Historia de Roma III

HISTORY OF ROME. •

from the Septizonium to ;i.bout the beginning of the Via del Colos­

seo, or a little below the baths of Trajan7 35 ; from thence along the

top of the Velia to the chapel of the Lares; and finally by the Via

Sacra to the Forum: her~ was a swamp reaching to the Velabrum.

Another borough, which however was unconnected with the town

on the Palatine, and probably was of later origin, stood on the Ca­

rinre, near S. Pietro in Vincola: it bad an earth wall toward the

Subura, then the village of Sucusa 3 a; and the gate at the foot of

the Viminal, spoken of in the legend of the Sabine war 3 7, the Porta

Janualis, can have been no other than that which closed the bottom

of the ascent leading up to the Carime.

The remark made by Dionysius, that the Aborigines dwelt upon

the hills in a number of scattered villages, is confirmed by the state

of the country about the original town of Roma, whatever opinion

may be entertained as to the primitive inhabitants. One of these

places, as I have already observed, was probably called Remuria:

one on the other side of the river, somewhere near S. Onofrio, Va­

tica or Va ti cum: for from a place so called must the ager Vaticanus

have received its name 88 : the tradition too which places another

village on the Janiculum, seems deserving of attention, however

little maybe due to its pretended names, .l.Enea or Antipolis*. These

villages must have been the first that disappeared before Rome.

The original territory of Rome, as it did not extend beyond the

Tiber toward Etruria, so it was con.fined on the other sides by.the

towns on the neighbouring hills 89 : in the direction of the sea alone

did it extend to any distance. So that there was no independent

settlement on the Aventine in those days: on the Cmlian however

was the town of which I shall speak further on. But of incom­

parably greater importance was the o~e on what in early times was

735 Co=only called the baths. of Titus. Blond us in 1440 found this dis­

trict still described in legal documents as the Curia V etus, and so called by

the inhabitants. Roma Instaurata 1 u. 32. This line however seems to make

much too great an inclination.

36 Varro de I. l.1v. 8.

37 Macrobius 1. 9. Cum hello Sabino Romani portam,· qum sub radicibus

collie Viminalis erat, claudere festinarent. This is the legend related above

p.175.

38 After the analogy of the ager .11/JJanus, Tusculiinus,La'Dicanus,and so on.

* Dionysius 1. 73. Pliny m. 9.

39 Festus v. Pectuscum palati. Earegio.urbis;quam Romulus observam

posuit, ea parte in qua plurimum erat agri Romani ad mare versus: cum Etrus­

corum agrum a Romano Tiberus discluderet, ceterw vicime civitates colles

aliquos habcrent oppositos.HISTORY OF ·ROME.

. 221

called the Agonian hill, the town of which the Capitoline may be

considered as the ~itadel: for the. skirts of these two hills met in a

spot which afterward formed a part of the Forum Ulpium; while a

swamp and marsh, extending from the Velabrum across the Forum

as far as the Subura, separated this. town from Roma on the Pala­

tine. If we wish to know the name of this town, I think I may

assume without scruple, that it was Quirium; for that of its inhabi­

tants was Quirites7 40 • The derivation of Quirites from Cures does

but badly, that from quiris not at all: assuredly too in the earlier

legend Numa was described as a citizen of Quirium, not of Cures.

The later name of the hill, the Quirinal; is derived from that of the

town.

That this hill was inhabited by the Sabines, is as certain, as any

well established fact in the ages where we have contemporary his­

tory: nor is this certainty lessened by our finding the tradition

connected with. the war of Tatius and the heroic lay. That the

Sabines were ;m elementary part of the Roman people, appears

from most of the Roman religious ceremonies being Sabine, and

referred, some to Tatius 41 , some to Numa. The connexion too

between the Quirinal and Capitoline hills was preserved in undis­

puted recollection 49 : the place where the house of Tatius had stood,

was shown in the Capitol, on the spot where the temple of l\fontea

was afterwards built 43 • The Sabines, when they had driven the Cas­

cans and the U mbrians befor'e them, continued to push forward their

conquests down the Tiber : hence we find their towns Collatia and

Regillum in the midst of the Latin ones in this district 44 : the Latin or

Siculian towns, amongst which they established themselves, it is

740 ·After the analogy of Samnium, Samnis. By the way, the town, a citi­

zen of which was called Interamnis, (Cicero pro Milon. c.17.)aname altered

by the critics into Interamnas contrary to the manuscripts, must have been

Interamnium: the other town was Interamna.

41 Varro de I. 1. iv. 10. p. 22. Dionysius u. 50.

42 TJ/rJo, (rf1w 1<1tTl_:t"1v) TO K<t7r1TaiA101 07r1p o; dp;t'ii' 1<1t'l'tO"_:tt, 111ti

'l'OY Kuplm1 o,:tBov. Dionysius u. 50. One might suppo~e that the first

Sabine settlement was on the Tarpeian rock; cum Sabini Capitolium atque

arcem implessent : Livy 1. 33. When the junction of the Quirinal with

Rome is ascribed to ~uma (Dionysius u .. 62.), this is in reference to the

Sabine character of that hill.

43 Plutarch Romul. c. 20.

44 Collatia, et quidquid circa Collatiam agri erat, Sabinis ademptum.

Livy 1. 38. But we must not overlook that Virgil mentions it among the

Latin towns: JEn. vi. 774. Rcgillum is spoken of as Sabine: Livy u. 16;

Dionysius v. 40.222

HISTORY OF ROME.

more than probable, were subject to them. Nor did the original town

of Homa escape this lot.; though she may perhaps have maintained

herself for a considerable time against the rival town which was

rising on the opposite side of the intervening marsh. Roma and

Quirium were two completety distinct towns; like the Greek and

Hispanian Emporire, which were separated as states, and by

walls*; like the Phenician Tripolis of the Sidonians, Tyrians, and

Aradianst; like the Oldtown and Newtown of Dantzic in the mid­

dle ages, and the three independent towns of Kcenigsberg, which,

while their walls met, made war with' one another; like Ghadames

in Northern Africa, where two hostile tribes dwell within the same

inclosure, separated from each other by a partition-wall:j:. Nor

have all traces of the steps by which the two towns were united

into one state, been effaced. A tradition was preserved, that each

had its king, and its senate of a hundred men' 45 , and that they met

together in the Comitium, which received its name from thence,

between the Palatine and the Capitoline hills 46 • Let me not be

charged then with offering a vapid interpretation of the poetical

story, such as I should reject with disgust, if I interpret the rape

of the Sabines and the war which broke' out in consequence, as

representing that at one time there was no right of intermarriage

between the two cities, and how the one which had before been in

subjection, raised itself by arms to an ~quality of civil rights, and

even to a preponderance•. The preservation of Romulus and Re­

mus is a fable, such as may pass from the heroic poetry of one

people into that qf another, or may arise in several places, as it

was told of Cyrus in the East, and of Habis in the West: but the

rape of the S~bines relates to traditions of quite another kind.

When the two cities had been united on terms of equality.' they

* Livy xxxzv. 9.

t Strabo xvi. p. 754. d.

t Lyon's Travels in Northern Africa. p. 162.

745 'E/6ou'/o.fuwro oi {6<1.11'1Mic OUK. euBrlc ;, "~"'!' p.1<r' .i.1111il11c.1, rl.>.>.' '""'·

'1'tpoc 1rp6rrtpo1 ;Jlr.t.

µ1TtL 'Tl.t!Y

i1'c:ttr0v,

t!'Tc:t

oVTQl' ei~ 'T«utrOv

1

d. '71'a.Vrr«.r

cruvM')'ov.

Plutarch Romul. c. 20.

'

46 I am aware the word comire was considered as only containing

· a record of the meeting in which the two kings concluded the treaty (Plu­

tarch Romul. c. 19.); and hence their statues were erected in the Comitium,

in the Via Sacra; that is, in the part of it which led from the side of the

Capitol to the gate of the Palatium. Ilut the Comitium was afterward the

place where the. patricians assembled; and as the senate of the two cities

met there 1 110 assuredly in case of general deliberations did the whole pody

of the citizens, the ancestors of the patricians.HISTORY OF ROME.

223

built the double J anus7 4 7 on the road leading from the Quirinal to

the Palatium, with a door facing each of the cities, as the £rate of

the double barrier which separated their liberties: it was open in

time of war, that succour might pass from one to the other; and

shut during peace; whether for the purpose of preventing an unre­

stricted intercourse, out of which quarrels might arise, or as a sym­

bol of their being distinct though united. The boundary between

the two towns was probably marked by the Via Sacra; which came

down from the top of the Velia, between the Quirinal and the Pala­

tine properly so called, and then making a bend ran between the

latter and the Capitoline, as far as the temple of Vesta, whence it

turned right across the Comitium toward the gate of the Palatine:

it was evidently destined for common religious processions.

Among the vestiges of the joint kingdom was the double throne,

which Romulus retained after the death of Remus 49 : we may also

discern a symbol of the double state, as the ancients have done be­

fore us 49 , in the head of Janus which from the earliest times was

stamped on the Roman as: the ship on the reverse side aliudes to

the maritime sway of the Tyrrhenians.

A double people the Romans certainly continued to be until low

down in the historical age: it was natural that this should be indi­

cated symbolically on many occasions. And this is th~ true mean­

ing of the story of the twin brothers: which, if it was iirst occa­

sioned by the union of Roma with Remuria, was kept up by that

of the Romans with the Quirites ; and gained the most vivid reality

from the relation between the patricians and the plebeians. Romus

and Romulus are only different forms of the same name 50 ; the

Greeks, on hearing a rumour of the legend about the twins, chose

the former instead ot the less sonorous name of Remus.

The unio'u became firmer'; whether they were alarmed by the

progressive approach of the Tuscan conquests, or by the power of

Alba. In course of time, when the feeling that the citizens of the

two towns were one people had been fostered by intermarriages

and a common religious worship, they came to an agreement to

have but one senate, one popular assembly, and one king, who.was

747 The Janus Quirini. The other Januses in the Via Sacra were of the

same kind.

48 See above p. 172, n. 6.26.

49 Servius on lEn. 1. 291. Alii dicunt Tatium et Romulum facto fredere

Jani templum redificasse, unde et Janus ipse duas facies habet, quasi ut osten­

dat duorum regum coitionem.

50 See note 219.224

HISTORY OF ROME.

to be chosen alternately by the one people out of the other7 51 • If

we might suppose that in touches of this kind the poetical story

aimed to present us with historical traditions, the establishment of

this legitimate order was preceded by a usurpation on the part of

the Romans, whose king prevented the election of a successor to

his Quirite colleague. From this time forward at the least the two

nations, having now become one, were styled on all solemn occa­

sions populus Romanus et Quirites; or properly, after the old

Roman usage of combining such names by mere juxtaposition,

populus Romanus Quirites 52 : which in later times was distorted

into populus Romanus Quiritium. For although subsequently the

names Quirites and plebeians were synonymous, this ought not to

shake the credit of the tradition, that the former were properly the

Sabine subjects of Tatius. It is easy to understand how, after all

distinction between the Romans and the ancient Quirites had ceased,

the name was transferred to the plebeians, who were now placed

in similar circumstances with the latter. By this union Romulus

was converted into Quirinus : and Quirium probably became that

mysterious Latin name of Rome, which it was forbidden to utter.

Wherever mention is made of tribes in ancient history, before

the time when an irresistible change in the condition of society led

to democratical institutions, if there be any difference in theirrights

and any thing can be discerned of their nature, it is manifest that they

a~e either distinct castes or of different origin i and even the dis­

tinction of castes, where it can be accounted for, always rose from

immigration or from conquest, even in Egypt and India. This fate

therefore must have been experienced by Attica e".en before the

Ionian immigration ; if the opinion that there were at one time

three tribes there, formed by the nobles, the peasants, and the

craftsmen 58 , be any thing more than a dream. For the four Ionic

751 It was because the patres were conceived in later times to be in all

cases the same as the senators, that the story of Numa's election assumed its

present form.

52 This is established by the learned Bri~sonius : de Form. 1. p. 61: he

only goes too far in imputing the later corruption, which Li\l"y found already

in use, to the transcribers, and in wishing to rid Roman writers of it. This

exaggeration was the cause which prevented even that excellent critic I. F.

Gronovius from perceiving the truth of the remark: Obss. 1v. 14. It is like

lis mndicial and lis vindieiarum.

53 Julius Pollux VIII. 111. 'Eu,,.11.-rplJ'ru, °)'t1JOµopo1, Jnµ1oup}'ol. But the

light which Hermann has thrown on this suhject, in his preface to the Ion p.

xx1, makPs me consider it almost certain that the statement is not authentic.

Assuredly thf'y would not have derived their name's simply from their callings:HISTORY OF ROME.

225

tribes there is historical evidence.; but the explanation which con­

verts them into castes rests only on a very dubious interpretation of

their names, assuming that they express conditions and callings

more or less clearly, and answer to the four tribes of Dgiamschid,

the priests, the warriors, the husbandmen, and the shepherds. At

the same time it must not be overlooked that in rank, as to which

the order of the names is unquestionably decisive, the Hopletes are

the last7 54 : so that the warriors would stand below the labouring

classes.

As to the practice of dividing a people into tribes acco~ding to

the different nations or places it came from, it is sufficient to adduce

two instances from the earlier ages of Greece. The Cyrenians were

distributed by Demonax into three tribes : one contained the The­

rreans and their subject peasantry : the second the Cretans and

Peloponnesians ; the third all the other islanders 55 • Another in­

stance is furnished by Thurium : first in the relation between the

old Sybarites and the new citizens,-although that belong;; also to

another head,-and next in the division of the latter, when they

had got rid of the others, into ten tribes, according to their descent

from the Peloponnesus, from Athens and the Ionian towns, or from

other states between the Isthmus and Thermopylre 56• Still nearer

home we find a similar instance at Mantua: where the power of the

Tuscan blood among the three tribes can only be explained to mean,

that one of them, the ruling one, consisted of Tuscans; the others

of foreigners; Ligurians or Umbrians 57.

pr~bably however it may be the fact, that at Athens also, before the time of

the lonians, there were three tribes, the names of which are unknown.

754 Not only according to Herodotus v. GG, but also according to the Cy­

zicene inscription cited by Wesseling in his note.-Hermann's remarks have

completely freed me from the yoke of an opinion to which I had long been

accustomed.

55 Herodotus 1v. 161. In this division it deserves to be noticed, that,

although at Thera there was a narrow aristocracy, and only a very limited

number of houses were eligible to magistracies, in this colony the Therreans

and their subjects were on a level.

56 Diodorus xn. 11.

57 In a note on lEn. x. 201, and foll.

-sed non genus omnibus unum.

Gens illi triplex, populi sub gente quaterni :

lpsa caput populis, Tusco de sanguine vires:

Servius, wretchedly as he has been mutilated in the later hooks, has yet pre­

served a scholium of some value : quia Mantua tres habuit populi tribus, qure

in quaternas curias dividehantur. Gens is used for tribus, as the ten tribes of

the Persians are called "'"" in Herodotus, 1. 1~.5, and the VJpihp~ of the Achre-

1.-DD226

lllSTORY OF IWME.

Thus the citizens of the two towns, when their confederacy was

converted into a union, became the members of two tribes, the Ram­

nes and Tities, whose names are deduced with one consent from

their royal founders. But along with them we find a third tribe,

the Luceres: a name the explanation of which was a matter of much

controversy among the Roman antiquai-ians. Most of them7s• de­

rived it from Lucumo, a pretended Etruscan ally of Romulus, who

is said to have fallen in the Sabine war 59 ; some from Lucerus a

king of Ardea 60 ; in other words the citizens of this tribe were held

by the former to be Etruscans, by the latter to be Tyrrhenians.

A perfectly natural explanation is supplied by another form of

the name, Luccrtes 6 1, which manifestly comes, like Tiburtes, from

tlrnt of a place, Lucer or Lucerum. These likewise were the citi­

zens of a separate town, who were incorporated and formed a new

tribe: the site of their town must be looked for on the Crelian.

This hill is said to have formed part of the city even in the time of

Romulus 62 : Tullus Hostilius however is considered as properly the

founder of the settlement upon it, in consequence of his bringing

the Albans thither : this then was the abode of the Alban houses

which he raised into Roman ones, as that of the Sabines was on the

Quirinal. A branch of the Romans is referred to Tullus, in the

same manner as the two primary tribes are to Romulus and Numa,

and the plebs to Ancus: these four kings are spoken of as the au­

thors of the ancient laws, and only these, not Tarquinius 68 : assign­

ments of lands too are ascribed to them all four, which is a token

that they were regarded as the .founders, each of a distinct part of

the Roman nation. Now the only part left for Tullos are the Lu­

ceres; so that these must be the same with the citizens of his town

menids is included in the }EV•~ of the Pasargads. In the passage of Virgil

however the division according to descent appears to be mixed up with a local

one : the populi seem to be twelve demcs in the territory of Mantua. At

least the words may naturally mean, ;Mantua is the chief over twelve demes;

whereas they must be very artificially strained, if Virgil intended to say, she

is the chief of tlte curies contained in lter tribes. On Tusco de sanguine vires,

Servius says: quia robur omne de Lucumo;,,ibus (from the ruling Etruscans)

l1al,uit.

758 Even Cicero de Re p. u. 8.

59 Merely because he never appears afterward. The name of Lucomedi

(see Festus) for the Luceres must have been confined to poets.

60 Festus v. Lucerenses.

61 The same in the same place.

62 Dionysius u. 50.

'p,,.µrJM~ To TictA.iTm (11.a:rl;t1.1>1) ""'' TO

'f·,..,

Kctfa1or .'&po,.

63 Numa religionibus et di vino jure populum devinxit, repertaquc quw­

dam a Tullo et Anco. Tacitus Annal. Ill. 2;),

1.. :.~·HISTORY OF ROME.

227

on the Crelian, which I shall henceforward call Lucerum without

further preface. To the very same spot are we· led by the story

deriving their name from Lucumo in the time of Romulus: for this

Lucumo is no other than the Tuscan captain -Crelcs Vibenna, who

is said to have settled on this hill with his band of followers, and

from whom its name was <le<luced. With regard to the king by

whom he was received, there were very different statements: some

of them went back to the time Qf Romulus 664 ; because the Crelian

was already belonging to Rome before the union with the Sabines.

The powerful Etruscan was conceived to be a Lucumo ; and his

appearing in the two forms of Lucumo and of Crelius is owing to

those who held the former to be a proper name.

As Numa, the father of the Tities, was made to come from Cures,

so was Tullus Hostilius through his father 65 from Medullia, a Latin

town which had been conquered by the Romans. This implies

that. Lucerum was in a state of subjection, and was inhabited by a

Latin race, anterior io the Alban settlement: so likewise does the

account that the Crelian was subject to the Roman kings in the

days of Tatius.

As the citizens of each of these places formed a separate tribe,

so did the territory belonging to each form a region in the total

domain 66 • This is erroneously represented as a division of the

ager. There is less incorrectness in the view which ascribes the

I

Dionysius n. 36. sq>' £vo, ~)'2µovo' ;,. Tvppn1lt1., f>,BorTo,,,; Kt1.fa10,

~voµ.e1. riv, 'l"Wl' >.O~~v 'TlC" iv '!',.. x.cc9IJ'pUv9n Kr1.f>...1oc-x~;...eirrtt1.

65 Dionysius m. 1. His voluntary removal is a recent alteration, for

the sake of preserving an imaginary decorum: in the old legend he must have

been among the captive's who were carried away to Rome. It is by no means

necessary to regard the derivation of the Ilostilii from Medullia as a fiction:

the surname Mcdullinus in the Fasti shows that a family of the Furii were of

the same origin; as does that of Camerinus that a branch of the Sulpicii came

from Cameria: both towns according to the legend were reduced and incor­

porated by Romulus. A considerable number of Roman surnames are with­

out doubt derived from the names of towns, every recollection of which has

been erased from history: thus there must have been such towns as Viscellia

and Malugo. The houses which bore these surnames belonged probably to

the Luceres: as all those which are called Alban houses admitted by Tullus,

and accordingly even the Julii, did necessarily. Among these Albans there

were Cloelii and Servilii: the Fa.sti exhibit the names Cloe Iius Siculus and

Servilius Priscus, both which surnames a.re evidence of Latin blood. Others

attest that some of the ancient houses were sprung from different nations;

such as Aquillius Tuscus, Sicinius Sabinus, Cominius Auruncus: the Aurun­

cians were the nation to which the Cascans belonged. Al?ove pp. 5:3. G3.·

6G Varro de L. L. JV. !l. p. 17. Ager Romanus primum divisus in partt•s

trPs: a quo trihus appellatre, Ra.mnium, 'J'itiPnsium, Lncnum.

764228

HISTORY OF ROME.

assignment of landed property to the founders of the three tribes,

the first three kings: for according to the principles of the Roman

constitution all such property emanated from the republic: those

who became citizens delivered up theirs to the state, and received

it back from the hands of the same. The ignorance of later ages

regarded this as a partition of the domain.

In every nation of antiquity there was a peculiar immemorial

mode of division into a stated number of tribes. If the citizens of

a state, whether the whole body of them, or a portion of that body,

enjoyed an equality of civil rights, and at the same time did not

live united together in a central capital, but scattered about in ham­

lets, these were subjected. to the same principle of arrangement.

The Dorians in Rhodes dwelt according to their tribes in its three

cities7 6 7: the same division by three lies at the bottom of that of

the Latin towns, and of the plebeian tribes, as well as of the

curies: the two former like the latter were subdivisions of tribes;

and the former like the latter contained only a decury a piece, of

which we find traces in the Latin tradition representing the found­

ing of Lavinium as its restoration:!<. Thus the senate of a Latin

town consisted of ten decuries : an institution which was retained

in the Latin colonies, and preserved or introduced by the Julian

law in all the municipal towns created by it, where the senate con­

sisted of the stated number of a hundred decurions. The Roman

senate when completed was formed by the united senates of the

three towns, each of which sent a hundred senators.

These tribes were not castes: yet if a new state arose, it was not

allowable for it to deviate from the peculiar fundamental institution

of the nation it belonged to. When Demonax settled the constitu­

tion of .Cyrene, the phyles he established were different from the

original Dorian three, because circumstances made such a differ­

ence necessary: but inasmuch as Cyrene was substantially a Dorian

city, although some Ionian islanders were incorporated, the tripar­

tite division was kept. The Sabines had very probably a different

division from the Latins: but according to that division Quirium

belonged in the same manner as ·Roma to a tribe of itl? nation.

When Roma and Quirium both separated themselves from their

respective nations and established ~ independent state, the Latin

principle became the prevalent one in this state; and they took

767 llliad B. 6Li8. Tpi;tB~ J'j i"ij9H

where appear as "P'.:t"'""·

. * See above p. 153.

1'«T«<j>ull.ct.J'o~.

The Dorians every­HISTORY OF ROME.

229

three for the number of their tribes; because the power of Roma

preponderated. ~Ience the account in the old narrative, that the

thirty curies were established immediately after the union of the

two states, is not incorrectly conceived: only it must not be re­

ferred solely to the Romans on the Palatine and to the Sabines.

The third tribe was formed by the Luceres, although they were

under the supremacy of Kome, and their senate was not incorpo­

rated till afterward: nor would their burghers be admitted to the

comitium. Thus the Irish parliament till 1782 was dependent on

what had long before become the united parliament of Great Bri­

tain.

The gradual extension of the rights of citizenship to the second

and the third tribe is scarcely perceptible in the ·historians that re­

main, except in the accounts how the number of the senators was

augmented: in these it is appareut, notwithstanding the discrep­

ancies in the details. All agree in making the senate consist at first

of a hundred: Livy is the only one who says nothing of its en­

largement after the peace with the Sabines : the common tradition,

in accordance with a correct view of the subject, relates that it was

ooubled. A few writers stated that the number was only raised to

a hundred and fifty7 68 : these conceived that all the three tribes were

represented, by fifty a piece, as in the 'council of Five-hundred at

Athens; and that before the federation with the Sabines the Ramnes

and Luceres were so by the original hundred. The connexion be­

tween this account and the one that Tarquinius Priscus doubled the

number of senators6 9, I shall explain in the proper place: it is suf­

ficient for the present to acknowledge that when Dionysius states,

the senate was augmented by Tarquinius from two to three hun­

dred, this is manifestly the correct way of expressing the admission

of the third tribe: whereas on the contrary in the account of his

having filled up the number by adding two hundred7°, it is forgotten

that the elevation of the Sabines preceded that of the Luceres.

Each of these towns, even the dependent one of Lucerum, had

not only a senate of its own, but its peculiar civil and ecclesiastical

dignities: and these were preserved as· far as was possible, when

768 Dionysius n. 47. Plutarch Numa c. 2.

69 In the Section on the Six Equestrian Centuries. Those who wrote

that Tullus Hostilius increased the number of the knights by ten turms, or

by a third, and also that of the senate, regarded him a~ the founder of Luce­

rum; and forgot the distinction between the separate institutions of a singlr

city, and those of a tribe.

70 Zonaras VII. 8.230

UISTORY UF 1Wi\IE.

the two sovereign bodies of citizens were transformed into tribes.

Dionysius says, that Numa put a stop to dispute:;: among the pa­

tricians, without taking any of their rights from the original citizens,

the Albans of Romulus, by granting other honours to the new citi­

zens, the Sabine tribe77 1 • No new honours however were created

on the union of the two states ; but each preserved its own. The

Luceres on the contrary at the time of their union 'were only ad­

mitted to a share in a few: their offices continued to subsist among

them, not however as national, but as local offices, as was the case

subsequently in the municipal towns. Hence in most of the offices

under the republic we find the two tribes represented, seldom the

three. This relation, and the way in which the inferior houses

were kept in the back ground, appears most clearly in the colleges

of the priests.

Before the senate ~as thrown open to the third tribe, there were

only four Vestals : the same king who enlarged its civil rights,

added two to the number of the virgins, that each tribe might have

its ownn.

According to the same principle, as Livy had been informed,

there ought to have been one augur, or, if more, an equal number,

for each tribe7 3 : hence, as there were only four when the Ogulnian

law was passed, he conjectures that two places must have been

vacant from deaths. But that law can never have been enacted

with reference to such an accidental diminution of the number, or

have made it a ground for abridging the rights of the patricians: it is

clear that only the first two tribes had augurs, two a piece, and that

Tarquinius did not place the third on the same footing with them

in this case, as he did in that of the Vestals. Two out of these

four are said to have been instituted by Numa74.

The pontiffs likewise had continued to be four in number, that

.is, two a piece for the Ramnes and the Tities7 5 : and the preliminary

771 ToVc 'lrttrrp1x,fovc oUJ'Ev µiv dq>£A0µevor ;, oi x.'T lcra.vTEC 'T~V 71'6>..1'1

tupov-ro, -ro'i' J" E7l'ol1£0l' e-rip!t.C 'rlV"-' d.71'0.f'o!i, -r1µ«,, 071'<tUO't dl<t<p•poµivou,.

II. 62.

72 Festus v. Sex Vestre Sacerdotes: Dionysius u. 67. Plutarch (Numa

c. 10.) ascribes the last augmentation to Servius, but speaks of a previous

one, from two to four.

73 Livy x. 6.

74 Cicero de Rep. II 14. The account in the same w9rk n. 9, that Romu­

lus appointed three augurs, is founded on the supposition that each of the three

towns had its own.

. 75 According to Livy's expr!'ss testimony x. 6. Cicero indeed says, that

Nnrna instituted fiv!' pontiff~ (de Re p. 1i. H); but in ~o doing he n•ckons theIllSTOH,Y OF JWME.

231

ceremonies in an assembly of the populus were performed by only

two flamens, along with the pontiffs and augurs77 6 : although the

greater flamens were three in number; so that there were also one

for the third estate. The fecials, the judges of international law,

were twenty77; that is, one from every cury of the first two tribes:

thus also four of them used to be sent on embassies, two from each

tribe 7".

The same principle of placing the two tribes on an equality, and

keeping the third below them, is apparent in the fraternities. The

original Salian priests of Gradivus had their chapel and sanctuary

on the Palatine; for they belonged to the primitive Romans : the

Agonales, the priests of- Pavor an<l Pallor, had theirs on the Quiri­

nal ; consequently they were of Sabine origin7 9 • So confe~sedly

were the Sodales Titii : they probably answered to the Fratres

Arvales. Lastly even the Luperci had two colleges; the Fabii and

the Quinctilii. The former, who are sai<l to, have been the com­

rades of Remus, may be considered as the Sabine fraternity ; more

especially as the Fabian house seems to have belonged to the Sa­

bines"0 : the rivalry between the two tribes gleams through the

legend 81 • It may perhaps have been the wish to deal evenly with

both; that determined the number of the duumvirs who kept the

Sibylline books, and that of the duumviri Perduellionis: that of

the consuls however probably rested on different grounds : it is

more likely that the laws of Servius designed one of them to be a

plebeian.

chief pontiff, who was not one of the major pontiffs, along with them, Had

the number been five, the Ogulnian law would not have added fo1,1r, but five

plebeians; more especially as five was the plebeian number. Including the

chief pontiff they subsequently made nine, like the augurs; being the same

multiple of the number of the original tribes: hence Sylla augmented them

to five times three. The minor pontiffs, whose name, when its meaning was

forgotten, was transferred to the secretaries of the college, were most probably

those of Lucerum.

776 Dionysius x. 32. iepo<P«VT<»•

71'«ponr»v, ""' oir»v•<T1<o:rr»v, &«l itp•­

11'Glr»• JiJolr.

77 Varro 3 de vita p. R. in Nonius de doctor. in:d. xu. 43. v. Fetiales.

fetiales viginti qui de !iis rebus cognoscerent, judicarent, et constituerent

(statuerunt).

78 Varro in the passage of Nonius last quoted: fetiales legatos res repe­

titum mittebant quatuor. By the way, in the same paragraph, where the

edition of Mercerus has magna licentia bella suscipiebant,and the interpolated

editions nulla licentia, the true reading is magna diligentia.

79 This was forgotten in the tradition which attributes the institution of

them to Tullus llostilius.

80 See note 810.

1'1 Ovid Fa~t. 11. 361, foll.

'I"'232

HISTORY OF ROM.i<.:.

Had the royal dignity been entrusted for life to two elective ma­

gistrates, it would have been ruinous to the peace of the state : the

survivor would have found it. easy to prevent the election of a suc­

cessor to his colleague, as Romulus is related to have done. That

instead of choosing two kings, the practice was adopted of electing

one alternately from tlie Romans and from the Quirites, is visible in

the instances of Tullus and Ancus, the former of whom is con•

nected with the Romans through Hostus, the latter through Numa

with the Quirites. Numa belongs to the earlier order of things,

when the king was elected by one tribe out of the other.

The first two tribes having these decided privileges, as the whole

body of the original citizens were called the patrician houses7 89, the

third tribe properly bears the name of the minor houses. The votes

of the senators of this class were taken after those of the major

houses 88 : in like manner the curies of the Luceres were assuredly

not called up during a long period till after the others. Their dis­

tinguishing epithet answers to the difference in civil rights; and

this was so trifling between the first two tribes, that the error of

Dionysius in applying the name of minor houses to the second,

falls to the ground of itself, as soon as it is pointed out.

A certain precedency indeed the.first tribe must have maintained;

and this is agreeable to the general course of h.istory : thus at Co­

logne the. fifteen oldest houses always ranked above the rest. The

title of the decem prirni, whom we hear of in the Latin senate even

before their great war with the Romans*, as we do afterward in all

the colonies and municipal towns, denotes, according to the simplest

explanation, the body formed by the ten who were the first in their

respective decuri.es. In the Roman senate likewise there were ten

such chiefs 84 ; and these undoubtedly .were the same who formed

the decemvirate of the interrexes, one from each decury. Mention

is also made of the judicature in capital causes having once been

782 Gentes patricire. See note 821. ·

83 Cicero de Re p. 11. 20. Hence Dionysius, II. ()2, from confounding

the Tities with them, says, that the senators of Alban extraction created by

Romulus, the Ramnes, laid claim l''""~o~ 11."px,m ..

* Livy vm. 3.

·

84 Valerius Maximus 1. 1, 1. Ut decem principum filii singulis Etrurim

populis traderentur. The same ten were also sent by the Romans on embas­

sies; even to the plebeians during the secession: oi ii1-orl1-uvo1 'TOU trvveJplov X<tl

'11'flll'l'GI .'T<LC J'V,;µ<LC 47TO't<t.l10f.UVOI 'l"l»r ti.'>..1HllV nµ•lC tuµlv;' the ten embassa­

dors: Dionysius v1. 34.HISTORY OF ROME.

233

confined to the purest tribe' 85 : and whatever may have been the ex­

act state of the case as to this obscure point-for that the Ti ties,

even supposing they had no share in the capital jurisdiction over

the minor houses, must have exercised one over their own members,

is indisputable; and besides, as I have already noticed, two was the

number of the judges for capital causes-at all events the account

implies a tradition of the precedency of the lofty Ramnes" 6 •

.

,

785 """' r6p.1p."'- li11.dfT'<ifp1e1, ?r•pl B"'v"'"°" ul qiur'iit P."'"'-'/>iporT•t i11. 'Tlit

11.d6"-P1JD'T"-'1'Ht <1>u11.iit i,,.l 'TOV pu?r"'-P,.'<"'-T•V o;tMr. Dionysius 1x. 44.

