in the following light. Turnus is nothing else but Turinus, in Dionysius
[Greek: Turrênos]; Lavinia, the fair maiden, is the name of the Latin
people, which may perhaps be so distinguished that the inhabitants of
the coast were called Tyrrhenians, and those further inland Latins.
Since, after the battle of Lake Regillus, the Latins are mentioned in
the treaty with Rome as forming thirty towns, there can be no doubt that
the towns, over which Alba had the supremacy in the earliest times, were
likewise thirty in number; but the confederacy did not at all times
contain the same towns, as some may afterward have perished and others
may have been added. In such political developments there is at work an
instinctive tendency to fill up that which has become vacant; and this
instinct acts as long as people proceed unconsciously according to the
ancient forms and not in accordance with actual wants. Such also was the
case in the twelve Achæan towns and in the seven Frisian maritime
communities; for as soon as one disappeared, another, dividing itself
into two, supplied its place. Wherever there is a fixed number, it is
kept up, even when one part dies away, and it ever continues to be
renewed. We may add that the state of the Latins lost in the West, but
gained in the East. We must therefore, I repeat it, conceive on the one
hand Alba with its thirty _demi_, and on the other the thirty Latin
towns, the latter at first forming a state allied with Alba, and at a
later time under its supremacy.
According to an important statement of Cato preserved in Dionysius, the
ancient towns of the Aborigines were small places scattered over the
mountains. One town of this kind was situated on the Palatine hill, and
bore the name of Roma, which is most certainly Greek. Not far from it
there occur several other places with Greek names, such as Pyrgi and
Alsium; for the people inhabiting those districts were closely akin to
the Greeks; and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture, that
Terracina was formerly called [Greek: Tracheinê] or the "rough place on
a rock"; Formiæ must be connected with [Greek: hormos] "a roadstead" or
"place for casting anchor." As certain as Pyrgi signifies "towers," so
certainly does _Roma_ signify "strength," and I believe that those are
quite right who consider that the name Roma in this sense is not
accidental. This Roma is described as a Pelasgian place in which
Evander, the introducer of scientific culture, resided. According to
tradition, the first foundation of civilization was laid by Saturn, in
the golden age of mankind. The tradition in Vergil, who was extremely
learned in matters of antiquity, that the first men were created out of
trees, must be taken quite literally; for as in Greece the [Greek:
myrmêches] were metamorphosed into the Myrmidons, and the stones thrown
by Deucalion and Pyrrha into men and women, so in Italy trees, by some
divine power, were changed into human beings. These beings, at first
only half human, gradually acquired a civilization which they owed to
Saturn; but the real intellectual culture was traced to Evander, who
must not be regarded as a person who had come from Arcadia, but as _the
good man_, as the teacher of the alphabet and of mental culture, which
man gradually works out for himself.
The Romans clung to the conviction that Romulus, the founder of Rome,
was the son of a virgin by a god, that his life was marvellously
preserved, that he was saved from the floods of the river and was reared
by a she-wolf. That this poetry is very ancient cannot be doubted; but
did the legend at all times describe Romulus as the son of Rea Silvia or
Ilia? Perizonius was the first who remarked against Ryccius that Rea
Ilia never occurs together, and that Rea Silvia was a daughter of
Numitor, while Ilia is called a daughter of Æneas. He is perfectly
right: Nævius and Ennius called Romulus a son of Ilia, the daughter of
Æneas, as is attested by Servius on Vergil and Porphyrio on Horace; but
it cannot be hence inferred that this was the national opinion of the
Romans themselves, for the poets who were familiar with the Greeks might
accommodate their stories to Greek poems. The ancient Romans, on the
other hand, could not possibly look upon the mother of the founder of
their city as a daughter of Æneas, who was believed to have lived three
hundred and thirty-three or three hundred and sixty years earlier.
