[53] who keeps them free

from vermin. These details are scattered: the narrators have as much

as possible stripped them of the marvellous. Faustulus, the legend

goes on to say, found the boys nursed with the milk of the strong

brute; he brought them up with his twelve sons, and they became the

stoutest of them all. As chiefs of the herdsmen of the Palatine, they

had a quarrel with those of Numitor on the Aventine;--the Palatine and

the Aventine are always hostile;--Remus is led away a prisoner to Alba;

Romulus rescues him; the descent from Numitor is discovered, and the

latter restored to the government. They receive permission to settle at

the foot of the Palatine hill, the place of their rescue.

From this beautiful poem the falsifiers tried to make out something

credible; even the unprejudiced and poetical Livy sets aside as much

as possible whatever was most marvellous. But the falsifiers went yet

a step beyond. In those days when no one any more believed in the

ancient deities, they sought to discover something rational in the old

legends; and thus they here got up a story which Plutarch received

with predilection, and which Dionysius also does not disdain, who,

however, likewise relates the old legend in a mutilated form. Dionysius

says that many people believed in demons, and that such a demon might

forsooth be the father of Romulus. Yet he himself is far from believing

in it. On the contrary, his version is that Amulius had in disguise

offered violence to Rea Silvia, playing off conjuror’s tricks of

thunder and lightning; that he had done so in order to have a pretext

for doing away with her, but had then been asked by his daughter not to

drown her, and had thereupon imprisoned her for life; that the herdsman

whom he commissioned to expose the children, had preserved them at

the entreaty of Numitor, and put two others in their stead; and that

Numitor’s grandsons had been taken to a guest-friend at Gabii, who had

educated them according to their rank, and caused them to be instructed

in Greek literature. It was really attempted to introduce this into

history; and indeed some of the details of this silly story have found

their way into the narrative of the historians, e. g. that the old

Alban nobility had emigrated with the two brothers to Rome. Had this

been the case, no asylum would have been wanting, and it would not have

been necessary to obtain the connubium with the other nations by force.

More historically important on the other hand is the difference of

opinion between the two brothers concerning the building of the city,

and the spot on which it is to be founded. According to the old legend,

both are equally heads of the colony, both of them kings. Romulus is

generally stated to have wished to build on the Palatine; and Remus is

said by some to have decided in favour of the Aventine, by others, of

the Remuria. This is, according to Plutarch, a hill three miles south

of Rome, and can be no other than the eminence which lies obliquely

from St. Paul’s; and this is the more likely, as this hill, though in

a country elsewhere very unhealthy, is remarkable for the healthiness

of the air,--a very important consideration in researches concerning

the old Latin towns; as it may safely be inferred, that where the air

is now wholesome, it was also the same at that time, and that where

it is now unwholesome, it was then no better. The general account of

tradition is that a quarrel had arisen between Romulus and Remus, as

to which of the two should give the name to the city, as well as where

it was to be built. Without doubt there also existed therefore on that

hill a town called Remuria; and at a subsequent period we find this

name transferred to the Aventine, as was so often done. According to

the common story, Auguries were to decide the matter. Romulus watched

on the Palatine, Remus on the Aventine. The latter watched the whole

of the night, but saw nothing; towards sunrise he saw six vultures

flying from the north to the south, and he sent word to Romulus. But

his brother, vexed that no sign had appeared to him, fraudulently

sent him a message that he had seen twelve vultures; and in fact, at

the very moment when the messenger of Romulus reached Remus, twelve

vultures made their appearance, and these he claimed for himself. This

is, however, impossible; for as the Palatine and the Aventine lie so

near each other, every Roman only knew too well, that whatever any one

saw high in the air on either of the two mountains, could not in any

way escape notice on the other. The legend cannot therefore be old: it

is only to be upheld by substituting Remuria for the Aventine. As the

Palatine was the seat of the noblest patrician tribe, and the Aventine

exclusively the city of the plebeians, there reigned between the two

an undying enmity; and thus in aftertimes that scene was transferred

from the Remuria, which was far off from the city, to the Aventine.

According to Ennius, the Aventine was the very spot from which Romulus

watched the heavens, so that the station of Remus must have been at

Remuria, and Romulus, when he had observed the Augury, threw his

javelin towards the Palatine. This is the old tradition which the

later authors neglected. He takes possession of the Palatine. That the

javelin took root, and grew into a tree which stood to the time of

Nero, is symbolical of the imperishableness of the new city, and of the

help of the gods. That Romulus had played false, is a later addition:

the fine poem of Ennius in _Cicero de Divinatione_[54] knows nothing of

the circumstance. From hence it now follows that in the earliest times

there were two towns, Roma and Remuria; the latter a good way outside

the city, and far from the Palatine.

Romulus now drew the boundaries of his city; but Remus leaped in

mockery over the ditch, for which Celer slew him, an intimation that

no one should step with impunity over the bulwarks of Rome. Romulus,

however, fell into grief on the death of Remus, instituted festivals

for him, and caused an empty throne to be raised at the side of his

own. Thus we have a double rule, which ends with the overthrow of

Remuria.

The next question is, what were these two cities,--Roma and Remuria?

They were evidently Pelasgian towns. There is an old tradition, that

Sicelus had come from Roma on the south to the Pelasgians; that is

to say, the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians are driven to the Morgetians in

Lucania and in the island, who were allied to them in blood. Among the

Greeks, according to Dionysius, the belief was general that Rome was a

Pelasgian, i. e. a Tyrrhenian city; but the writers from whom he had

this information are lost to us. There is a fragment, however, in which

it is stated that Rome was a sister-town of Antium and Ardea. We have

also to quote here the notice from the Chronicle of Cumæ, that Evander

had had his palatium on the Palatine. As an Arcadian he is likewise a

Pelasgian. To us he appears less important than he is in the legend: he

is one of the benefactors of the people, and to the Pelasgians in Italy

he brought the use of letters and the arts, as Damaratus did to the

Tyrrhenians in Etruria. In this meaning, therefore, Rome is indeed a

Latin town; and that not a mixed, but a purely Tyrrheno-Pelasgian one.

The after fortunes of this settlement are indicated in the allegories.

Romulus found the band which he had with him much too small. To the

numbers of three thousand foot and three hundred horsemen, which Livy

got from the _Commentarii Pontificum_, no regard should be given; for

this is merely the sketch of the later Roman military array, dated

back to the earliest times. According to the old tradition, his little

troop was too small for him, and he opened an asylum on the Capitol.