86 Celsi Ramnes. Welcome, proud cousins (stolze Vettern), was the ad­

dress with which the members of a house greeted each other in Ditmarsh;

and in the Danish ballads proud (stolt) is perpetually used as an honourable

epithet for a damsel.

I.-EE

"'THE P ATRfCIAN HOUSES .AND THE CU­

RIES.

THE tribes in the states of antiquity were constituted on a two­

fold principle : in some states the. arrangement was regulated by the

houses which composed the tribes, in others by the ground which

they occupied. It might seem as if the two principles must have

coincided, when at the settlement of a city a tribe consisting of

certain houses had a whole tract of land assigned to it; neverthe­

less this did not form its bond of union. Dionysius, who is a dili­

gent investigator of antiquities, makes this express distinction

between the earlier Roman tribes, and those of Servius, calling the

former genealogical, the latter local7 8 7; a distinction assuredly bor­

rowed from older authors. Aristotie, it is true, does not take any

notice of the hereditary tribes, any more than Polybius; for although

in his time such tribes must have been still subsisting here and

there, the notion of arranging a state according to combinations of

families would no longer have occurred to any legislator.

· The genealogical tribes were more ancient than the local, by

which they were almost every where superseded. Their form in

its utmost strictness is that of castes ; where one is separated from

another, without the right of intermarrying, and with an entire dif­

ference of rank; each having an exclusive unalterable calling; from

which, if there be any necessity, an individual may be allowed to

descend; ~ut to rise is impossible 88 , In course of time the severity

of these institutions relaxes, except where a divine law is given out

to be their origin, until there is a complete equality among the

tribes : when, among themselves,_ like the Venetian nobility, they

787 .puxttl l''"'"tl and TO?rl'1.<ti: Dionysius IV. 14.

88 This however does not prevent any one from seizing on the govern­

ment, who can do it by force of arms; as Amasis did: thus the Mahrattas and

their prince~ belonged to one of the lower castf's.HISTORY OF ROME.

235

form a democracy, although they may be the rulers over subjects

that outnumber them many times over. According to the principle

of this constitution, the houses are conceived to have existed before

the state; and the state to have been composed out of these its ele­

mentary parts : nor can any body belong to the state, unle3s he is

a member of a house; which, by the institution of castes, can only

be by legitimate descent. In the mildest form of such a govern­

ment, it is allowable to admit freemen connected with the state by

a community of national. law: and this admission may take place

by the resolution of a particular hous&' 89 j or of. the majority in a

general assembly of the houses, or by means of definite powers

vested in a particular member of a house: in solitary instances it is

conceivable that even a whole house should be incorporated, that is,

in the room of an extinct one. For the total number is fixed, and

in no way can it be augmented.

The local tribes when first established are adapted to the divi­

.sion of a country into districts and hamlets : so that every one who

at the time when such a division was made, for instance in the

ag~ of Clisthenes in Attic~, was settled in any village as its demote,

was enrolled in the phyle to the Jegion of which the village be­

longed. . Now ordinarily the descendants of such a person conti­

nued members of the same phyle and the same deme, .without regard

to the place of their residence; whereby this division likewise ac­

quired a semblance- of being regulated by descent: and had the

great council been entirely closed against the admission of new citi­

zens, and had it been. impossible for a citizen to remove from the

tribe of his ancestors, the local tribes would have been transformed

into genealogical ones. This will appear distinctly further on,

from the account of a change of this kind in modern times*: in

antiquity there is no instance in which the object of'keeping the

'"state from being stifled by the bonds of hereditary privileges was

thus forD"otten. 1'he connexion of a citizen with his local tribe was

not in dissoluble : a family might. obtain a. removal into another

deme, though it is probable that the inducements to apply for it

were extr~mely rare : the number of the demes was variable : new

phyles might be added to the existing ones, or these might be re­

780 Thus an alien, who produced ·uninterrupted evidence of his honoura­

ble birth, lineao-e, life, and conversati<:m, was adopted by the houses of Dit­

marsh as a cou;in, an'd held in no less estimation than one who was born a

member.of the ~ept. See the chronicle ofNeocorus.

" . See the latter part of the section ~n the Six Equestrian Centuries.236

HISTORY OF ROME.

modelled; and every one who received a franchise by a decree of

the people or by the law, was enrolled in a deme.

If any one makes the presumptuous attempt to frame a distinct

conception of the way in which states arose out of a foregoing order

of things where no civil society existed, he is forced to mount up

in thought to an age when such families as spring· from one stock

live united in a patriarchal manner into a little community: such a

community he will consider as a house; and the coalition of seve­

ral of them, as the social compact, the formation of a state. Aris­

totle himself in an unguarded moment gave way to this i11usion7Do;

and Dicooarchus explicitly deduced the houses from the ramifica­

tions of a common pedigree, and the phratries from combinations

of the houses by marriages1,

Now Aristotle perceived more clearly than any nne has ever done

since, that union in a political society is essential to human nature,

and that it is impossible to conceive a 'man, above a mere animal,

except as born and living in a state; nor could any one be Jess

inclined to search after imaginary beginnings of things: so that

assuredly he was not thinking in. this place of a primitive state of

humanity, but of one where the social union had been dissolved,

where the germ of it however wa,; still subsisting. The philoso­

phers of the . Lyceum had probably heard accounts of the settle­

ments that had arisen within the memory of man in perfect freedom

a1nong the hills of Epirus or lEtolia; and their mistake lay only in

confounding the systematical institutions· enacted by legislators,

with such as were the growth of nature, the prototypes which sug­

gested those institutions. For had there not been the 'example of

houses that had grown out of families, no one would have formed

any as the elements of states: just as the changes of the moon have

led to the division of the solar year into months, which nevertheless

do not bear any reference to the moon.

In those happier times when the Turkish empire was verging

without any hinderance to its dissolution and ruin through its own

barbarism and wickedness; and when the Christians under its yoke

were taking advantage of the growing sluggishness, rapacity, and

shortsightedness of their tyrants, to lay the foundations of freedom

for their posterity, which must have been attained but that the ma­

lice of fiends has converted the noblest hopes into the agonies of

790 When he applies the term op.o')'dlvJ.H.'td.C (Politic. I. 1), which is syno­

nymous with '}trVii''l'o<C (Pollux vm. 111.) to a family descended from a com­

mon ancestor.

91 See Stephanus Byz. v. Tii'l'po<.HISTORY OF ROME.

237

despair:-in those happier times when much that was great and

exceUent was suryiving here and there in that unfortunate country

unoMerved, and thus escaped being crushed and destroyed ; some

bands of free-spirited m~n retired from various parts of Epirus to

the mountains of Suli. There was formed that people, which by

its heroism and its misfortunes has left. the l\Iessenians far behind

it, and the extermination of which, through the agency of the Franks,

will draw down on our age the curses of posterity, long after all the

guilty have been called before the jullgment-seat of God. The Suliots

consisted of one and thirty houses or pharas7 9 ~: these, so far as we

can gather, were actually families descended. each from a common

stock; varying in numbers, but each having its captain,. who was

its judge and leader; the captains collectively made up a senate.

'Vhat renders the image of antiquity a complete one, is, that this

people was the sovereign over a considerable number of villagesos.

The constitution of many a little p~ople in ancient Greece and Italy

may probably have grown up in an equally simple manner. Now in

ancient times if a people of this kind migrated with its subject pea­

santry and' with other· companions, and s~ttling in a conquered

co~ntry increased so as to become a nation ; it would naturally

strengthen itself by forming a union between its auxiliaries and the

original houses, adapting its institutions to the example set by earlier·

states. ·when one of these sent out a colony, the leader of it mo­

delled the new people after the institutions of the country regarded

as its mother; divilling it into the sams number of phyles, and these

into as many phratries and genea, as were fonnd in the parent city,

according as it was a Dorian or· Ionian one. He separated, proba­

bly in every ~ase, his settlers and the strangers whom he incor­

porated, classing them according to their descent, and giving each

class a phyle of its own: in this ,Phyle he collected the individual

families into a determinate number of houses, however. dilfe~ent

their pedigrees, and without any regard to consanguinity: and the

union thus formed was· upheld by sacrifices offered up i_n common

down to the remotest posteri_ty. Of the rig~ts enjoyed by these

792 <l>"-P"j': it must be a merely accide11.tal coincidence that the Lombards

likewise called an aggregate of families Fara.

93 Its ?rtpfo11<01. · This account, applicable beyond a doubt to all the other

Albanian' and Romaic tribes, which were free until Ali Pacha became master

of the Venetian towns on the coast of Epirus, is contained in the beautiful

i<T<roplct 7 ou :!oii>.1 by Major Perrevos;. which in the hopeful times of Greece

was generally read there, and by which thousands of hearts must have been

warmed. It is extracted from him by Fauriel, in the appendix to the first

volume of his Greek songs.HISTORY OF ROME.

238

associations almost every recollection muat have been lost in later

times, except, as was the case at Athens, among a few of the eupa­

. trids.

·

. It is uniformly laid down by all the grammarians who explain

the nature' of the Attic gennetes, and among the rest by Julius Pol­

lux,-who drew his invalu:;.ble accounts of the Athenian constitu­

tion, and the alterations it underwent, from the treatise upon it in

Aristotle's Politfrs-that, when the tribes were four in number,

each was divided into three phratries, and that each phratry com­

prised thirty houses. The members of a house, or. genos, who

were called gennetes or oµol'a'.'-1t.11.T•>. w.ere no way akin, but bore

this name· solely in consequence of their unionl' 0 4, This was ce­

mented by common religious rites, inherited from their ancestors,

•who were originally distributed into these housesos.

Now every thing in this statement is remarkable and pregnant

with consequences : the determinate and invariable number; its pe­

culiar character; the exp~ess contradiction to the notion of a com­

mon descent 98 ; and the fact of the Athenians having originally

been distributed into the houses.

For no one, however great his influence or wealth, who had not

inherited the ennobling quality of this original citizenship from his

ancestors, could be admitted into a phratry, or consequently into a

genos 97. -With the tribes of Clisthenes neither the phratries nor

the houses had the slightest connexion: those ti:ibes were divided

into deme.s ; and the gennetes of the same house might belong to

794 oj f<tTO;t,OV'l"'C 'TOU ')'EVOU> (e11.<t1'.0UV'l"o) -ytv'ii1a.1 (thus) xa.l oµo-yd.>-1t.rtfo,

•u ?rfo1T>l11.ovl2', i11. J'e Iii> 1Tvv0Jou oil1t:11 rrpo1T1t')'•p•vDµ•v01. Pollux vm.

9. 111.

!)5 oi

dp;x}i> ,;, <ra. 1t1tl\06µ.va. 1-ivn 1t1t.Ta.v1µn9ivT•>· I-Iarpocration v.

1-mii'T<tl. An abundance of passages in point are referred to in Alberti's note

on I-lesychius v. ')"vviiTa.1 : to these has recently been added a scholium on

the Philebus, p. 80. d. and a passage in the Rhetorical Lexicon published in

Bekker's Anecd. 1. p. 227. !) ; which passage Eustathius had before him .

.From the words i'P"'' ITV'j-)'tvlit"'v 1-ovliTa.1 in the latter passage, and those of

Demosthenes against Eubulides, p. 131!). 2G: 'A?r6>.l\wvoc ?r<t.Tprf_ou 1<1tl A10>

'Epx.tlou 1-avnTa.l, (the accent seems to be very uncertain), I would correct the

corrupt passage, ll i'f"'' op)'[.,, ll va.uTa.1, in the law of Solon 1. 4. D. de col­

Iegiis (XLvn. 22.) by reading if i•P"'' op}[.,v -y•vvliT1t.1: at least this alteration

jij easier than one which in other rc_spects would be equally "\Veil founded,

')'EV£1 µiv

•e

~ itpl»V OP'}ll»VH, • )tiVVMTltl..

1

96 Stated the most positively in the Rhetorical Lexicon mentioned in the

.Jast note.

,

97 The notion is tb.e same as that of an old Christian was forme~]y in

Spa.in.HISTORY OF ROME.

239

different demes; 9 s: foreigners too, who obtained the freedom of the

city, were registered in a phyle and a deme, but not in a phratry or

a genos 99 : hence Aristophanes says more than once, as a taunting

mode of designating new citizens, that they have no phrators, or

only barbarous onessoo,

The number of the phratries being twelve, and that of the houses

three hundred-and sixty, the grammarians were reminded, and with

very good reason, of the months and days in the solar. year: the

five for the odcl days could not have been introduced without occa­

sioning an inequality which was inadmissible.

Every house bore a particular name, in form resembling a patro~

nymic; as the Codrids, the Eumolpids, the Buta<ls: which gives rise

to an appearance, but a fallacious one·, of their baving helongecl to

the same family. These names may perhaps have been transferrecl

from the most distinguishecl among the associatecl families to the

rest: but it is more probable that they were adopted from the name

of some hero, who was their i?Toovu,uo~. Such a house was that of

the Hornerids in Chios ; their suppo::;ed descent from the poet was

only an inference drawn from their name, while others pronounced

that they were no way related· to bim 1 • What we take for a

family in Greek history was probably in many cases only a house

of this kind: nor is this system of distribution to be confined to

the Ionian tribes alone.

Now as a number of the Greeks believecl both in their own de­

scent, and in that of others, from'a heroic progenit~r; so at Rome the

Julii deducecl their origin from Iulus, the son ·of .lEneas; .the Fabii

theirs from a son of Hercules; the .lEmilii theirs from a son _of

Pythagoras. These particular pedigrees will not now fincl many

champions: such as arc still unwilling to abandon the opinion, that

a house was an aggregate of families which had sprung from the

708 See the.instance of the Brytids in the speech against Nerera, amongst

those of Demosthened p. 1365.

99 See the decree conferring the franchise on the Platreans, in the same

speech p. 1380.

'

.

800 Frogs 41_9 : Birds 765. I formerly censured Barthelemy for assummg,

with the most express testimonies before his eyes, that each of the ten phyles

cuntained ninety houses (Anacharsis c. 26) : but he was misled by Salmasius,

whose dissertation on this subject (in his Observ. ad jus Attic. et Roman. c.

4.) is a complete failure.

1 Harpocration .v. 'O,u•pil«I. We may f~irly assume t~at a her~ nam:d

Homer was revered by the Ionians at the time when Ch10s received its

law8. See thP Rhenish Museum J. 257.240

HISTORY OF ROME.

same root, but which for the most part were no longer able to

trace their mutual connexion, or more likely to take shelter under

the authority of Varro, who, in comparing the affinities of families

and of words, assumes that an lEmilius had been the ancestor of

all the 1Emilii 802 , However since he is here speaking merely for the

sake of illustration, he would surely himself have deprecated our

construing such an illusion, as if it were a historical assertion. In

like manner the Greek mode of expression grew lax, and con·

founded the political with the natural union 3 the notion of a

house had already become obsolete: but what stress can be laid on

this, after the testimonies adduced, which are derived from Aris­

totle, and which so studiously oppose themselves to any m1sunder­

"'

standing of this kind?

We have certainly no similar express testimony positively deny­

ing the existence of a family affinity among the members of a Ro­

man gens. But if a term which would have been sufficient by itself,

is wanting in-a definition, and above all in one which, being'a spe­

~imen,'aims at absolute completeness 4 , that term is thereby excluded.

Had Cicero believed that the members of a gens 5 were of a common

origin, he would have had no. trouble in giving a definition of them:

as it is however, he says not a syllable of this; but determines the

notion by a successidn of attributes, each of which adds to its pre­

cision ; their bearing a common name ; being des_cended from free­

men; without any stain of slavary among their ancestors ; and hav­

ing never incurred any legal disability whether public or private.

Hereby ev-en the freed clients, though they bore the gentile name of

their patrons, are expressly excluded; while the freeborn foreigners,

802 Vt ab lEmilio homines orti lEmilii ac gentiles: de I. I. vn. 2. p. 104.

My attention was drawn to this passage by Salmasius Observ. ad Jus Attic.

et Rom. p. 122.

3 ~un,,,Hlc was originally synonymus with )'tYVli'T<tl : it is so used by

Herodotus (v. UG.), by lsams, and by Dionysiuscontinually, although custom,

which even at Athens was variable, had Jong before his day decided in favour

of its meaning kinsmen. , In the same. way it is forgotten that the German

word Vettern at one time did not mean kinsmen.

4 Cicero Topic. 6 (20). This description is framed according to the cir­

cumstances of the age ; and its object is to determine who was at that time

entitled to such inheritances as fell to the members of a gens: some genera­

tions earlier it would have run differently, more simply and more. distinctly.

But it was not Cicero's design to deduce the notion from its origin.

5 It is only in jest that he calls Servi us Tullius his gentilis, Tusc. Disp.

1. 16: but he would never have used this playful expression, if he had be­

lieved that gentility implied affinity of blood.IIISTORY OF ROME.

241

who had received that name when they acquired the Roman fran­

chise, are recognized by the very exclusion of the clients. The

Cornelii as a gens had common religious rites ; but we cannot on

that account assume that any original kindred existed between the

Scipios and the Syllas. The Scauri were a genuine patrician

family; but their names do not appear in the Fasti before the

seventh century. The .iElii, being plebeians, can only be cited

here as a house belonging to a municipal town : they too con­

sisted of many families 808 ; and even the fabulous genealogy of the

Lam ii, who deduced their origin from Lamus of Formire, is a proof

that a particular family might believe its own descent to be different

from that of the other members of the house.

Now should any one still contend that no conclusion is to be

drawn from the character of the Athenian gennetes to that of the

Roman gentiles, he would be bound to show, how an institution,

which nms through the whole ancient world, came to have a com­

pletely different character in Italy and in Greece. Genus and gens

are the same word; the one form is used for the other ; genus for

gens, and conversely 7•

That the members of a Roman gens had .common sacred rites is

well known: these were sacrifices appointecJ for stated days and

places 8 : the N autii were under the obligation of offering such to l\1i­

nerva9; the Fabii, it may be conjectured, to Hercules or Sancus 10 ;

the Horatii in expiation of the fratricide committed by Horatius 11.

Such sacrifices became burthensome, as the members of the gens

who were.liable to them decreased in number; and the decrease

was inevitable : hence all sorts of attempts were made to get rid of

806 Fest. Epit. v. gens 1Elia.

7 Genus Fabium and Cilnium,for gens, Livy n. 46. x. 3. 5: genus Poly­

plusium, Plautus Captiv. n. 2. 27: Romani generis disertissimus: genus armis'

ferox, Sallust. Fragm. Hist. I. p. 933. 03G: Deum gens, 1Enea ! for genus,

1En. 1. 228 : and Virgil took this expression from a liturgical phrase. That

the general notion of a gens was regarded as equivalent to that of a nation, is

further shown by Livy saying nomen Fabium (n. 45), like nomen Latinum;

and by Dion Cassius calling the Cornelian gens 'l'o T"'v Kopv~,._i,.v q,iii.01,

XXXIX.17.

.

8 Like the sacrifice of the Fabii on the Quirinal: Livy v. 46.

9 Dionysius v1. 69. Servius on 1En. n. IGG. v. 704.

10 Because they traced their origin to Hercules : that they were Sabines,

seems to follow from their chapel being on the Quirinal; consequently they

must have revered Semo Sancus; and Fabius may perhaps be the name which

lies hid under the corrupt reading Fabidius in Dionysius ir. 48.

11 Livy I. 26. Sacrificia piacularia gentis lloratiro. ·

1.-FP'242

HISTORY OF ROME.

the bu~then, by expedients which the ancient jurists in vain la­

boured to obviate. The problem was, to shake it off without giving

up the gentile relation, so far as any advantage accrued from it;

'and as the change in the state of feeling in Cicero's age rendered

this feasible, he did not include among the terms of his definition,

what in Aristotle's time would of itself have been sufficient at Rome

as well as at Athens.

And unquestionably the belonging to a Roman gens, if it had its

burdens, likewise conferred advantages. The right of succeeding

to the property of members who died without kin and intestate,

was that which lasted the longest ; so long indeed as to engage the

attention of the jurists, and even-though assuredly not as any

thing more than a historical question-that of Gaius, the manu­

script of.whose work is unfortunately illegible in this part. That

no right of this kind is discernible in the writings of the Athenian

orators, must be owing to the changes in every social relation,

which at Athens hurried on far before those at Rome; the tide

there having set in toward democracy much earlier and stronger.

For the same reason we can still less expect that those orators

should make mention of the obligation which bound the gennetes

to assist their indigent fellows in bearing extraordinary burthens ;

an obligation which 41t Rome lay on the members of the house, as

well as on the clients• 12 : this bond did not outlive the times and

manners of remote antiquity. Even in Roman history we find but

a single iU:stance of it; when the clients and. gentiles of Camillus

pay the fine for him to which he had been sentenced.1 8 Subse­

quently the custom must have grown obsolete: the gentiles were

certainly not called upon, except when the means of the clients

were inadequate; and when the relations of clientship had extended

over the whole of Italy and still further, there was so seldom occa­

sion to call on them, that the right itself was forgotten. Yet even

so late as the second Punic war the gentiles wanted to ransom their

fellows who were ill captivity, and were forbidden to do it by the

812 Dionysius n. 10: (ilu 'l'ou'

l'l'l?.<t.'1'«')

'l'i»r .:.va.?.,.fJ.d.'l'®Y ,,;, Tou, -ybu

wpornl,.01Td.I p.td)(."'·

13 Exe. Dionysii Mai. xm. 5. That u11-y-y1vel, in this passage means the

gentiles, is certain from the way in which Dionysius uses the terms, u11-y-ylv1,.<1.

lop« and ovop.«.-a. 1 and uu-y-ymita.l iep,,,uilv<1.1. See Sylburg's Greek index.

The crll)')'nt'i, of Isagoras, who offer sacrifice to the Carian Jupiter (Herodot.

v. 66.), are his gennetes. These gentiles Livy probably found termed in

some chronicle the tribules of Camillus : that is, the members of the same pa·

trician tribe.HISTORY OF ROME.

243

senate~ 14 •

This obligation is an essential characteristic of a gens :

and thus the patents of incorporation into the houses of Ditmarsh

in their amended form-for after the Reformation the practice of

forced compurgation was abolished as contrary to conscience-still

contains an engagement to come forward and aid the members of

the house tO the utmost in raising dikes or dwellings and under

every kind of disaster. The reciprocal exercise of this noble rela­

tion could not but in the first instance excite a feeling which led

them to regard each other like kindred, and by degrees a belief that

they were so. This assuredly was not a solitary local custom, but

common to the whole German nation : only where the German

tribes dwelt as conquerors it became extinct many centuries earlier;

and was retained nowhere but in my remote native province of

Ditmarsh, where no lord ruled and no slave served: and if the

chronicle which has preserved the patent had been lost, no trace of

it would have remained.

A striking coincidence hi character between the corporate houses

among the Greeks and in modern times, is presented by the fact

that compurgators used to appear at Cuma in aid of members of

their house. Aristotle only 'mentions their coming forward on the

side of the prosecutor 15 ; probably because he deemed this a still

more barbarous custom, than the use of the same means in behalf

of the defendant.

The analagous example of the Athenian houses leads us to sup­

pose, that at Rome likewise the number of houses contained in the

tribes was absolutely fixed.· Dionysius says, Romulus divided the

curies into decads 16 : what other subdivision can we conceive this

to be; except that into houses? its nature being such, that each

cury contained ten houses, and the three tribes three hundred.

Owing to this the patrician tribes might also be called centuries, as

they are in Livy; they comp!ised each a hundred houses. Here

we find the pervading numerical basis of the Roman divisions,

three multiplied into ten ; and three hundred stands in the same

relation to the days of the cyclical year 11, as the number of the

Athenian houses to those of the solar year. Moreover it corres·

ponds with the three hundred fathers in the senate: and the reason

814 Appian An~ibal. 28.. Ou1t. i7l"1'Tp1{tv ~ /Jou1o.~ 'Toir cru-y-yiv..-1 A6cr.i.-B.u

'Tovr «ix_µ«At»'To6r. He drew his account of this war from Fabius.

15 . Politic. n. 8.

16 , 11. 7. l1¥pnno ti 1<<1.l air lezci,,f,,_, <Li V>pi.'Tp<1.1 .;,..• a.inoii1 ul ii'}eµ~v

tI<ot<T'THV i1t.ocrµu 111<.til<L, l11<oupI~v '11"pocr<1.-yopwoµ1vor.

17 300 in~tead of304, as 360 instead of365. See a.hove p. 243.244

HISTORY OF ROME.

why the senators of the colonies and provincial towns were called

decurions, was that this was the name given to the captain and

burgess of each house. Before Clisthenes enacted that fifty coun­

sellors should be sent by each tribe, every Athenian genos in the

same way must doubtless have had its representative.

Such numerical proportions are an irrefragable proof that the

Roman houses were not more ancient than the constitution; but

corporations formed by a legislator in harmony with the rest of its

scheme. A similar conclusion must be drawn with regard to the

German houses, which in the free cities and rural cantons appear

likewise in regular round numbers. In Ditrnarsh beyond doubt

there were formerly thirty houses 818 : at Cologne there were three

classes, each containing fifteen; the first, which originally was in

exclusive possession of the government, continued to have a supe­

riority of rank: at Florence there were seventy-two; and it cannot

be doubted that these were distributed in equal numbers among the

three classes of the lords, the knights, and the freemen, which

formed the tribes of the sovereign people in the Italian cities: the

classes at Cologne must have been of a similar nature. I have no

hesitation in believing the Italian traditions, that the freedom of

their cities was founded by the emperor Otho:. and I conceive that

he did it by collecting the Lombards, the Franks, the other Ger­

mans, and the Italians also, into houses, and by making their col­

lective body a free corporation. Even the word schiatta, the

appropriate term for this relation, is a mark of. a low-German em­

peror: it is the same word with sc!dacht, the low~German form of

the high-German geschlecfit: the J,om bards instead of it used f ara.

No more effectual method could have been devised for quelling the

power of the seditious Lombard grandee3; and as we find that it

was quelled, there must have been an adequate cause to contend

against it. The means used by Doria, whose wise. legislation res­

cued Genoa from the feuds between the Fregosi and the Adorni,

were, to break up the houses then existing, and to blend the fami­

lies contained in them together in the eight and twenty newly

formed Jl.lberglii, which retained the substance and name of the

old houses : if this plan was devised without any precedent in the

earlier annals of. the city, it is one of the most brilliant inventions

ever applied to the practical regulation of a free state. The estab­

818 This was ingeniously proved by Heinzelmann in a short treatise on

the Ditmarsh Nemede which appeared in 1792, the first and hitherto the last

inquiry into the ancient constitution and laws of my native province.HISTORY OF ROME.

245

lishment of houses in round numbers in the German free commu­

nities can scarcely have taken place at any other time than when

the subdivisions 'of the cantons were settled, and when the cities

were founded. I am far however from referring the first origin of

the associations to that period.. All that was then done, was, that

an ancient and wholly immemorial institution,-which must have

been common to all the German tribes, and which before the adop­

tion of Christianity must probably have had a further essential fea­

ture of resemblance to the form of society among the Greeks and

lfomans,-was adapteJ to the actually existing state. of circum­

stances, with which the old worn out order of things was no longer

in tune.

No institution of the ancient world. was more general than this

of the houses. Every body of citizens. was divided in this man­

ner ; the Gephyrreans and Salaminians as well as the Athenians,

the Tusculans as weUas the Romans: and in each case, when the

citizens of the dependent city were incorporated foto the common-

3.lty of the ruli.ng city, still the houses which had subsisted among

them, were not dissolved. In the constitutions of the municipal

towns, which in earlier times did not undergo any change on their

receiving the Roman franchise, the houses, so long as they were

of any importance in themselves, must also. have retained their po­

litical character: and when this had been done away wjth by time

and circumstances, they undoubtedly continu~d in the undiminished

possession of their civil and religious privileges. But they were

not aknowledged by the Roman state, their greater country, as

bearing any political relation to her: no houses but those which

compm;ed the three ancient tribes, were essential parts of the state:

and this enabled the patricians to boast that they alone had a

house 819 ; while nevertheless there were members of plebeian houses

at Rome by thousands, who possessed gentile privileges in the

munici1ial towns. On this superiority did the patrician Claudii

ground their claim to the exclusive exercise of the gentile privilege

of inheritance 20 ; it matters not that the claim seems to have been

819 Vos solos gentem habere." Livy x. 8.

20 Cicero de Orat. 1. 39. The claim of the patrician Claudii is at vari­

ance with the definition in the Topics (c. 6), which excludes the posterity

of freedmen from the character of gentiles: probably the decision was against

the Claudii, and this might be the.ground on which Cicero denied the title of

gentiles to the descendants of freedmen. I conceive in so doing he must

have been much mistaken. We.know from Cicero himself (de leg. 11. 22.)

that no bodies or a.shes were allowed to be placed in the common sepulchre,246

HISTORY OF ROME.

unreasonable in this particular instance, where the Marcelli were

asserting a right which had no connexion with the political privi­

leges of the ancient houses.

The division into houses was so essential to the patrician order,

that the appropriate ancient term to designate that order was a cir~

cumlocution, the patrician gentes 821 : but the instance just mentioned

also shows beyond the reach of a doubt, that such a gens did not

consist of patricians alone. The Claudian contained the Marcellii;

who were plebeians, equal to the Apii in the splendour of the hon­

ours they attained to, and incomparably more useful to the com­

monwealth: such plebeian families must evidently have arisen from

marriages of disparagement, contracted before there was any right

of intermarriage between the orders 22 • But the Claudian house

had also a very large number of insignificant persons who bore its

name; such as the M. Claudius, who disputed the freedom of Vir-.

ginia: nay, according to an opinion of earlier times, as the very

case in Cicero proves, it contairted the freedmen and their descend­

ants. Thus among the Gaels the clan of the Campbells was

formed by the nobles and their vassals: if we apply the Roman

phrase to them, the former had the clan, the latter only belonged

to it.

The proposition that the patrons and clients made up the whole

of the original Roman people, is one of those the validity of which

is not to be questioned except when it is carried too far. False as

it is, and destructive to historical truth, if we do not acknowl~dge that

the plebeians were free, and if we overlook the nature of the com­

monalty ; no less. true is it, if applied to· the period before the

unless they belonged to such as shared in the gens and its sacred rites : and

several freedmen have been admitted into the sepulchre of the Scipios.

821 Plebes dicitur (according to Capito) in qua gentes civium patricii:e non

insunt. Gellius x. 20. Before the Licinian law, jus non erat nisi ex patriciis

gentibus fieri consules. xvu. 21. Instead of a patrician, Livy says 'Dir patri­

cii:e gentis, of L. Tarquitius m. 27 1 of P. Sestius III. 33: of M. Manliu(v1.

11. Even among the Italian Greeks in early times there is so great a proba­

bility that the terms gentile and patrician were used as equivalent, that we

are certainly not justified in altering the 4ext in Polymnus I. 29. 2; where

we read that Hiero in his war against the Ita!iots, o?l'O'T• A.tL~o1 'TIYtL~ tLi>;_f<tL­

.,,_,.'ToQ' .,.,.:, VV)")''Y"'v ~ :nav.-f,.v, conciliated them by his kindness. What

scribe would have substituted this word for ,;,,_,v,.v, as has been conjectured?

The ?l'Muu101 are the rich members of the commonalty, who did not belong to

a house, but nevertheless were persons of influence in their respective cities.

22 I here repeat the acknowledgement, a cherished memento of the de­

lightful days I once passed with Savigny, that I am indebted for this obaerva­

tion to him.HISTORY OF ROME.

247

commonalty was formed, when.all the Romans were comprised in

the original tribes by means of the houses they belonged· to. The

Patronus and JJ1atrona were the father and mother of .the family,

ill relation to their children and domestics, and to their dependents,

•

.

the clients 823 •

How the clientship arose, does not admit of a historical exposi­

tion, any more than the origin of Rome. Dionysius compares this

relation with that of the Thessalian bondmen, the Penests : not

however that he himself conceived them both alike to have origina­

ted in conquest: his notion doubtless was, that Romulus separated

the noble and rich out of the thousands of his new citizens, to make

them patricians, and consigned the common people to their protec­

tion. According to his conception of the origin of Rome, he could

not retain his hold of ;hat comparison, which in substance is cer­

tainly founded in truth : the same relation which in Thessaly was

rude and revolting, might at Rome be more refined, in consequence

of different manners and a better spirit; the.condition and advanta­

ges of the ward who had placed himself of his own accord under

the protection of a patron, being transferred to the serf. A ward­

ship of this kind existed among the Greeks in the case of a so­

journer, who was bound to choose a citizen for his guardian 24, in

order that he might not be an outlaw with regard to the commonest

civil rights : yet the condition of the Helots and Penests never

changed its hateful character. The Romans, and the citizens of such

towns as stood in .a federal relation to Rome, were mutually entitled

to exchange their home for the other city, perhaps under the obli­

gation, at all events with the right, of attaching themselves to a

patron: this is the meaning of thatjus applicationis, which we find

connected with thejus e:i;ulandi*. Many who availed themselves

of this right, as appears from the instance of accused Romans, wer~,

criminals, but such as the state had not been able to take into cus­

tody; and this practice being viewed with an evil eye by the ple­

beians, in their contempt for the clients, and their hatred of the

order whose power the clients upheld, hence came the legend about

the asylum.

823 The German word hOJriger, a depende:nt, from hi:ere:n, to hear, answers

exactly to diens, which comes from cluere.