Dionysius says that his account, which is that of Fabius, occurred in
the sacred songs, and it is in itself perfectly consistent. Fabius
cannot have taken it, as Plutarch asserts, from Diocles, a miserable
unknown Greek author; the statue of the she-wolf was erected in the year
A.U. 457, long before Diocles wrote, and at least a hundred years before
Fabius. This tradition therefore is certainly the more ancient Roman
one; and it puts Rome in connection with Alba. A monument has lately
been discovered at Bovillæ: it is an altar which the _Gentiles Julii_
erected _lege Albana_, and therefore expresses a religious relation of a
Roman gens to Alba. The connection of the two towns continues down to
the founder of Rome; and the well-known tradition, with its ancient
poetical details, many of which Livy and Dionysius omitted from their
histories lest they should seem to deal too much in the marvellous, runs
as follows:
Numitor and Amulius were contending for the throne of Alba. Amulius took
possession of the throne, and made Rea Silvia, the daughter of Numitor,
a vestal virgin, in order that the Silvian house might become extinct.
This part of the story was composed without any insight into political
laws, for a daughter could not have transmitted any gentilician rights.
The name Rea Silvia is ancient, but Rea is only a surname: _rea femmina_
often occurs in Boccaccio, and is used to this day in Tuscany to
designate a woman whose reputation is blighted; a priestess Rea is
described by Vergil as having been overpowered by Hercules. While Rea
was fetching water in a grove for a sacrifice the sun became eclipsed,
and she took refuge from a wolf in a cave, where she was overpowered by
Mars. When she was delivered, the sun was again eclipsed and the statue
of Vesta covered its eyes. Livy has here abandoned the marvellous. The
tyrant threw Rea with her infants into the river Anio: she lost her life
in the waves, but the god of the river took her soul and changed it into
an immortal goddess, whom he married. This story has been softened down
into the tale of her imprisonment, which is unpoetical enough to be a
later invention. The river Anio carried the cradle, like a boat, into
the Tiber, and the latter conveyed it to the foot of the Palatine, the
water having overflowed the country, and the cradle was upset at the
root of a fig-tree. A she-wolf carried the babies away and suckled them;
Mars sent a woodpecker which provided the children with food, and the
bird _parra_ which protected them from insects. These statements are
gathered from various quarters; for the historians got rid of the
marvellous as much as possible. Faustulus, the legend continues, found
the boys feeding on the milk of the huge wild beast; he brought them up
with his twelve sons, and they became the staunchest of all. Being at
the head of the shepherds on Mount Palatine, they became involved in a
quarrel with the shepherds of Numitor on the Aventine--the Palatine and
the Aventine are always hostile to each other. Remus being taken
prisoner was led to Alba, but Romulus rescued him, and their descent
from Numitor being discovered, the latter was restored to the throne,
and the two young men obtained permission to form a settlement at the
foot of Mount Palatine where they had been saved.
Out of this beautiful poem the falsifiers endeavored to make some
credible story: even the unprejudiced and poetical Livy tried to avoid
the most marvellous points as much as he could, but the falsifiers went
a step farther. In the days when men had altogether ceased to believe in
the ancient gods, attempts were made to find something intelligible in
the old legends, and thus a history was made up, which Plutarch fondly
embraced and Dionysius did not reject, though he also relates the
ancient tradition in a mutilated form. He says that many people believe
in demons, and that such a demon might have been the father of Romulus;
but he himself is very far from believing it, and rather thinks that
Amulius himself, in disguise, violated Rea Silvia amid thunder and
lightning produced by artifice. This he is said to have done in order to
have a pretext for getting rid of her, but being entreated by his
daughter not to drown her, he imprisoned her for life. The children were
saved by the shepherd who was commissioned to expose them, at the
request of Numitor, and two other boys were put in their place.
Numitor's grandsons were taken to a friend at Gabii, who caused them to
be educated according to their rank, and to be instructed in Greek
literature. Attempts have actually been made to introduce this stupid
forgery into history, and some portions of it have been adopted in the
narrative of our historians; for example, that the ancient Alban
nobility migrated with the two brothers to Rome; but if this had been
the case there would have been no need of opening an asylum, nor would
it have been necessary to obtain by force the _connubium_ with other
nations.
But of more historical importance is the difference of opinion between
the two brothers respecting the building of the city and its site.