This asylum, according to the old description, only took in a very

small space; a proof that these things were not at all understood as

history. Therein were all sorts of people gathered together,--thieves,

murderers, in short, rogues and vagabonds. This is the simple account

of the way in which clientship began. In the bitterness with which

the different classes afterwards regarded each other, this has been

applied to the Patricians, as though their earliest ancestors had been

scoundrels. But the Patricians would naturally be deemed descendants

of the free companions of Romulus. Those who took refuge there are men

who placed themselves as dependants under the protection of the really

free citizens. But wives were now wanting to them, and they tried to

get the right of intermarriage (_connubium_) with the neighbouring

towns; especially perhaps with Antemnæ, which was only four (Roman)

miles distant from Rome, with the Sabines and others. This was refused.

Romulus, therefore, had recourse to stratagem: he gave out that he had

discovered the altar of Consus, the god of counsel, an allegory to

denote his usual craftiness. In the midst of the festival, the Sabine

maidens were carried away, thirty in number; for this is the genuine

old tradition, a proof how small people pictured to themselves old Rome

to have been. From these the Curies received their names. Afterwards

the number was found to be too little; and it was cunningly made out

that these thirty had been chosen by the drawing of lots to give their

names to the Curies, and Valerius Antias fixes the numbers of those who

were carried off at five hundred and twenty-seven. The Rape is placed

in the fourth month of the city, because the Consualia were kept in

August, and the festival in commemoration of the foundation of the city

in April; afterwards it was made four years later, as by Cn. Gellius,

and Dionysius finds this much more worthy of belief. Wars arise from

it; first with the neighbouring towns, which yielded one after the

other; at last with the Sabines. There is no trace in the old tradition

of the latter having been carried on to any length; yet in later times

it was necessary to assume it, because another standard was then

adopted. Lucumo and Cælius march forth to join Romulus, an allusion

to the inroad of Cæles Vibenna, which, however, took place much later.

Tatius, by means of treason, gains a settlement on the hill which was

called the Tarpeian stronghold. Between the Palatine and the Tarpeian

rock an indecisive battle is fought, until at length the Sabine women

threw themselves between the combatants, and the strife was put an end

to by an agreement that the rule should be shared between the Romans

and the Sabines. This happened according to the annals in the fourth

year. But it lasted a short time only; Tatius was slain at a sacrifice

at Laurentum, and his throne was left vacant. Before that time, each

king had a senate of a hundred members, which after having deliberated

separately, joined together in what was called a _comitium_. Romulus

reigned alone all the remaining time. The old legend knows nothing of

his having been a tyrant: on the contrary, according to Ennius, he

continued to be a mild and benevolent king, and Tatius was a tyrant.

The ancient tradition had nothing more than the beginning and the

end of the reign of Romulus: all that lies between, the war with the

Veientines, Fidenates, &c. are silly stories of the later annalists;

and whilst the poem itself is beautiful, this narrative is quite

tasteless. It says, for instance, that Romulus slew with his own hand

ten thousand Veientines, and more of the same stuff. The old poem

proceeds at once to the period when Romulus fulfils his career, and

when to Mars the promise given him by Jupiter was granted, that Romulus

might be the only man whom he should dare to introduce among the gods.

According to this ancient story, the king once reviewed his army at

the marsh of Capræ, when, as at the time of his conception, an eclipse

of the sun came on; and then likewise arose a whirlwind, in which Mars

rode down in a chariot of fire, and took him up with him to heaven.

From this beautiful lay, the most pitiful interpretations were wrested.

It was said that Romulus had been among the senators, who had stabbed

him, cut him in pieces, and carried him off beneath their togas. This

silly story has become the general one. In order that a cause for such

a deed of horror might not be wanting, it was now told that Romulus in

his latter days had become a tyrant, and that the senators had revenged

themselves upon him in this manner.

After the death of Romulus, there was for a long time a feud between

the Romans and the people of Tatius; the Sabines wishing for a king

from among themselves, since no new election had been made to fill the

room of Tatius, whilst the Romans would have one of their own race.

Then, it is said, it was at last agreed that one people was to elect

the king from the other people.

And here we must speak of the relation of the two nations to each

other, as it in reality existed.

All the nations of antiquity lived in fixed forms, and their political

communities were always organized, down to the lowest ranks. When

cities rise into nations, we always find at first a division into

tribes. Herodotus mentions such tribes when Cyrene was colonized, and

in later times this was also the case at the founding of Thurii; yet

when a city any where existed as such, its claim to this character

consisted in this, that its citizens were at a certain time divided

into communities (γένη), which had a common chapel and the worship

of a common hero. In the higher stages of these organizations, the

clans were also in certain numerical proportions united into Curies

(φράτραι). These clans are not families, but free associations,

sometimes close, sometimes open; and in certain cases the general

assembly of the state might assign them new members; as in Venice the

great council was a close body, and it was so likewise in many of the

oligarchical states of antiquity.

All the communities had a council and a commonalty, that is to say, a

small and a great council, or a council and a popular assembly, the

latter of which consisted of the guilds or clans; and these again were

united as it were into parishes. The Latin towns have all a council of

a hundred persons. This was divided into ten decuries; and these gave

rise to the term decurions, which was continued to the latest times

for the magistrates of the towns, and also passed by the _lex Julia_

into the constitution of the Italian municipalities. That this council

consisted of a hundred persons is shown by Savigny in the first volume

of his history of Roman jurisprudence. This constitution survived until

late in the middle ages, and was abolished when corporations of the

different trades came into the place of the municipal constitution.

Giovanni Villani says, that before the revolution in the twelfth

century there had been in Florence a hundred _buoni uomini_, who

managed the affairs of the town. There is nothing in our German cities

corresponding to this constitution. We must not consider these hundred

as gentlemen; but they were, as in the small free cities of the

empire, an assembly of the burghers and husbandmen, each representing

a clan. They are called by Propertius _patres pelliti_. The Curia at

Rome, which was thatched with straw (_recens horrebat regia culmo_ in

Virgil), was a faithful remembrance of the times when Rome, buried in

what may be deemed the night of history, stood like a small country

town surrounded by its fields.

The earliest event which we are enabled to make out from the forms of

allegory, by comparison with what happened in other places in Italy, is

a consequence of the continued great movement of the different races.

It did not stop when the Oscans were driven from the Fucinus to the

Alban Lake; it went much farther. The Sabines may have rested for some

time, but they pressed on far beyond the countries of which we have

traditions. They begin as one of the smallest of peoples, and become

afterwards one of the greatest in Italy. The Marrucinians, Caudinians,

Vestinians, Marsians, Pelignians, in short all the Samnite peoples; the

Lucanians, the Oscan part of the Bruttians, the Picenians and others,

have all sprung from the Sabine stock: and yet we have traditions only

about the founding of some of them. This people was down to the period

at which we must fix the foundation of Rome, in a state of expansion.