24 His 'lrpocr-ra/tM. It answers to the German MuruJlierr, the Mundihur­

dus, as he was called in the Latin of the middle ages.

'

* · Compare Cicero de Orat. 1. 39. (177.) with pro Cmcina, 33. (98.) 34.

(100.)248

HISTORY OF ROME.

In Greece this connexion rested only on reciprocal interest; and

might be given up and altered at will: it ceased as soon as the

alien obtained the franchise of the city, or even the privileges of,

isotely: at Rome it continued in the case of the rerarian; nay,

beyond doubt it was hereditary like vassalage. That it commonly

descended from one generation to another, Dionysius is aware;

only he looks on this as a voluntary prolongation. Most probably

he is mistaken: for with regard to towns and communities the.

hereditary eontinuance of the clientship is certain ; and whatever

may have been the doctrine in Cicero's days as to the relation in

which the descendants of freedmen stood to the house of their

original· patron, still, even if the claim of the patrician Claud ii in

the above mentioned case was unreasonable, the admission of freed­

men into· the sepulchre of a house is a proof, as I have· already hint­

ed, that the opinion which ascribed to them the character of gen­

tiles, has been rejected erroneously. If this be so, the duration of

this connexion being unlimited, we may infer the same as to the

clientship in general. And in truth. how should the clients have

obtained the name of the gens, as was also the case with those who

were received into a house without being natives of Italy, unless

they had been accounted members of it? And why should they

have been held unworthy of-the honour, when the slave, who was

, mostly an Italian prisoner of war, stood on familiar terms with

his master, as appeitrs by the Saturnalia, and ate at his table?

Those clients, who neither gained their livelihood by trade nor

had already acquired any property of their own, received grants

from their patrons of building ground on their estates, together

with two jugers of arable land: not as property, but as , a preca­

rious tenement, which the owner might resume if he felt himself

injured. :But all, however different in rank and consequence,

were entitled to paternal protection from their patron: he was

bound to relieve their distress, to appear for them in court, to ex­

pound the law to them, civil and pontifical, On the other hand

the clients were to be heartily dutiful and obedient to their patron,

to promote his honour, to pay his mulcts and fines, to aid him jointly

with the members of his house in bearing burthens for the com­

mowealth and defraying the charges of public offices, to contribute

toward portioning his daughters, and to ransom him or any of his

, , ·

family who might fall into the hands of an enemy. .

That great writer, Blackstone, who recognized the customs and

laws of ancient, times even in the games of children, makes anHISTORY OF ROJ\IE.

249

allusion to these burthens of the Roman clientship, when describ­

ing the ·duties of _vassals in the middle ages 825 •

If a client died without heirs, his patron inherited 96 : and this

law extended to the case of freedmen; the power of the patron

over whom must certainly have been founded originally on the

general patronal rights. Now if P. Mrenius was able to put his

freedman to death for forgetting the respect due to his house 27 , and

this was deemed to be justifiable as well as wholesome severity;

we may infer that the patron could not only sentence his client to

lighter penalties when he himslf was aggrieved, but also sat in

judgment upon him when accused by a neighbour.

There was a mutual bond between the patron and the client,

that neither should bring an accusation or bear witness against th~

other, or give sentence in court against him, or in favour of his

enemies: this looks like a mitigated form of the old law of com­

purgation. The duties of the patron toward the client were more.

sacred than those toward his own kin 28 , 'Vhoever trespassed

·against his clients, was guilty of treason, and devoted to the infer­

nal .gods; that is to say, outlawed, so that any might slay him

with impunity. It is probable that the pontiff, as the vicegerent of

heaven; to which the cry of the injured party was 'raised, devoted

the head of the offender. To bring a charge before a civil tribunal

was impossible: its interference would have. perverted and de­

stroyed the whole relation;' which could not exist at all, or must·

admit of being abused. Still this abuse must have been threatened

with fearful punishment: for to imagine that the patricians, who

in their dealings with the plebeians neither respected equity nor

compacts ratified by oaths, should have let obligations which were

merely conscientious k~ep them such kind fathers toward their

clients, as many are not even to the children of their body, would

be a silly dream of a golden age, such as never .existed. They

were no better than those knights of the. middle ages, whose virtues

have been extolled by ignorance and falsehood; they who are

charged by a respectable contemporary with robbing the soccager

.

.

825 Comme.nh.ries n. 5. p. 64. The feudal aids admitted of no exemption

in three cases : for ransoming the lord out. of captivity; for knighting his

eldest son; and for portioning his eldest daughter.

26 On this right, the existence of which was first perceived by Con·

nanus, see Reiz in his Preface to Nieupoort's Ritus Roman. p. xii.

27 Valerius Maximus v1. 1. 4.

·

28 Gellius v. 13. xx. 1. The classical passage on the patronship is the

·

·

well known one in Dionysius u. 9 1 10.

I.-GG

•250

HISTORY OF ROME.

of his substance, as though he were a bondman, because they

could <lo it with impunity, since there was no judge between them

and the poor man except God. As if they ought not also to have

treated the bondman with kindness 1

Among the privileges which the Ramnes are said to have claimed

to the exclusion of the other patricians, according to a narrative

which assuredly represents their relation to the Luceres, one is that

of receiving strangers as clients 8 ~ 9 • · Still less then would they allow

this right to the plebeians: yet when distinguished men rose up in

the latter order, who could afford protection and redress, and grant

plots of ground to be held at will, clients attached themselves to

these as well as to the patricians. Until 'the plebeians obtained a

share· in the consulship and in the usufntct of the domains, free

foreigners, with few exceptions, must needs have applied to the

first order; in which however there may have been many with.

scarcely a client: and so long patron and patrician were co-exten­

sive terms.

Perhaps they were also synonymous: for the notion that the

patres were so called from their paternal care in assigning plots of'

arable land to the poor, as it were to their own children 80 , is quite

in accord with the spirit of ancient times; although perhaps even

this explanation is still too artificial. 'For the· name may possibly

. have been only a simple title of honour used in addressing the

ancient citizens, whether in the senate or the assembly of the .

curies 3 '. It is by no means confined tothe senators; on the con­

trary the patres are mentioned even by Livy along with the senate:

arn.l wherever he speaks of the younger patres 8 ~, he conceives them

to stand in opposition to the senate. By the usage of later times

'inde~d the word was gradually restricted more and more to the

senators ; and even those writers who do not entirely exclude the

wider meaning, and who themselves fluctuate in their practice, are

still always inclined to interpret their authorities in the narrower.

82!) Dionysius 11. 62: e.p<t7t!U!O'BIU '7rpci~ 'l'QlY t71"H:>.UJ'Qly.

30 Patres senatores ideo appellati sunt, quia agrorum partes attribuebant

tenuioribus, pcrinde ac liberis propriis. Fest. Epit. completed by the help of

the fragment;

• '

'

,

31 In· the solemn lines, Dum domus .lEnere Capitoli immobile saxum

Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit, the words pater Romanus

designate a Romari citizen, in the language of very early times. Hence also

paterfamilias, which was used.at times to mean nothing more than a citizen.

32 The seniores and juniores patrum are often placed in opposition by

Livy, from the beginning of the plebeian disturbances until after the decem·

virate; the former being represented as inclined to conciliatory measures, theHISTORY OF ROME.

2'5L

Julius Cresar and Augustus raised certain families to the patriciate ;

because so many of the houses had become extinct, or had been

merged among the lower orders from thr.ir poverty, or had volun­

tarily passed over to the commonalty, that there were no longer

persons enough to. fill the priestly offices according to ancient usage.

Now the fifty families which were then still remaining 933 , were cer­

tainly an old nobility in every respect ; and since those rulers

mixed them up with the most illustrious families among the plebe­

ian nobless, both Dionysius and Livy were hereby prepared to con­

sider the patriciate as a nobility from the first. Two centuries

earlier Cincius, whose weight as an authority I have already noticed,

had come to a totally different conclusion; namely, that anciently

all freeborn citizens were called patricians 34• This is to be referred

to the time anterior to the rise of the plebs : ~ven then however the

number of freeborn men among the clients must haye been consid­

erable. What is strictly accurate in the <;omparison, seems to be

-and perh_aps it was so expressed by Cincius, whose meaning

can merely collect from the· abridgement of an abridgement-that the

we

latter as more ob~tinate and violent. Several times, as well during the first

disturbances, as in the affair of Creso Quinctius, we find a like statement on

the same occasions in Dionysius; whence it is clear that they both met with

it in the Annals. Iloth of them supposed these patres to be senators, differing

in temper according to their ages: but they must certainly have been mis­

taken. The dry old Annals can never have indulged in such delineations of

character: but they may have related from tr;i.ditions, that the general assem­

bly of the curies- had· often shown itself more headstrong than the senate,

which had the charge of the daily administration, and could not, like the for­

mer, reject a mea,sure without incurring any responsibility. In th~ senate

there were only the seniors, men who had passed the age of military service:

all the juniors sat in the curies: so indeed did those seniors who had no seats

in the senate; but their number was small, and the name of the assembly

war not determined by them. The following instance is the most .decisive:

L. Furius and C. Manlius, when accused, circumeunt s01·didati non plebem

magis quam juniores patrum: II. 54. This can never mean a mere part of the

senate: it is inconceivable that the accused should ha.ve neglected those very

senators whose age and authority were the greatest. Compare also II. 28. III.

14. 15. 65. The meaning Livy assigned to the phrase is the less dubious,

since in II. 28 he even talks of 'tninimus quisque uatu patrum. llowever the

most probable supposition is, that both the historians, being mjsled bj their

immediate predecessors, misunderstood who in all these passage~ wei:i the

mirwres, spoken of in the ancient books: for that word was certainly also used

to signify young men: as majores audire, m.irwri dicere. Compare note 1143.

833 Dionysius 1. 85.

·

34 Fest. Epit. v. Patricios. It does not follow from this passage that

Cincius mistook the nature of the termination, and fancied he saw ciere in it.252

HISTORY OF ROME.

patricians formerly stood in the same relation to the rest of the Ro·

mans, their clients, as the tribes of the ingenui did in his days to

those of the libertini. They were the true citizens: just as in Ger·

many, even during the thirteenth century, a member of a house and

a burgher were equivalent terms : and so we need not have any

scruples excited in us by the want of a class to occupy a middle

station between them and their dependents. Nor are we to be star·

tled at there being three hundred hous,es, which would be an in·

credible number for the nobility of a small state : nor again is it any

objection to this number, that the patrician gentile names which we

meet with, that is, in the Fasti, are very much fewer. For even

supposing, what must have been far from the truth,, that, when the

Tarquins were banished, the complement of the houses was full,

the consulate was unquestionably open but to a small portion of

them, although every one was eligible to it. In all aristocracies a

few families alone are illustrious and powerful: an incomparably

greater number continues needy and obscure, or becomes so: such

was the case for instance at Venice. The latter die off unobserved,

or they lose themselves among the common people, like the no­

bility in Ditmarsh and Norway: some of the Roman families too

renounced their patriciate of their own accord, and went over to the

plebs 835 : in other cases the same effect followed from marriages of

disparagement, before the right of intermarriage between the' two

' orders. w~s established· by the Canuleian law. Among the patrician

houses of this kind, which never occur. in the Fasti, are the gens

Racilia and Tarquitia 36 : i:o are the Vitellii: and since the names of

the older plebeian tribes resemble the gentile names in form, andin

several instances are common to them with patrician houses, it is

also exceedingly p~obable that there was a gens Camilia, Cluentia,

Galeria, Lemonia, Pupinia, Voltinia 37,

If patres, and its derivative patricii, were titles of honour for indi·

835 This w~ called the transitio ad plebem; with regard to which it is true

that in later times there were also a number of fables invented by plebeian

vanity! and accordingly this must certainly be the true reading instead of

a plebe transitiones in Cicero Brut. 16. The instance of L. Minucius is given

by Livy Iv. 16, and Pliny xvm. 4.

36 The great Cincinnatus was married to a Racilia before the Canuleian

la.w: L. Tarquitus was ma8ter of the horse during his dictatorship.

~ The Vestal virgins in ancient titnes were patricians no Iese certainly

than the priests. But the genuineness of the names ascribed to those who are

mentioned, such as Verenia, Canuleia, Opimia, Orbinia,. is too slippery ground

to build on.HISTORY OF ROME.

253

viduals, the name of the whole class, as distinguished from the rest

of the nation, appears to have been Celeres. That this was the

name of the kni'ghts, is recorded: as it is also-which indeed is

clear from the very nature of all the constitutions of antiquity-that

the tribes of Romulus had tribunes" 38 : and since the tribunate of the

Celeres is said to have been a magistracy and a priestly office, it is

palpably absurd to regard it as the captaincy of a body-guard. If

the kings had any such guard, it must assuredly have been formed

out of the numerous clients re·siding on their demesnes. The tri­

bunes of all the three tribes were certainly· at once leaders in the

field and magistrates and priests in the city; just as a curion, in his

character of centurion, which moreover was his name in the army,

was captain over a hundred in the Romulian legion39: but among

the three the tribune of the principal tribe must have enjoyed pecu­

liar distinctions; and hence we only find mention of one 40 •

Cicero speaks of it as a symptom of the anarchy and lawlessness

prevalent in the Greik states of his time, that measures were car­

ried by masses; by the aggregate number of heads, and not by the

votes of the several orders: the subjects however then open to their

deliberation were so trifling, that it was nearly indifferent in what

manner they were decided upon. In earlier times it was a princi­

ple in every legislatio~, whether the form of government was aris­

tocratical or democratical, that the weight of any individual's vote

and his liabilities, especially to milltary service, should be propor­

tioned to the number not of the whole community, but of the cor­

poration he belonged to: so .that every precaution was taken to

prevent the mob from turning the scale; and the more numerous a

man's corporation was in comparison with the rest, the lighter were

his burthens and the less impor:tant his vote. The same principle

prevailed in the constitutions of the middle ages founded on houses

and guilds. Now in the earliest times of Rome the question was,

whether the tribes or the curies were·to be the units, in taking the

votes of the whole body. But if the tribes, when only two of them

as yet possessed the right of voting, had differed in opinion, they

would have stood in direct opposition to each other in a manner

dangerous to the public peace: and after the thir<l order was added

to them, it would have felt itself placed on an inferior footing, if

'

838 For the former point see Pliny xxxm. 9: for the latter Dionysius II.

7: Pomponius 1. 2. § 20. D. 1. 2. de orig. jur.

39 Paternus in Lydus de Magistr. I. 9.

40 Dionysius however is an exception to this; inn. 64 he speaks of the

tribuni Celerum., like the other priests, as a college.254

HISTORY OF ROME.

both the higher orders gave their votes ag~inst it. When the ques­

tion was to do away with antiquated but still burthcnsome privi­

leges, the third class might be unanimous in its determination, and

four-tenths in each of the first two tribes might agree with it: all

would be in vain. This was obviated by taking the votes accord­

ing tq curies; and the remedy was complete, when these were no

longer called up in any sta.ted order, so that the major houses should

take precedence of the Luceres, but in one settled by lot; this how­

ever was probably a later innovation..

.

Now as .there is no doubt that the families sprung from marriages

of disparagement, and the clients, shared in the sacred rites of the

curies 841 ; one may be apt to think it probable that both those classes

likewise took part with the patricians in their comitia. The notion

that foreigners were admitted to the franchise of the curies, in the

same way as they were afterward to that of the centuries, does not

now need to be refuted.

'Vhen we consider the pervading principle of the institution, we

find it very difficult to conceive, that the votes taken in the curies

should have been those of the individual members, and not those of

the houses which were their component units: and that the latter was

actually the way of voting, seems to be attested by an express state­

ment of an ancient authoru. 'Vere this so, it may have been

nearly indifferent to the patricians as a body, so long as their rela­

tion to the other citizens continued to be substantially the same,

whether the inferior members of their houses had votes or not: for

the clients were not at liberty to vote against their patrons ; and so

the only effect would have been, that in every gens men of influence

would have exerted a preponderance proportionate to the number

of their clients, over those who c'ould confer no protection. As, to

families springing from marriages of disparagement, they rise up

-0nly by slow degrees.

841 Ifwe suppose that among the number of the extinct patrician houses

there was a gens Scribonia, of which only a plebeian family remained, it be­

comes less surprising that, when the plebeian nobility had far outstept the

patrician, and a great many plebeians, from causes which will be explained

further on, had been admitted to a share in the religious worship of the curies,

a Scribonius was made curio maximus.

42 Lrolius Felix in Gellius xv. 27. Cum ex generibus hominum suffra­

gium fcratur, curiata eomitia esse. Here too genus is equivalent to gens: see

note 807. 1t matters not as to the main point that lwminum must certainly be

a wrong word; the mistake too is one for which Gellius can hardly be made

answerable : his text iB still in want of an able oritic.HISTORY OF ROME.

255

But although it would not have been irreconcilable with the inte­

rests of the order, to admit such votes under such circumstances;

still it would have been diametrically opposite to the spirit of an

aristocracy; which, as was the case at Venice, requires an equality

within its own body between the poorest and the richest noble, an

absolute inequality between every noble and every plebeian: to

such an aristocracy it must have been worse than a stumbling-block,

had the vote of L. Tarquitius told for no more than that of a· client

to one of his rich gentiles. And th e above mentioned supposition

becomes altogether inadmissible, when we consider the changes

that time would make in the state of things. - The example of all

ages and places teaches us, that, so long as purity of lineage was

insisted upon, the patrician families in the houses must have been

rapidly decreasing. If the newly risen plebeian families and the

clients had voted in a house, they would have retained possession

of its vote, even though not a single patrician were any longer to

be found in it: and alnong the three hundred many must have been

reduced to this state in the course of a few generations 849 : so that

the patricians would have been unable to maintain the preponder­

ance even in their own comitia. Still more unfavourable to them

would have been the result of voting in the curies by poll.

The houses in their political chiracter being essentially patrician,

the definition pf Lrelius, just referred to, though it may not be an

absolute proof that none but patricians appeared in the comitia of

the curies, certainly establishes the correctness of the opinion, that

they formed the main part of those assemblies. Moreover the fur­

ther accourtt of the same Lmlius, founded on Labeo, stated, that the

comitia of the curies were convoked by a lictor, those of the centu­

ries by a hornblowcr4~: and Dionysius says that the patricians were

summoned by a messenger by name, the people by the blowing o.f

a ho-rn 4 s. Thus we find that Labeo and Dionysius agree in uequivo­

0

843 That this would unavoidabiy be the case, will be clear to every one

acquainted with the history of the provincial nobility, wherever proofs of pedi­

gree are required.

44 In Gellius xv. 27. Curiata comitia per lictorem curiatum calari, id

est convocari; centuriata per cornicinem. Thus far the latter as well as the

former were calata, convoked: and as the patrician absolved himself from his

gens by the detestatio sacrorum and disposed of his property by will in the

presence of the populus, so the plebeian did the same before the exercitus.

But the account of the matter in Gellius is confused.

45 Dionysius ii. 8. 'l'ou' µh 'll"<L'<p11<lov~ o'll"o'l't J'of m

~1:1.a-1'>.&u1T1

ITVl'l«LA&iv, .; 11.iipv1u, $~ ov6µ1:1.T6, <Ti ui 'll"<t.'Z'po9iv d.vn-ropavw 'I'D~, cl't Inµ•­

,...7,HISTORY OF ROME.

256

cally designating the curies as the assembly of the patricians. The

same identity appears, on comparing the account of Livy, that Tar­

quinius Priscus assigned places foi: seats round the circus to the

patres and the knights, with that of Dionysius, who says he assign­

ed them to the curies 846 •

In order however to give a complete and perfectly decisive proof

0£ this important proposition, I will here anticipate a topic, the

proper place for which lies somew hat further on, where I shall be

obliged to recur to it.

·

The most important piece of information on the Roman constitu·

tion contained in the newly discovered fragments of Cicero's books

on the Republic, is, that, after the kings had been elected by the

curies, they had i;;till to apply to the same curies for the imperium,

the refusal of which would have made their election void 4 7, Ci­

cero had the means of knowing this from the books of the pontiffs

and augurs; and extraordinary as it may sound, that the assembly

had to decide twice, and could annul its own election by the se­

cond decision, he asserts most distinctly that such was the case.

Nor was the assertion superfluous even in his time ; for Dionysius

and Livy both of them assume that the assemblies must have been

two different ones, as was the case after the time of s·ervius Tul­

lius. The electing assembly is taken by both to be the people ;

the confirmative one is called by the former the· patricians, by the

·latter the patres 48 : by which term he probably meant the senate ;

which was necessarily a- party to every decree of the curies; though

possibly in this place also he had the patricians in view, at least

rr1x.0U, V7r11pErrt.t1 i'f'JvS,, r:i.6p001 x.Ep~u1 ftoafo,, £µ.{iuxa.voovrr•,, i7Z'l

'Tct' txx"A.Jtfl'fttc

The mention of the kings here only means that the practice be­

longed to times long past; and the comitia of the curies became extinct soon

after the middle of the fifth century.

846 See below, note 8!.l3.

47 De Re p. 11. 13. (Numa) quamquam populus curia.tis eum comitiis

regem esse jusserat, tamen ipse de suo imperio curiatam legem tulit. 17.

Tullum Hostilium populus regem comitiis curiatis creavit, isque de imperio

suo-populum consuluit curiatim. 18. Rex a populo est Ancus Martius con•

stitutus : idemque de imperio suo legem curiatam tulit. 20. Rex est creatus

L. Tarquinius-isque ut de suo imperio le gem tulit, &c. Also of Ser. Tul­

lius; 21. populum de se ipso consuluit, legem de imperio suo curiatam tulit.

48 Dionysius 11. 60 . .,.,,,, 71''1:rp11<loo1 t7l'txup,,, ...;,.,.;.,, .,.,,, J'o~<Lv.,.,,, "''!' 71'7-nBu.

Livy 1. 17. decreverunt, ut, cum populus regem jussisset, id sic ratum esset,

si patres auctores fierent. Jn this form Numa's election is conducted. 22.

Tullum-regem populus jussit, patres auctores facti. 32. Ancum Martium

regem populus creavit, patres fuerunt auctores. 41. Servius injussu populi,

volw1tate patrum regnavit.

O'UVH)'DV·

,HISTORY OF ROME.

257

indistinctly, as he had elsewhere more frequently than such a

sense is assigned to him. At all events every reader will see,

without need of many words to prove it, that what Cicero calls the

lex curiata de imperio, is precisely the i,iame thing as the auctori­

tas patrum in Livy, and the confirmation by the patricians in Dio­

nysius.

And thus. it is now further clear that the auctorit~s patrum,

which, until the l\fanian law, was indispensable to the validity of

elections, was nothing else than the lex curiata de imperio, which

even the dictators were forced to obtain. But those patres were

the patricians ; they are called so most distinctly 849 : history cannot

supply a more conclusive proof than this for the identity between

the comitia of the curies and the assembly of the patricians.

849 Livy VI. 42, when L. Sextius was elected consul: ne is quidem finis

certaminum fuit. Quia patricii se auctores futuros negabant, prope secessionem

plebis-res venit, &c. Sallust in the speech of C. Lacinius Macer, p. 972.

Virilia ilia quo-libera ab auctoribus patriciis suffragia majores vestri paravere.

Here Sallust must certainly have been making use of a speech actually com­

posed by the learned antiquary Macer. Dionysius writes with regard to a

transaction substantially the same, in one place, v1. 90, '!"Ou' 7r<t'l"p1,.[ou' .;.,lir­

etne' ;,,.,,.up<»IT<tl 'TnY dpx.ilv ·F<l>•Y t7l'oe:y1<etY'I""-'• in another, x. 4, eti <1>pd'l"pet1

../-n<1>•• t71'1~lpouir1y-to which I shall advert again when I come to the institution

of the tribunes of the people : see note 13G3. Here we catch a glimpse of some

Roman writer; I would wager, of the same Macer; for Dionysius himself had

no cloe in this labyrinth. Of the patricians too in the strictest sense is it said

in the Declamation pro Domo 14. (38.), that, should they become extinct, the

republic would be in want of flamens, Salii, and so on, and of the auct()J'es

centuriatorum et curiatorum comitim-um. Here the half-informed rhetorician

betrays himself: he had probably read the passages just quoted from Cicero's

books on the republic (note 847) : and he did not reflect that in Cicero's days

there were no other curiate comitia than the mere formal assemblies for con­

firming elections.

Tn•

I.-HHTHE SENATE, THE INTERREXES, AND

THE KINGS.

THE contemporaries of Camillus, though they had a firmly

rooted belief in the legends about Romulus, would have laughed at

ariy one who, as the most intelligent men did three centuries after,

should have represented the institution of the senate as a measure

of policy issuing from the free will of the founder of the city. In

all the cities belonging to civilized nations on the coasts of the Me­

diterranean, a senate was a no less essential and indispensable part

of the state than a popular assembly : it was a select body of the

elder citizens: such a council, says Aristotle, there always is, whe­

ther the constitution be aristocratical or deinocratical : even in oli­

, garchies, be the number of shares in the sovereignty ever so small,

certain counsellors are appointed for preparing public measures 850•

'rhat the Roman. senate, like the Athenian one established by

Clisthenes, corresponded to the tribes, has already been explained:

but we may go further, and affirm without hesitation, that origi­

nally, when the number of houses was complete, they were repre­

sented immediately by the senate, the. number of which was pro­

portionate to theirs. The three hundred senators answered to the

three hundred houses, which was assumed above on good grounds

to be the number of them: each gens sent its decurion, who was

its alderman, and the president in its by-meetings, to represent it

in the senate. The Spartan -repwr" were eight and twenty, a sin·

gular number ; but since the two kings along with the rest made up

thirty,_ it may be explained according to the same hypothesis.

There were thirty houses represented 51 , the Agiads and Eurypon­

850 ?tpo~ou>.o1, procuratori. Aristotle Polit. IV. 15.

51 These thirty senators corresponded to the number of days in a month.

ln the Roman number of three hundred there is a reference to the days in the

ten months of the cyclical year: in that of the Attic houses to those in the

11olar year of twelve months. See note 817. The numbers in the politicalHISTORY OF ROME.

259

tids by the kings : these names, when the descent of the two houses

from twins had become an article of popular belief, were derived

from certain alleged descendants of those mythical brothersss2.

Tha~ the senate should be appointed by the kings at their discre­

tion, can never have been the original institution. Even Dionysius

supposes that there was an election: his notion of it however is

quite untenable, and the deputies must have been chosen at least

originally by the houses, and not by the curies.

The senate was divided into decuries: each of these correspond­

ed to a cury. When the state was without a king, ten senators

presided over it during the interreign: the mode of proceeding on

these occa.sions is another of the points on which the accounts given

by our historians are contradictory: and no wonder; for no such

magistrate had then existed within the last three centuries 5 s. Ac­

cording to Livy, when there were but a hundred senators, one was

nominated in each decury. These together formed a board of ten,

each of whom enjoyed the regal power and its badges as interrex

for five days; if no king was created at the expiration of fifty days,

the rotation began anew. Dionysius on the other hand states, that

the two hundred patres, of whom the senate was composed at the

death of Romulus, were divided into twenty decuries, and that one

of these w~s chosen by lot as the interregal board; and, when their

time had expired, another. Plutarch finally, taking the number of

senators at a hundred and .fifty, says nothing of any decuries, but

relates that the royal power went round from the first to the last, so

as not to remain more than half a day and half a night with each;

institutions of antiquity were never arbitrary; and when we find an unusual

one, we. are naturally curious to inquire its meaning. From a like reference

I would explain the singula.r number of the council of One Hundred and

Four at Carthage (Aristotle Polit. II. 11.)'. This is twice the number of

the weeks in a year: such a distribution of time, wholly independent of

the celebration of the Sabbath, would seem to have been common to the

Phenicians with their neighbours, and to have been the basis of a politi­

' cal division, as the months were among the Greeks and Romans. In no na­

tion is such a scheme more probable, than in that which raised altars to the

Yeat and the Month, and paid divine honours to them, as 'to other abstrac­

tions: this is related of the inhabitants of Gades by Eustathius, on Dionys.

Perieg. v. 453, from lElian.

852 The tworoyalhouses'were not quite equal-ol,.;.,

vt:Odl<tJ"'Tlf"'•

says Herodotus (v1. 51) of Demaratus~d perhaps the tribes of houses never

were so at the first. The three Argive royal houses in mythical story-that of

Anaxagoras, of Bias, and of Amythaon-were invented in order that in like

manner they might stand for the three tribes.

53 There was to be sure an interreign in the year 701 : but all proceed­

ings at that time were arbitrary and lawless.

i.,, ,,.;;,HISTORY OF ROME.

260

and then, if the people still continued without a king, the rotation

commenced anew 854 • This last account falls with the hollow basis

on· which it rests, the number he assigns to the senate: and Dio­

nysius was thinking of the Attic prytanies, and assumed that all the

senators must have stood on an equality. In Livy's statement there

is a reference to the superiority of the Ramnes; and we see the

decem primi, the ten, each of whom was the first in his decury 55 :

we need not hesitate to decide in its favour.

The senate-and, so long as the right of election was exercised

by one tribe alone, the decuries of that tribe-agreed among them­

selves on the person to be proposed by the interrex to the curies;

whose power was confined to accepting or rejecting him. It was

a rogation, as in the case of a law; and hence the interrex is said

rogare regem, to put his acceptance to the vote. In this way is the

creation of Numa and Ancus .related: as to Servius Tullius, he is

said to have usurped the throue without a previous election by the

senate 56 • Afterward the same system continues for a considerable

time in the consular elections: and so does the use of the word rogare.

When the king had been accepted, his inauguration took place,

in order to give him the immediate sanction of the gods; and there

may perhaps have been a time of honest credulity when adverse

auguries would be a ground for proceeding to a new election. Even

this however was not sufficient to give the new king the full power,

the imperium: it was necessary that he should be invested with it

by a specific law, which he himself proposed, and the rejection of

which would have compelled him to resign his dignity. The ori­

gin of this practice seems to have been, that in very ancient times,

· though the Quirites were to hold the office in turn, the election

854 Livy 1. l7. Dionysius n. 57. Plutarch Numa, e. 2.

55 The expression of Dionysius, 'Toi, ""X'"""' Jfa<t. '!l'prhOI' d7riJ'"'""''

a."p;i:.uv, shows that he found the phrase decem primi in the Annals. Unless

h; ha~ meant to indicate this, he would have written 'Toi' '!l'f"''"" ~r1.;tov1TI

'"""·· 56

Dionysius 11. 58. '!l'pou;tt1pi,,.r1.no (oi 7rptlT~U'l"tpoi ~·~"•u'l"rtl)-N•µ•W

.;, J'I 'l"OU'I"' u.e., flV'TOi,, O"U)'lf.ltAOUQ"I 'TO '!l'A;;e., •h tlf.lf.l\HO"l.;.V. "'"' '!l'<tpt;..$111,

'e <tU'T/111 •

'TOTI P,IO"O~<J.O"ll\IU' "'· 'T. "· III. 36 • .; P.'""'~11,u{;..eio' «pxn ttipeiT<tl

~oc.-1;..&., •A'Y"'"' e:>r1xuplli,,.11.n°' JI 'l"•li l>iµou 'l"tt. Joectntt. 'T' P,ou"' "· 'T. "·

1v. 8. ov1t.

('rdv 'ruuiov) t«u'Tlf µn;i:.11.vi!.-ct.-Bct.1 ~" ..'"'"'"' &;ou,,.f<t.v,

p.1i'T1 {dou;..Y,; ..j.H<l>11Td. 1 <..£vn,, µ1f'l"t 'TQlV t1."l\l\QlV 'TQlV 1t.d.'Td. VOfl-~1 f'!l'l'TtAt0"9fV'i"QlV.

.reioun"

In the subsequent part of the account of Numa's election, which I have not

transcribed here, it looks as if the interrex proposed the candidate for the

kingship of his own authority : but this semblance is dispelled by the way in

which the election of Ancus is represented. Dionysius however was perhaps

somewhat inattentive to what he was saying.HISTORY OF ROME.

261

rested with the Ramnes; after which however it was requisite that

the person elected should be approved of by the other order: and

this was done by the curies of the. two tribes conferring the impe·

rium. , On the elevation of the third tribe, it was in like manner

fair that its curies should be summoned to express their acceptance,

when the election had been completed by the other two. An insti·

tution of this sort will outlive the causes that produced it; one hi

however disposed to seek for reasons why it was maintained when

the election was carried on by all the curies conjointly. It may

either have been that the person nominated had, like the Greek

magistrates, to undergo a scrutiny and prove that there was nothing

rendering him unable or unworthy to enter upon his office; and the

delegated examiners were to make their report on the subject to the

curies 85 7: or the entrusting so great a power was deemed by free

men a measure so grave and hazardotts, that they reserved them·

selves the power of deliberating upon it twice over. The latter was

Cicero's view, even with regard to the annual and limited magis.

tracies 58 • As the curies however could not come to a vote on any

matter which was not brought before them by a decree of the senate,

there must have been such a decree in this case also: and if we

. suppose that the first choice was made originally by only a part of

the senate, there would be the same ground for this second .decree

as for taking the opinion of the curies. When these had ceased to

exist except as a mere name, the senate still retained the power of

refusing its assent: owing to this it was compelled to express its

acceptance previously to the matter being proposed to the people;

and the continuance of this formality misled Livy into supposing

that the patres who had to give ·their assent in the earliest ages,

were the senate.