According to the ancient tradition, both were kings and the equal heads
of the colony; Romulus is universally said to have wished to build on
the Palatine, while Remus, according to some, preferred the Aventine;
according to others, the hill Remuria. Plutarch states that the latter
is a hill three miles south of Rome, and cannot have been any other than
the hill nearly opposite St. Paul, which is the more credible, since
this hill, though situated in an otherwise unhealthy district, has an
extremely fine air: a very important point in investigations respecting
the ancient Latin towns, for it may be taken for certain that where the
air is now healthy it was so in those times also, and that where it is
now decidedly unhealthy, it was anciently no better. The legend now goes
on to say that a dispute arose between Romulus and Remus as to which of
them should give the name to the town, and also as to where it was to be
built. A town Remuria therefore undoubtedly existed on that hill, though
subsequently we find the name transferred to the Aventine, as is the
case so frequently. According to the common tradition, the auguries were
to decide between the brothers: Romulus took his stand on the Palatine,
Remus on the Aventine. The latter observed the whole night, but saw
nothing until about sunrise, when he saw six vultures flying from north
to south, and sent word of it to Romulus; but at that very time the
latter, annoyed at not having seen any sign, fraudulently sent a
messenger to say that he had seen twelve vultures, and at the very
moment the messenger arrived there did appear twelve vultures, to which
Romulus appealed. This account is impossible; for the Palatine and
Aventine are so near each other that, as every Roman well knew, whatever
a person on one of the two hills saw high in the air, could not escape
the observation of any one who was watching on the other. This part of
the story therefore cannot be ancient, and can be saved only by
substituting the Remuria for the Aventine. As the Palatine was the seat
of the noblest patrician tribe, and the Aventine the special town of the
plebeians, there existed between the two a perpetual feud, and thus it
came to pass that in after times the story relating to the Remuria,
which was far away from the city, was transferred to the Aventine.
According to Ennius, Romulus made his observations on the Aventine; in
this case Remus must certainly have been on the Remuria, and it is said
that when Romulus obtained the augury he threw his spear toward the
Palatine. This is the ancient legend which was neglected by the later
writers. Romulus took possession of the Palatine. The spear taking root
and becoming a tree, which existed down to the time of Nero, is a symbol
of the eternity of the new city, and of the protection of the gods. The
statement that Romulus tried to deceive his brother is a later addition;
and the beautiful poem of Ennius, quoted by Cicero, knows nothing of
this circumstance. The conclusion which must be drawn from all this is,
that in the earliest times there were two towns, Roma and Remuria, the
latter being far distant from the city and from the Palatine.
Romulus now fixed the boundary of his town, but Remus scornfully leaped
across the ditch, for which he was slain by Celer, a hint that no one
should cross the fortifications of Rome with impunity. But Romulus fell
into a state of melancholy occasioned by the death of Remus; he
instituted festivals to honor him, and ordered an empty throne to be put
up by the side of his own. Thus we have a double kingdom, which ends
with the defeat of Remuria.
The question now is, What were these two towns of Roma and Remuria? They
were evidently Pelasgian places: the ancient tradition states that
Sicelus migrated from Rome southward to the Pelasgians, that is, the
Tyrrhenian Pelasgians were pushed forward to the Morgetes, a kindred
nation in Lucania and in Sicily. Among the Greeks it was, as Dionysius
states, a general opinion that Rome was a Pelasgian, that is, a
Tyrrhenian city, but the authorities from whom he learned this are no
longer extant. There is, however, a fragment in which it is stated that
Rome was a sister city of Antium and Ardea; here too we must apply the
statement from the chronicle of Cumæ, that Evander, who, as an Arcadian,
was likewise a Pelasgian, had his _palatium_ on the Palatine. To us he
appears of less importance than in the legend, for in the latter he is
one of the benefactors of nations, and introduced among the Pelasgians
in Italy the use of the alphabet and other arts, just as Damaratus did
among the Tyrrhenians in Etruria. In this sense, therefore, Rome was
certainly a Latin town, and had not a mixed but a purely
Tyrrheno-Pelasgian population. The subsequent vicissitudes of this
settlement may be gathered from the allegories.