It is said the Sabines, guided by a bullock, had advanced into Opica,

and had thus founded the country of the Samnites. Yet earlier perhaps,

they had moved down below the Tiber, so that we there find Sabine

towns mixed with Latin ones; and we meet with some of them also on the

banks of the Anio. Into the country of the later Sabines, they in all

likelihood only came subsequently; for Falerii is a Tuscan town, and

certainly its population had once been entirely Tyrrhenian.

At the advance of the Sabines, some of the Latin towns maintained their

ground, others gave way. Fidenæ belongs to the former class: north of

it all is Sabine. Now we find at the side of Old Roma a Sabine town on

the Quirinal and Capitoline, hard by the Latin one; yet the existence

of this town is all that we know of it. A tradition is extant, that

before that there had once been a Siculian town, Saturnia,[55] on the

Capitoline; this then must have been conquered by the Sabines. Whatever

may have been the case with regard to this, and to the existence of an

old town on the Janiculum, there were here a number of small towns. The

two cities could exist together, as there was a deep marsh between them.

The town on the Palatine may have been for a long time dependent on

the Sabine conqueror, who, according to tradition, was Titus Tatius,

and hence it is that his memory has been so hated. He was slain at the

sacrifice of Laurentum. Ennius calls him a tyrant in the well-known

line:

O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti.

The existence of a Sabine town on the Quirinal hill is confirmed by

the number of Sabine chapels which undoubtedly stood there, as Varro

still knew, who proved from this fact that the Sabine ritual was

received by the Romans. This Sabine element in the Roman worship has

almost always been mistaken.[56]

The legend that by the rape of the virgins war had arisen between

the Sabines and Romans, is without doubt a symbolical account of the

relation between the two places, when as yet there was no intermarriage

between them. The Sabines had the upper hand, and denied it; the Romans

conquered it by force of arms. The Sabines were certainly originally

the masters; but by some movement of the Romans, other Sabine places

like Antemnæ and Fidenæ, were subjected, and the Sabines were thus

isolated from their countrymen. The Romans again insisted upon their

independence, and from thence arose war, the issue of which may have

been that which is handed down to us,--only that Romulus is to be

set aside,--namely, that both places formed a sort of confederacy as

two closely united towns, each with a senate of a hundred men and a

king, with an offensive and defensive alliance; and that in common

deliberation, the assembly of their clans met on that spot between the

two cities which afterwards bore the name of Comitium. Thus they formed

against the foreigner only one state.

The account of a double state existed already among the ancients; yet

the only proofs of it which have been preserved are scattered notices

here and there, chiefly among the scholiasts. The head of Janus which

in the earliest times is represented on the Roman _As_, is symbolical

of it. Roman antiquaries have quite correctly understood this. The

empty royal throne by the side of the Curule seat of Romulus refers

to the time when there was one king only, and is emblematical of the

equal but dormant right of the other people.[57]

It is also historical that this agreement was not of long duration; and

that the Roman king usurped the rule over the Sabines; and that the

two councils combined and formed one senate under one king, it being

also settled that the king should by turns be a Roman and a Sabine; and

that each time the king should be chosen by the other people, yet that

no one should be forced upon the non-electing people whom they did not

like, but that he should only be able to enter upon the _imperium_,

if in the first place the auguries were favourable, and moreover the

whole people had confirmed him. The other tribe had therefore the right

of recognising or rejecting the king elect. This is told of Numa as a

fact; yet it is merely a representation of the right taken from the

books of rituals. This strange double act of election, which seems such

a riddle, and was formerly so entirely misunderstood, is in this manner

quite intelligible.

When the two states amalgamated, after having existed separately

perhaps for ages, the towns ceased to be towns, and the collective

mass of their clans formed itself into tribes. The nation consisted

therefore of two tribes. From the earliest times the style of

addressing the Roman people was, _Populus Romanus Quirites_, out of

which, when the origin was forgotten, _Populus Romanus Quiritium_ was

made; just as _lis vindiciæ_ afterwards was into _lis vindiciarum_.

This change is older than Livy; yet the correct use of the phrase is

still met with in his time, though much encroached upon by the false

one. The old tradition says that the name _Quirites_ had after the

union of the two tribes been adopted as a common one. But this is

false. The name first becomes common at a very late period only. When

for a long time there had been no more difference between Romans and

Sabines, nor between these and the Luceres; and even later, when that

between the patricians and plebeians had become almost wholly extinct,

this denomination still remained, and was transferred to the plebeians.

Thus the two towns stood side by side as tribes (_tribus_), and it is

merely in acknowledgment of the old tradition that we call the Latins

Ramnes, and the Sabines Tities. That the derivation from Romulus and T.

Tatius is incorrect, does not impair the truth of the main assertion.

Dionysius, who had good materials, and made use of very many of

them, must indeed, for the time of the Consuls, have sometimes had

more than he gives; especially concerning one important change in

the constitution, where he has a few words only, and has either

not seen clearly, or has been careless.[58] Yet with regard to the

olden times of the kings he was clear. He says that there had been a

dissension between the two tribes concerning the senates, which Numa

had compromised, by not taking any thing for the Ramnes as the first

tribe, but bestowing honours upon the Tities. This is perfectly plain.

The senate, which at first consisted of one hundred, but now of two,

was divided into ten decuries, each of which had a president. These are

the _decem primi_, and these were taken from the Ramnes. They formed

among themselves the _Collegium_, which, when there was no king, held

the government by rotation; each for five days, yet so that the same

always came back in their turn, as we must correctly assume with Livy.

As for Dionysius, he brings in his Greek notions, taken from the Attic

Prytanies; and Plutarch quite misunderstands the matter.

Not only the senate, but also the augurs and pontiffs, were doubled in

number; so that each college consisted of four members, two of them

from the Ramnes, and two from the Tities. These changes were attached

indeed by Dionysius and Cicero to the names of certain kings; yet this

must not hinder us from acknowledging them as quite historical.

Thus was Rome in the second stage of its development. This state of

compromise is that of peace, and is described as the reign of Numa.

Concerning him the traditions are simple and short. They had the ideal

of a peaceful period, with a holy man at the head of affairs like

Nicholas Von der Flue in Switzerland. People pictured to themselves

Numa inspired by the goddess Egeria, whom he married in the grove

of the Camenæ; who introduces him among the quire of her sisters,

afterwards melts into tears at his death, and gives her name to

a well springing from them. Such a peace of forty years, during

which no people had risen against Rome, because Numa’s piety had

had its influence upon the other nations, is a fine idea; but it is

historically impossible at that time,--evidently a poetical fiction.

With Numa the first _sæculum_ closes, and quite a new epoch begins;

just as in Hesiod the ages succeed each other. The age of the heroes is

followed by the iron era: it is evidently a period;--quite a different

order of the world is supposed to be commencing. Hitherto we had mere

poetical fiction; but now with Tullus Hostillus a sort of history

begins, i. e. events which on the whole must be taken as historical,

being foreign to history only from the light in which they appear.