The law· of the curies invested the king with all the power he

needed as head of the state and of the army; and with authority

to hold courts and appoint judges 59 • The extent of this preroga·

tive cannot possibly be defined: thus much however I consider to

be certain; that. the celebrated lex regia concerning the emperors,

857 This would be the province of the pontiffs ; because the kings had so

important a.. share in the divine service: and the preliminary scrutiny, the

J'oxlfl<tlFi«, could certainly belong to none but those who 't<t' "fX."-' «71',;.IF<t'

00"tt.H' Buvlt.t. '?'" n 6•p«.1ttltt. 8tt»J ftfJctX.U~«'• xtt.I ToUc iapt'i, 0:7rr.L'l'Ttt.r; i!•rrtt.~oucro.

Dionysius 11. 73. Moreover they presided in the comitia. of the curies.

58 de I. agr. n. 11. (26.)

59 Judicia, fJU<lJ imperio continehantur; which in those days cannot pos­

sibly have been defined.262

HISTORY OF ROME.

which has been the subject of so much controversy, was no other

than the law which granted the imperium to the kings; though

with alterations as well as additions. A law which had been pro­

posed by a king, was a lex 1'egia; not so one which related to con­

ferring regal power on such as were not kings. The table con­

cerning the imperium of Vespasian is a law, not a decree of the

senate 860 : though under the emperors any comitia but such as were

mere forms, like those of the curies, are out of the question. · It

must 'have been in the Papirian code that the forn:iulary by which

the imperium was granted to the kings, was preserved.

The kingly office at Rome in its power, perogatives; and restric­

tions, resembled that of the heroic age in Greece: it differed, in

being a magistracy granted only for life. The king had the abso­

lute command of the army, and was the priest who offered sacrifices

for the nation : when within the city he must have been the only

person entitled to convoke the senate and the people, and to lay

measures before them: but laws, and questions of war and peace,

were determined upon by the citizens 61 ; though there could be no

precise limits to the power of a successful and favourite prince.

He had the right of punishing the disobedient with corporal penal­

ties and fines : an appeal however lay from such sentences to the

assembly of the citizens 6 ~; a privilege which we cannot conceive

to have been enjoyed by any but the patricians. Every ninth day

the king held his court 63 : to his tribunal belonged the adjudication

of property and persons, the protection of legal possession; in a

word every thing that was subsequently included in the jurisdiction

of the prretor, even the assigning a judge: if he chose however to

determine causes in person, he might do so. His power over resi­

860 Since this was written I have found out that this law had already been

recognized by Ernesti to be the lex curiata de imperio. Excurs. II. in Oberlin's

Tacitus, vol. II. 865. His scruples about its genuineness would have van­

ished at the first sight of the original; or if he had been aware that it was

already known in the time of the glossographers 1 and regarded as one of the

twelve tables. Owing to this it was carried to the Lateran, as a relic of an­

cient Rome.

61 Dionysius II. 14. vi. 66.

62 Provocationem etiam a regibus fuisse declarant pontificii libri, signifi­

cant nostri etiam augurales. Cicero de Re p. 11. 31. See below, note 1176.

63 Macrobius 1. 15. Tusci nono quoque die regem suum salutabant, et

de propriis negotiis consulebant. The feelings which the recollection of this

usage kept alive, were probably the occasion of the separating the nones and

the nundines ~ Macrob. 1. 13: not the fabulous cause assigned for it. See

notes 721, 910.HISTORY OF ROME.

263

.dents within the pale*, and over all that did not belong to the houses

of the citizens, had no bounds, any more than that of a dictator.·

Booty and land acquired in war were at his absolute disposal, so

far as the claim of the citizens to the usufruct did not. stand in his

way. A part of the conquered territory fell to the share of the

crown; which had extensive demesnes attached to it, cultivated by

its vassals 1 A4 , and supplying it with riches and with a devoted train.

Over the administration of the pontifical law the king did not pre­

side: ·the independence of the augurs is appar~nt from the legend of

Attus Navius; that of the pontiffs is quite as unquestionable.

* See the text to note 961.

864 Agri, arvi et arbusti et pascui, lati atque uberes, definiebantur, qui

essent regii, colerenturque sine regum opera atque labore. Cicero de Re p.

IV. 2.

·.TULLUS IIOSTILIUS AND ANCUS.

IT was from the books of the pontiffs and augurs, that Livy took

the formularies for the solemn proceedings of the Roman law; for­

mularies which, after prevailing for many ages, had in his day long

been obsolete, and the origin of which was traced back to the kings.

It is certain that it was from this source he derived the formu1ary

used in trials for treason, containing the evidence for the existence

of that appeal to the people, which Cicero had found mention of in

the pontifical and augural books 865 : nor is it more doubtful with

regard to those which were used in consecrating a king, in the pro­

ceedings of the pater patratus at a treaty, in those of the fecials,

and in the surrender of a city. A conjecture about the nature and

char~cter of these books may be hazarded without presumptuously

prying into what fate has forbidden us to know. We ~an only con­

ceive them to have been collections of traditions, decisions, and de­

crees, laying clown principles of law by reporting particular cases 66 :

and thus fragments of old poems might be contained in them, such

as the law of treason from the lay of the Horatii.

The actual narrative of the times of the kings Livy, guided by

his poetical feeling, drew mainly from Ennius: this seems to be

demonstrated by his assuming the same period for the duration of

Alba, which is presupposed by the chronology of that ancient poet 67;

and surely it cannot have been a mere work of chance, that the

words in which Cocles invokes the god Tiber should be so nearly

the same in the two accounts 68 • ,He could not have selected more

865 Above, notes 687 and 862.

66 As was done in the eastern collections of traditions, and even in the

Pentateuch: see Numb. xxxv1.

67 Above, pp. 155 and 205.

68 Tiberine pater, te sancte precor, hmc arma et hunc militem propitio

flumine accipias. Livy n. 10. Teque, pater Tiberint>, tuo cum flumine

sancto. Ennius, p. 41.HISTORY OF ROME.

265

judiciously: and so long as the history of Rome shall continue to

be written, the narrator in this part has no choice but to translate

Livy; or, if his work, like mine, will not admit of such details, to

give a simple record of poems, with which we may happily pre­

sume every one to be familiar in Livy's excellent representation of

them.

If any one looks for historical truth, and consequently for con­

nexion, in the story of the first century of Rome, he must find it

wholly incomprehensible that Alba should disappear altogether the

moment the city is founded. The tradition neither tells us of any

aid sent by the mother city during the danger that threatened Rome;

nor does it explain how, when the race of JEneas became extinct

with N umitor, Romulus was excluded from their throne. Both

what is said, and what is not said on this point, tends to establish

the nature of those accounts, which are given us for historical.

Alba and Roma were entirely strangers to each other: in the legend

which relates the fall of the former city, it is not the Silvii who

rule there, but C. Cluilius or Fuffetius, as dictator, or prretor.

Mutual acts of violence had been committed by the citizens of

the two cities; and it fell out that both were sending embassies to

demand satisfaction at the same time. In order to render the Al­

bans responsible for having unjustly refused to make atonement,

the Roman king detained their ambassadors by festivals and ban­

quets, declining to introduce them into the senate ; until the Albans

had refused to deliver up the offeriders to the Roman envoys, and

these had thereupon declared war against Alba 869• The armies of

the two cities were drawn up against each other on the Fossa Clu­

ilia, where it crossed the Latin way and the boundary of the Roman

869 Bellum in trigesimum diem indi:rerant, says Livy: according to the

fecial law however it was the practioe, after the lapse of three respites, each

of ten days (or likewise after thirty-three days), to declare, that it was uow

time for the elders at home to take counsel, whether they should avenge their

wrong by war; and such assuredly was the account the ancient poet gave in

this place. No doubt the change had been made long before Livy's time by

the annalist he followed, though the number was not altogether abandoned :

and certainly it was startling, that thirty days should have elapsed, without

the Albans at Rome hearing of the demand made in their city by the fecials.

However what need had the poet of calculating the actual distance?· He had

the right of enlarging it, as much as served his purpose : just as Herodotus

and Xenophon on the contrary speak of the Medes and Persians as if their

country were not more e:rtensive than that of a small Greek people, nay of a

11ingle city with its domain.

'

1.-11266

HISTORY OF ROME.

territory e7o: the princes came to an agreement to avert a battle by

a combat. There were in each army three brothers, of the same

age, the Horatii and the Curiatii ; their mothers were sisters, and

had both brought their sons into the world at a birth7•, The an·

cient narrators varied in calling sometimes the Horatii, and some·

times the Curiatii, Romans or Albans: it was only the later hista.

rians who came to a decision on this point; nor is there any better

authority than their caprice for the opinion which is now universal,

and which I too shall follow, that the former were Romans. Two

of the Horatii had fallen ; the third was left unhurt to contend

against three wounded foes, and by craft and skill overcame them.

At the gate of the city his sister met him, and cursed him in her

despair, on seeing him conducted by the exulting army, and bear·

ing aloft the spoils of the slain, among the rest the embroidered

cloak of her betrothed which she herself had woven: anger seized

him and she fell by his hand. The judges of blood c~ndemned

him to be hung upon the fatal tree7 9 ; he appealed to the people,

and they gave him his life.

For the compact had been, that the nation whose champions

should be victorious, was to command the obedience and service of

the other: and the Albans fulfilled it. When Fidenre however,

having driven out or overpowered the Roman colonists, was de­

fending itself with the assistance of the Veientines against Tullus

and the Romans, in the battle that ensued the Romans stood against

the Veientines; on the right, over against the Fidenates, were the

Albans under their dictator Mettius Fuffetius78• Faithless and yet

870 That is, near Settebassi, between the fourth and fifth milestone from

the Porta Capena, on the road to Frascati : for the Via Latina, which was

much older than the Via Appia, led in those days to Alba: see above, pp. 155,

156. Let those who go along that road think of the Horatii in this part of it.

The name of the ditch was unquestionably derived from an Alban prince : for

the sake ofexplaining this name, the story was in.vented that the armies were

encamped a long time in this place, and, since Fuffetius appears subsequently

as the prmtor of the Albans, that Cluilius died here. The oldest tradition

must have represented the princes as coming to an agreement from the first

that they would meet, each attended by his people, at the borders of their

·

territories, and leave the decision of their quarrel to the gods.

71 Every body will perceive that we have here types of the two nations,

regarded as sisters, and of the three tribes in each of them.

72 The phrase, am argen nordern Baum Henken, in the Frisian laws,

answers to infelid arbore suspendere.

73 Mcttius, not JIIettus, would have been the reading in Livy, as well u

in Ennius-in whom it is to be pronounced JIIettieo Fujff:tie6-and in the

Greek writers, unless the authority of the manuscripts had been disregarded.HISTORY OF ROME.

267

irresolute he drew them off from the conflict to the hills: the Etrus­

cans, seeing that he did not keep his engagement to them, and sus­

pecting that he was threatening their flank, gave way, and fled along

by his line; when the twofold traitor fell upon them in their dis­

order, in the hope of cloaking his treachery. The Roman king

feigned himself deceived: on the following day the two armies were

summoned, to receive their praises and rewards. They whose

courage forsakes them in the execution of a· criminal plot, will sur­

render themselves to vengeance, if it be dissembled, with a view of

avoiding what might confirm the suspicion that such a plot had

been formed. The Albans came without their arms, were sur­

rounded by the Roman troops, and heard the sentence of the inex­

orable king; that, as their dictator had broken his faith both. to Rome

and to the Etruscans, he should in like manner be torn in pieces

by horses driven two opposite ways; and as for themselves and

their city, that they should remove to Rome, and that Alba should

be destroyed. It was carried into execution. ·The city, being

already stripped of all its men capable of bearing arms, was sur­

prised, and razed, to the sound of trumpets•74, all but the temples.

Tullus assigned the Albans habitations on the Crelian: and this

is a point the legendary history of Rome may rely on, because he

was regarded as the founder of the Luceres. Else the settlement

on the Crelian was ascribed by other stories to Tuscans; some plac­

ing it as far back as under Romulus, and others again much later

than Tullus. All the patrician houses that deduced their stock

from Alba, belonged to the Luceres; even the Julii: and the fact of

their having come from Alba, I hold to be historically certain, as

well as the fall of Alba. But the war which terminated in that fall

has only an indefinable historical foundation, like the Trojan war.

The probability is, that Rome in conjunction with the Latin towns'

took Alba, and that the allies divided the territory and the people

they had conquered. For by the Italian law of nations, which in

such a case of a total destruction would also be the law of nature,

the Alban territory must have become the property of the conqueror:

yet we find it in the possession not of Rome, but of the Latins;

here, at the fountain of Ferentina, below Marino, did they hold

their national assemblies7 5 • Or perhaps Alba may have been de-

The proper names of the Latins resemble gentile names in their terminations;

as Octamus.

874 Servius on 1En. II. 313.

75 Livy 1. 50. vu. 25. Dionysius seems to confound this place 'with the

Ferentinum of the Hernicans.268

HISTORY OF ROME.

stroycd by the Latins, not by Rome, and the Albans who retired to

Rome may have been received there as refugees. Thus the de­

molition of Fiesole, and the carrying away the Fiesolans to her

pretended daughter city, is the earliest point that passes for histo­

rical in the story of Florence. The interval between the year 1008

ancl Machiavel is less by near 150 years than that which was

reckoned between Tullus and Livy; the oldest chronicles related

it: and now the Tuscan critics have long since proved that Fiesole

continued to exist for many ages after that pretended destruction in

the very same state as before.

After the fall of Alba began the wars with the Latins, who dwelt

on both sides of the Anio in a semicircle about Rome, the Tiber

founing its chord. Of that war with them, 'vhich Dionysius relates

to have arisen even in the time of Tull~s, in consequence of Rome

pretending to have acquired the supremacy ascribed to Alba, Livy

is ignorant. He does however mention a·n alliance concluded

under that king with the Latins: and the existence of this alliance,

as a confederacy in arms, not with the Latins alone, but also with

the Hernicans, such as that" formed by Sp. Cassius, is implied in

a narrative preserved from Varro, which has a historical air 5 7 6 , It

relates that the troops of the allies under generals from Anagnia

and Tusculum encamped upon the Esquiline; and covered the ,city

whilst Tullus was besieging Veii; and this war is connected with

that against Fidenre, just as there is a like connexion in the legend

of Romulus: Livy, who passes over it here, nevertheless seems to

include it in the total number of the Veientine wars77,

In the time of Tullus the Sabines were the most powerful people

in all Italy, next to the Etruscans. Tullus warred against them

with success ; until the anger of the gods at the neglect of their

service, and at the decay of the piety inculcated by Numa, was an­

nounced by a shower of stones on the Alban mount, and by a pes­

tilence. The king himself grew sick, and sank despondingly into

a restless superstition. As the gods persisted in their silence, and

would not grant him any sign revealing the means of atonement, he

sought to constrain them to answer by N uma's mysterious rites at

the altar of Jupiter Elicius: but an oversight in these perilous con­

jurations, or the wrath of the gods, drew down a thunderbolt upon

him. The lightning consumed the king's corpse, and his house,

876 Varro Rer. Human. vm. in Festus v. Septimontio.

77 Septies rebellarunt, he says, v. 4.HISTORY OF ROME.

269

together with all his family. A reign of two and thirty years was

assigned to him.

The lay of Tullus Hostilius is followed by the narration of a

course of events, without any marvellous circumstances, or poetical

colouring: by the founding of Ostia this narrative is connected

with real history: but it is referred to a chronological computation

in which the tricks of elaborate falsifiers are most clearly apparent.

Ancus Marcius, from whom the plebeian house of the Marcii

boasted of descending, was called in the tradition the son of Nu ma's

daughter; which alludea to the practice of taking the kings alter­

nately from the Romans and the Quirites. Mindful of his an·

cestor's example· he applied himself to the re-establishment of re­

ligion, which had fallen into neglect. He had the ceremonial law,

so far as it required to be generally known, transcribed upon tables,

which were fixed up in public that all might read them: and in­

deed it may easily be believed to have not been until after the time

of the kings that the indispensable observances of religion were

converted by the pontiffs into a mystery only to be learnt from

their teaching. ,

.

The reign of Ancus however was not destined to be so peaceful.

as that of Numa. He conducted the war against the Latins victo·

riously. He took Politorium, Tellena, Ficana, towns lying be·

tween Rome' and the sea, the Via Ostiensis and the Ardeatina, and

compelled their inhabitants to settle upon the Aventine. At length

being alarmed by the aanger of Medullia, a confederate army assem­

bled, over which the king gained a hard-fought victory; whereupon,

as the tradition says, he carried ·away several thousand Latins to

Rome. He also made conquests from Veii, and acquired some

forests on the sea coast and sorrie saltmarshes, as well as both banks

of the Tiber down to its mouth; here he buill Ostia, the oldest of

the Roman colonies which the historical age recognized as having

been preserved ; for those founded by Romulus, Fidenre, Crus­

tumerium, and Medullia, effaced this character .by their rebellion.

Ostia, which like them enjoyed the Crerite franchise, '?'as the

harbour of Rome: ships of considerable size could in those days

run into the Tiber; the mouth of whiCh, partly through neglect,

and partly from ill judged erections, has now become inaccessible,

even more so than those 'of the other rivers that discharge into the

Mediterranean. He built the first bridge over the Tiber, and a

fort beyond it on the J aniculum as a bulwark against Etruria: on

the other side he dug the ditch of the Quirites, a protection of

eonsiderable importance, as Livy says, for such parts of the city as270

HISTORY OF ROME.

stood low and were exposed. This ditch, a work of no splendour

and not mentioned by :my other writer, must without doubt be the

Martana, a continuation of the Fossa Cluilia, which originally

perhaps had been conducted into one of the little rivers that fall into

the Tiber below Rome. It was a defence for the. open ground

between the Crelian and the Palatine 8 7 8 ; and it drained the valley

of the Murcia, while it supplied the Campagna with water. The

oldest remaining monument of Rome, the prison, formed out of a

stone-quarry in the Capitoline hill, is also called the work of Ancus.

It was on the side of the hill above the Forum, the place ·of assem­

bly for the plebeians; and, until an equality of laws was introduced,

it served only to keep the_ plebeians, and those who were below

them, in custody: hence the construction of it may be ascribed to

the same king to whom the first establishment of the plebeian estate

is referred. The original common law of the plebs was regarded

as the fruit of his .legislation; in the same manner as the rights of

the three ancient tribes were looked upon to be the laws of the

first three kings7 9 : and because all landed property by the principles

of the Roman law proceeded from the state, and on the incorpora­

tion of new communities was surrendered by them, and conferred

back on them by the state, the assignment of public lands is attri­

buted to Ancus 80 • Now this act being viewed as a parcelling out of

public territories, was probably the cause which led the plebeians

to bestow the epithet of good upon him in the old poems: as on the

other hand it must have been the same act that induced Virgil to

charge him with vanity and courting popular favours 1•. They who

look with aversion on the beneficent and kingly work of fostering

the germs of new rights and cherishing them as they spring up,

seek for the source of such conduct, not in that generosity of mind

which, while it respects the rights of whatever has any living

energy, rejoices in the coming forth of new life, and shrinks from

the sight of torpor and decay, but in impure motives, which, it is

true, may give birth to actions not dissimilar in appearance.

The ground about the temple of Murcia, bet.ween the Circus and

the Aventine, cannot have afforded more than scanty room for a few

hundred small houses, and can never have been sufficient for the

878 The Vicus of Septem Vire.

79 See note 763.

' 80 Cicero de Re. p. n. 18.

81 Bonus Ancus. Ennius 111. p. 53. Lucretius m. 1038. Zonaras too

says: iir1w<il' .,·,. In Virgil on the' contrary he is Jactantior Ancus .Nu~

q1t0que jam nimium gaudens popularibus auris.HISTORY OF ROME.

271

many thousand families that Livy speaks of 8 "~: but the Annals may

perhaps have been justified in stating that even thus early a very

large number of free Latins were incorporated with the Roman

Btate. Perhaps however this was not effected by conquest, ~ut by

a voluntary treaty; if we suppose that after the destruction of Alba

an agreement was entered into by Rome and Latium, that a part of

the Albensian and a part of the Priscan Latin towns should belong

to Rome, while a new statz, consisting like the old one of thirty

towns, was formed out of the rest. For a similar arrangement was

entered into by these states on two several occasions during the

historical age.

The new subjects could not be admitted into a new tribe, as the

Luceres had been : for by the reception of these the number of tribes

had been completed, and it could not be exceeded: they constituted

a community which stood side by side with the people formed by

the members of the thirty curies, as the body of the Latin towns

had stood in relation to Alba. This was the beginning of the plebs,

which was the strength and the life of Rome; the people of Ancus

as distinguished from that of Romulus 88 • And this is a fresh reason

for Ancus being placed in the middle of the Roman kings.

·

0

882 I. 33. Multis millibus Latinorum in civitatem acceptis, quibus, ut

jungeretur Palatio Aventinus, ad Murcire datre sedes.

83 The words ip. the concluding strophe of the hymn of Catullus, xxuv,

Sis quocumque tibi placet Sancta nomine, Romulique .!lnr:ique, ut solita es,

bona Sospites ope gentem, answer to the formulary, Quod felix faustum for­

tunatumque sit populo plebique Romana. It was Scaliger's piercing eye that

detected the true reading in this passage, from finding that the text, before the

editors had disfigured it, was antique; out of which the superficial, always

easily satisfied, had made antiquam, the reading adopted by his predecessors.

The light which led him seems to have been that of grammatical logic, which

taught him that, to complete~the sense of the passage, another conjunction

was wanting after Romulique: at least I do not know of any trace of his hav­

ever set himself to solve the riddle of Roman history. But there was no re­

gion of philological research that he had left unvisited; and that which is

frequently the case may perhaps in this instance have befallen him: in a mass

of utter confusion, a, single spot which others have overlooked, will often

strike an observing eye ; but no distinct consciousness of it is retained, be­

cause it is only an insulated fragment of a whole. It recurs to the memory,

when any thing e1se connected with it is any where met with: but even then

it is often only a transient light which falls upon the darkness; and even he

on whom it has shone forgets what is revealed to him.THE LAY OF L. TARQUINIUS PRISCUS

AND SERVIUS TULLIUS.

IT is impossible to believe that the ancient lays in their original

form spoke of Damaratus as the father of L. Tarquinius: but Poly­

bius must have found this story already extant in the Roman An·

nals*; and perhaps it ~lso occurred in Ennius ; nay even in the later

forms assumed by the old poem, when the tales of Zopyrus and

Periander were woven into it. Such lays, even in .the hands of

learned bard,i, are perpetually altering their features, shifting and

changing until they vanish away.

When Cypselus, the offspring of a marriage of disparagement,

uniting with the commons had overthrown the oligarchy at Corinth,

and was taking vengeance on the persons who had aimed at his life,

many of the Bacchiads fled, and among the rest Damaratus. Com·

merce had not been esteemed disreputable among the Corinthian

nobility; as a merchant, Damaratus had formed ties of friendship at

Tarquinii; he settled there. He brought great wealth with him ;

the sculptors Euchir and Eugrammus, and Cleophantus the paint­

er8841 accompanied him; and along with the fine arts of Greece he

taught the Etrusc~ns alphabetical writingss. Renouncing his native

country for ever, he took an Etruscan wife, and to the sons whom

she bare him, gave the names and education of their own land,

together with the refinements of Greece. One story represents him

as having obtained the government of Tarq uinii• 6 : but there is more

accordance with the customs aml laws of Etruria in the other, that

his son Luc~mo, having by his elder brother's early death become

sole heir of his father'.s riches, and being encouraged by his wife

Tanaquil who was initiated in the national art of reading futurity,

resolved on emigrating to Rome, because every prospect to honours

* Po!yb. v1. 2.

85 Tacitus. Annal.

11.

14.

884 Pliny xxxv. 5. 43.

66 Strabo vm. p. 378. c.HISTORY OF ROME.

273

was closed against strangers among the Etruscans. Her expecta­

tions were confirmed by an augury. When they were looking from

the top of the J aniculum upon the Roman hills before them, the

traveller's bonnet was carried away by an eagle into the air; but

soon he stopped again with it and replaced it on the head he had

bared. At Rome Lucumo was welcome: being admitted with his

family to the rights of citizenship, he changed his name into Lucius

Tarquinius, to which Livy adds Priscus. His courage, the splen­

dour with which he lived, his liberality and prudence, gained him

the favour of the king and the people: the former appointed him

guardian to his sons; and when the throne became vacant the

senate and citizens raised him to it with one accord.

Of the wars ascribed to L. Tarquinius, Dionysius, adopting the

forgeries of very recent annalists, has given an intolerable newspa­

per account: for the purposes of this work even Livy's dignified

brevity goes too much into detail; and it would be utterly at vari­

ance with them, to stop and point out how the two historians con­

tradict each other as to the order of these wars and their events.

According to Livy it was by the Latins and Sabines that the grow­

ing power of Rome was obstinately but unsuccessfully resisted.

Apiohe, a town destroyed by Tarquinius, belonged to the Latins;

and its wealth was such, that the booty enabled him to ex~1ibit more

splendid games than the city had yet seen: Corniculum too was

demolished ; and N omen tum, 'together with Ameriola, Cameria,

Crustumerium, Ficulea, l\ledullia, places which must have lain be­

tween Nomentum, Tusculum, and the walls of Rome 88 7, submitted

to the dominion of the Romans. One or two of these towns are

never again mentioned afterward. The Sabines had advanced with

a great force to the gates of Rome: the Roman horse drova them

back: their camp was -011 the left bank of the Anio; Tarquinius set

fire to their bridge by means of burning rafts, and annihilated their

whole army. Several traditions are connected with this war; the

vow of the Capitol, and the institution of ornaments for boys of

noble birth: the king's son, a lad of fourteen, was in tested by him

with a golden bulla and a purple-bordered robe, for having slain one

of the foe.

The war in which the lEquians, who in aftartimes became the

indefatigable enemies of Rome, and were already a great and for­

887 It is hard to understand how the Romans and Sabines could come in

hostile contact, so long as these cities continued independent and inte~ven<'d

between them.

1.-KK274

HISTORY OF ROME.

midable people 888 , were subdued by Tarquinius, is referred by Livy

to the second king of that narne 89 • Dionysius says nothing of this

quarrel: but on the other hand he relates minutely, how at first

five of the remoter great Etruscan cities were induced to send aid,

which proved inadequate, to the Latins; and how afterward, when

the Sabines had entered into a truce for several years, all the twelve

cities to the south of the Apennines united their forces against Rome,

but after losing a battle at Eretum submitted to king Tarquinius as

their supreme head, and did homage to him by presenting him

with the badges of royalty, the splendour of which ennobled his

triumph9°: according to this account, in the evening of his days he

was the rcknowledged sovereign of the Etruscans, the Latins, and

the Sabines. With regard to this vast extent of his dominions

nothing is said by Cicero- or by Livy; the only extant Latin writer

who speaks of it, is Florus: but· thus much is recognized by all,

that the power of Rome under Priscus rose far above what it had

ever been before.

His victory in the Sabine war was owing to his having doubled

the number of his cavalry: in conformity with this measure, the

king wished to double the number of the equestrian centuries, and

to name the three new ones after himself and two of his friends.

His plan was opposed by the augur Attus Navius; who represented

that Romulus had acted under the guidance of the auspices in regu­

lating the distribution of the knights, and that nothing but the con­

. sent of the auspices could warrant a change- in it. Attus by descent

was a Sabine; the gift of observing and interpreting auguries was

the endowment of his countrymen; even when a boy without any

instruction he had practised the art, and afterward on being taught

had acquired the greatest knowledge of it that any priest ever at­

tained to 91 • In all probability the books which we read, word his

888 Cicero de Re p. n. 20. Strabo v. p. 231. a. • A1"wo1 /'fl'l"ov1uov7ec

µri.>.10-'1"11. T•ic Kuph<tw 7ou7111v 'l""c -.Z.6>.m T<tp1<uV1oc ITpio-"°' ite7r6p9nn. In

the same place he calls A piolre a V olscian town.

89 He treats it indeed as a matter of little importance: pacem cum lEquo·

rum gente fecit. r. 55.

90 This ceremony, like others, was adopted by Rome from the Etrus·

cans, whose monuments contain representations of triumphal processions.

91 Dionysius says, he did not belong to the college of augurs. This is

an inference which his ingenuity, or that of some one before him, drew, be~

cause the augurs were patricians, and Attus in his boyhood had tended his

father's swine; as if a poor patrician could have dispensed with the household

services of his children. lt is utterly inconceivable that the ancient legend

should have represented the most renowned of all augurs as a stranger to the

college.IIISTORY OF ROME.

275

objections less peremptorily than they were .worded in the original

legend: in which he probably declared that the auspices forbade

any change. Tarquinius, for the sake of shaming the augurs, or

· for his own satisfaction, as Crcesus put the veracity of the oracles

to the proof, commanded him to divine whether what he was at that

moment thinking of were possible or impossible. When Attus had

observed the heavens and declared that the object of the king's

thoughts was feasible, Tarquinius held out a whetstone, and a razor

to split it with: the augur straightway did so. The whetstone and

razor were preserved in the Comitium under an altar: beside them

on the steps of the senate-house stood the statue of Attus, a priest

with his head muffied.

Yielding to this omen, the king abandoned the scheme of estab­

lishing any new centuries ; but to each of those established by

Romulus he associated a second under the same name ; so that

from this time forward there were the first and second Ramnes,

.Tities, and Luceres. The writers who state that the equestrian

order was increased to twelve hundred, take a century for a hun­

dred horsemen, and suppose that the six centuries were further

doubled by the same king after the JEquian wars9~.: the fact they

refer to however was nothing but the union with an equal number

of Latin cavalry in the field, like that between the infantry of the

two nations.

What has made the name of Tarquinius ever memorable, is,

that with him begins the greatness and the splendour of the city.

Often the legends' fluctuate in ascribing a work or an exploit to

him or to his son: e but the vaulted sewers by which the Velabrum,

the Forums, the country down to the lower Subura, and the valley

of the Circus, till then swamps and lakes, or bays in the bed of the

river, were drained, are in mo.st of them called the work of the

elder king; and coupled with this undertaking must have been that

of embanking the Tiber. In the valley thus gained between the

ancient town of Roma and the Tarpeian hill, he allotted a spaet}

892 This throws light on a very obscure passage of Cicero de Re p. 11. 20.

Prioribu"s equitum partibus secundis additis, M ac cc fecit equitcs, numerum­

que duplicavit postquam bello lEquos subegit. Livy has misunderstood the

fact: yet in him too the true reading is 1200, not 1800 : see Mai on the pas­

sage of Cicero. For there is little difference between d and a, especially in

the uncial character of which a specimen is given in the plate to my edition

of Cicero's fragments, n. 3; and they would be perpetually mistaken for

each other, but that d is a consonant. nidccc in the Florentine manuscript

comes from 11taccc (Mac cc) as it stanrls in Ci<;ero.276

HISTORY OF ROME.

for a market and for the meetings of the people, built porticoes

round it, and gave ground to such as wished to set up booths and

shops there. Betwixt the Palatine and the Aventine, the meadow

redeemed from the water was levelled, and converted into a race­

course: each of the curies had a place here assigned to it, where

the senators and knights erected scaffolds to view the games

from" 98 , and where they would also make room for their clients.

He surrounded the city with a wall of hewn stone after the Etrus­

can manner, or at least made preparations for doing so 9 \ The

building of the Capitoline temple from the very foundation is

ascribed by the earlier narratives to the last king; to the father they

only attribute the vow. And so must every one do, who wishes

for connexion or fancies he sees history in lays and legends ; else

the building would have rested for a number of years during the

whole reign of Servius Tullius.

These works, rivalling the greatest of the Etruscan, can never

have been accomplished without oppressive task work, any more

than those of the Pharaohs or Solomon's. To cheer his people

during their hard service, the king instituted games; which from

his time forward were celebrated annually in September, under the

name of the Roman or great games. Of the contests which drew

the Greeks to Olympia, none but the <lhariot race and boxing were

practised by the Etruscans. The spectacle was a source of delight

to the people of Italy; but the contests were the business of hire­

lings or slaves : if a freeman engaged in. them, instead of being

im~ortalized by sculpture or in song, and of becoming the pride of

his family, he forfeited his honour and his franchise. The cha­

rioteer and the player were in no higher esteem than the gladiator.

Not that the Romans clung to their spectacles of all kinds with

less vehemence of pleasure than the Greeks: if however, like the

Greeks, they could have honoured the object that excited their pas­

sions, they would not have lost themselves in that extravagant fury,

which even in earlier times maddened the factions of the circus in

behalf of their despicable favourites. But the chariot race was not

the only amusement at the Circensia: there were also the proces­

sions, the images of the gods borne along robed in kingly garments,

Loca. divisa patribus equitibusque, says Livy 1. 35 : J'm,fllv To~' 'l'O?rou'

.i,..£J""'" p.£11.r. Dionysius 1n.

68. They are both relating the same thing.'

94 Dionysius, m. 67, says icfo1tlp.1t<l'I" Livy 1. 38, parat. The tradition,

we may be sure, was not thus cautious: the reason which ma.de the histo­

rians so, is clear enough : the wall of Servius.