Romulus now found the number of his fellow-settlers too small; the
number of three thousand foot and three hundred horse, which Livy gives
from the commentaries of the pontiffs, is worth nothing; for it is only
an outline of the later military arrangement transferred to the earliest
times. According to the ancient tradition, Romulus's band was too small,
and he opened an asylum on the Capitoline hill. This asylum, the old
description states, contained only a very small space, a proof how
little these things were understood historically. All manner of people,
thieves, murderers, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked thither. This
is the simple view taken of the origin of the clients. In the bitterness
with which the estates subsequently looked upon one another, it was made
a matter of reproach to the Patricians that their earliest ancestors had
been vagabonds; though it was a common opinion that the Patricians were
descended from the free companions of Romulus, and that those who took
refuge in the asylum placed themselves as clients under the protection
of the real free citizens. But now they wanted women, and attempts were
made to obtain the _connubium_ with neighboring towns, especially
perhaps with Antemnæ, which was only four miles distant from Rome, with
the Sabines and others. This being refused Romulus had recourse to a
stratagem, proclaiming that he had discovered the altar of Consus, the
god of counsels, an allegory of his cunning in general. In the midst of
the solemnities, the Sabine maidens, thirty in number, were carried off,
from whom the _curiæ_ received their names: this is the genuine ancient
legend, and it proves how small ancient Rome was conceived to have been.
In later times the number was thought too small; it was supposed that
these thirty had been chosen by lot for the purpose of naming the
_curiæ_ after them; and Valerius Antias fixed the number of the women
who had been carried off at five hundred and twenty-seven. The rape is
placed in the fourth month of the city, because the _consualia_ fall in
August, and the festival commemorating the foundation of the city in
April; later writers, as Cn. Gellius, extended this period to four
years, and Dionysius found this of course far more credible. From this
rape there arose wars, first with the neighboring towns, which were
defeated one after another, and at last with the Sabines. The ancient
legend contains not a trace of this war having been of long continuance;
but in later times it was necessarily supposed to have lasted for a
considerable time, since matters were then measured by a different
standard. Lucumo and Cælius came to the assistance of Romulus, an
allusion to the expedition of Cæles Vibenna, which however belongs to a
much later period. The Sabine king, Tatius, was induced by treachery to
settle on the hill which is called the Tarpeian _arx_. Between the
Palatine and the Tarpeian rock a battle was fought, in which neither
party gained a decisive victory, until the Sabine women threw themselves
between the combatants, who agreed that henceforth the sovereignty
should be divided between the Romans and the Sabines. According to the
annals, this happened in the fourth year of Rome.
But this arrangement lasted only a short time; Tatius was slain during a
sacrifice at Lavinium, and his vacant throne was not filled up. During
their common reign, each king had a senate of one hundred members, and
the two senates, after consulting separately, used to meet, and this was
called _comitium_. Romulus during the remainder of his life ruled alone;
the ancient legend knows nothing of his having been a tyrant: according
to Ennius he continued, on the contrary, to be a mild and benevolent
king, while Tatius was a tyrant. The ancient tradition contained nothing
beyond the beginning and the end of the reign of Romulus; all that lies
between these points, the war with the Veientines, Fidenates, and so on,
is a foolish invention of later annalists. The poem itself is beautiful,
but this inserted narrative is highly absurd, as for example the
statement that Romulus slew ten thousand Veientines with his own hand.
The ancient poem passed on at once to the time when Romulus had
completed his earthly career, and Jupiter fulfilled his promise to Mars,
that Romulus was the only man whom he would introduce among the gods.
According to this ancient legend, the king was reviewing his army near
the marsh of Capræ, when, as at the moment of his conception, there
occurred an eclipse of the sun and at the same time a hurricane, during
which Mars descended in a fiery chariot and took his son up to heaven.
Out of this beautiful poem the most wretched stories have been
manufactured: Romulus, it is said, while in the midst of his senators
was knocked down, cut into pieces, and thus carried away by them under
their togas. This stupid story was generally adopted, and that a cause
for so horrible a deed might not be wanting, it was related that in his
latter years Romulus had become a tyrant, and that the senators took
revenge by murdering him.
After the death of Romulus, the Romans and the people of Tatius
quarrelled for a long time with each other, the Sabines wishing that one
of their nation should be raised to the throne, while the Romans claimed
that the new king should be chosen from among them. At length they
agreed, it is said, that the one nation should choose a king from the
other.