Thus the destruction of Alba is historical, very probably also the

reception of the Albans into Rome. The conquests of Ancus Marcius are

very credible: this point of real history stands like an oasis in the

midst of legends. Something like this we once find in the Chronicle

of Cologne. In the Abyssinian annals, there occurs in the thirteenth

century one story, quite explicitly given, which we recognise as

a piece of contemporary narrative. Before and after that, nothing

historical is met with.

The history which now follows is like an image seen from behind, like

phantasmagoria. The names of the kings are entirely fictitious. How

long the Roman kings have reigned, no mortal man can know, as we do

not know how many have reigned. For seven was fixed upon for the sake

of the number only, which is found in connexion with many proportions,

especially some important astronomical ones. The chronological dates

are therefore utterly worthless. One ought to look upon the interval,

from the origin of Rome to the times when people were able to execute

those gigantic works which were really executed under the kings, and

which vied with those of the Egyptians,--the sewers, the wall of

Servius, and other buildings, as at least a succession of centuries.

Romulus and Numa are to be wholly set aside; yet there follows a long

period in which the races gradually amalgamate with each other, and

spread, until the regal government disappears, and makes way for a

republic.

For remembrance sake, we must, however, give the history as we have

it. Between Rome and Alba there is not the least connexion, not even

in those writers who suppose Rome to be an offshoot from Alba. Yet

all at once, under Tullus Hostilius, they appear as enemies; each

of the nations seeks for war, and the only question is to gain the

favour of Fortune, on the strength of each party pretending to be the

injured one, and wishing to declare war. Both mutually sent envoys to

demand satisfaction for depredations committed. The form was, that

these envoys, the Fetiales, told to every one they met the grievances

of their town; then they proclaimed them in the market-place of the

foreign town, and if after three times ten days no satisfaction were

given, they said, “We have done enough and now return,” whereupon the

senators at home deliberated about the manner of the satisfaction.

In this formula, therefore, the _res_, the giving up of the guilty,

and the restitution of the body was to be demanded. Now we are told,

that the two nations at exactly the same time, sent such envoys; but

that Tullus Hostilius had for a while detained the Albans sent to him,

until he had learned for certain that the Romans had not had right done

them at Alba, and had there declared war. He now first admitted the

envoys into the senate, and to their complaints it was answered, that

they themselves had not redressed the grievances of the Romans. Livy

therefore thus continues: _bellum in trigesimum diem dixerant_. Yet

the formula is _post trigesimum diem_; why did Livy or the annalist

whom he followed, alter this? Quite naturally. One rides from Rome to

Alba in a couple of hours; so that it was impossible that the Alban

envoys should have been detained in Rome for thirty days, without

being apprised of what was in the meanwhile going on at Alba. Livy saw

this, and therefore altered the formula. But to the old poet this was

of no consequence: he did not let it trouble him. He enlarged in his

imagination the distance, and made Rome and Alba great states.

Just as undeniably poetical is the whole representation of the state of

affairs in which Alba’s fate was decided. We shall dwell a little on

this point, in order to show how a semblance of history may be got up.

There was between Rome and Alba a ditch, _fossa Cluilia_ or _Cloelia_;

and moreover there must have been a tradition that here the Albans had

pitched their camp. In Livy and Dionysius we find it mentioned, that

a general of the Albans, Cluilius, had given it this name, and had

also died in that spot. The latter circumstance must have been told

to account for the general being afterwards a different man, Mettius

Fuffetius, and yet that it should be still possible to connect the

name of that ditch with the Albans. The two states commit the issue

of the feud to single combat. Dionysius says that the traditions were

not unanimous, as to whether the Roman champions were called Horatii

or Curiatii; yet he as well as Livy gives them the name of Horatii,

in all likelihood, because the larger number of the annalists so had

it. Who, without that passage of Dionysius, would have guessed any

thing of that uncertainty? The combat of the three twin-born children

is symbolical of both the states being at that time divided into three

tribes. Attempts have indeed been made to clear away the improbability

by denying the triple birth,--one of them is even mentioned as the

youngest; yet the legend goes still farther, the brothers being said to

have been the sons of two sisters, and to have been born on the same

day. This is to represent the absolute equality between Rome and Alba.

The issue was the complete subjection of Alba. Yet Alba did not remain

faithful. In the struggle with the Etruscans which followed, Mettius

Fuffetius shows himself a traitor to Rome; but he is prevented from

executing his plan, and afterwards falls on the fugitive Etruscans;

Tullus by way of punishment caused him to be torn in pieces, and

Alba to be demolished; and the most distinguished Alban clans were

transferred to Rome.

Equally poetical is the legend of the death of Tullus. He foolishly

undertakes conjurations like Numa, and thereby draws the thunderbolt

upon his own head.

If we try to make out the historical substance of these legends, we

come to a period when Rome no longer stands alone, but has already

colonies with Roman settlers, who possess a third of the soil, and

who hold the sway. This is the case with a number of towns, most of

them old Siculian ones. So much is certain, that Alba was destroyed,

and that after its fall, the towns of the Prisci Latini formed an

independent and compact confederacy. How Alba was destroyed is involved

in great obscurity. Whether, as it is said, it was ever forced to

acknowledge the supremacy of Rome; whether it was destroyed by Romans

and Latins combined, or by Latins or Romans alone, are questions

which no human sagacity can solve. The destruction by the Latins

rising against Alba’s superiority is the most probable; but whether in

that case Rome received the Albans into her bosom, will ever remain

uncertain. That Alban clans were settled at Rome we cannot doubt,

as little as that the Prisci Latini from henceforth existed as a

consolidated state. Yet if we consider that Alba lies in the middle of

the Latin country; that the Alban hill was their common sanctuary, the

grove of Ferentina their place of assembly; the greater probability is

this, that Rome did not destroy Alba, but that the latter perished in

the insurrection of the Latin towns, and that the Romans strengthened

themselves by the admission of the Albans.

Whether the Albans first built on the Cælius, is more than we can

ascertain. The account which places the foundation of the town on

the Cælius in the times of Romulus, tends to prove that before the

reception of the Albans, a town already existed here. But what weight

has that account? A third tradition represents it as an Etruscan colony

of Cæles Vibenna.

The destruction of Alba had an extraordinary effect on the greatness of

Rome. At all events there now existed a third town on the Cælius and

part of the Esquiliæ, which seems to have been very populous. Such a

settlement quite close to other towns was made for the sake of mutual

protection. Between the two older towns there was a perpetual marsh and

morass; the Roman town was likewise bordered on its south side by a

piece of stagnant water; but between the third town and Rome there was

dry ground. Rome had also a considerable suburb towards the Aventine,

behind a wall and ditch, as is represented in the legend of Remus. The

latter is a personification of the plebeians: he jumps from the side of

the Aventine over the ditch.