803

,;, <rp11i.1t.ov'l'11. <j>pa'.<rp11.~, i1t<r'.<l'<r~ <j>pa:rp<f- p.o'ip"'HISTORY OF ROME.

277

the armed boys, the war dances and the ludicrous imitations of

them*. The rites of religion too, which till then h;i.d been plain

and simple, were clothed with splendour under Tarquiniu~: in his

reign bloody sacrifices are said to have been introduced, and adora­

tion to have been first paid to representations of the gods under

human forms.

The memory of this king was honoured and celebrated by the

descendants of those who had sighed under his heavy yoke: nay

the sufferings themselves were imputed to his detested son; although

neither the Forum nor the Circus can have been laid out, until the

great sewers had been built. Still more favour was shown by after

ages to Caia Crecilia, the wife whom another legend gives him in­

stead of the Etruscan Tanaquil: the Roman brides reverenced her

as a benificent enchantress 895 , and an industrious housewife diligent

at the looms 6, just as the blessed days of Queen Bertha and her

spinning wheel are still held in remembrance among the Germans.

According to. the tables of the pontiffs Tarquinius had reigned

thirty-eight years, when his glorious life was terminated by assas­

sination. The sons of Ancus l\Iarcius had· long looked upon him

as an enemy and usurper, whose death would afford them an oppor­

tunity of mounting the throne. They were' not quieted by seeing

that the king was more than eighty years old : for there was no

doubt that, if the approach of death found him in possession of his

consciousness, he would secure the succession to his son-in-law

Servius Tullius, his own favourite, and the darling of the whole

people. In those days princes still acted as judges, especially in

breaches of the peace, for any of their subjects who had recourse

to their paternal authority. Under a pretext of this kind two mur­

derers engaged by the l\Iarcii obtained an entrance into the king's

chamber, and gave him a deadly wound.

The birth of Servius Tullius was no less marvellous than humble.

Ocrisia, a handmaid of the queen, and one of the captives taken at

Corniculum, was bringing some cakes as an offering to the house­

hold genius, when she saw an apparition of the god in the fire on

the hearth: Tanaquil commanded her to array herself as a bride

and shut herself ~p in the chapel. She became pregnant by a god:

* Dionysius vu. 72.

895 She wore a. magic girdle : hence persons in great peril took filings

from the girdle of her statue in the temple of Sancus. Festus v. Prredia.

96 Probus de nominibus p.1400. in Gothofred. Anet. Ling. Lat. Plutarch,

Qurest. Rom. xxx. p. 271, makes her wife to a son ofTarquinius.278

IIISTORY OF RO.ME.

by many of the Romans the household genius was said to be the

father of Servius; by others Vulcan. The former supported their

opinion by the festival Servius established in honour of the Lares :

the latter by the deliverance which the god of fire vouchsafed to

his statue 89 7.

Such legends are always far older than those which have a histo­

rical air: of the latter kind two very different ones became current

on the descent of Servius. According to the oneus, his mother

was a handmaid from Tarquinii, his father one of the king's clients,

he himself when a child in the condition of a slave. The other had

a more dignified air, and was caught at by Dionysius: it stated that

at Corniculum, one of the .Latin towns to the north of the Anio,

dwelt a person of princely birth, who likewise bore the name of

Servius Tullius: that at the taking of his native city he was slain

along with all its defenders: but that his widow.- then far advanced in

her pregnancy, was carried away with the other captives to Rome;

where she was assigned to the queen on account of her illustrious

rank, was treated with honour, and was delivered of a boy.

One day, as the child was sleeping in the porch of the royal

palace, his head to the horror of the beholders was seen encircled

with flames9 9 , The queen Tanaquil forbade their being extin­

guished : for the Etruscan prophetess recognized the spirit of his

father, and foresaw that the boy was called to great things : w lien

he awoke the apparition had vanished. From that tim11 forward he

was bred up like the king's own child, 'and to the highest hopes.

Nor in more advanced life did he ever cea:>e to be in intimate com­

munion with the higher p 0 wers. The goddess Fortune loved him:

she compressed within his life the extremes of herrempire, birth in

the form of a servant, the possession of sovereign power with wor­

thiness to wield it; and finally an unmerited cruel death: she visited

him secretly as his spouse 900 , but under the condition that he should

cover his face and never look upon her. A very ancient gilt wooden

statue of the king, the face of which was kept covered over in like

manner,-was set up in the temple he had erected to his goddess.

8D7 Ovid. Fast. vr. 625. ff. Dionysius Iv. 2.

98 In Cicero de Rep. n. 21. The insinuation that Servius was probably

a bastard of the king, is an instance how even the greatest mind may be be­

trayed into a silly absurdity.

·

9D According to Valerius Antias this happened late in his life, when he

had fallen asleep after sorrowing long for the death of his wife Gegania. Plu­

tarch de Fort. Roman. p. 323. c. ' This Gcgania instead of Tarquinia, and

Crecilia instead ofTanaquil, may possibly be historical personages.

900 Ovid. Fast. v1. 577. ff.HISTORY OF lWi\l'E.

279

The temple was once consumed by fire; but the statue remained

.uninjured, because Servius was sprung out of the flames.

In his early years the city and army found him the bravest and

the best of the Roman youth: a battle had been almost lost; he

tossed the standard into the midst of the enemy's ranks, .and thus

inspirited his soldiers to gain the victory: he headed the armies of

the aged l•ing with glory, and was rewarded with the hand of his

daughter. His father-in-law entrusted him with the exercise of the

government; and when Tarquinius became very old, Servius was

enabled to lighten the yoke that pressed on his subjects. So that

they rejoiced, when, by an artifice frequently practised in the East,

it was announced to them that the king's wound was not danger­

ous ; and that for the present he appointed Servius to govern in his

stead. Had an interreign taken place, the senate would have had

the power of keeping the election of Servius from coming to the

vote: as it was, he exercised the authority of king, without any

election: however, when the death of Tarquinius became known,

the curies invested him with the imperium9° 1; and afterward he

did homage, for the first time, to the majesty of the centuries, by

calling upon them too to decide whether he was to reign over them.

The wars of this king are far the least important part of his ac­

tions: a successful one against the Veientines, of which Livy makes

only slight mention, is magnified by Dionysius into victories over

the whole Etruscan nation, which after the death of Tarquinius

had repented of its submission, but was compelled by severe defeats

to resort to it a second time as the only means of safety. Indeed

the forgery has made way even into the Fasti, where the pretended

triumphs are recorded with the year and day of their occurrence;

In the older traditions Servi us, next to Numa, seems to have had·

the scantiest portion of military fame: his great deeds were laws;

and he was named by posterity, says Livy, as the author of all

their civil rights and institutions, by the side of Numa, the author

of their religious worship. The constitution attributed to ~im re•

quires an explanation that must be kept apart and removed without

the circle of these legends : but the lays which preserved his

memory in freshness, must assuredly have also celebrated his pay·

ing the debts of such as were reduced to poverty, out of his royal

treasures; his redeeming those who hau pledged their labour for

what they borrowed; and his assigning allotments of land, to the

free plebeian citizens, out of the territories they had won for their

common country with their blood,

901

Cicero de Re p.

11.

21.

Dionysius

1v.

12.280

HISTORY OF ROME.

Several Latin communities, thei1· towns having been destroyed,

or continuing to exist only as market places, were at this time a

component part of the Roman people, which had already grown

into a nation: and this nation was leagued by treaty, but not by a

federal union, with the Latins who held their general assemblies at

the fountain of Ferentina. Such a federal union was effected by

Servi us, who at the same time obtained the supremacy in it. All

such federations among the ancients were connected with the wor­

ship at some common temple: the sun and moon, Di anus and

Diana, were the divinities adored by the Latins, as the mightiest,

the most manifest, and the most benevolent. Accordingly when

Servius concluded a league between Ron;e and the thirty towns of

the Latins, among which Tusculum, Gabii, Pneneste, Tibur, Aricia,

Ardea, were at that time the most important, the confederates com­

bined in raising a temple to Diana on the Aventine, the principal

abode of such Latins as had newly become citizens of Rome. The

tablet containing the record of the league, and enumerating every

people that took a part in it, was erected and preserved th~re : and

perhaps it was because this temple was the common property of

Rome and Latiurn, that the Aventine was not included within the

pomcerium.; neither when Servius extended it by incorporating the

Esquiline and the Viminal, nor in subsequent enlargements 90 ~.

The Sabines too joined in the worship of this temple 3 • A yeo·

man of that people had a bull of prodigious size born among his

cattle, the enormous horns of which were preserved down to very

late times, nailed up in the vestibule : the soothsayers announced

that whoever should sacrifice this bull to the Diana of the Aven­

tine, would -raise his country to rule over her confederates. The

Sabine had already driven the victim before the altar, when the

Roman priest craftily rebuked him for daring to offer it up with

unclean hands: while he went and washed in the Tiber, the Ro­

man accomplished the sacrifice.

The legend relates that the king's beneficent and wise laws were

·received by the patricians with sullenness and anger ; and its voice

may well be believed ; for of their descendants but a very few were

inspired with the wisdom of king Theopompus, who comforted his

repining queen by telling her, that limited power is the more lasting.

Strong houses belonging to the nobles in strong situations within

!J02 Gellius xm. 14.

3 In this way one may get over the difficulty which that acute critic 1

G!areanus, perceived in Livy 1. 45.HISTORY OF ROME.

281

the city excited alarm in ancient Rome, as they did in the Italian

towns during the middle ages : thus the people looked with jea·

lousy on the house that the consul Valerius was building; and thus

the Tuscans are said to have been commanded to descend from the

Crelian hill*. In the same spirit it is related, that, when Servius

was building on the Esquiline, and took up his own residence on

that mount, he would not allow the patricians to fix there ; just as

they were afterward prohibited from dwelling on the Capitoline:

but he assigned the valley to them, where they settled and formed

the Vicus Patricius 904 ; in the neighbourhood of Santa Pudenziana.

His suspicion was not unwarranted: thus much may be considered

as historical, that they conspired with a heinous rebel against the

venerable king.

The royal house of Rome, says Livy, was doomed, like others,

to be defiled by tragical horrors. The two brothers, Lucius and

Aruns, the sons of Tarquinius Priscus, were marrie~ to the two

daughters of king Servius. Lucius, capable of crime, though his

own impulses were not strong enough to urge him to it, was united

to a virtuous lady; Aruns, honest and sincere, to a wife of a fiend­

ish character. Enraged at the long life of her aged father, and at

the apathy of her husband, who seemed ready, when the throne

· became vacant, to resign it to his ambitious brother, she swore de­

struction to them both. She seduced Lucius to join her in bringing

about the death of his brother, and of her own sister: without even

the bare show of mourning, they lit their marriage torch at the fu.

neral pile: Tanaquil lived to endure this sorro'f. 5 It seemed

however as if the criminals were 011 the point of losing the object

of their crime: for Servius, to complete his legislation, entertained

the thought of resigning the crown, and establishing the consular

form of government. 6 Nor were· the patricians less alarmed and

indignant at this plan: for they saw that the hateful laws of Ser­

vius would be confirmed forever, if consuls were to be appointed

after the manner proposed in the king's commentaries. When the

conspiracy was ripe, Tarquinius appeared in the senate with the

badges of royalty, and was greeted by ~he insurgents as prince. On

* Vaxro de I. I. 1v. p. 14.

904 Festus v. Patric!tis Vicus.

5 According to Fabius: see Dionysius iv. 30; where he vehemently

finds fault with Fabius on this score, because according to the Annals Aruns

died in the fortieth yeax of Servi us.

6 Livy 1. 48. 60. Dionysius 1v. 40. In Plutaxch, de Fort. Roman. p.

323. d, Ocrisia or Tanaquil exacts an oath from him not to do so: that is, she

foresaw Tullia's crime.

J.-LL282

HISTORY OF ROME.

the report of a seditious commotion, the king hastened undaunted

to the senate-house, and standing in the doorway reprimanded Tar­

quinius as a traitor: the latter seized the weak old man, and threw

him down the stone steps. Bleeding and maimed Servius was lifted

up by some trusty attendants and led away; but before he reached

his dwelling, the tyrant's servants came up with him and murdered

him: his body was left lying in its blood.

Meanwhile,Tullia could not await.the tidings of the result. She

drove through the midst of the crowd .to the senate-house, and hailed

her husband king: her transports struck even him with horror; he

commanded her to return home. In a street, which from that time

forward bore the nam!) of Wicked, the body of her father was lying

before .her. The mules shrank back; her servant pulled in the

reins; she ordered him to drive on over. the corpse: the blood

spirted over the carriage and on her dress.

According to another legend which Ovid has worked up 90 7, the

insurrection of Tarquinius excited a fray between his partisans and

those who remained faithful to the king; in which Servius, while

flying homeward, was slain at the foot of the Esquiline: hence the

bloody corpse was lying before the carriage, when Tullia drove to

take possession of the palace.

Once she ventured to enter the temple of Fortune, where the

honoured statue of her father was erected: the statue hid its face

from the looks of the parricide •

The people, stunned and dismayed, suffered the chains that had

been loosened to be fastened upon them again. But when in the

funeral procession the image of Servius was borne behind his bier

in the pomp of royalty, every virtuous and every fierce passion was

kindled by .the beloved features thus restored to their sight: an in­

surrection would have burst forth immediately; vengeance would

have been taken: but so unstable and thoughtless is the populace,

its rage was appeased when the face was covered overs. Yet the

memory of Servi us continued to live very long; and si_nce the peo­

ple celebrated his birth day on the nones of every month-for the

month had become a matter of uncertainty, but that he was born on

907 Ovid Fast. v1. 598.

8 Ovid Fast. v1. 613.

9 Ovid Fast. v1. 581. Another legend followed by Livy related exactly

the contrary; that Tarquiniils forbade the burial ·Of the corpse, aaying in

mockery, Romulus too went witlurut funeral rites; and that for this reason the

name of Superbus was given him. They who, like Dionysius, thought such

conduct too unmannerly, devised a way of giving Serviu11, not indeed a burial

suitable to his rank, but at all events a private one.HISTORY OF ROME.

283

the nones of some month was agreed by every tradition,-and as

their veneration grew stronger and stronger, when the patricians,

having become sole masters of the government under the consular

form, were pressing hard upon the commonalty, the senate at length

found it necessary to enact that the markets should never be held

on the nones, lest the countryfolk being gathered together, and in­

flamed by present oppression, and by the remembrance of better

times, should venture upon an insurrection, to restore the laws of

the martyr. 91 ~

910 Macrobius Saturnalia. 1, 13.EXAMINATION OF THE ·STORIES OF L.

TARQUINIUS AND SERVIUS TULLIUS.

THE story of Damaratus acquires a seductive look of historical

truth, from the positive manner in which it is connected with Cyp­

selus, whereby it appears at the same time to confirm the chrono­

logical statements with regard to L. Tarquinius. Now could it be

assumed that the story was transplanted in this shape out of native

traditions into the earliest annals, its importance would only be in­

creased by the gross ignorance as to the affairs of Greece displayed

by the annalists even so late as in the seventh century of the city,

and by their manifest incompetence for devising that the tables of

the pontiffs should synchronize with the history of Corinth. Did

they not even consider Dionysius a contemporary of Coriolanus ?

did they not fancy, running off into the opposite error, that in the

year 323 the Carthaginian armies crossed over into Sicily for the

first time9 11 ?

But this apparent chronological coincidence stands and falls with

the dates assigned to L. Tarquinius: and the only foundation for

these is a piece of numerical trifling. In the bare empty outline,

which is clearly an invention, there may seem to be such an agree­

ment: but the old Roman story was enormously at variance with

those dates; ancL there is no possibility of a reconcilement: what

looks like one has only been effected by glossing over some things

and distorting others.

All the Roman annalists, with the exception 'of Piso who adul­

terated what he found, followed Fabius in calling the last king and

his brother Aruns the sons of the elder Tarquinius, who died during

their childhood; and this account was adopted by Cicero and Livy:

911 For the former point, see Dionysius vu. 1: for the latter, Livy 1v. 29;

who repeats the statement without a scruple. There is a singular misunder­

standing here, which I will explain in the second volume.HISTORY OF ROME.

285

Fabius said no less expressly, that they were the sons of Tanaquil,

and that she outlived Aruns. This harmonizes exceedingly well

with our finding that Collatinus and L. Brutus, the former of whom

is described as the grandson to the brother of the elder Tarquinius,

the latter as the son of that king's daughter, are of the same age

with the sons of Tarquinius Superbus : and this strikes so deep

into the very heart of the story, that the refinements of Piso and

Dionysius destroy all manner of connexion in it, and entail the

necssity of still more falsifications than they themselves had any

notion of, in order to restore even a scantling of sense and unity.

It was the easiest of all possible historical controversies, to shame

old Fabius by calculating that Tarquinius, if, as the Annals gave

out, he came to Rome at latest in the eighth year of Ancus, must at

least have reached his eightieth year when he was murdered, and

that Tanaquil cannot then have been under her seventy-fifth ; so

his having left children of tender age behind him was out of the

question; and moreover that, if Aruns died in the fortieth year of

Servius, his mother must then have been a hundred and fifteen years

old. With Fabi~s indeed Dionysius might argue on the premises

of the chronology admitted by both: but the old poet would have

replied to him: My good friend! who told you that I count like

the pontiffs? ·Were I to reckon a period of eighty-two years for

the two reigns of Tarquinius and Servius, and to trouble myself

about what the Annals say concerning the year when the Lucumo

came to Rome and that when Aruns died, then you would be in the

right: but those nonsensical numbers no way affect me. If you

insist on my saying how many years then I would allow to these

two kings, and if I must needs give you an answer; why...five and

twenty, thirty 91 ~ ••• what know I about it? what care I? Only it

must not be a number that ruins my poem, and makes Tullia and

Tarquinius wait twenty long years from the hour when they must

have conceived the plot of their crime, before they carry it into

effect: it must not be a number that makes the father of Collatinus

come into the world above a hundred and twenty years before the

day of his son's idle talk with the royal youths over their cups; or

912 Whoever wishes to form a notion as to the probable mean duration of

a magistracy resembling the Roman monarchy, may acquire it from the cata­

logues of the Venetian doges, during that period when the election did not

fall of set purpose on old men, but on persons fit to govern and to command

the armies of the state.· Durin<>' the five centuries between 805 and 1311,

there were forty doges; so that h~elve years and a half fall to the share ofeach.

Besides at the beginning the office was in fact hereditary.286

HISTORY OF ROME.

the mother of Brutus more than a century before he drove out the

Tarquins, after having been living with the young princes as their

comrade.

But as soon as the birth of the first Tarquinius is placed at least

fifty years later, Damaratus ceases to be the contemporary of Cyp·

selus ; and down comes the whole story which was fabricated out

of this coincidence by some Greek learned in chronology. Such

invention3 may have travelled to Rome as early as in the time of

Fabius, since the father of Roman history did not write till after the

death of Eratosthenes.

Here again 1 will not refuse to try if I can explain how the cur·

rent story arose. That story is very far from the same thing with

a certain ancient Grreco-ltalian tradition, that Etruria had received

alphabetical writing and the arts from Greece. The tale of Dama·

ratus personified the bearers: nobody surely will place the sculptors

Euchir and Eugrammus, that is, the skilful handler of clay and the

good drawer upon it, as real personages in the history of the arts;

yet these names seem to belong to early times; not so that of Cleo·

phantus the painter, who was probably added afterward. Damara­

tus however is inseparable from his companion; and it is by no

means candid to lose sight of or slur over his being the introducer

of writing: which is only done, because it. is impossible to believe

that the art was not brought into Tyrrhenia until about the thirtieth

Olympiad.

What is related of him is an ancient tradition, just of the same kind

as that which makes Evander teach the art of writing to the Latins:

originally it was without any determinate date, and only repre·

sented the fact as belonging to that remote period when writing

was first diffused and the arts were in the germ; for Cleophantus

had no other colours than the red dust ground from tiles : so that

assuredly, had the notion become more distinct, the age of Dama·

ratus would hav,e been thrown back, like that Of Evander, far be­

yond the first Olympiad. As to Corinth being called his home, a

hint for explaining this might perhaps be derived from the resem·

blance noticed above between the earthen vases of Tarquinii and of

Corinth* ; which leads us to infer that there was some peculiar in·

tercourse between these two maritime cities : and perhaps some

Corinthian of the same name did actually at one time or other

reside in Etruria, and gain celebrity; which became still greater

from his name being given by the f~ble. to that ancient teacher of

* P. 100.HISTORY OF ROME.

287

Tyrrhenia. Having thus become generally known, like Pytha­

goras, the Roman legend connected Tarquinius with him, as it did

Numa and the .lEmilii with that philosopher; and from the Roman

chronology it was concluded that he must have been contemporary

with Cypselus, and so might be a fugitive Bacchiad. The cause

which moved him to leave his country, is cleverly devised, and so

is the story how he won general popularity: for it was necessary

to account for a foreigner being freely chosen king.

Now should any person c..onceive that the historical features of

this story are to be detected behind the legendary mask, and that

Tarquinius may have been a Tyrrhenian, born of an Etruscan wo­

man in a marriage of disparagement, he might urge, among other

arguments, his having introduced Greek rites and representations of

the gods into the Roman temples. For my own part I hazard a

very different conjecture, though one in this point nearly allied to

that which has just been suggested; a conjecture which may per­

haps startle even such as are not over-timid, more than any other

opinion at variance with the received one: yet in my eyes it has a

probability amounting to conviction.

The supposition that Tarquinius was an Etruscan owed its origin,

I conceive, solely to his name being deduced from that of the

Etruscan city; so that he was moreover deemed a suitable person

for the Tuscan age of Rome to be referred to. I am so far however

from regarding Tarquinii as the birth-place of his race, that I hold

it to .be of Latin origin.

The notion that the Tarquins were a family in our sense of the

word, is disproved by the fact, the evidence for which will be brought

forward by and by*, that a whole Tarquinian house existed at

Rome, which was banished along with the last king. We also find

mentioned of Tarquins at Laurentumeia: these may be supposed to

have been exiles of that house: but even if they were, to this place

'must the legend or tradition have made them turn their steps, as it

made Collatinus settle at Lavinium. When such a belief was cur­

rent, assuredly Tarquinii was not looked upon as their home.

The Latin origin of the Tarquins is pointed out by the surname

of the first king, just as the names of oth~r patricians showed from

what people they sprang 1". For Priscus was certainly the name

* Note 1148.

913 Dionysius v. 54.

14 J.luruncus, Siculus, Tuscus, Sabinus. See above n. 7G5. Rutilus too

is Rutul,us; and among the Mamilii we find the names Turinus and Vitulus.

In like manner Priscus was a surname of several families: it is best known

as such in ancient times among the Servilii, and as the first surname of theHISTORY OF ROME.

288

of a people just like Cascus*; and after the very same manner did

it grow mean primitive and oldfashioned: the Prisci Latini were

the Prisci et Latini. The formulary for declaring war, which

Livy has inserted under the reign of Ancus, is indeed any thing but

a document of that age : it is taken however from the books of pon­

tifical law, which extended into much remoter ages than the Annals,

and the writers of which, according to the times they lived in, were

observant of the circumstances and relations of antiquity. In these

books such an utter absurdity would never have been committed,

as to draw up a formulary declaring war against the old Latins, at

a time when Latin colonies had never been thought of: the expres­

sion is altogether unexceptionable, if used to denote the united .na­

tion of the Priscans and Latins 915 • Now the Servilii, among whom

Priscus was a surname, were among the Alban houses on the

Crelian; as were the Clmlii, who bore the surname of Siculus 16 :

for th,e Albans were conceived to be a mixture of the Siculians with

the Priscans. But as the Servilii being Priscans belonged to the

Luceres, so were the Tarquins the heatls and representatives of

that tribe. In this capacity they will appear in the course of the

history: for the present I will only remark that the father called up

the lesser houses to the senate, and that they were the faction which

supported the son in his insurrection 17. That one of the Luceres

should have become king, before his tribe was raised by his means

to the full rights of citizenship, is less surprising than if we sup­

pose him to have been a foreigner; and indeed by military influence

it may easily be explained j an infringement of privileges in such a

state of things being much more possible than under the consulate.

The Albans, although a mixed race, were mainly Tyrrhenians; and

this accounts for the worship of the Greek gods at the ludi Romani:

which, if Tarquinius was an Etruscan, is so inexplicable. Down

to this time the Sabine was the prevailing religion at Rome.

to

censor Marcus Porcius: who was born in the land of the Sabines, and came

from Latin ancestors. (Plutarch, Cato, c. 1.) In his case again it was mis­

understood, as if meant to distinguish him from his descendant: pris~i Cato­

nis virtus. The· name Priscus has exactly the same form and character with

the national names, Tuscus, Cascus, Opscus.

* Seep. 61.

915 Like populus Romanus Quiritcs. Livy 1. 32. Quarum rerum, &c.

condixit pater patratus populi Romoni Quiritium patri patrato Priscorum Lati­

norum, hominibusque Priscis Latinis, o/c. See above p. 224.

16 Livy 1. 30. Principes Albanorum in patres legit, Tullios, Servilios,

Quinctios, Geganios, Curiatios, Clrelios.

17 Livy 1. 47. Circumire et prensare minorum maxime gentium patres.HISTORY OF ROME.

28~

Caia Crocilia belongs to a legend concerning Tarquinius entirely

different from the prevalent one: for in the lattter Tanaquil comes

to Rome with him and outlives him; nor is any thing even said of

her having changed her Etruscan name like her husband. Croeilia

had a statue in a temple; so clearly is the tradition about her the

older: and her name implies a connexion with Prroneste, said to

have been built by Croculus 9 1", the heroic founder of her house. In

this point the fictitious Etruscan Tarquinius, the son of Damaratus,

has not quite obliterated the traces of the Latin Priscus: the histo­

rians threw aside altogether, what they could not reconcile with

their accounts.

. ·

·

Lucumo, as a name for an Etruscan, would have been just like

that of Patricius for a Roman. That no such ever occurred among

the Tuscans, is a matter on which the grave-stones, were it needed,

might serve as witnesses: the application of it in the legends of the

Romans to individuals, to the ally of Romulus, to the nobleman of

Clusium*, and to Tarquinius, is a proof how utterly uninformed

they were on every thing that concerned a nation in their imme­

diate neighbourhood, from their not understanding a word of its

language.

The greatest event in the story of Tarquinius Priscus, his sub·

duing the whole of Etruria south of the Apennines, is entirely past

over by Cicero and Livy; but the triumphal Fasti show that here

too Dionysius had Annals to bear him out; so th:.t the account they

gave must have been rejected as incredible by those Roman writers,

as no doubt it had been before the time of Cicero by Polybius.

In truth one may openly deny the historical character of a story

stating that the twelve Etruscan cities from Veii to Arretium, not

one of which is said even to have been besieged, much less taken, ·

should be led to submit to a master by the single battle at Eretum ;

and consequently of the account of the whole war, in spite of the

triumphal Fasti. At the same time this very union of Rome

with Etruria may chance to be one of the very few particles of his­

torical truth relating to those ages' 9 • But even if Rome was the

capital of a king who ruled over Etruria, with whom Tarquinius,

from his name, was identified, and if that king embellished it with

such works as could only be executed by the powers of a great

nation, who is there able to assure us that Rome conquered Etruria?

918 Servius on JEn. v~I. 681.

* Dionysius n. 37. Livy v. 33.

19 Authors read by Strabo (v. p. 220. a.) also ~pake ofTarquinius Ill the

benefactor, and doubtle•• aa the ruler, of Etruria.

1.-!IBI290

HISTORY OF ROME.

that it was not a Tuscan who fixed his abode at Rome, in the cen­

tral point of Etruria, Latium, and the land of the Sabines?

The legend that Servi us Tullius was born in slavery, generally

adopted even by such as did not believe the story of his marvellous

conception, was probably occasioned by his name; or at least that

seemed to establish its truth. Now most of the explanations given

by the Romans themselves of their ordinary names, are to the full

as absurd as it would be to explain many among our own com­

monest names.by means of Teutonic roots: for the Roman are of

Sabine or some other foreign origin, as even Varro, the most ca­

pricious of all etymologers, allows. If however we are disposed

to accede to that which has a pl,ausible look, and so to adopt the

derivation given by Festus and Probus for the names .Manius and

Lucius, we may find an analogous and suitable meaning for ServiwJ

or Seruius; to wit, a child born in the evening, from sero, like

Manius from manes 2 o.

'Vhatever way.we regard him, the most remarkable of the Roman

kings, whose personal existence the history of the constitution

cannot refuse to recognize, is still in all the narratives of our hiB­

torians as much a mythological being as Romulus or Numa. We

look about for firm ground; and had nothing but those fictions been

handed down to us, I should not scruple to follow the track pointed

out by the relation between the king who preceded him .and the

lesser houses. The Tullii are mentioned among the Alban houses

by Livy: hence it would be probable that.Servius also belonged to

the Luceres: I would go further, and conjecture that he may have

been the offspring of a marriage unsanctioned by the state with a

Latin woman of Corniculum. But whatever weight may be attached

•to these probabilities, it requires more courage than does any other

conjecture in my work, to speak with confidence on this hPad.

For by a document, which itself has been preserved in an extra­

ordinary way, Servius is transported into a totally different region,

but is placed where we should never have looked for him.

The most credulous adherent to what commonly passes for a

history of the early ages of Rome, could not decline the challenge

to abide by the decision of Etruscan histories, if any strange good

chance were to supply us with such in an intelligible language.

For they must grant that the literature of Etruria was far older than

that of Rome ; and that the earliest Roman historian must have lived

920 The name of the Servilian house besides justifies us in conjecturing

without fear of going wrong that there was a hero named Servius in the Ro­

man '!1ythology.

'HISTORY OF ROME.

291

a full century later than the time when the Etruscan annals were

composed, if these were written in the eighth secle of their nation*.

Now we <lo find an account of what these annals related about Ser­

vius, in the fragments of a speech made by the emperor Claudius

concerning the admission of some Lug<lunensian Gauls into the

senate: which fragments are preserved on two tables discovered at

J,yons in the sixteenth century 9 ~1, and since the time of Lipsius have

been often printed among the notes o~ Tacitus, but probably have

seldom met with a reader. And on this point the author of the

Tyrrhenian history is unquestionably a trustworthy witness.

Claudius begins to recount from the origin of the city how often

the form of government had been changed, and how even the royal

dignity had been bestowed upon foreigners. Then he says of

Servius Tullius: according to our annals he was the son of the

captive Ocresia: but if we follow the Tuscans, he was the faithful

follower of Creles Vivenna 22 , and shared in all his fortunes. At

last, being overpowered through a variety of disasters, he quitted

Etruria with the remains of the army that had 3erved under Creles,

went to Rome, and occupied the Crelian hill, calling it so after his

former commander. He exchanged his Tuscan name l\fastarna for

a Roman one, obtained the kingly power, and wielded it to the

great good of the state 23 •

Now Crelius or Creles Vibenna, and the settling of his army at

Rome on the .hill named after him, were known to the Roman

archeologers, and even mentioned in the Annals. According to

them Creles himself came to Rome : but with regard to the person

who was king at the time, the statements, as Tacitus observesg 4 ,

differed greatly. He himself assumes that it was Tarquinius Pris·

cus : and a mangled passage of Festus, where moreover Creles and

Vibenna are said to have been brothers, seems to have agreed with

* Above p. 104;

921 It may be found in Gruter, p. Dll.

22 ClEli might look like the genitive of Cll!lius; but there is no long I in

the impression, and Claudius, from his love of what was antiquated, declined

Cll!les in this way, like Persi. The Etruscan gentile names ended in na, as

those of the Romans did in ius: thus ClEcina, Spurinv.a, Perpenna, and here

Vivenna and .~fastarna.

23 Servius Tullius, si nostros sequimur, captiva natus Ocresia; si Tus­

cos, Cieli quondam Vi vennre sodalis fidelissimus, omnisque ejus casus comes:

postquam varia fortuna exactus cum omnibus reliquiis Creliani exercitus Etru­

ria ex,cessit, montem Crelium oc~upavit, et a duce &uo Crelio ita appellitatus

(write appellitavit), mutatoque nomine, nam Tusce Mastarna ei nom~n erat,

ita appellatus est ut dixi, et regnum summa cum rcip. utilitate optinmt.

24 Annal. IV. GG.

·292

HISTORY OF ROME.

him 925 : on the other hand the same Festus in another passage, along

with Dionysius and Varro 26 , places him under Romulus during the

Sabine war: both statements make him come to assist the Roman

kings on their summons. In all these stories, as in the Etruscan

one, he appears as the leader of an army raised by himself and not

belonging to any state, like the bands of the Condottieri, sometimes

serving a master for pay, at others pillaging and exacting contribu­

tions on their own score. \Ve read several times of foreigners

levying men in Etruria, and that too in early ages*: a practice out

of which such dangerous bodies of troops might easily arise.

· I have already remarked that the Lucumo mentioned in the Sa­

bine war is no other than Creles, who was transplanted into the

age of Rornulus 21, because Lucerum existed from time immemorial

by the side of Rome, and the Tuscans on the Cmlian were taken

for Etruscans. This trace leads us further; and, such was the

multiplicity of the legends, it is exceedingly probable that in some

other the supposed Lucumo Tarquinius was identified with this

very Tuscan leader: in that case the calling up of the.lesser houses,

or of the Luceres, answered to the settling of Cmlius and his fol­

lowers. In like manner I also suspect that there was a connexion

between the Roman legend of Tarquinius, the assumed supreme

head of all Etruria, and the Etruscan one of the conqueror Tar­

chon28, the founder of Tarquinii, .who was born with the wisdom

and the gray hairs of old age. This Tarchon however, a descend­

ant of Telephus, was claimed by the Rasena, as Hector and the

Teucrian heroes were by the Greek inhabitants of Ilium : he be­

longs to the Tyrrhenians, and was probably the hero who gave

name to the house of the Tarquins.