We have now reached the point at which it is necessary to speak of the
relation between the two nations, such as it actually existed.
All the nations of antiquity lived in fixed forms, and their civil
relations were always marked by various divisions and subdivisions. When
cities raise themselves to the rank of nations, we always find a
division at first into tribes; Herodotus mentions such tribes in the
colonization of Cyrene, and the same was afterward the case at the
foundation of Thurii; but when a place existed anywhere as a distinct
township, its nature was characterized by the fact of its citizens being
at a certain time divided into _gentes_ [Greek: genê], each of which had
a common chapel and a common hero. These _gentes_ were united in
definite numerical proportions into _curiæ_ [Greek: phratrai]. The
_gentes_ are not families, but free corporations, sometimes close and
sometimes open; in certain cases the whole body of the state might
assign to them new associates; the great council at Venice was a close
body, and no one could be admitted whose ancestors had not been in it,
and such also was the case in many oligarchical states of antiquity.
All civil communities had a council and an assembly of burghers, that
is, a small and a great council; the burghers consisted of the guilds or
_gentes_, and these again were united, as it were, in parishes; all the
Latin towns had a council of one hundred members, who were divided into
ten _curiæ_; this division gave rise to the name of _decuriones_, which
remained in use as a title of civic magistrates down to the latest
times, and through the _lex Julia_ was transferred to the constitution
of the Italian _municipia_. That this council consisted of one hundred
persons has been proved by Savigny, in the first volume of his history
of the Roman law. This constitution continued to exist till a late
period of the middle ages, but perished when the institution of guilds
took the place of municipal constitutions. Giovanni Villani says, that
previously to the revolution in the twelfth century there were at
Florence one hundred _buoni nomini_, who had the administration of the
city. There is nothing in the German cities which answers to this
constitution. We must not conceive those hundred to have been nobles;
they were an assembly of burghers and country people, as was the case in
our small imperial cities, or as in the small cantons of Switzerland.
Each of them represented a _gens_; and they are those whom Propertius
calls _patres pelliti_. The _curia_ of Rome, a cottage covered with
straw, was a faithful memorial of the times when Rome stood buried in
the night of history, as a small country town surrounded by its little
domain.
The most ancient occurrence which we can discover from the form of the
allegory, by a comparison of what happened in other parts of Italy, is
a result of the great and continued commotion among the nations of
Italy. It did not terminate when the Oscans had been pressed forward
from Lake Fucinus to the lake of Alba, but continued much longer. The
Sabines may have rested for a time, but they advanced far beyond the
districts about which we have any traditions. These Sabines began as a
very small tribe, but afterward became one of the greatest nations of
Italy, for the Marrucinians, Caudines, Vestinians, Marsians, Pelignians,
and in short all the Samnite tribes, the Lucanians, the Oscan part of
the Bruttians, the Picentians, and several others were all descended
from the Sabine stock, and yet there are no traditions about their
settlements except in a few cases. At the time to which we must refer
the foundation of Rome, the Sabines were widely diffused. It is said
that, guided by a bull, they penetrated into Opica, and thus occupied
the country of the Samnites. It was perhaps at an earlier time that they
migrated down the Tiber, whence we there find Sabine towns mixed with
Latin ones; some of their places also existed on the Anio. The country
afterward inhabited by the Sabines was probably not occupied by them
till a later period, for Falerii is a Tuscan town, and its population
was certainly at one time thoroughly Tyrrhenian.
As the Sabines advanced, some Latin towns maintained their independence,
others were subdued; Fidenæ belonged to the former, but north of it all
the country was Sabine. Now by the side of the ancient Roma we find a
Sabine town on the Quirinal and Capitoline close to the Latin town; but
its existence is all that we know about it. A tradition states that
there previously existed on the Capitoline a Siculian town of the name
of Saturnia, which, in this case, must have been conquered by the
Sabines. But whatever we may think of this, as well as of the existence
of another ancient town on the Janiculum, it is certain that there were
a number of small towns in that district. The two towns could exist
perfectly well side by side, as there was a deep marsh between them.