The Sabine town had without doubt the name of Quirium; for the

πολιτικόν of it is _Quiris_. This is certain. Almost as little do I

doubt but that the town on the Cælius was Lucerum; because, when it

was united with Rome, its citizens were called _Lucertes_ (Luceres).

The ancients derive this name from Lucumo king of the Tuscans, or from

Lucerus king of Ardea. The meaning of the latter may perhaps be this,

that the tribe was Tyrrheno-Latin, since Ardea was the chief town of

that tribe. Thus Rome was enlarged by a third element, which is not,

however, on an equal footing with the other two, but is in subjection

to them, just as Ireland was to Great Britain before the year 1782. Yet

although they were obliged to acknowledge this supremacy, they were

already looked upon as being a part of the whole, as a third _tribus_

with an independent administration, though with inferior rights. What

here shows us our way is the statement of Festus, who on the subject of

Roman antiquities is very trustworthy, inasmuch as he makes extracts

from Verrius Flaccus. In a few points only has one of the two in my

opinion made a mistake; all the rest may be accounted for by the

deficiency of the extract, as Festus did not always understand Verrius

Flaccus. The statement of Festus, which I am now speaking of, is this,

that Tarquin the Proud had reduced the number of the vestals to six,

so that each tribe might have two of them. In connexion with this is

to be taken the passage in the tenth book of Livy, which asserts that

the augurs were to represent the three tribes. The numbers in the Roman

priestly colleges may always be divided either by two or by three: by

three, those of the vestal virgins, of the great flamens; by two, those

of the augurs, the pontiffs, the fetiales; these last represented only

the two first tribes. Before the passing of the Ogulnian law, there

were only four augurs; and when afterwards five plebeian ones were

added, the basis of this increase was indeed a different[59] one; yet

the ancient form of divisibility by three was kept up. The pontiffs,

of whom there were likewise four, had at that time only four added

to them. This then would seem to be an inconsistency; but a passage

of Cicero on the subject has been overlooked, in which he tells us

that the number of those added had been five, evidently counting the

Pontifex Maximus with them, which Livy does not.--In the same manner

there were twenty Fetiales, ten for each tribe; and Numa added to the

Palatine Salii, another brotherhood of the same kind on the Quirinal.

Every where the two first tribes are plainly opposed to each other on

an equal footing, while the third is left in the background.

The third rank accordingly consisted of free citizens; yet it had not

the same rights as the two first. Nevertheless it thought itself better

than all other people; it stood in the same position as that in which

the Venetian citizens of the mainland did to the nobili. The nobleman

of Venice treated one of these citizens with more regard than he showed

to any of the others, so long as he did not take upon himself to claim

to have a voice in political matters. Whoever belonged to the Luceres

called himself a Roman; and if the dictator of Tusculum had come to

Rome, the man of the third tribe in it would have looked down upon him

as an inferior, although he himself was of no account.

Tullus is succeeded by Ancus. Tullus makes his appearance as one of

the Ramnes, as a descendant of Hostus Hostilius, one of the companions

of Romulus; but Ancus on the contrary is a Sabine, and a grandson of

Numa. His story has an historical air: there is none of the colouring

of poetry in it. The development of the state advances in his reign

another step. Rome and the Latin towns are, according to the old

description, at war with each other, and the Romans carry it on with

success. How many of the details of which we are told here, are

historical, I cannot decide: that a war took place is credible enough.

It is said that Ancus after this war led away many thousand Latins,

and established them on the Aventine. The ancients judged differently

of him: he at one time appears as _captator auræ popularis_, and at

another he is called _bonus Ancus_. Like the three first kings, he is

also stated to have been a lawgiver: of the later ones this is no more

mentioned. He is said besides to have founded the colony of Ostia, and

therefore to have extended his rule to the mouth of the Tiber.

Ancus seems, like Tullus, to be historical; only we can hardly suppose

that the one was the immediate successor of the other, and that the

events which are placed in their reigns really belonged to those

times. These events must be considered in the following manner. When

at the end of the fourth reign, the Romans, after a long feud, came to

an agreement with the Latins about the renewal of the long neglected

league, Rome dropped her claims to a dominion which she could not

preserve, and in exchange enlarged herself on another and a safer side.

The eastern colonies coalesced with the preserved Latin towns, although

this is nowhere expressly stated. Part of the Latin country was yielded

to Rome, the rest entered into relations of friendship, and perhaps of

isopolity with it. Rome in this acted wisely, as England did when she

acknowledged the United States of North America.

In this manner Rome acquired a _distretto_ (district). The many

thousand settlers whom Ancus is said to have led to the Aventine, are

the population of the Latin towns which fell to Rome, a much more

numerous one than that of the two old tribes, even with the addition of

the third, which was already much the largest. In this rural district

lay the strength of Rome; from it was the army raised with which the

Romans carried on their wars. Now it would have been natural to admit

this population as a fourth tribe, but this did not please the Romans:

the constitution of the state was closed, and it was looked upon as a

trust in which nothing must be changed. As our forefathers in their

different tribes clung to their own peculiar laws (the emperor Otho

made a question arising out of the law of inheritance to be decided

by an appeal to the judgment of God), so was it likewise among the

Greeks and Romans. A town in Sicily had Chalcidian _Nomima_, another

had Doric ones, although the population was entirely mixed: in the

former there were four; in the latter, three tribes.[60] The division

into three tribes was an indigenous Latin one; but it may be that the

Sabines in their towns had the division into four.

_Here we have the first beginning of the plebes._ Although the story

that Ancus led the Latins away from their homes, and transplanted them

in Rome, deserves no credit, because it is impossible; yet it is not to

be doubted that Ancus Marcius is justly mentioned as the builder of a

town on the Aventine. Here arose a town, which to the very latest times

kept itself politically separated from Rome proper, and which for a

very long period, as a byetown, was not comprehended in the Pomœrium.

Ancus is succeeded by Tarquinius Priscus, who is represented as a half

Etruscan, son of an Etruscan woman and of Damaratus. The latter is said

to have been a Bacchiades, who in the revolution of Cypselus had left

Corinth with great treasures, and emigrated to Tarquinii. His heir

was his son Lucius Tarquinius, as an elder son, Aruns, had previously

died, leaving behind him a wife whom the father did not know to be

with child. This account is very generally believed, because Polybius,

though a Greek, mentions Tarquin as a son of Damaratus, and because the

time corresponds. Yet this is after all merely an illusion. The whole

agreement hinges upon the correctness of our chronological dates of the

Roman kings, according to which Tarquinius Priscus ascended the throne

in the year of the city 132; but if we must place him at a later time,

the story of Damaratus and Cypselus, which pretty certainly belongs to

the thirtieth Olympiad, falls at once to the ground. Now it has already

been remarked in the general review of the sources of Roman history,

that all the old annalists, with the single exception of subtle Piso,

have never doubted but that Tarquin the Proud was the son of Tarquinius

Priscus; and consequently the date assigned for the latter must be

altogether incorrect. And therefore the connexion with Damaratus

becomes impossible.