,

Here I pause, convinced that, though a few points in the grey

9"25 V. Tuscum Vicum: we ought probably to read secuti for secum, were

.it allowable to amend' a passage where the gaps cannot be filled up with cer­

tainty.

26 Fest. Epit, v. Coelius Mons. Dionysius n, 3G. Varro de L. L. 1v. 8.

p.14; I will remark here by the way that the diphthong oe in the name of the

hill and of the Etruscan commander as well as of the Roman family is an en­

tire mistake, and that we ought always to write Cmlius; and besides, that the

Florentine manuscript of Varro instead of Coelio has Cmle, which Victorius

seems to have overlooked.

* Above p. 97, note 403. ­

27 Above p. 227. Dionysius n, 37. Compare Varro de L. L.1v. 9, p.17.

28 Schol. Veron. on lEn. x. , .flrchon and Darclwn must however surely

be blunders of the scribes, See Strabo v. p. 219. d: above pp. 29. 87, note

362.HISTORY OF ROME.

293

distance may appear to be distinguishable from the height, he who

would descend to approach them, would forthwith lose sight of

them, and, having no fixed point to steer by, would wander on a

fruitless journey further and further from his course. The Etrus·

can story, if it had come to us immediately and authentically from

the old Etrnscan annals, could not be gainsaid, but would be irre­

concilable with all the rest of Roman history ; nor would it lead

to any results. But while we take into account that Etruria con­

tinued to flourish till the time of Sylla without losing her national

independence, we may also regard it as certain that during all that

period there was a succession of annalists, among whom, as among

the Roman, the later always knew more than his predecessors,

without having any new sources of information. 'Vherever judg­

ment was requisite, Claudius was quite at a fault: and if the ancient

tale of the faithful and persevering Mastarna retiring to Rome had

been attached to Servius Tullius out of national vanity by any

Etruscan writer, however late his age or arbitrary his procedure,

Claudius would yet have been unable. to distinguish this from a

genuine tradition.

I will not pore any longer over these questions : but this repre­

sentation, like the ordinary one of L. Tarquinius Priscus, clearly

implies the notion that there was a time when Rome received Tus:

can institutions from a prince of Etruria, and was the great and

splendid capital of~ powerful Etruscan state.

Those who saw that a part of the religious knowledge possessed

by the Romans had an Etruscan character, as was confirmed by

the practice continued down to late ages for the Roman youths to

study at the source of oral tradition*, and that all the. profane sci­

ences prevalent at Rome before the introduction of Greek literature

were of Etruscan origin ; and who believed the evidence affirming

that many of the political institutions, and even the names of the

ancient tribes 92 B, came from the same source; were long ago led to

the conviction that the Etruscans were a much more important

element in the ancient Roman nation than they are said to be, at

least by writers now extant. Accordingly, when the tale concern­

ing the Alban origin of Rome had been l!Xcluded from history, the

first bent of thought was to assume that it was an Etruscan colony.

To go thus far, against all ancient authority,, was more than bold:

·but he who contends against rooted prejudices, digging to the bot­

*

!);,JL)

Above p. 92, note 377.

Volnius in Varro de L. L. 1v. D. p. 17.

See above p. 101, note 415.294

. HISTORY OF HO.ME.

tom of them and resolved to upset their dominion, cannot possibly

keep himself entirely free from excess ; he is led into it by the

contemptible aspect which every thing connected with the old error

wears in his eyes. Moderation can only come in after the victory

is achieved : then is the time to look into the erroneous opinion

which had previously been current, for those features of truth that

had been crusted over; and the restoring this truth to honour, when

purified from what had made it worthless, is a delightful reward, to

which an honest man will joyfully sacrifice his hypothesis.

As such a reward I esteem my persuasion, in the first place that

at Rome, as in Etruria, a- very great deal which was regarded as

Etruscan was in fact Tyrrhenian, and consequently any thing but

foreign to the Latins;· and next, that that operation of Etruscan in­

fluence upon Rome, which by the Romans w·as implied under the

government of the first L. Tarquinius, by the Rtruscans under the

settlement of the army of Creles, is enough to account intelligibly

for the rest: so that it is not necessary to deny the Latin stock of

the first Romans. .J have gained the conviction that, considering

the lateness of the times when Crere is still spoken of as the Pelas~

gian Agylla, its conquests by the Etruscans, and consequently their

advance to the Tiber, previously to which they could not have

established a colony at ·Rome, cannot be referred to very remote

ages ; and that before the time 'of the Etruscans the Sabines were

a powerful nation in these parts. The point of most importance

would be that the names of the tribes were Tuscan : but is it at all

probable that the etymological explanations given by Volnius were

happier or surer than Varro's Latin ones? even if he did not abuse

his ad vantage that no ~me was capable of judging of what he said.

The Etruscans at one time were masters of Rome ; even if it

was only during the passing conquests by Porsenna: perhaps one

of the three states in its neighbourhood conquered the city, or the

army or' Creles or some other such established itself there. The

former notion, and the conjecture· that Crere planted a colony at

Rome, derive considerable probability from the franchise shared by

and named after the inhabitants of Crere, and from the affinity be-,

tween the religious worship of the two places. The citizens of

the genuine Roman colonies had the franchise of Rome without a

vote; and, so far as it coul<l have any value for a Roman, he had

the franchise of the colony. Had any such town, Antium for in­

stance or Ostia, ma<le itself independent, and grown powerful while

Rome sauk, and had it nevertheless retained its ancient institutions;

in that case the right to such a franchise there might have been de­HISTORY OF ROME.

295

nominated the right of the Romans. A like state of things would

very well account for the origin of the Cmrite franchise at Rome:

there is a good deal of plausibility in the derivation of the word

Cr£remonia from Cmre, slight as in such matters is the authority of

the Roman grammarians who give it: and one is naturally ready to

embrace this explanation of the fact, that when the Gauls attacked

the city the sacred treasures of the Roman state were conveyed

for refuge to Cmre*, in preference to other places not more remote.

Still all this does not amount to a proof. Who can tell how for

this connexion was a connexion with Agylla, arid how far with

Crere? Besides the wish to introduce genuine Etruscan laws

would have led an Etruscan sovereign to !!'end for priests and

teachers from the nearest city of his own people; and thus a per·

manent intercourse bet,veen the Roman an<l Cmrite priesthood

might be establishe<l: while as to a community Gf franchise, it ex­

isted at times even with a totally foreign people. The close union

between Rome and Latium, the constitution of the centuries which

was at once common and peculiar to them, are in fact altogether

incompatible with the hypothesis of an Etruscan colony ; but may

be reconciled with that of a very powerful action of Etruscan influ·

ence. If any body pretends that he is able to decide, with confi­

dence in questions of such obscurity, let none listen to himt.

The want of any historical information with regard to the Etrus­

can <lominion at Rome arises not merely from the same general

causes by which history has been destroyod and perverted; but in

times when no written documents exist in an imperishable form, a

people that has delivered itself from a foreign yoke, seeks to blot

out even the memory of its ever having pined in servitude. Thus

after the revival of ancient literature the Italian historians, ashamed

that their country should be governed by barbarians, fabled that

Narses h~d driven the Goths, Charlemange the Lombards, out of

the whole of Italy, and had restored it to the Romans, purged of

the stranger and of his laws.

As to the story of the death of Servius, which has lived for two

thousand years, and willJive as long as a recollection of the Roman

kings endures, it may be of about the same historical reality, as

that the Tuscan chief Mastarna was the son of Ocrisia: Tullia's

"

Livy v. 40.

To understand the foregoing paragraphs the re'ader should be aware

that the author in his first edition inclined strongly to suppose that Rome was

of Etruscan origin, and even started the conjecture that it might be a colony

from Crere.

t296

HISTORY OF ROME.

crimes may be no less imaginary than those of Lady Macbeth. But

thus much is infallibly certain, that the laws of the man who c::illed

the commons to freedom, were for the most part rendered abortive:

whether this counter, revolution of the patricians was effected by

mere threats and the crafty usurpation of power, or was attended

with bloodshed and atrocities, is of very little importance. The

fact and its fruits are recorded in the tradition as the reig'n of Tar­

quinius the tyrant.

On the other hand those wholesome laws, the perfecting the state,

and the completing the .city, which presuppose that there was an

earlier condition such as may aptly be termed the Romulean, shed

glory over the reigns of the first Tarquinius and of Servius : the

investigation of these points leads me back again to something that

is really historical and stands on a sure basis.THE COMPLETING THE CITY OF ROME.

THE festival of Septimontium preserved the remembrance of a

time when the Capitoline, Quirinal, and Viminal hills were not yet

incorporated with Rome; but the rest of the city, with the excep­

tion of the Aventine, which was and continued to be a borough,

formed a united civic community, to the extent afterward inclosed

within the wall of ServiusB 30 • It consisted of seven districts, which

as such still retained each its own holidays and sacrifices. in the age

of Tiberius 81 : Palatium, Velia, Cermalus 8 ~, Crelius, Fagutal, Oppius,

Cispius 88 , Not that every one of these places had a claim to be

called a hill: one unquestionably, and perhaps a second, lay in the

plain at the foot of· a hill; Others were heights, which in later

times were reckoned along with some neighbouring hill, as part of

it, with the view of not having more than seven hills in Rome: for

even in regard to this division a form derived from an early age and

a petty state of things was subsequently stretched by the Romans

to fit a very enlarged one 84, The Velia was the ridge which·runs

930 Varro (iv. 5. p. 11), according to the Florentine MS, considers Septi­

montium as the ancient name of the place where the city afterward arose:

Ubi nunc est Roma Septimontium.

31 The members of these guilds must be the montani who appear in the

declamation Pro dmno 28 (74): null um est in hac urbe collegium, nulli pagani,

aut montani. The plebs rustica cannot possibly be alluded to in this place.

32 The spelling this name with a C, not a G,·is established by Festus,

the Florentine MS of Varro, and Plutarch (Romul. c. 3); the termination us,

not um, b'y the epitome of Festus.

33 Festus v. Septimontium. Beside these he also mentions the Subura;

that is, one district more than seven : this however was the pagus sucusanus,

or belonged to it; hence the Suburans were pagani, not montani. They may

have taken part in celebrating the Septimontium, from belonging to the liber­

ties of Lucerum, not of Quirium.

34 Not only did the Romans never reckon more than seven hills; but

when Augustus divided the city into regions, though it was entirely for prac­

J.-NN298

HISTORY OF ROME.

from the Palatine toward the Carinre, the site of the temple of Peace

and of that of Venus and Roma 935 : Oppius and Cispius are the two

hills of the Esquiline: but the Cermalus is the spot at the foot of

the Palatine, where the L~percal and the Ficus Ruminalis were,

and where, before the first Tarq uinius, the surface, when the waters

were high, was flooded from the V elabrum. So that it is by no

means necessary to suppose that the Fagutal was a hill: and since

it is incredible that the wide and convenient plain between the Pa­

latine and the Crelian, Septizonium and the Colosseum, which did

not need draining like the lower levels, should have been unoccu­

pied by buildings and without a name, it seems to me most plausi­

ble to look on this as the Fagutal 36•

These places, which had sprung up near one another, were not

united by any ring wall. I have already marked out the line of

the fortifications in the pomcerium of Romulus, and hinted that on

the further side of the Via del Colosseo it abutted on the mound

which protected the Carinre 3 7: in the valley beyond, under that

mound, lay Subura, which was then a village 38• The Cispius and

the Crelian, we are to suppose, were strengthened after· the ancient

Italian method by steepening the sides of the hill, and, where the

ground did not allow of this, by a wall and ditch. The Aventine,

from lying insulated, admitted of being easily fortified.

The part most in need of defence was the flat between the Pa­

latine and the Crelian: for this was the only place where there•

were open plains. As the ground abounded in land springs, a moat

·running from the edge of the Aventine toward the neighbourhood

of the Porta Capena, itself supplying the earth for a wall, was the

tical purposes, he determined their number by doubling that of the oldest

divisions. Christian Rome too was very early divided into seven regions.

!l35 For the Carinre as all the older topographers perceived from the con­

tinuance of the name, le carra, and from observation, was the neighbourhood

of S. Pietro in Vincola: and under the Velia lay the temple of the Penates, in

a street leading from the Carinre to .the Forum; perhaps San Cosma. e Da­

miano.

36 The notion that the Fagutal was a part of the Esquiline rests on the

misinterpretation of a passage in Varro (1v. 8. p. 15.), which says nothing of

the kind.

.

37 Above p. 220. Varro de L. L.1v. 8. p. 15. Subura sub muro terreo

Carina.rum.

38 Varro iu the same place : Subura, Junius scribit, ab eo quod fuerit

sub antiqua urbe,-quod subest ei loco qui terreue murus vocatur._ Sed ego a

pago potius Sucusano, dictum puto SucusaJn. Pagu11 Sucusanus, quod sue·

currit Carinis.HISTORY OF ROME.

299

fortification that nature pointed out. This was the line of the

Marrana or· ditch of the Quirites, mentioned among the works of

Ancus 989 : here alone can it be looked for by any one who calls to

mind what was then the state of the city, and not upon the plain

where the wall of Servius was afterward erected: for the Qui­

rinal and Viminal did not yet form part of Rome.

The establishing a local communication to unite Septimontium

with the hills of Quirium on the one side, on the other with the

Aventine, was the beginning of a new city. It commenced with

the building the Cloaca Maxima, which carried off the collected

waters of the Velabrum, and which its founder made of such

dimensions that it could receive still larger afRuxes. "Without en­

croaching on the domain of Roman topography, a historian may

record of. this astonishing structure, that its innermost vault is a

semicircle 18 Roman palms in width and in heighth; that this is

inclosed within a second, and this again within a third ; and that

they are all formed of hewn blocks of peperino, 7t palms long, and

4t high, fixed together without cement. This river-like sewer

discharges into the Tiber through a sort of gate in the quay; which

is iirr the same style of architecture, and must have been erected

at the same time, inasmuch ·as it dams off the river from the Vela­

brum which was redeemed from it. It was only for the Ve•

labrum and the valley of Circus that this Cloaca sufficed: far more

extensive structures were requisite to convey into. it the waters

drained off from the land about the Forums and the Subur~. toge­

ther with what .came down from the hills. And a vault no less

astonishing than the one just described \Vas discovered during the

excavations in the year 1742 40 , passing off from the V elabrum,

under the Comitium and the Forum, as far as S. Adriano, 40

palms below the present surface: the nature of the ground shows

evidently that it might be traced from thence under the Forum of

Augustus.i up to the Subura 49•

!)39 Above, p. 269.

40 Ficoroni Vestigia di Roma p. 74, 75.

41 Which Hirt and Piale have recognized in what since Donati has been

called the Forum of Nerva. The vault must pass under the Arco de' Pan­

tani: that enormous wall can never have been built directly across it.

42 Of which express evidence is contained in the lines of Juvenal, v.

104,105,

Tiberinus--

Vernula riparum pinguis torrente cloaca,

Et solitus medire cryptam penetrare Suburre.300

HISTORY OF ROME.

The part of it however then uncovered between the Fenili and S.

Adriano must be of a much later age than the Cloaca in the Vela·

brum: for Ficoroni, an extremely estimable authority, mentions,

only cursorily it is true-but he was an eyewitness and cannot have

used a wrong word here-that it was built of travertino : and this

material did not come into use until long after the time of the kings,

who employed Alban or Gabine stone. From the very first indeed

there must unquestionably have been a sewer from the Subura;

else the Forum could never have been constructed: but this object

might be attained, though not permanently, by means of such drains

as are built at present. Dionysius relates from C. AciliusD 48 , who

wrote after 570, that a thousand talents, near two hundred thousand

pounds of our money, were once spent by the censors in improving

the sewers : tor sewers so built as those we now see, there could

never have been any need of laying out a single as. Earthquakes,

the pressure of buildings, the neglect of fifteen hundred years, have

not moved a stone out of its place ; and for ten thousand years to

come those vaults will stand uninjured as at this day. If however

in the room of an irnperf~t structure in need of repairs they sub·

stituted an indestructible one like that of Tarquinius, but executed

with the storie then in higher esteem, this might require that sum,

and yet, if carelessly related, might pass for nothing mote than a

reparation 44 • That the waters from the valley of the Circus like·

wise flowed into the Cloaca Maxima, is evident: so probably did

those from the forums between the Capitoline and the river. On

the other hand. the drainage of the seventh and ninth regions formed

a completely distinct system; ·and the notion that in the name of

the church S • .l:lmbrogio in maxima the word understood is cloaca,

is utterly untenable 45 ,

Since the Esquiline was already part of Septimontium, Livy's

account that Servius Tullius erected buildings and increased the

population upon it, but that the hills he united with the city were

the Quirinal and Viminal 46 , gives a much correcter view of the

943 The Vatican MS gives' A11.IA;.ior: instead of 'A11.'7i.1or: m. 67.

44 The period after the first Punic war, when the contribution of Car­

thage, amounting to above six hundred thou11and pounds (Polyb. 1. 63), flowed

into the Roman treasury, is most probably the time at which this work was

executed. We can hardly conceive that any thing so luxurious as the use of

travcrtino prevailed earlier.

45 The true word is probably porticu.

46 Livy I. 44. Addit duos colles, Quirinalem, Viminalemque. lnde dein­

ceps auget Esquilias, ibique ipse habitat. Only he ought to have mentioned

the Capit?line hill along with the other two.HISTORY OF ROME.

301

gradual progress with which changes are brought about, than the

statement which includes that double hill among those first taken

into the city by Servius. That nothing but insulated villages stood

in those days on the Oppius and Cispius, may be inferred, because

in the distribution of the city into four regions Subura and the Ca·

rime made part of the Crelian region, not of the Esquiline.*

In a military point of view the union of the whole city was

effected by the erection of the wall. The connecting the Colline

region with the Esquiline was so entirely dependent upon and the

consequence of such a wall, that here again Livy, who following

older accounts calls Servius its builder 947, proceeds with much more

consistency than Di-0nysius and Pliny who ascribe it to Tarquinius

the tyrant 48 • · But whatever name it may be associated with, it was

scarcely a less work than the Cloaca, and worthy to excite the

astonishment of Plinyt, although the Colosseum had been built in

his time by the incalculable riches of the empire. This mound

extended from the Colline to the Esquiline gate, seven stadiums or

seven-eighths .of a mile: out of a moat above a hundred feet broad

and thirty deep-for there is no stone here, only puzzolana-was

raised a wall fifty feet wide, and consequently above sixty high,

faced toward the moat with a skirti.ng of flag stones, and flanked

with towers. But the Colline gate was situate where the Quirinal

had already sunk to a flat level; and a similar wall connected it

with the western steeps of that hill 49 , where we may place the

boundary of the ancient Sabine town. .

The Viminal, at the time of its. being taken into the city, seems

to have been still entirely uncultivated, and overgrown with osier

thickets, .whence its name; as that, of the Esquiline came from its

* Varro de L. L. IV. p. 15.

!)47 Aggere et fossis et muro circumdat urbem.

48 Strabo does not by any means speak so distinctly in favour of Servi us,

ns at first sight it seems: IV. P· 235. c. And the fancy that Dionysius knew

it to have been his work, only forgot to mention that the wall which he attri­

butes to Tarquinius (1v. 54) was a different one, could never have occurred

except to Nardini, the corrupter of' Roman topography, which before his time

was much better understood. If' the city was left open or weakly fortified on

this side, where the Quirinal and Viminal descend by a gentle slope into the

plain, it made not tlie slightest difference whether the Gabines hit upon this

weak spot as they came along the high road, or whetl1er, to get to it, they

were forced to cross the country for half a Roman mile to the right. In a

Tuscan war, as the city was covered by the Tiber and Anio, such weakness

was far less dangerous.

t H. N. III. 9.

49 Nibby Mura di Roma. p. 110.302

HISTORY OF ROME.

oak woods 950 • This enlargement was the idea of a mind that trusted

in the eternity and the destinies of the city, and was preparing a

way for its advance. We are not to suppose that a regular town

existed in the part near the wall till long after: but before it arose

the fortified enclosure received the peasant with his cattle in time

of war, and afforded a safe place of pasture, like the long walls of

Athens. Besides there is a singular justice in Cicero's expression,

that Rome stands on a healthy spot in the midst of a pestilential

country 51• The air in the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo must

have been just as noxious in summer then as now : nay, even be­

tween the wall of Servius and the present walls, on the Esquiline

and Viminal fields, it is unhealthy ; and the countryfolk then as

now must have retired during the summer months into the city; so

that for them dwellings were wanted 59 • They may have found

th.em on the Esquiline, as may others on the Aventine and Crelian;

and this explains how it came to pass that Rome, where trade was

only carried on for the mere neci!ssaries of life, and where both the

burghers and the commonalty consisted wholly of farmers, had so

large a compass, and yet in those days the country was not left

without inhabitants •.- When the vintage and regular field labours

begins, the bad air has disappeared, and the peasant may again

pass the night on his field: and when it returns, he has harvested

his corn. On the east and south the wall of Servius seems accu­

rately to follow the limit marked out by nature for the city: on this

side no blessing has attended the overstepping his inaugurated po·

mmrium. And still· the people unconsciously acknowledge his

ancient Rome to be the true city : the vine-dresser or gardener

about the Lateran or Santa Bibiena says, he is going to Rome, or

coming from it, just as much as he that lives withounhe walls of

Aurelian.

The mound that has been described, and such lines as it was

necessary in other places to carry across the vallies, and the towers

and walls at the gates which barred an ascent, were the only works

raised by man: elsewhere the city was fortified solely by the steep·

950 From spots covered with the tallest kind of oak, the tIJScvlus: see Voss

on Virgil's Georgics n. 16. In V a.rro's til,Jle this hill was still full of small

sacred groves : de L. L. 1v. p. 15.

51 Locum in regione pestilenti salubrem: de Re p. u. 6.

52 For determining the site of such Latin towns as were destroyed in

early times, the air may serve as a negative criterion: they are all to be looked

for upon the hills; and no place where the country people cannot live through

the summer, can well have been a town 2500 years ago.HISTORY OF ROME.

303

ness of its .hills 958 , When the Gauls had clomb up the Capitoline,

they were in the citadel; so it cannot have been protected by any

wall. The circumference of the city, a little larger than that of

Athens 5 •, did not measure six miles: on the Janiculum there may

have stood a fort: but the notion that walls came down from it and

reaching to the Tiber covered the bridge, is utterly mistaken : the

bridge was out of the city 55 : its wall stretched from the Tarpeian

rock along the Aventine, between the Circus and the river, and may

still be traced where a continuous ridge of rubbish cuts across all

'

the allie:;i in the V elabrum.

These works and the building of the Capitoline temple declare

with an irresistible voice that Rome under her later kings was the

capital of a great state.

953 Dionysius ix. 68.

54 Dionysius 1v. 13. u:. 68.

55 The proofs for these assertions, which are by no means newly taken

up, will be given in another place.THE SIX EQUESTRIAN CENTURIES.

THE increase of the senate, whereby the number of_ senators was

raised to three hundred, is ascribed to the first Tarquinius by every

writer, with the exception of one who mistakes the character of the

lesser houses 958 • On the. other hand, there are great discrepancies

in the statements as to the number he introduced; with respect to

which, and to my opinion that this increase was effected by admit­

ting the third class, it would be an idle repetition for me. to speak

again 57 •

The most difficult point however in the whole earlier history of

the constitution is the formation of the three new centuries attri­

buted to the same king: an innovation which, inasmuch as it con­

fines itself to an extension of the Romulean constitution, is placed,

in consonance to the spirit of such personifications, before the time

of Servius Tulli~s ; while it is later than the calling up of the Lu­

ceres into the senate, by which act that constitution received its

complete development. If the Ramnes, Tit~es, and Luceres, were

in fact centuries and tribes of the houses, although the troops of

horsemen were also called by the name of the tribe they belonged

to; then the centuries formed by Tarquinius and named after the

old ones, but as secondary to them, were likewise tribes of houses :

and nothing less than the design of creating new centuries out of

new houses, to stand along side of the old ones, could give occasion

to the extreme violence with which Navius opposed him, and to

the miracle wrought in support of it: a mere change in military

arrangements would never have met with such unbending resist­

ance, even from the most stiff-necked of augurs. Thus much is

clear, that the sovereign wished to form three new tribes of houses,

partly out of his own retainers, partly from amo1.1g the commons,

956 Tacitus, xx. 25; with regard to whose statement see the text to note

1158.

57 See above p. 220.HISTORY OF ROME.

305

and to name them after himself and his friends; so that there would

have been six of them: nor is it less clear that Attus N avius, acting

in the spirit of the old citizens, withstood the king to the utmost,

and even called in heaven to his aid. Was this the prince who

conceived this project, really Tarquinius? or was he au Etruscan?

If he yielded to the resistance of the nation, he certainly cannot be

regarded as a conqueror. But in what sense are we to understand

that he yielded? since he still formed three new centuries; which,

being united with the old ones under the name of the six suffragia,

outlived the constitution of the classes such as it came from the

hands of Servius Tullius. And again how came it that the number

of the curies still continued to be .thirty, as in the original three

centuries or tribes ? When Tarquinius purposed to create three

new tribes, he must have intended to divide these like the former

three into thirty curies, and to establish that number of new ones :

this however did not take place,

There are, it seems to me, only two suppositions which can help

us to solve this enigma. '\Ve may assume that the original three

hundred houses still existed in their full compliment; and that the

same number of new ones were either formed, or, being already in

existence among the commons, were admitted into the body of

burghers; so as to assign ten new houses to every cury, the number

of the curies remaining as before, but, inasmuch as each cury was

now twice as numerous, only five curies instead of ten being reck­

oned to a century, which even in this manner would still consist of

a hundred houses.

It is ~uch more probable however that, when the alteration took

place, the original number of the houses had long since fallen short:

for every exclusive aristocracy, which omits to replace such houses

as become extinct, dies away ; and that too with precipitous rapid­

ity, if it be strict in insisting on purity of descent; so that it must

sink into an oppressive and hateful oligarchy 958 • Now supposing

958 Let any one compare lists of the families of freeholders in any Ger­

man province several hundred years ago and at present. Formerly they were

a considerable portion of the whole· free rustic population: how many in a

hundred are there now in the same province? where a part of the gaps has

not been filled up by.families of strangers settling amongst them, or by the

rise of new families from among the old inhabitants. And after all what has

been filled up has been no more than a small part. Among the ancients in

the common course of things a replenishment of this sort was impossible.

There are oligarchs who ·regard the share of the aristocracy in the adminis­

tration of government as a tontine, where the total property belonging to the

1.-00306

HISTORY OF ROME.

that some half of the houses were become extinct, that every cury

on an average no longer contained more than five, then, if the re­

mainder amounting to about a hundred and fifty were collected

together into half the number of the original curies, and the vacant

fifteen were filled with newly adopted houses, the ancient propor­

tion of ten houses to a cury remained undisturbed.

And this latter hypothesis is confirmed, and almost established,

by the statement that Tarquinius doubled the senate, raising the

number from 150 to 300; just as the doubling the cavalry and the

centuries is ascribed to him. Only here two changes are con­

founded, between which a considerable interval would probably

elapse. If every house had a member to represent it, 'the senate

of the first two estates, after many of the houses had become ex­

tinct, can no longer have amounted to· two hundred; and the third

estate also must nave 'been unable to depute a hundred senators,

long before its council was ·incorporated with the supreme one.

The calling up of the Luceres thrrefore would be far from raising

the senate to three hundred, as would have bet{n the case if the

complement of houses had been full: and, without weighing the

numbers too minutely, we may combine the two statements, which

represent the senate, the one as having been increased by a hun­

dred, the other as having been doubled: the former being effected

in conformity to the original plan of the constitution, the latter by

creating the three new centuries. The first of these measures must

have been the earlier, but the second too must have preceded the

legislation of Servius •

. One might strain one's ingenuity in considering whether the new

equestrian centuries were not more likely than those of the third

estate to be called the lesser ones. In such dim twilight all appear­

ances are deceptive: I rather incline however to believe that each

of the additional centuries shared in the honours. of its elder name­

sake; because the colleges of priests continued to be filled exclu­

sively from the two superior estates, each of which appointed two,

corresponding to its two centuries. In like manner all the six

centuries were represented by the six Vestals·"'·

survivors continues unchanged, and every individual finds himself all the

better off, the mote of his comrades have died away.

In Zealand the nobles were become wholly extinct; in Holland they were

so within four or five families; the free peasantry in northern Holland were

not admitted into the states: hence the towns of necessity acquired exclusive

possession of the government. ·

* See above, p. 230.HISTORY OF ROME.

307

Instances are not proofs, but in history are scarcely of less force;

above all where they exhibit a parallel in the progressive develop­

ment of institutions. The following is the history of a constitution

consisting of curies and houses, which will show that the changes

and developments pointed out in the foregoing remarks are not

arbitrarily devised: and since' the place where, this constitution

existed is intimately connected with o"ur classical recollections, the

account of it is by no means alien to this work.

It was a pleasing thought of the Neapolitan jurists, that the seggj

of their native city had arisen out of the Greek phratries : and if it

was a delusion to derive the old and perple:\ing name of those bo­

dies, tocchj, from the Greek e"'""• yet it is hard to keep oneself

from being led astray by it. At all events however that derivation

must not pass for more t}ian a venerable reminiscence : for sub­

stantially all we can expect to find in Naples under its dukes, as ill

all the other free cities dependent upon the Roman throne at Con­

stantinople, is a constitution arising out of the municipal institutions

of. the western empire, an ordo and possessores. These proprieta­

ries, whose nobility consisted, like the eu/'iwot of the Greeks, in

hereditary birth and hereditary wealth, were registered according

to their lineage in tocclif, which were connected with particular dis­

tricts of the city, and were of two kinds. Of the great tocclij, ac­

cording to the earliest mention of them, there were four, to whkh

two were afterward added: the number of the lesser cannot be de­

termined, since they are only spoken of incidentally. The former

may be compared to the tribes, the latter to the curies ; with this

difference, about which there can be no question, that both were

open to receive new citizens. Tocchj was .the ancient name for

their places of assemblage or chambers, their curies; but under the

kings of the house of Anjou they obtained that of seggj.

These kings, who pursued a system of grounding their usurpa­

tion on feudality and military noblesse, changed the character of

the Neapolitan citizens, by their readiness to bes.tow knighthood

on such as were well born or even rich : and since the foreign no­

bles who resided in the capital, took care to be enrol1ed in the seggj,

the consequence was, that, at the time when every where else the

power of the noble houses in the towns was sinking, at Naples an

aristocracy of houses was introduced.· The newly admitted citi­

zens must have entered immediately into the six great seggj: for

the lesser all gradually disappear ; because, as is expressly stated,

the few families that were left in them became extinct.

Thus only the six great seggj remained : and these by the union

a308•

HISTORY OF ROME.

of two were reduced to five; probably with the view of giving the

vacated one to the commonalty, against whom the tribes on becom­

ing noble had been shut ; and who in this country could not suc­

ceed in establishing any thing like corporate institutions, while the

kings were in need of their assistance against the turbulent nobility.

The five noble seggj were not absolutely closed: but the recep­

tion even of noblemen into them was so obstructed, that the number

of families in them continually lessened ; while there was a conti­

nual incr'3ase of the nobles who resided in the city without being

admitted among the members, and yet were superior to many of

them in rank and honours. This is the parallel to the state of

things I conceive to have existed at Rome, when the reformer,

whom we call Tarquinius Priscus, was desirous of forming new

tribes. The last mentioned families made interest with the Spanish

kings that they would vouchsafe to erect a new seggio : but,

wretched and paltry as were the privileges of a Neapolitan patri­

cian, the jealousy of the oligarchy opposed their reasonable request,

and yet was just as unwilling to receive them and distribute them

among the existing seggj*. But in course of time it gave way in

single exceptions ; and thus things went on, until the revolutionary

government of 1799 got rid of the seggj and eletti, and the restored

one availed itself of this riddance, no less than of that of every ·other

corporate institution which presented even the shadow of a limit to

its arbitrary will, as so much gain to itself. Indeed this municipal

co.nstitution had long since become so worthless and open to abuse,

nay mischievous, that neither did its venerable origin excite inte­

' rest at the time of i~ abolition, nor is its loss now felt.

Every person had a vote in a seggio, who belonged to any patri­

cian family enrolled in it, whatever his residence might be; and in

fact this institution was far more a representation of the barons of

the whole kingdom, than of the citizens, or even the nobles of the

city.

..

Had Naples been the capital of Campania alone; had its eonsti~

tution lived and grown, enlarged and completed itself, in that case

the ottine of the people would have become plebeian tribes, in the

same way in which the Roman commons obtained a constitution,

and thereby multiplied the vital energies of the republic.

* Giannone xx. 4.THE 001\flVIONALTY, AND THE PLEBEIAN

TRIBES.