Damaratus belongs to the old tradition about the connexion between

Greece and Etruria, and of the civilization which came from Greece

to Etruria. As Evander did to the Latins, so does Damaratus bring

the letters of Cadmus to the Etruscans, or Tyrrhenians; and he also

belongs, according to the most ancient Greek tradition, to equally

early times. The alleged connexion with Tarquinius Priscus arose from

the circumstance that the old legend speaks of Tarquinii as the place

where Damaratus settled. Of his descent as a Bacchiad, the tradition

certainly knew nothing: it was added by later historizing accounts,

which every where tried to keep up a sort of link with history. The

reason for referring Damaratus to Tarquinii was partly this, that

Tarquinii was an important town, and partly also that between Tarquinii

and Corinth there is a connexion not to be mistaken. Formerly the vases

and vessels found in Tuscany were taken for Etruscan; but afterwards

people most justly gave up that opinion, though they now believed

that such vases had never existed in ancient Etruria. But there have

been vessels dug up at Corneto which are perfectly similar to the

oldest Greek ones,--not to those which were formerly called Etruscan

but to the real Greek ones from the earliest times, especially to the

Corinthian ones which Dodwell has copied.[61] Fragments of the same

kind are only found there near the old Tarquinii. In all the rest

of Tuscany such a vessel has hardly been met with more than once or

twice; whilst in the north-eastern part of the country, near Arezzo

and Fiesole, the Arretinian vessels of baked red clay with embossed

figures of quite a peculiar style of art are quite common, which, on

the other hand, are nowhere found near the coast. This connexion of

the art of Tarquinii with that of Greece, especially Corinth, explains

the tradition that the artists Eucheir and Eugrammos had accompanied

Damaratus from Corinth.

When once Tarquinius Priscus was connected with Tarquinii, and the

tradition besides was remembered, that the solemn worship of the Greeks

had first been introduced by him, it was said, “this is the work of

the old Greeks;” and now it became necessary to compare the Roman

chronology, as laid down in the books of the pontiffs, with the Greek

one, which could already be done, as Timæus had written. Then it was

found that the connexion became possible, if Damaratus was made the

father of Tarquin. This Tarquinius Priscus or Lucumo, it was said,

had with his wife Tanaquil, an Etruscan soothsayer, betaken himself

to Rome, being only a half citizen at Tarquinii; and on his journey

thither, a miracle happens to him. Of his reign many glorious things

are told. Yet here the accounts differ: one, that of Livy, is very

modest; another makes him conquer all the Etruscan towns. This is to

be read at length in Dionysius; the story of it has its place in the

Roman annals, so that Augustus even had these victories marked in the

triumphal Fasti as three triumphs with definite dates, as we see from

the fragments which remain.[62] Now the Romans had so much the more

reason for believing these statements, as Tarquinius Priscus is always

mentioned as the man who united the two towns, that of the Sabines,

and that of the Romans, and built the gigantic works by which also the

valleys were filled up.

The same account, generally calls Tarquinius Priscus Lucumo; yet

this was never a name, but the Etruscan title of a prince. Whenever

the Romans want to invent any thing about the Etruscans, they always

call the men Lucumo, Aruns, or Lars. The last of these probably means

king. Aruns is a common name, as we may see from the inscriptions of

the Etruscan tombs, of which we cannot indeed understand one word,

but yet may recognise the names. I have looked over all the Etruscan

inscriptions, and have arrived at this conviction, that there is in

them an entirely different language, of which we can only guess some

words: for instance, _ril avil_ means _vixit annos_. Lucumo is nowhere

found on them; and the old philologians also, as Verrius Flaccus, knew

that it was no name. The Romans had several traditions concerning a

Lucumo who acts a part in Roman history; one, for instance, was a

companion of Romulus. No one else is meant by any of them but Lucius

Tarquinius Priscus; that is to say, the tradition referred every thing

to him that was told of the others. Livy says that he had given himself

at Rome the name of L. Tarquinius Priscus, for which the philologians

reproach him as guilty of a great oversight, which, however, is only

to be deemed one if we suppose that he had explained Priscus to mean

“The Old.” Yet Livy might often in the first book have written down

the narrative under the conviction that all that had not really so

happened, and that something different might be understood as its

meaning. Priscus is a common name with the Romans. Among the Patricians

we find it in the family of the Servilii; Cato was called Priscus

before he got the name of Cato, i. e. Catus, the prudent one, with the

emphatic termination o; and besides these a whole series of families

bear this cognomen. I am convinced that Tarquinius has been brought

into connexion with Tarquinii only because of his name, and that on the

contrary he was in reality a Latin. This is supported by the mention of

Tarquinians, who after the expulsion of the kings reside at Laurentum;

and likewise by the fact that Collatinus betook himself to Lavinium,

a Latin town. The whole story of the descent of Tarquinius Priscus

from Damaratus falls besides to the ground, as Cicero, Varro, and even

Livy acknowledge the existence of a _gens Tarquinia_; and how utterly

different is a _gens_ indeed from a family which only consists of two

houses, that of the kings and that of Collatinus? Varro says expressly,

_omnes Tarquinios ejecerunt, ne quam reditionis per gentilitatem spem

haberet_.

The reason of Tarquin’s being connected with Etruria was, besides

his name, the necessity of accounting for an Etruscan influence on

Rome. The Romans made Servius Tullius, who was an Etruscan, a Latin

from Corniculum; and _vice versa_, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, who

was a Latin, an Etruscan. Thus the whole story of his descent is a

fiction, and this is also decidedly the case with Tanaquil, inasmuch

as the Romans so name every one of the women who were stated to have

been Etruscans, it being a common Etruscan name, which is often met

with in inscriptions. In the old native tradition Tarquin was married

to a Latin woman, Caia Cæcilia, a name which must be traced back to

Cæculus the founder of Præneste. Her image was set up in the temple of

Semo Sancus; for she was worshipped as the guardian goddess of female

domestic virtue. This bears a genuine stamp of nationality. In the old

legend, she is such a familiar personage that the girdle of her brazen

image was filed off, and the filings were used as remedies.

It is therefore a matter of history, that there was a Latin Tarquinius

Priscus; yet he in all likelihood belongs to the Luceres. He introduces

the Luceres into the senate; to the two hundred councillors a hundred

more are added, summoned by the king as _gentes minores_ after the

_gentes_ of the two first tribes; in the rebellion of his son against

Servius Tullius, they are his faction. His time seems to be parted

from the former one by a great gulf: in his reign, Rome appears under

quite a different form from what she had before. The conquests which

are ascribed to Ancus Marcius are confined within a very narrow space.

He first conquers the mouth of the Tiber, and fortifies Ostia. But now

a state of things is mentioned, the consequences of which we still

see, even to this hour. To this very day there stands unchanged the

great river vault, the _Cloaca maxima_, with the name of which one

incorrectly associates a base meaning. It is not a mere sewer, though

it is also used as such. Its real object was no less than that of

draining the great branch of the river’s bed, which went forth from

the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Aventine, and the Palatine, and

between the Palatine and Capitoline, and then extended in marshes to

the space between the Quirinal and the Viminal, and of thereby gaining

solid ground. This work consisting of three half circles of huge blocks

of free stone without mortar, which even to this present moment have

not given way the breadth of the back of a knife, drew off the water

from the surface, received it under ground, carried it into the Tiber,

and formed a firm soil. At the same time, because the Tiber had also

muddy banks, a great wall was built as a dyke, the greater part of

which is still in preservation. This construction is equal in extent

and bulk to the pyramids; in difficulty it very far surpasses them. It

is such a gigantic fabric, that one does not comprehend it when one

sees it: even the aqueducts of the Emperors are indeed nothing great

when compared to it. They were of brick, with a cast of mortar in the

middle; but here, all is of hewn Alban freestone, with immensely deep

foundations.

Whether the _Cloaca Maxima_ was executed by Tarquinius Priscus, or by

his son Superbus, is a point in which the ancients differ from each

other, and we also can decide nothing. This much, however, we may

say, that the building must have been completed before the town was

enclosed within the circuit of the seven hills, and formed a whole;

yet this was done by the last king but one, and therefore, if we will

avail ourselves of the personification, in the time of Tarquinius

Priscus. But such a work could not possibly have been executed with the

resources of the State as we know it to have been at that period, when

its territory extended from the river about two leagues in breadth,

and at most six to eight leagues in length, and consequently was not

as large as that of Nuremburg; especially if we think of all the

difficulties of an age in which trade and commercial wealth were in

no wise in existence. Here are evidently all the intervening stages

leaped over, and we see at once an Empire before us quite different

from the former one, in which Rome rules far and wide. Of this sway

we find no mention in Livy, although he too is astonished at these

buildings. Livy fancies that time to be a state of childhood for the

city, and is therefore under the same delusion by which Cicero, and the

later writers especially are beguiled; that the period of the kings was

to be looked upon as the age of Rome’s greatest weakness. Much more

correct might be the account given by Dionysius, according to which the

Etruscan towns, the Latins, and the Sabines paid homage to Tarquinius

Priscus. Only all the narratives of the manner in which this had come

to pass are so fabulous, that one cannot be mistaken as to their being

invented by those who had wished to solve the riddle. Here history

entirely fails us. But whatever relation Tarquinius Priscus may have to

the Tuscan legends of the conquests of Tarchon, this much we may say;

that Rome itself ruled at that time with an extensive sway, or else

that it was the seat of foreign rulers, so that at all events a state

of things had existed in which Rome was the centre of a foreign empire.

Another undertaking quite as enigmatical is assigned to the same reign

of Tarquinius Priscus. It is said that Tarquin had wished to double

the Romulean _Tribus_, that is to say, to add three new tribes bearing

his own and his friend’s names. To this the Augur Attius Navius had

objected, as three tribes were enjoined by the auspices. Probably

the legend was not as Livy, but as Dionysius has it; that Tarquin had

himself cut through the whet stone, and in doing so had wounded his

hand. The king had not indeed then formed three new tribes, but had

annexed new centuries to the old ones. In this legend therefore the

immutability of the tribes is spoken of, as well as the intention of

the ruler to double the community by new citizens, which scheme the

old citizens set their face against, pleading the sacred character

of the original number. But we see here a ruler, who is not a mere

magistrate, but governs by arbitrary force:--he yields as to the form,

but alters the substance, making second centuries. Centuries and

tribes are originally the same thing, since the _tribus_ had a hundred

clans. How it was with the second centuries is utterly hidden from

us. One hypothesis is this, that as many of the old clans had died

away, Tarquin formed new ones; for instance, that when the Ramnes had

dwindled to fifty, he added to fill up the number fifty new clans,

as _secundi Ramnes_. We have the example of the Potitii, who became

extinct in the time of Appius Claudius, though they still consisted, as

we are told, of twelve families. The rolls of exclusive families show

with what rapidity they become extinct. In Styria there were formerly

two thousand noble families, and now there exist scarcely a dozen of

them; in the duchy of Bremen, the equestrian body admissible to the

diet dwindled within fifty years to half its number, merely because

they intermarried only with those of their own cast. In Luneburg the

government formerly belonged to the noble houses; now there is only

one house left. Perhaps Tarquin collected the remnants of the old

Curies, and then made up clans which were wanting. What recommends this

supposition is this, that there remained some difference between the

old and new clans. Certainly the new centuries had not the weight which

they would have had as independent tribes.

It is a very uncertain thing to seek allegories in historical

statements, and to try and draw from them again historical facts. Thus

as Ancus Marcius is the founder of the _plebes_, and the murder of

Tarquin is said to have been brought about by the Marcii, one might

surmise that Tarquin, who was one of the Luceres and had introduced

them into the senate, had perished owing to rebellion of the plebeians.

Yet this is one of the most hazardous hypotheses, and therefore I did

not choose to have it printed. In proffering it, I support myself on

a credit to which he may lay claim, who for eighteen years has almost

incessantly devoted himself to these researches, after having been

fondly attached to them for many a year before.