IN every state the constitution of which has been grounded on a

certain number of houses, a commonalty 959 has grown up or sub­

sisted by the side of the burghers or the freeholders. The mem­

bers of this commonalty were not only recognized as freemen, but

also _as fellow-countrymen: they received like succour against

foreigners, were under the protection of the laws, mig-ht acquire

real property, had their motes for making by-laws and their courts,

were bound to serve in time of war, but were excluded from the

government, which was confined to the houses. 60

The origin of such a com_monalty, though admitting of many

varieties, in cities mostly coincides with that of the rights of the

pale-burghers; of the dwellers within the pale or the contado 61 : but

it increased in extent and still more so in importance, when a city

acquired a domain, a. distretto, containing towns and other small

places. The inhabitants of such a domain were sometimes taken

in a mass under the protection of the law and admitted to the rights

of freemen; more frequently this was done for su'ch as removed

into the city: these would be persons of very different rank, gentle

and simple.. In like manner freemen out of such foreign places as

were connected by a community of civic or national law, and bond­

men who obtained their freedom with the consent of their lords,

959 It commune. When a number of such commonalties exist in a larger

state, along with the ruling part of the nation, they are les communes, tlte

commons.

60 This was also the condition ofthe proselytes of righteousness in Judea.

Those of the gate answered to the metics.

61 Like the English pale in Ireland, before James the First. In Ger­

many·they were called pfalilbUrger,pale·burghers, which in French wus dis­

torted into fauxbourgeois.310

HISTORY OF ROME.

were received into the commonalty: so that,' from the variety of

elements it contained, its name ·was fully justified by its nature.

Now since among the ancients civic trades and commerce were

in low repute, while agriculture was in the highest; whereas during

the middle ages the sc'ale of their estimation was directly reversed;·

it came to pass that in the former period the commonalty was often

m'ade up of the inhabitants of the domain; in the latter on the other '

hand the neighbouring country was seld<;>m admitted to a fellowship

of rights, but within the walls there grew up a commonalty of arti­

sans and tradesmen of all sorts. These were impelled by a feeling

of their necessities to unite in companies, which in consequence of

their local compression developed such a force as was not to be

found among the rural population: but owing to this peculiarity in

their nature, the revolutions by which the commons gained the

upper hand in the middle ages, had an entirely different character

from that of those whereby the demus or the plebs among the

ancients acquired first freedom, and then the superiority in the

state: the consequences too were entirely different'. The govern,

ment of the traders and manufacturers made the free cities unwar­

like, as Machiavel remarks with regard to Florence ; that of the

country people made them bold and firm, as was the case at Rome.

As opposed to the houses, the demus, the plebs, and the com­

monalty are the same thing, and of the same kind: in order how­

ever to form a picture oJ what the plebeians were, and of the station

they occupied alongside of the citizens, let the reader take-as an

easily intelligible instance from among a multitude-the territory

of Zurich, before the change which brought the government into

the hands o( the guilds, when it equalled th~ present canton in

extent, and with its nobles, its free peasantry, and its country

towns, constituting a compact whole, was inseparably attached to

the city, in such a manner that while the houses formed one part

of the state, the free members of the commonalty in the city were

united into one body with the country folks*.

Still this difference between a civic and rustic commonalty does

not destroy the parallel· in the history of the free constitutions

See Miiller's Hi~tory of Switze.r1<µ1d Book n. chap. 2 .. The reader

may find much light thrown on these interesting questions in the third volume

of Hiillmann's Geschichte des Ursprungs der Stiinde in Deutschland; in Eich­

horn's Deutsche' Staats und Rechtsgeschiclite, especially in sections 310-313,

431-434; and in .a dissertation on the origin of the constitutions of the Ger­

man towns by the same Eichhorn in the first and second volu.mes of Savig­

n y 's Z~itschrift f iir gescltichtliche Rcchtswissensr,haft.HISTORY OF RO.ME.

311

<luring the iwo golden ages of cities. In both ages it is the history

of the conflict between' the privileged houses and the commonalty:

the latter, feeling· that it is come of age and ripe for a constitution

and a share in the government, (i .. n,.opl~) ; the former striving to

keep it in subjection and servitude. The struggle was unequal;

for a spreading growing power encountered one that was pent in

and dwindling away: nor has any thing but the prudent use made

of some casual advantage gained by open force, or of some disas­

ter, turned the scale against the commonalty, wherever this has

been the result. Such a victory of the privileged houses was the

worst thing that could happen; for then they always degenerated;

and beneath their unlimited power the commonwealth went morally

and politically to decay, as has been seen at Nurenberg. Where

the disputes came to an amicable adjustment by a compact and the

establishment of a balance, they were followed by happy times ;

which might have been of long continuance, if the aim of the aris­

tocracy had been to renovate and thus to prolong its existence ;

whereas when it contracted itself and shrivelled up into an oligar­

chy, it became impotent as opposed to the buoyant vigour of life.

Often the conflict was waged with great ferocity, in cases where

stubborn arrogance refused to make room for the rights of the

power that was coming into being9 69 , or rather already existed; nay

mounted the higher in its pretensions, the more it ought to have

lowered them. On the other hand the houses frequently yielded

almost without resistance : as in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen­

turies the constitutions of many Italian and German towns were

changed with mutual good will, after the example set by some of

the great cities.

A government conducted by privileged houses, so long as they

are still numerous, and actually the powerfullest, purest and noblest

part of the community, is the original idea of an aristocracy: the

predominance of the commonalty is what at first was denoted by

the name of democracy. In later times the primitive simple mean­

ing of the two words had fallen into oblivion; and it was then

attempted .to define them from some of' their accidental properties.

In Aristotle's time aristocracies in the genuine ancient sense were

hardly to be found, here and there one: such as had not become

democracies had long before shrunk up into oligarchies: the same

power as their ancestors had exercised was now exercised by a

\162

In.

Da.s Recht tlrs Wf·rdrml1m it has he<'n <·allt•d hy n Swi•s w~ill•r, Trox-312

HISTORY OF ROME.

much smaller number over a commonalty which was become

greatly more numerous and imp.ortant; and in proportion as the

latter felt its dignity and its rights, and the disparity became glaring,

the power was wielded distrustfully, rancorously, with the set pur­

pose of stifling what was growi,ng up. When legislators however

wished to escape from a democracy, in the sense then assigned to

it, they, like those of our times, knew of no other expedient than

to take property for a standard; a measure which the philosophers

judged to be utterly condemnable and oligarchal. The union of an

aristocracy in full vigour with a commonalty was by them esteemed

the justest and wholesomest constitution: this they called a polity,

the Italians in the middle ages popolo.

But the great difficulty in h~man instiutions is to ward off the

approach of numbness and of decay. It mostly happened that

even a polity, where it was established, nay often that a complete

democracy so fenced itself in, that a body of freemen sprang up by

its side out of new elements appertaining to the commonwealth;

which body was essentially a commonalty, just as much so as

those who had attained to an equality of rights; only it did not bear

the name; a body of free peasants or handicraftsmen, who were

kept in the back ground, and whose exclusion, if their strength

become considerable, was quite as injurious to the state, or at all

events quite as unjust, as that of the others. The most signal and

momentous example of this is afforded by the later ages of the Ro­

man republic: its ruin arose from a stoppage in that development

of its political system, which by the admission and elevation of

the commonalty had made the state powerful and glorious ; from

the Italian allies not being invested oue after another with the Ro­

man franchise. Instances on a smaller scale may be .found in

every state by which a new. territory was acquired: the Bceotian

districts which. made a transfer of themselves to the Athenians,

enjoyed the advantages resulting from a community of laws; but

their citizens did not become citizens of Athens : the territories

subject to the Swiss towns had a like claim to civic rights as the

guilds had had some centuries before: and in my native Ditmarsh

the Strandmen, whom the archbishopric of Bremen made over to

the republic, when the aristocracy of the houses had ceased to exist,

were a commonalty; which had no voice in the public assembly,

and no privileged houses.

The demus in Attica, in the state Solon found it in, was a com­

monalty formed by the inhabitants of the country, divided no doubtHISTORY OF ROME.

313

and ranged~ even then into demes or wards 063 ; and contradistin­

guished from the houses: the parties which it split into, and which

the eupatrids induced to engage in their feuds, corresponded to

the local character of the land. The members of these demes

were those among the posterity of the ancient Atticans who had

preserved their freedom, and had not been degraded into thetes,

either by violence at the Ionian immigration, or subsequently by

distress and the sale of their own persons. In the constitution of

Clisthenes this demus was already become predominant in the

state. ·

The Roman commonalty, the plebs, arose like others out of a

medley of elements, as it was by incorporating tmch that it sup­

ported and immense,ly enlarged itself. Even in the original three

towns a commonalty must from the first have begun to form, out

of such persons as were received under the protection of the law,

and of clients, as well those who were free hereditarily, as those

whose bondage had expired ·by their emancipation with their

patron's consent, pr by the extinction of his race. This common­

alty, had it continued alone, would never have risen out of obscu­

rity: on the contrary the destination of the civic tribes in later

times to receive such citizens as were of servile descent is to be

accounted for from this being their origin. The genuine, noble,

great plebs takes it rise from the formation of a domain out of the

towns won from the Latins. In the accounts of the conquests·

made by the first· kings it is stated that many of the conquered

places were converted into colonies, that the others were destroyed

and the inhabitants carried to Rome; where they, along with the

citizens of the coldnies, received the Roman franchise 64 • 'Vith

regard to the origin of the plebs of king Ancus however, we are

to suppose that after the destruction of Alba a portion of the Latins

were ceded by a treaty adjusting the clai~s of Rome and Latium,

963 In the fragment of the laws of Solon, I. 4. D. de collegiis (XL vu. 22),

J'iµo' ·is used for a corporation. '

64 This.state of things was not unknown to Dionysius; only he saw it in

the Annals through a mist and in a wrong place; to wit, after the death ofRo­

mulus, during the feud between the Ramnes and Tities: If 62. Hence he

makes a distinction there among the patrician~, between· the ,.,,.;<T<tM'" 'l'Hr

'lTOAlv and the t?To1Jt.01: saying however at the same time, that among the de.

mus many of those who had been recently admitted into the nation, that is,

the inhabitants of the conquered towns to whom Romulus had granted the

Roman franchise, were dlscontentcd because tliey had not received any land.

Here we see the plebs, vainly demanding its share of the ager pub/;cus, and

what was its origin.

J.-PP314

HISTORY

OF

ROME.

and thus were placed in a like relation of affinity to Romeeas. The

names of the conquered places given by the historians rest on no

sufficient authority; nor can it be any thing but an accident that

they are all Latin towns: whatever people these new members of

the state may have belonged to, their collective body formed a

commonalty. Their franchise resembled that which in later

times was citizenship without a vote; for a vote could not be given

except in the curies: hut their condition was worse than that of

those who afterward stood on this footing: for they could not in­

termarry with the patricians, and all their relations with them were

uniformly to their prejudice.

Nevertheless these new citizens,

scantily as they were endowed with rights, were not made up then,

any more than in later times, merely of the lower orders: the

nobles of the conquered and ceded towns were among them; as

subsequently we find that, the Mamilii, the Papii, the Cilnii, the

Crecinre, were all plebeians.

,

, Now that the plebeian commonalty arose out of the freemen thus

incorporated with the state1 is sufficiently proved by the tradition

that Ancus assigned habitations on the Aventine tll the Latins from

the towns which had become subject to Rome: for this hill was

afterward the site of what was peculiarly the plebeian city. The

statement indeed that they were conveyed thither is not historical:

it is impossible that such an enormous population should have been

amassed· at Rome, so as to be prevented from cultivating its remote

estates. Those who chose to settle there had the Aventine allotted

them as a place for a suburb where they might live apart under

their own laws: far the greater portion staid in their home: but

their towns ceased to be c9rporations. The· territory of a place that

had been taken by storm, or had s1:1rrendered unconditionally, be­

longed by the Italian law of nations to the state: a part of it con­

tinued to be public property, and was tu'rned to account by the

patricians for themse] ves and their vassals : a part fell to the share

of the crown: the rest was parcelled out and assigned by the

kings to the old proprietors, in their new capacity of Romans.

Often probably the confiscation did not extend beyond the public

domain.

Here I, will merely suggest the notion, le;iving it to rest on its

own merits, that, as in a much later age .M. Manlius was looked

up to by the collective plebeian order as its declared patron, so at

the first beginning of the commonalty the ki,pgs were it3 patrons.

965

Above p. 271.HISTORY OF ROME.

315

At all events it is a gross error, which leads us to frame the most

unjust judgments, to suppose that the plebeians sprang out of the

clients of the patricians, and consequently must have been insur­

gent hereditary bondmen. That the clients were total strangers to

the plebeian commonalty, and did not coalesce with it until late,

when the bond of servitude had been foosened, partly from the

houses of their patrons dying off or sinking into decay, partly from

the'advance· of the whole nation toward freedom, will be proved in

the sequel of this history: and the most decisive expressions on the

point will be quoted from Dionysius himself; for, though it is true

he has distinctly conceived that erroneous notion, yet in his details

he copies the ohl Roman Annals, in which the correct view of the

relation had not been lost*. Cntain as this is, it is no less so that,

whatever may have been the form of the connexion between the

commonalty and the kings, they protected it against the oligarchy0 66 :

undoubtedly they could ·_not fail to perceive that the plebeians in a

continually increasing proportion formed the most important part of

their military force; that on them all .the hopes of the future rested;

and that the only way for Rome to become great and to continue

so, was for its laws to sanction and promote the growth of a great

Roman people out of every people of Italy.

The existence of the plebs, as acknowledgedly a free and a very

numerous portion of the nation, may be traced back to the reign of

Ancus : but before the time of Servius it was only an aggi:egate of

unconnected parts, not a united regular ·whole. The natural divi­

sion for a rural commonalty was into districts; and such a one we

find at Rome as well as inAttica 67. In its principle, like the division

of the hquses, it was adapted to the state of things already existing;

but in like manner it did not merely collect the elementary parts such

as it found them one beside the other, as chance had determined

their number and• variety: the territory 'was portioned out into a

fixed number of districts; in some of which perhaps such lines of

demarcation as before subsisted might be preserve,d unchanged, but

the majority must have acquired a new form during the process of

separation and re-union. ' When Clisthenes divided the people of

Attica into a hundred demes 68 , it is evident that he proece . ded in this

* See below notes 1306--1316.

966 As the sta.tholders protected the citizens in the Dutch towns against

the oligarchal magistracy.

67 cpu>.otl 'l"07rJ1<11.i: see above note 787, p. 232. Lmlius Felix in Gellius,

xv. 27: comitia tributa esse cum ex regionibus et locis suffragium feratur.

68 Herodotus v. 69. The ceta.inty of this statement is no way shaken

by our meeting with more than a hundred names in after times. For in the316

HISTORY OF ROME.

way: demes he found already there, but such a number can never

have been the work of chance. Servius too, who distributed the

Roman plebs into a determinate number of tribes, assuredly did

1

not bind himself to observe such relations as previously existed,

the remains of which can only have continued to endure in some of

the pagi. In process of time however, as has been remarked

above, this local distribution transformed itself into a hereditary one

according to families 9 Ag: for if a person removed from Acharnre

to Rhamnus, he still continued an Acharnian, belonging to the

phyle Oeneis, and so did.his posterity for ever. Only doubtless

there was a possibility at Athens, on showing valid grounds for

such an application, of migrating into a different phyle: and the

Roman censors, who at least in the later times of the republic often

changed the tribe of a citizen at discretion, must always have had

it in their power to comply with requests for transfers of this sort,

when made with regard to tribes enjoying an equality of rights.

An incomparably more important distinction of these local tribes

however was that they were not closed against new members ; that,

first place there was nothing to hinder the forming fresh demes, by subdi­

viding old ones, or by incorporating new districts : next, the lexicographers

unquestionably often give the name of a de~e to what was in fact a house :

and lastly, at Athens too it was,only in the course of time that the patricians

were received into the ten tribes, and, when they were so, many houses may

perhaps have entered in their corporate capacity, so as to form entire demes.

969 See pp. 235. 236. In modern history I know no instance of the same

kind in a democracy, except in the canton of Schweitz, where, until the revo­

lution, the sovereign estatesmen were distributed into six quarters, four of

them original, and two additional ones. These quarters had local names ; but

it was not.the dweller in a p)ace, for instance in Arth, that belonged to the

quarter of Arth; but he whose ancestors had been registered there. Fiisis

Erdbeschreilrung, vol. u. p. 245. This order of things must now have been re­

established in substance, though modified in its application, because that part

of the population of the canton which was formerly in a state of dependence,

must have been admitted into the quarters. In an aristocratical constitution,

the above mentioned Seggj at Naples unquestionably furnish a like example:

and the same principle must have prevailed with regard to the noble houses

in the towns of Lombardy and Tuscany, which were registered according to

their quarters, if any ofthe members left their hereditary strong holds, which

however can have happened but seldom. One who is carrying on an inquiry

into the history of the constitutions during the middle ages, ought not to over­

look the hint contained in the circumstance, which assuredly is not mere

chance, thatin Schweitz the estatesmen, at Florence, and also at Naples, ~he

. burghers, were at first divided into four parts; to which afterward, in the

former case owing to the enlargement of the territory, in the latter to that of

the city, two others were added; as the third tribe was at Rome. Ditmarsh

too was divided into four D<I'jfte: the Strandmen never formed one.HISTORY OF ROME.

317

when an i~ferior franchise was established in the place they had

previously occupied, all such as appeared to deserve it, and even

whole districts at once, might be elevated from this and admitted

· into the plebeian tribes, and that patricians themselves could enter

into them.

Every locaf tribe had a region corresponding to it 9 7° ; and all the

free substantial members of the Roman state, not included in the

houses, who were dwelling within the limits of any region when

the constitution was introduced, were registered as its tribesmen.

The region bore the name of the tribe7 1 ; whether it was in the city,

or in the country. In the former, until Augustus divided the city

according to its increased size, and the exigencies of his time into a

greater number of regions, the four established by Servius were

retained: they answered to the four civic tribes7 2 : and with regard

to these there is no difference of opinion. As to the number of re­

gions however into which the Roman territory was parcelled out at

the establishment of the plebeians as an estate, and consequently

as to the number of plebeian tribes originally instituted, Dionysius

found totally contradictory statements : and Livy must have held

the difficulty to be completely inexplicable; so that he. confined

himself to mentioning the civic tribes, and that too in such a man­

ner, as if none but these had been established by Servius. When

in the Annals for the year 259 he found, and himself copied, the

970 See the passage of Lrelius Felix quoted above in note 967; and that

of Varro below in note 974.

71 Livy xxv1. 9. In Pupiniam dimisso exercitu. See also the explanations

of the names of the tribes in Festus.

72 Three of these answerecleach to one ofthe three original towns, the

commonalty of each of which accordingly formed a tribe: with regard to the

Palatine and Colline this is clear: in the Suburan region the most prominent

feature was the Crelian hill, as Varro says de L. L. iv. 8. The rank of these

however was the reverse of that of the patrician tribes: the commonalty of

the Luceres became the first, that of the Ramnes the third; for which assuredly

there was a reason. The Esquiline seems also to have belonged to the liber­

ties of Lucerum; but the settlement upon it is described as formed by genu­

ine plebeians, whether by the Latins and Hernicans in the time of Tullus (see

Festus v. Septimontio), or whether it was founded by Servius: it lay however

within his pomrnrium, and consequently was comprehended within the cere­

monial worship of the patricians, and like the other three civic tribes stood on

a less honourable footing. Thus the number seven, which is perpetually re­

curring in the, local division of the city, (see above n. 934), we again find here

within the pomrnrium of Servi us: three districts are counted twice over, once

for the patricians, the other time for the plebeians; the seventh was a mixed

district, being also the site of the Vic us Patricius.HISTORY OF ROME.

318

statement that tbe tribes were now augmented to one and twenty,

he probably assumed, if he took any thought about earlier times,

that Servius had divided the Roman territory into sixteen regions.

Before his time a better informed person, even Cato himself, had

left this point equally undetermined: and the cause of his doing so

is plainly, that a greater number than twenty seemed irreconcilable

with that of the year 259, which was placed beyond dispute by the

subsequent gradual increase; while his good sense and honesty

would not allow l1im to assert that twenty was the original number,

in direct opposition to the older Annals, and doubtless also to 1he

books of the augurs and pontiffs. How the tribes increased from

twenty upward was to be found related everywhere; and Venno­

nius, who ascribed the establishment of the whole five and thirty

to Servius, is a person almost utterly unknown, and betrays unp:;.­

ralleled ignorance and carelessness.

·

·

But Dionysius quotes a statement from Fabius, that Servius liad

divided the Roman territory into Bix and twenty regions; so that

with the four civic ones there would have been thirty, and the same

number of tribes 97 8 : and that this singular account in, Dionysius

may be depended upon, is attested by a fragment of Varro, wherein

some person, not named, is said to have apportioned land around

the city to the free citizens in six and twenty regions 74 ; which

surely can only refer to Servius Tullius and his tribes. Now every

973 The passage of Dionysius (rv. 15,) is so important and in such com­

plete disorder, that I will transcribe it as it ought to be written, at the same

time justifying my corrections. A1fo,, J's""').,.,;, ;x.t>iptt.v :.71'ct.11'a.v, "',uh <11rt.fj16,

~)Jf1'11 .;, µolpd.C Ee x.eel t7x.oa-1r, a.fie x.a.l a.iJ'Td.' Xd..AE'i <f'U/i..ti.,, x.xl 'Td.C d.7TIX.d.C

?tf011''Tl91lc rJ.iJ.,.a.ic <ri'T<rtt.pe1.c, <rp1d.11.ona. <j>u11.a.c e71'l TuMlou <ra.c ?ta.11'ctc ')-1vfrSa.1

A!j181· ~'

ti OUovt.fviot icr'1"6pnx.ev, &le µlco x.a.l

'f'pta.x.avTrL <;>uAr£c· ~ frrrs fru., rra.7c

1

xa.'Td. 7r01'.t'I oUfrettc ix.7Z'&?T>..11pr.;'<TBeu 'TGtC £T1 x.ctl tic ~µ;c U7Z't.tpx_,aUfrt.tC trp1ci.x.01rrd.

ioct.) ?Tiv'Tt<j>ull.ct.•. Kct.'Tt»V µino1,'ToU'Tt»V <iµ<j>o'l'ip(.f)Y «;1o?tll1''TO'T•poc ,,,·v, ou;x, op{~u

'l't»Y µ01p(.f)V

d.p19µ6v. Instead of copying the passage from the printed text

for the reader to compare the two, it is enough to refer to it; and I need only

.,.6,

remark, that I have inserted the addition found in the manuscript of Bessa­

rion, which is probably contained in all the others; and that the change I

have made is confined to transposing the words, except the omission of l<a.l

before <rp1a.11.01'Ta.. The emendation suggested by Sigonius transposes two

clauses; mine in fact only one: and his would force us to substitute l>h·(.f)'

for 11.1,,11. The whole corruption arose from the words Ka.'!". µ. <r. eiµ<j>. hav­

ing been forgotten, and then added in the margin; but as this would not hold

the four words, the last was written above the other three: hence the next

scribe who replaced the passage in the text, but in the wrong place, thought

tt.µ<j>•Topaiv was to stand first.

74 Varro de vita pop. Rom. r. p. 240, from Nonius Marcellus c. r. v. viri­

tim. Extra urbem in regiones xxvr agros viritini liberis attribuit.HISTORY OF ROME.

319

one will perceive the striking internal probability that the number

of plebeian tribes should be thirty; because the patricians and the

Latins, between whom the plebs i;:tood as an intermediate body

uniting the two, were both divided into thirty corporations: nay this

probability is so great, that, if no statement of the kind were pre­

served, and we were only left without any thing to contradict this

number, analogy would lead us to take it for granted. The sole

objection is, that, at the admission of the Crustumine tribe, the num­

ber then existing was only twenty.

This difficulty may be solved by considering that there was an

essential and necessary correspondence between the regions and

the tribes: and as the registering or the assigning landed property

within any district formed the groundwork of a local tribe; and

voting by regions was the same with voting by plebeian tribes; so

likewise a tribe mu'st have ce11sed to exist, when the state was com­

pelled to give up the region that was its basis. The Eleans for

instance had tw,elve phyles: but when they lost a part of their ter­

ritory to the Arcadians, along witli the demes comprised in it, the

number of phyles left was only eight 975 • That the Romans in the

treaty with Porsenna were forced to cede the territory on the Etrus­

can bank of the Tiber is acknowledged; and I shall show how

utterly destitute of historical foundation is the tale of its being re­

stored to them by an act of romantic generosity. Now we fre­

quently find, both in the legends of the oldest times and in the more

genuine history of Rome, that a vanquished people was compelled

to give up a third part of its territory to the conqueror: if such was

the measure adopted by Porsenna with regard to Rome, it would

explain how it came to pass that just a third of the original tribes

disappears7 6 , Had the Annals confessed ,this diminution, the lm­

miliation and fall of Rome would have been manifest in its whole

975 Pausanias Eliac, 1. c. ix. These local tribes in Elis are an instance

of the manner in which a rustic population grew in time to form a common­

alty, and the commonalty united into one people with the citizens. During

the Peloponnesian war the sovereignty still belonged to the city of Elis, and

the neighbouring country was in a state of dependence. It is also remarkable

enough, that afterward, just at a time too of the greatest distress, the senseless

oligarchs strove again to rob the inhabitants of the country of the rights that

had been conceded to them.

76 See below notes 10£)3. 1215. 12'2"2. Those who lost their property in

consequence would be admitted into other tribes, if they removed to Rome:

if they staid on their land, they became aliens to Rome and clients to the new

lords of the soil: as the Irish became farmers of the estates which had been

the property of their forefathers.320

HISTORY OF ROME.

extent; and the empty fable of the speed with which it recovcretl

from its misfortune would have been laitl bare977,

It is worthy of remark that these tribes do not correspond in num­

ber with the tribes of the patricians, but with their subdivisions, the

curies: this leads us to question whether their name may not ori­

ginally have been a different one, and whether ten of them were

not requisite to make up a plebeian tribe; so that at first there would

be three. such, which subsequently sank to two. This conjecture

is favoured by our finding that the commonalty at the Crustumine

secession had two tribunes to direct it; and that afterward, when

the consular power was transferred to military tribunes chosen out

of the two or<lers, their regular number seems properly to have

been six, three for the patricians according to their tribes, an<l three

in like manner for the plebeians. Ilut in this latter case the inten­

tion may only .have been that, ·the number of the patricians being

given, they should have an equal number of plebeian colleagues:

and in the former, since twenty were too many to guide a people

in a state of insurrection, as well as for taking prudent counsel, each

decury of the tribunes may have appointetl a delegate: indeed why

should not they, like the decuries of the senators, have had each

a leader, who was to come forward on such occasions? In fact

there is an express statement that the plebs at the second secession

had twenty tribunes divided into two decnries, who had io appoint

977 It will not be a waste oflabour to determine what were the tribes that.

remained out of the original thirty. The four civic ones according to their

rank were the Supuran, the Esquiline, the Colline, and the Palatine: the rus­

tic tribes arranged alphabetically were the lEmilian, Camilian, Cluentian,

Cornelian, Fabian, Galerian, Horatian, Lemonian, Menenian, Papirian, ];'upi­

nian, Romilian, Sergian, Veturian, Voltinian: the complement of sixteen was

made up by the Claudian. Not that there was a Claudian tribe from the be­

ginning; but I must here anticipate the conjecture that it was substituted in

the room of a Tarquinian tribe, which, like the Tarquinian house, was done

away with: see the text to note 1236. '.fhe Crustumine is indeed older than

all that were constituted after 259: but since it differs from all the rustic

tribes in this list both in the termination of its name and in that name being

a. local one, it must no doubt have been the twenty-first, which was established

after the treaty with Latium,-the first of a new order of things, by which the

ten lost tribes were to be replaced. The Pollian is without doubt the same

with the Poblilian, one of the later tribes; just as mollia and mobilia are the

same word-oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu: pilentis matres in molli­

bus-otherwise there would have been thirty-six, instead of thirty-five. For

a Veientine tribe the only authority is a corrupt reading, which has now been

expunged on the authority of the good manuscripts, in the speech pro Plancio

16(38); where the right word is Ufcntina.HISTORY OF ROME.

321

two chiefs97 8 • The votes of the curies being those which wer~ told

in the assembly*, the tribes of Romulus had sunk into insignifi­

cance; nor do we meet among the Latins with any trace of a divi­

sion standing higher in the scale than that into thirty towns.

A phyle must needs have a phylarch, and so must a tribe

have a tribune: if Dionysius con.fines his statement to the civic

tribes, when he says that Servius appointed a tribune over each of

them to inspect the condition of every household, and that troops

and taxes were levied according to the same division7 9 , his sole

reason for this limitation is that he knew not what to make of the

rustic tribes. This charge of inspecting, making inquires, and re­

porting, was repugnant to the spirit of later ages, which, as the pe­

culiarities of character became more varied, needed and exacted a

larger scope of freedom: but it was only !his portion of the tribunes

office that became extinct; the tribuni :erarii who lasted until the

end of the republie, seem to have been merely the successors of

the original tribunes. When the Roman people had become ex­

empted from all taxes, the main part of their business as collectors

was at an end: but they continued to exist, and to have an oath

administered to them, and they were called by the Aurelian law to

the exercise of judicial functions, as representing the body of the

most respectable citizenst.

That these tribes at first comprised only the plebeians, and that

the patricians and their clients were not.enrolled in them till much

later, will be made to appear in the sequel of this history. For

the present I will remind the reader that the assembly of the tribes

was the scene where the tribunes of the people were supreme; that

it was never convoked by a patrician magistrate; that, when it met,

the patricians and clients had to withdraw from the forum: that the

centuries were instituted to mediate between the two bodies and to

unite them, and so would otherwise have been needless. True, it

is stated that the Claudian tribe was formed by the clients of that

house: but in the first place this is very far from certain; and

besides it would not have been a greater deviation from the princi­

978 Livy m. 51. Decem numero tribunos militares (this is an accidental

mistake) creant in Aventino-lcilius eundem numerum ab suis creandum

curat.-Viginti tribunis militum negotium dederunt, ut ex suo numero duos

crearent.

* Above p. 254.

79 Dionysius 1v. 14. 'Ht-iµov«> lcp' i1ti.-'1'n> ,;.,,.,J.i~:1.1, C:,'.-,,.,p cpv1.i.px,ou,;

o1~ 'll'potri'Ta.~o 1iJ'Evr:1.1 ':f'of1v oixlr.o fz~tT11"0(' ol1ul.

t See Duker on the Epitome of Livy xcvu.

J.-<N322

HISTORY OF ROME.

ples of the constitution, than the receiving the Claudii among the

patricians, that is, into the three tribes, instead of the exiled house

of the Tarquins. The establishment of that tribe may perhaps

have been an experiment whether the ten that were extinct could

not be gradually replaced by new ones f?rmed out of the clientry*.

· I will here meet an objection, which might possibly be raised, at

least some time or other hereafter, by a vigilant reader. So long as

it had never been questioned that these tribes were a general division

of the whole nation, as those of Romulus were also supposed to

have been previously ; nor moreover that the houses were families

according to our notions ; every one who remarked that some of the

tribes, the .lEmilian, Cornelian, Fabian, bore the well known names

of the most eminent partrician houses, thought no doubt that this

must be owing to their having had the honour of containing such a

house along with its clients. To me this circumstance rather seems

to explain how the names of the houses themselves originated. An

Athenian of the .lEantid phyle did not believe himself to be de­

scended from Ajax; or a Formian from 1Emilus: these were only

eponyms, honoured by the tribesmen as their common guardian

spirits. Just as little can the Crecilii, so lo)lg as the original idea

was not utterly lost sight of, have carried back their pedigree to

Creculus, the Fabii to a Fabus or Fabius, the Julii to Iulus. Wher­

ever a house and a tribe bore the same name, it may b'e assumed

that both wer:i so called in the same manner after the same indiges;

and that both performed sacrifices to him, as to a patron of a higher

order 980 •

That the tribes of Servi us . were plebeian 8 1, is proved at least in

substance by Varro's connecting their institution with the assign·

See the text to note 123G.

980 Such is Clausus in Virgil, lEn. vu. 707: Claudia nurtc a quo diffun­

ditur et tribus et gens Per Latium : he is no more the progenitor of the one

than of the other. Such accurate information does Virgil display even on

this point. Much of what he gathered together after the manner of the Al­

exandrian poets, from regions seldom visited, passes for his arbitrary inven­

tion, and as such is even censured as faulty. When he introduces the

eponyms of the Sergian and Cluentian~ tribes among the Trojan followers of

lEneas (v. 121-123), and thus revives the recollection of an ancient belief,

which it is likely he may have met with in Nrevius, a reader of the present

day fancies he meant to pay a stupid compliment to some Sergius and Cluen­

tius; men of high rank; though no such names are to be found among the

persons of influence in his day.

81 The abstract substantive from plebs is plebitas, .or, according to the

old spelling, pll"nitas, which Nonius quotes as ttsed by Cato and Cassius lle­

mina: De hon. vet. dictis.llISTORY OF

~OME.