The legend which makes Tarquin the acknowledged chief of the

twelve Etruscan towns, leads us to speak of the Etruscans. They

are perhaps of all the nations of antiquity that on which the most

different disquisitions have been made with the smallest apparatus of

authorities, and about which also the greatest number of deceptions

have been circulated. The forgeries of one Annius of Viterbo, of one

Inghirami, and others, are impudent in the highest degree; and yet

they have nevertheless become the sources of many later works. By

them Dempster, and by him Winkelmann in his turn, was led astray. In

the eighteenth century, the Italians did not indeed forge any more

documents; but with the greatest recklessness they gave themselves the

air of being able to explain what could never be explained. Indeed,

many written documents existed of the Etruscans; yet only a few great

ones. Five years ago an altar was dug up, written all over on three

sides; a cippus in Perugia; a coffin at Bolsena, &c.; and descriptions

have been published of them, some separately, and some collectively;

especially by Lanzi. On works of art also, inscriptions are found. To

interpret these is a matter of great interest, since, if we could read

them, much light would dawn upon us; but this has given rise to the

definite presupposition that they were capable of being explained, and

thus the most arbitrary things were done. Eastern languages, and the

Celtic were applied to it; at last Lanzi acted on the supposition that

it was a sort of Greek, and, in defiance of all the rules of grammar,

he formed at his own pleasure a spurious Greek. With all these relics,

we stand without knowing any thing, as we did with regard to the

hieroglyphics, until Champollion arose. Long _inscriptiones bilingues_

only could help us out. We may positively assert that the Etruscan has

not the least resemblance to the Latin and Greek, nay, to any language

which is known to us, as Dionysius already has justly observed. This

passage of Dionysius has purposely been overlooked, or its absolute

meaning has been wrested into a conditional one. The Umbrian on the

Eugubian tablets, has some resemblance to the Latin.

Dionysius had this information, that the Etruscans considered

themselves as an indigenous people, which descended from no other,

and, knowing nothing of the name of Tyrrhenians and Etruscans, called

themselves Rasena.[63] Of the traditions of the Greeks they knew

nothing. Yet the latter had two distinct traditions concerning the

Tyrrhenians, which they referred to the Etruscans; the one, that of

Hellanicus, that the Pelasgians from Thessaly had settled at the mouth

of the Po, at Spina, from whence they had crossed over the mountains to

Etruria; the second, that of Herodotus, according to which the Lydians

at the time of Atys, were visited by a famine, so that part of the

people under Tyrrhenus were obliged to emigrate to Italy. Dionysius

controverts the latter statement in that good style of criticism which

we sometimes find in him, on the ground that neither the language

nor the religion of the Etruscans bore any resemblance to those of

the Lydians; and that neither the Etruscans, nor the Lydian writer

Xanthus,--whose work, as O. Müller shows, was unjustly suspected among

the Greeks of not being genuine,--know any thing about it. Dionysius

in this judged rightly, because he did not work from books, but from

immediate observation. With the other tradition he deals differently:

he does not altogether drop it; but he refers it, not to the Etruscans,

but to the aborigines. The Italian antiquaries, on the contrary, stuck

to the Lydian tradition; or they also referred the emigration of the

Pelasgians from Thessaly to the Etruscans, and said, in spite of all

the assertions of Herodotus, that the inhabitants of Cortona (Croton)

were not at all different from the people of the neighbourhood.

And here I will now set forth the simple results of my researches

concerning the Etruscans. I have (in the new edition of the first

volume of my Roman history) shown that the name of Tyrrhenians was

transferred by the Greeks to the Etruscans, as we use that of Britons

when speaking of the English, or that of Mexicans and Peruvians, of

the Spaniards in America; because those nations dwelt originally in

these countries, whilst a newly immigrating people founded quite a new

order of things, and that so completely that we no more recognise any

traces of an earlier condition, than if the former had never existed.

The Tyrrhenians were quite a different people; yet they inhabited the

shores of Etruria, as well as the whole coast to the south, as far as

Œnotria proper, i. e. Calabria and Basilicata. These Tyrrhenians were

Pelasgians, as well as those of the Peloponnesus and Thessaly: and

when Sophocles speaks of Τυῤῥηνοὶ πελασγοί in Argos; when in Æschylus

king Pelasgus, son of Palæchthon, rules in Argos; when Tyrrhenians,

according to Thucydides, reside near Athos, and in Lemnos, and,

according to Herodotus, in Attica near the Hymettus, these are all

branches of one and the same stock. In Asia Minor we must fill up the

gap in history after the destruction of Troy by making the Lydians,

Carians, and Mysians, push forward from the interior country nearer to

the coast in the neighbourhood of the fallen city, partly subjugating,

partly expelling, the Meonians and other Pelasgian nations. The

Meonians, who are always distinguished from the Lydians, are likewise

Tyrrhenians, and are called so by Ovid in the Bacchian fable. Now

these Tyrrhenians have given to the coast of Western Italy and to the

Tyrrhenian Sea their names: the Romans call them _Tusci_. Both names

passed to the Rasena, who came down the Alps as conquerors. Thus the

whole statement of Herodotus becomes clear. It is a usual genealogical

explanation to show how Tyrrhenians could have been in Lydia, and also

in Italy. This opinion is now generally received in Germany and in

England.

The only difficulty, which indeed does not damage the evidence for this

representation, but is surprising as a fact, is this, that after the

Etruscan conquest of the Tyrrhenian country, the language of the Rasena

is the only one preserved on so many monuments; and that no trace of

inscriptions is to be seen in the tongue which was akin to the Greek,

as we must presume the Tyrrhenian to have been. But, in the first

place, these inscriptions were almost all of them found in the interior

of the country near Perugia, Volterra, Arrezzo, &c., where the original

population was Umbrian; and on the sea coast near Pisa, Populonia,

Cære, Tarquinii, and elsewhere, only in very small numbers. Some have

been lately discovered near Tarquinii, but they have not yet been

published: one might therefore say, that if no Tyrrhenian inscriptions

have yet been met with, they may still be found. But no stress is to

be laid on such special pleading. In conquests which bring a heavy

yoke upon the conquered, the language of the vanquished often becomes

wholly extinct. In Asia and many other countries, the use of the native

tongue was forbidden, in order to prevent treason. The Moors were in

many respects mild rulers in Spain, and the country flourished under

their sway; yet in Andalusia, at the advance of the Christians, a king

forbade his people on pain of death to speak Latin, so that a hundred

years afterwards no more trace of that language is to be found. As late

as in the eighteenth century, the whole Christian population of Cæsarea

spoke Greek: a bashaw forbid them to do so, and after a lapse of thirty

or forty years, when my father came to the place, not a soul was any

more able to converse in that language. In Sicily, at the time of the

Norman conquest, the language was exclusively Greek and Arabic; even

under the Emperor Frederic the Second, the laws were still promulgated

in Greek; afterwards this language all at once utterly disappears.

In the Terra di Lecce, and the Terra di Otranto also, the names were

afterwards Italian, but conversation was in Greek; and at the end

of two hundred years, in the fifteenth century, it became extinct

also here. In Pomerania and Mecklenburg, without any immigration of

Germans, merely owing to the predilection of the princes, the Vandal

language has vanished in the course of one or two generations. The

conquerors of the march of Brandenburg forbade the use of the Vandal

tongue on pain of death, and nothing soon was spoken but the Low

German, (plattdeutsch). The Etruscans had quite an aristocratical

constitution, and they lived in their towns in the midst of a large

subjected country; under such circumstances, it could not but be of

great importance to them, that the people should adopt their language.