323

ment of landed property. The nature of the right to enjoy the

profits of the national domains by possession, and of the right to an

assignment of property therein, requires to be separately and fully

developed. For the present I will merely obser\'e, that the for;ncr

originally belonged to the patricians, who after receiving lands in­

vested their clients with them; the latter exclusiw·ly to the ple­

beians: that, in other words, with the exception of the country

under the city walls, all landed property, strictly speaking, was in

the hands of the plebeians alone: that all the assignments of land

were in their favour, and were a set-off for their share in the public

domains; that consequently, where general assignments of land are

spoken of, they are almost always expressly mentioned as the re·

ceivers; and that, where this is not the case, the same restriction

must assuredly have existed 982 • The earlier assignments to the

freemen, such as are ascribed to the Sabine kings, Numa and Ancus,

had recognized the rights of men belonging to a commonalty which

had not yet assumed the form of an estate; and by the assignment

under Servius the plebs was established in its distinctive character

of free hereditary proprietors.

From this time forward the Roman nation consisted of the two

·estates, the populus, or body of burghers,. and the plebs, or com­

monalty: both, according to the views of the legislator, equally free,

but differing in degree of honour: the patricians, as elder brothers,

and moreover as each of them was the member of a far less nu­

merous body, had the advantage of the plebeians, as the greater

houses had of the lesser. I do not aim at prying into the mysteries

of the ancient theologies; thus much however is evident: that the

Romans conceived every part of nature and enry vital and spiritual

power to be divided into two sexes anu two persons; they had

tellus and tellumo, anim.a and animus; and in like manner they

probably also looked upon the nation as consisting of populus and

plebes: hence the names are masculine and feminine. The use of

the former word for the sovereign assembly of the centuries b~longs

to later; for the whole nation, to yet more recent times: and along

982 Dionysius speaks of a twofold assignment under Servius; one just at

the beginning of his reign; and another after the close of the Etruscan war,

which he represents to have lasted twenty years, out of the conquered terri­

tory. Livy, who was not disturbed by any feeling that it was necessary for

him to fill up the wearisome period of forty-four years by recording the events

of each, despatches the Etruscan war in a fow words, before he comes to the

establishment of the centuries; and thf>n (e. 4G) he JnPntions the only assign­

rnent of which ht> t.akt>s any noticl'.3U

HISTORY OF ROME.

wi.th the second meaning the original one long continued to prevail.

It is related under the year 341 that the plebs, with the concurrence

of the populus, committed the charge of investigating the murder of

Postumius to the consuls: in this place no interpretation can att~ch

that meaning to the word into which it has been attempted, though

very mistakenly, to strain it in the saying of Appius Claudius, that

the tribunes were magistrates of the plebs, not of the populus;

where it is contended that populus means the people in the centu­

ries988.

Even in the oracle of the Marcii, which was promulgated during

the second Punic war, the prretor is still spoken of as pronouncing

the supreme sentence of the law both over the burghers and the

commonalty 84 • Again, a concilium, as we know from a very good

authority, was the assemblage of a mere part of the nation 85 ; not

of the whole, as it was united in the centuries. Now Livy says,

the auguries had attained to such high honour, that the concilia po­

puli and the centuriate comitia were dissolved in consequence of

unfavourable omens 86 • Here the concilia populi, which from their

very name must have been distinct from· the only general comitia,

those of the centuries, or the exercitus, are over and above this ex­

pressly named alongside of them: and a concilium plebes is out of

the question; for this did not stand under the influence of the au­

guries. So that a concilium populi is equivalent to an assembly of

the patricians or the curies. Such was the concilium to which

Publicola paid homage by lowering his fascess7: such was the

assembly that decided between the Aricines and the Ardeates con·

cerning the territory 88 they were disputing about: besides as the

patricians as then were still the only possessors of the domains, the

plebs was in no way qualified for judging whether a particular dis·

trict belonged to them; nor would it have had any interest to decide

unfairly ; nor finally would the consuls have granted it the honour of

settling a quarrel between two foreign towns. If we keep this ex·

983 Livy iv. 51. A plebe consensu populi consulibns negotium mandatur.

n. 56. Non populi sed plebis magistratum: that a tribune had no authority

over the patricians. · For that was the point in dispute.

84 Livy xxv. 12. Prretor-is qui populo plebique jus dabit summum.

85 Lrelius Felix in Gellius xv. 27. Is qui non universum populum, sed

partem aliquam adesse jubet, non comitia, sed concilium edicere debet.

86 Livy 1. 36. Ut-concilia populi, exercitus vocati, summa. rerum, ubi

aves non admisissent, dirimerentur.

87 See below note 1172.

88 Livy 111. 71. Concilio populi a magistratibus dato.HISTORY OF ROME.

325

planation steadily in view, we perceive it was by the curies that M.

Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol, the patron of the Roman com­

monalty, was condemned to death, after the centuries had acquitted

him 98 9 : so greedily did the patri.cians thirst after his blood. Their

place of meeting was the Comitium, that of the plebeians the Fo­

rum90. The distinction between the two orders is visible even in

their games; which were twofold, the Roman and the plebeian.

The first were held in the great Circus; and accordingly we are

told the curies had places there assigned to them : the separation

between the orders accounts for the origin and purpose of the Cir­

cus Flaminius. It must have been designe~ for the games of the

commonalty; which in early times chose its tribunes there, on the

Flaminian field9t,

Now as the Marcii designated the nation by the two words popu­

lus and plebs, so the formularies of prayer by which all proceedings

in the presence of the whole nation were opened, sometimes made

mention of the Quirites, sometimes of the plebeians, along with the

populus 9 ~. It is true, the original Quirites were totally and essen­

tially different from the plebeians, and were become a part of the

patricians : but the plebeians were now standing in the same rela­

lation to the collective body of the curies, in which the second tribe

had once stood to the first: the formulary was ready at hand, and

989 Livy v1. 20. Cum centuriatim populus citaretur-apparuit-nunquam

fore-crimini Iocum. lta-concilium populi indictum est. The true account

is clearly that the duumvirs impeached him.

90 Both of these lay on the same level-qti.anto rostra foro et comitio

superiora sunt, says Fronto ad Antonin. Aug. 1. 2. p. 148. ed. Rom.-and

were so situate as to form a whole, which in common parlance was called the

Forum: it was this Forum, in the wider acceptation of the word, that "'as sur­

rounded by porticoes. The original plebeian Forum was paved with flag­

stones oftravertinec the Comitium is the piece of g.round where a pavement

of flagstones of giallo was brought to light by the excavations of the last cen­

tury. They were separated by the ancient rostra, a stage of considerable

length with steps at each end of it, lying in the line between the temple of

Castor and the Curia Hostilia, at right angles to the front of this Curia

and the steps before it. Down to the time of Caius Gracchus even the tri­

bunes in speaking used to front the Comitium: he turned his back to it, and

spoke with his face toward the Forum.

•

91 All such distinctions necessarily came to an end, when the patricians

were lost in the body of the nation like a ,drop in the sea.

92 Quod felix, faustum, fortunatum, salutareque sit popvlo Romano Qui­

ritibus (not Quiritium: see above p. 224, not 752). Festus v. Dici mos erat

Romanis in omnibus sacrificiis precibusque. Cicero paraphrases this as fol­

lows : Qure deprecatus sum-ut ea res--popvlo plebi'[Ue RomanOJ bene atque

feliciter eveniret. Pro Murena 1.326

HISTORY OF ROME.

was applicable : hence the custom of addressing the assembly in

the Forum by the name of Quirites : hence the phrase, Quiritary

property, and the like99 3 ,

Among the measures ofServius for promoting freedom, it is further

stated that he established judges for private actions 94 • I entertain

no doubt that this refers to the institution of the centumvirs. The

only ground for the prevalent notion that this tribunal was not

erected until the five. and thirty tribes were completed, or till there

were at least three and thirty, lies in its name: whereas, the agree­

ment being only approximate, this is a sufficient sign that the name

arose out of common ,parlance, and was not the original technical

appellation. For every tribe there were three judges. This num­

ber,-the principle of representing the particular tribes, and the

consequent practice for the election to be conducted by each seve­

rally, not by the collective commonalty,-the symbol of the spear,­

all point to very old times:. the symbol just mentioned.contains an

allusion to the plebeians as Quirites, that name being frequently

derived from the Sabine word quiris, a spear. Moreover the

causes which came before this court, referred uniformly to matters

that occurred in the census, or concerned Quiritary property •. The

993 At the close of this inquiry 1 must add one more remark. A great

number of instances may be collected by merely turning over the pages of

Livy, where he gives the name of populus to the plebs;: but these are not of

the slightest importance, if we make a distinction between the strict practice

of the language in ancient times, which he retained in copying from such

Annals as still paid attention to it, and the fluctuating usage which he shared

with his own age. How difficult would it have been for him to avoid this!

when the tribunes, who had already long been actually tribunes of the people,

had for some hundred years at the least transacted business officially with the

populus of that age, the comitia of the centuries. But thi11 only makes us the

more struck with the precision of those passages where he is literally reciting

the expressions of the older writers. I will however myself quote another

passage, which might seem to make against me. Varro de Re rust. I. 2. 9.

Licinius trib. pl. cum esset, post regesexactosannis cccLxv,primus populum

ad leges accipiendas in septem jugera forensia e comitio eduxit. The number

of years, as every one sees, is corrupt, and perhaps the corruption has gone

further: but if any one takes populus here. to mean plebs, and the comitium to

be lts place of assembly, he is totally in the dark. In this very passage the

populus is the curies, who were forced to accept the law proposed by the tri­

umphant plebeians, (leges accipere): the tribune conducts them from the

Comitium to the spot where they are to conclude peace with the plebs: the

seven jugers are the condition: in septem jugera: like pax• data in has !eges

est: Livy xxx111. 30.

!14 Dionysius 1v. 2.'>IIISTORY OF ROME.

327

one senatorian judge, who was appointed by the prretor, was pro­

perly called an arbiter 995 : the centumvirs, we are perfectly justified

in assuming, originally when they were ninety, and afterward as

their number, which on. the diminution of the tribes had been re- .

duced to sixty, gradually increased again, bore the name ofjudices.

And the unprejudiced will easily see that these are the judices who

after the abolition of the decemvirate were protected along with the

other plebeian magistrates by the laws declaring them inviolable 96 •

Beside the election of these judges :ind of the tribunes, several

others may have been carried on by the plebeians collectively, or

by the particular tribes separately. It is assuredly more probable

that even in those times they had rediles, forming a peculiar local

magistracy, such as we may suppose to have subsisted in the towns

the inhabitants of which belonged to the plebs, than that this office

originated later. The plebeian assemblies may also have had a

variety of purposes over and above elections ; the passing resolu­

tions, the imposing rates for common objects: thus general contri­

butions for the funerals of favourite statesmen were ordained by

public decree 97. \Ve may assume however that even then they

had rights which came much nearer to their subsequent power.

For the legislation of an individual who is·the supreme head of a

state, pursues a different course from that taken by conflicting powers

in a free state; where, without violating the public peace and the

forms of law, nothing but graduaf concessions can be wrung, some­

times by lulling fears, sometimes by rousing them, from the pos­

sessors of privileges that have become exorbitant, above all when

their sway is a usurpation. The royal author of that constitution

!)!)5 Plautus Rudens III. 4. 7. Ergo dato De senatu Cyrenensi quemvis

opulentum arbitrum, Si tuas esse oportet etc. 150 years afterward it was a

matter of. dispute whether judcx or arbiter were the right name. Cicero pro

Murena 12. (27). The nature of the relation between them had been totally

forgotten.

.

DG Livy III. 55. That ingenious scholar Ant. Augustinus, who in his

views on historical questions was mostly no less happy, than he invariably

was the contrary in emendatory criticism, discerned this truth: but he only

gave a faint hint of his opinion, and so his conjecture did not meet with ac­

ceptance. (See Drakenborch on the passage referred to). He would have

had to fetch his readers from a vast distance, out of a public still far behind

in its nonage, and to carry them up to the point where he was standing: the

road to it was not levelled: and after all would they have thanked him for it?

Might he not be satisfied with having found his way thither himself?

97 For that of Agr. Menenius it was proposed by the tribunes. Dionysius

VJ. 00.328

HISTORY OF ROME.

which posterity· designated with the name of Servi us TulliusD98,

cannot have understood the nature of his own measures, if, after

establishing the plebeian estate, he left it so destitute of protection

as it was before the Secession, and so far from an equality of rights

as it still continued long after. Cicero wa~ not speaking inconsi·

derately, nor did he so much transport himself to the point of view

taken by a different party, as draw back that curtain of prejudices

through which he usually esteemed it his duty to look into the

sanctuary of the constitution, when he declared that the plebs by

the Secession recovered its hallowed rights, its liberties 99 • The

measure by. which they were secured was new, and was the result

of necessity, owing to the change in the form of the constitution:

but of the rights themselves the commonalty cannot have been des­

titute. It would not have been a free body, like the body of bur·

ghers, unless there had been the same right of appealing to its

assembly, which the patricians had of appealing to the curies; and

unless it had been entitled to pass sentence upon such as grossly

infringed its libert~es.

That the counter-revolution of L. Tarquinius and the patricians

did actually drive back the commonalty so far from the fair rights

it had reached, that centuries were needed before it could again

make its way against wind and tide into the harbour where after

that royal legislation it was lying, is evinced among other instances

by the state of the law concerning debts. '\Ve are distinctly told

that a law of king Servius abolished the practice of pledging the

person, and substituted that of pledging property 1000 : the selfsame

measure by which the Pretelian law made a new epoch in the free­

dom of the plebs. It is further said, that this beneficent enactment

was repealed by Tarquinius the tyrant! ; and the patricians con­

998 Ut, quemadmodum Numa divini auctor juris fuisset, ita Servium

conditorem omnis in civitate discriminis, ordinumque-posteri fama ferrent.

Livy1. 42.

99 Ut leges sacratas sibi restitueret. Fragm. of the Corneliana. Sacro­

sanctus answers. to the Germanf1·on.

1000 Dionysius 1v. 9. "ouot J" .;,, µ•-ra. 'Ta.iiTa. J11,vefuD1Jv'T11,1, 'Tou'Tov' oU,.

'd,l}'DIJ 11'f0' "'"' XfEd, t.l.7l'd,°)'&1T611,1, t.l.AAt.l. ""'' voµov 9>iuoµ11,t p.HdEV<t. J11,vei!:;m .,,.,

uoJµ11,u" h1v6ipo", ;,.11,vov ii/'oilµtV•' 'role J11,rnu,,.11,'ic "'"'' .;,,;11,, 'rDIJP uiJµ~"-A">-•µ­

' 111v xp<1.T1'ir. In the same harimgue he makes Servius further say, that the

domains should not thenceforward be .possessed by the usurping patricians,

but by the plebeians who had won them with their blood. So that the agrarian

law was likewise referred to tho same founder of every constitutional right.

1 Dionysius 1v. 43. Tarquinius is even said to have destroyed the ta­

bles on which these beneficent laws were written. These then must haveHISTORY OF ROME.

329

trived to prevent its renewal for two hundred years after the ban­

. ishment of the kings.

The story that Servius meant to resign the throne, and have an­

nual consuls elected, may have as insecure a historical foundation

as the tale of his birth: nevertheless it points decidedly to a neces·

sary connexion which common tradition and opinion perceived be­

tween the consulate and the laws bearing his name. This is dis·

tinctlyimplied in Livy's statement that the first consuls were chosen

in conformity to the· commentaries of king Servius Tullius; those

commentaries, which contained a detailed scheme of his constitu­

tion, as the quotations in Festus show. And since one is unwill­

ing to suspect that the author of so great a legislation, who had the

power to fashion it for his purposes, would do any thing that must

have· destroyed it; the design of that legislator whom we call Ser­

vius Tullius, must have been, it would seem, to place the two free

states on a level in the consulate as well as elsewhere, in the man­

ner in which it was effected by the election of J,. Brutus, and per­

manently by the law of C. Licinius and L. Sextius. If he did not,

if he only created two annual magistracies for the houses, and left

the commonalty without any consul from its own body, it was in

a worse condition than under a single supreme head who retained

his functions for life : the latter would emancipate himself, and the

longer he reigned the more so, from the prejudices of the order out

of which he too had proceeded; prejudices by which an annual

magistrate would continue to be fettered. And by no gain save

that of universal freedom could the palpable mischievous conse­

quences of a divided government be counterbalanced.

fift;

been the

spoke~ of in 1v. 13, the mode of mentioning which(:"""') im­

plies that they were no longer in existenc;e, and accordingly were not com­

prehended in the Papirian collection. If this was digested under the second

'l'arquinius, of course it did not contain the laws which he rescinded: their

not being found in it is assuredly the only ground for the above mentioned

story of his having destroyed them in a fit of passion. From this however it

ensues that the whole account of that law on debts has nothing but tradition

to rest upon. See the text to note 1264.

J,-RR. I

THE CENTURIES.

WITH regard to the purpose of the Servian constitution to im·

part an equal share in the 'consular· government to the plebeians,

every one is at liberty to think as he likes: that it granted them the

right of taking part in elections and in legislation, is universally

acknowledged.

Servius, as for the sake of brevity I ·will call the lawgiver in

accordance with the writers of antiquity, would have taken the

simplest method of bestowing these rights, if he had adopted the

same plan whereby the commons in feudal states obtained a station

alongside of the barons, and had ordained that all national concerns

should be brought both before the council of the burghers and that of

the commonalty, and that the decree of the one should not have force

without the approval of the other, and should be made null by its

rejection. This was the footing on which the plebeian tribes in

after times stood in relation to the curies: but if these two bodies

had been set up over against each other from the beginning, they

would have rent the state asunder: to accomplish the perfect union

of which the centuries were devised by Servius. For in them he

collected the patricians and their clients together with the plebe·

ians; and along with all these that new class of their fellow-citizens

which had arisen from bestowing the' Roman franchise on, the in·

habitants of other towns, the municipals : so that nobody could in

any way look upon himslf as a Roman, without having some place

or other, though indeed it might often be a very insignficant one,

in this great assr.mbly 1009• The preponderance, nay the whole

power in that assembly lay with the plebs: this however excited

no ill will, because no one was excluded; and provoked no oppo·

sition, because it did not decide by itself, but stood on an equipoise

with the curies.

1002 Comitia.tus ma.ximus.HISTORY OF ROME.

331

This institution of the centuries has thrown that of the tribes

completely into the shade ; and through the former alone has the

name of king Servius maintained its renown to our day. More­

over it has long and universally been held to be a settled point,

that this is understood with more certainty and accuracy than any

other part of the Roman constitution; because it is described by

Dionysius and Livy, and that description is couched in numbers:

and only a very few, who saw more clearly, have ventured to pro­

nounce, that at all events the.se representations were not suited to

the times of which we have a contemporary history. At present

this in the main is no longer contested ; and, a far more authentic

record having come to light, the errors common to the two his­

torians, and those peculiar to each, may be satisfactorily pointed

out. They cannot either of them have been acquainted with the

account contained in the commentaries which were ascribed to the

king himself, but have written from very different and very defec­

tive reports: as to Cicero, the only reason that indisposes us to

believe his having drawn immediately from the authentic source,

is, that erudition of this sort was not in his way; else his state­

ments are exceedingly accurate and trustworthy. The mistakes

of the two historians need not surprise us; for they were not speak­

ing of an institution still existing, nor even of one that had been

recently changed, but of what had long passed away. · Livy says

expressly, that it had nothing in common with the constitution of

the centuries in his days : and this moreover is the very reason

why he describes it, as he does the ancient tactics in his account of

the Latin war. Various other statements too must have been current,

containing still greater discrepancies; for Pliny takes 110,QOO

ases to be the limit for the property of the first class, Gellius

125,000 1008 ; numbers, which can neither be regarded as blunders

in the manuscripts, nor as slips in the writers.

In one point both the historians are mistaken : confounding the

burghers with the commonalty, they imagine that a people, in

which till then perfect union and equality had prevailed, was now

divided into classes according to property, in such a manner that

all the power fell into the hands of the rich, though incumbered

with no slight burthens. Dionysius adds. another error to this, in

looking upon the eighteen equestrian centuries, which had the first

rank in the constitution of Servius, as a timocratical institution.

The principle of an aristocracy is to maintain a perfect equality

1003 Pliny H. N. xxmi. 13. Gellius vu. 13.332

HISTORY OF ROME.

within its own body. The poorest and obscurest nobile of Venice,

into who~e family no office of dignity had come for centuries, was

esteemed in the great council as the equal of those whose wealth

and name encircled them with splendour. A government formed

like the Roman by a large body of houses is a complete democracy

within itself, just as much so as that of a canton where the popu­

lation is not more numerous: an aristocracy it is solely in its rela­

tion to the commonalty. This was misunderstoocl by Dionysius

:md Livy: no change was made by Servius in this equality of the

ancient burghers : his timocracy only affected those who stood

entirely without the pale of that body, or those who at the utmost

were attached to it, but far from partaking in the same equality.

The six equestrian centuries established by L. Tarquinius were

incorporated by Servi us into his comitia; and received the name of

the six sujfragia: so that these comprised all the patricians; among

whom it cannot be conceived that in this constitution, any more

than in the earlier, there existed any distinction adapted to the scale

of their property. Livy, though he forgot that the six centuries

had been instituted by Tarquinius, makes a perfectly correct dis­

tinction between them and the twelve which were added by Ser­

vius1004; out of the principal men in the state,. as he says: he ought

to have said, in the commonalty: for the patricians were in the six

sujfragia, nor can any of them have been admitted into the twelve

centuries. Dionysius therefore should have confined himself to

these twelve centuries, when he conceived that the knights were

chosen by Servius out of the richest and most illustrious families;

which notion he extends to all the eighteen 5 : for the patricians,

who unquestionably as body were the richest as well as the lead­

ing men in the state, had all of them places in the six sujfragia by

birth and descent, though particular individuals among them might

·

happen to be exceedingly poor.

Else it is clear from the character of the measure, that the person

who arranged this division of ranks, when he collected the notables

and separated them from the commonalty, would pass over such of

the nobles of Medullia or Tellena as were totally reduced to poverty

a

1004 Festus (v. Sex Suffragia) in direct opposition to the truth takes the

six to have been the centuries formed by Servius. To this he was led by the

notion that the twelve had already been instituted by Tarquinius. See above

p. 275 1 note 8!.12.

.

5 IV. 18. 'E,. 'TfOr ix_on,.r 'TO µl)'ltr'TOJ 'Tlµnµd., 1r.i:tl l<d.'Td. )'lvo'

t,,.lq>d.''"'· The passage of Cicero about selecting the knights censu maxima

is mutilate, and cannot be filled up with any certainty.HISTORY OF ROME.

333

and insignificance, and would enroll in these centuries such of the

merely freeborn inhabitants as in compliance with the notion of the

class possessed wealth enough to equip a horseman, provided their

honour was untarnished; not those whose character stood the high·

est, if their means were too small. Marius would not have been

placed among the knights: the object of Servius however was not

to bestow prizes on the virtues of individuals, but to establish an

estate in the nation; to unite the plebeian notables with the patri­

cian. Now among the Greeks, wherever the ancient government

did not dwindle into an oligarchy, the tra:nsitioh to that later order

of things which the course of nature brought about, was effected by

the remnant of a decaying aristocracy uniting themselves into one

class with the richer landed proprietors among the commonalty, the

i''"'f<6po1: this class, from being able to defray the expense of serving

as horsemen out of their own means, bore the name of j,,.,,.,7,; which

is best rendered in English by the word knights, although in using

it certain associations must be guarded against. The Greek philo­

sophers, when the ancient notions of ancestry had long been lost,

defined nobility to consist, according to the way of thinking then pre­

valent, of hereditary good birth together with hereditary wealth 1006,

Where poverty has intruded, none but a military noblesse, such as

that which several German provinces take pride in, can maintain

the character of the class in public opinion, which alone preserves

it. Nay the privileged classes have universally esteemed wealth,

and the outward splendour that flows from it, as the only thing

which can place any one on a level with themselves. Such has

always been the case. The Heraclid Aristodemus, the progenitor

of the Spartan kings, said, .Money makes the man. Alcreus re­

peated it in his songs, as a saying of the wise7: and bad as this

sounds, bad as it is, still it can no way be disputed that, in an

undertaking like that of king Servius, wealth and not bare lineage

was to be taken as the criterion for the plebeian aristocracy which

was to be established under a new form.

Only we must beware of confounding the first institution with

what took place afterward; as also of supposing that the subsequent

standard of an equestrian fortune, a million ases, is derived from

1006 Aristotle Fro.gm. de Nobilitate.

· 7 Xpilf<<t<r• <tvilp. Alcreus in the Schol. on Pind. lsthm. u. 17. fragm.

50. ed. Matth. Aristodemus said it at Sparta.: so that this tradition, like the

national one in Herodotus (vr. 52.), represented him as not having died until

the conquest was completed.HISTORY OF ROME.

334

the times of Servius. \Ve cannot suppose that the descendants of

those who were originally enrolled, took their station otherwise

than hereditarily, whether they were plebeians or patricians. Poly­

bius says, at present the knights are chosen according to fortune 1008 :

previously therefore it must have been on another principle; that

is, according to birth : and Zonaras informs us that the censors had

the power of rewarding merit by raising an rerarian into the tribes,

a mere plebeian into the equestrian order; and contrariwise of pun­

ishing a bad life by erasing from both of the two upper ranks 9•

Here the regulative principle is plainly the reverse of one that de­

pends upon property, such as prevailed in later times, when who­

ever could produce his four hundred thousands was entitled to

demand a place among the knights; and the want of a few thou­

sand sesterces, in spite of every virtue, kept a man down amid the

plebs 10• True, the censors in those times ordered an unworthy

possessor of a knight's horse to sell it: this however now formed

the whole of the censorian brand, unless they could also turn down

the tribesmen among the rerarians. Indeed this very power of con­

ferring the privilege of a knight's horse enabled the censors still to

reward civic virtues in individuals : as in Great Britain a general

or admiral who is raised to the peerage, if not wealthy, receives

from the nation a pension suitable to hi~ rank; although, as a body,

the House of Peers can only maintain its station by comprehending

the mass of the great landed proprietors. That the original eques·

trian fortune cannot have amounted as in aftertimes to a million, is

clear: for the classes from the fourth upward ascend by intervals of

25,000; and this would be followed by the enormous leap from a

hundred thousand ases to a million; whereas during the second

Punic war we find this interval subdivided, as was the part of the

scale below a hundred thousand into only two classes. 11 Thus

much may at all events be conjectured: that the obligation of those

who were registered as horsemen to serve as such at their own cost,

1008 Polybius v1. 20. , To"' ;,,,.,,,.,h

'To

µiv

1rd.1'.<t101

'""f<d.~tn-Jur If ?rpO'Tlpor", ?rMu'Tmflrr °)'•)'o~µon,

.;,,,.a

.:O''Ttpou'

i1oi610"1t.P

'Tou .,.,µnou T'ii,

ix>.o)''ii': since fortune has been taken as the standard in choosing them.

If

he had not intended to imply a casual connexion here, he would have writ­

ten °)'tr•µtrn', being clwsen according to their fortune.

9 Zonaras vu. 19. E;lir a.il'Toi'-i' 'TM q.uA"-'• xa.l i1 .,.;,, i7t'7t'i.J11.,

ul i, .,.;,, )'•PouO"lr1.1 t)')'pii~uv, Tou' I' oux 1il" ~1o'iwra.' "-71'"-J'T"-,:toBtr i'<t.Atl­

i'll'. '

10 Si quadringentis sex, septem millia desunt, Plebs eris.

11 Livy xnv. 11.HISTORY OF ROME.

335

when a knight's horse could not be assigned to them, was deter­

mined by a certain fixed amount of their property; and that, if it

fell short of this, they were bound under the· same circumstances

to enter into the infantry. The former regulation perhaps gave

occasion to the story, in the description of the general zeal to wipe

away the disgrace endured before Veii, that the knights who had

an equestrian fortune and no horse allotted them, volunteered to

serve on horseback at their own expense 1Du; and the latter is alluded

to in the tradition that L. Tarquitius, the friend of the great Cin­

cinnatus, and the bravest of the Roman youth, was compelled by

his poverty to serve on foot 13• The fixing such a sum was a mat­

ter of necessity: from the same reason it was probably altered from

time to time according to the changes in the value of money.

The prevalent opinion, that the equestrian rank from the begin­

ning was essentially connected with great wealth, and yet that all

the knights were furnished with horses by the state, and had a

yearly rent assigned for their keep, not only charges the Roman

laws with absurdity and injustice, but also overlooks Livy's express

remark, which follows close upon his account of the advantages en­

joyed by the knights, that all these burthens were shifted from the

poor upon the. rich 14• Would any one indeed answer for it that a

rich patrician, if he might have had his expenses defrayed, would

magnanimously have declined availing himself of this right, for the

benefit of his poorer brother patrician 1 And as for the plebeians,

if they too had a like right granted them by Servius, at all events it

cannot have been exercised for several generatiqns. At first how­

ever no doubt it was one of the patrician privileges: indeed the

1012 Livy v. 7: that is to say, a greater number than had been called out.

13 Livy III. 27. Though this particular instance itself belongs to the

poetical tradition. For Tarquitius was a patrician; and even those who do

not admit the certainty of the hypothesis that a citizen of this order did not

belong to any class, will allow that poverty in this case would either have

entirely excluded him from servillg, or at best would have degraded him into

a class in which his merits would never have been distinguished .

. 14 lime omnia indites a pauperibus inclinata oner&. Dionysius evi·

dently felt the absurdity that results from his representation, and therefore

sacrificed the opportunity, at other times so welcome to him, of deriving Ro­

man institutions from the Greek ; as Polybius would have Jed him to do by his

comparison of the Roman equestrian order with the Corinthian. I say Poly­

bius: for from him must Cicero have borrowed the notice of a circumstance,

which, as showing how widely such institutions were spread n.mong the an­

cients, is extremely interesting: though as a proof of any connexion between

Rome and Corinth it is good for nothing.336

HISTORY OF ROME.

incontestable meaning of the account in Cicero, representing this

allowance as an institution of the first L. Tarquinius, is, that its

origin was prior.to the establishment of the commonalty as an estate:

and, if restricted to those among the ruling burghers, who, though

equal to their fellows in rank, were below them in fortune, there

was nothing unfair or oppressive in it.

The sum of ten thousand ases for the purchase of a horse, by the

side of the sums at which oxen and sheep were rated in the table of

penalties*, seems to' be so exorbitant, that the correctness of the

number has been questioned. But in the first place it was not to

be a common nag; and compared with such a one at Rome as else­

where a war-horse was naturally very dear: and besides the equip­

ment was incomplete without at least a groom, a slave, who was to

be bought, and then to be mounted. One should be glad to know

whether the state did not replace such horses at least as were lost

on the field;· whether a horseman who was discharged on account

·of age, or the heirs of a deceased one, had not to pay back the ten

thousand ases that had been received. These are questions tow hich

it is scarcely probable that even a lucky moment of conjecture will

ever divine an answer: but surely I cannot be mistaken in suppos­

ing that, when the censor .commanded a knight to sell rhis horse,

the intention was, that the person thus degraded should refund to

the state the outfit-money which had been advanced to him, and

should procure the means of doing so by that sale : he cannot have

had the right of bargaining with another and entitling him on the

payment of the ten thousand ases to enter in his stead into the receipt

of the annual two thousand, as if it had been a transferable office

or luogo vacabile. For this penal command of the censors continued

in use down to the end of the republic; when the practice had long

been to give the knights pay and fodder in room of that allowance.

This change had already been introduced in the time of Polybius 1015 :

knight's horses furnished by the state are mentioned in inscriptions

under the emperors, as long as the old institutions lasted ; though

certainly it is in a very different sense 14 •

* . See below note 1058.

1015 Polybius VI. 39. 12. 13.

16 Cicero (de Rep. 1v. 2.) alludes to a change made by a decree of the

plebs ordaining that the horses should be restored; for when he makes Scipio

speak of any measure as intended, we are to suppose that it had actually taken

effect, but, according to the information pos5essed by Cicero, was later than

the date he assigns to Scipio's discourse. It is possible that the holders of

the outfit-money were enjoined to pay it into 'the treasury, that a great sumHISTORY OF ROME.

337

The form of the equestrian order was determined by that of the

older centuries, which were preserved unaltered as the six sujfra­

gia; and after them were the twelve plebeian centuries modelled.

The centuries of the knights were not connected with the form of

the army; the turms of the cavalry no way corresponded with them:

on the other hand the classes represented an army of infantry, in

exact accord with the constitution of the legion; troops of the line

and light-armed soldiers, with their body of reserve, their carpen•

ters, and thefr band ; and even with the baggage-train.

This exact conformity to the frame of the army was 'peculiar to

this institution, although in many of the Greek states the hoplites

and the full citizens were the same. Nay,the principle also, which

is justly assumed by Dionysius,-that the votes allotted to each

class bore the same proportion to the collective sum of votes,,as the

taxable property of its members bore to the total taxable property

of all the five classes, and that the numbers of the citizens contained

in each stood in an inverse ratio to the numbers that designated

their property,-was not unknown to the Greeks. Aristotle speaks

of votes the weight of which was regulated by the amount of the

property of the voters 101 ~.

might be in hand for largesses: the horses and equipment would have con­

tinued their property. Perhaps too Cicero was mistaken about the date; and the

higher pay mentioned by Polybius, and the fodder, might be meant as a com­

pensation. At all events the inscrip~ions referred to show that the measure

was not permanent. See for instance in Grutur, 404 (3.4.). 407 (6). 415 (3).

1017 Politic. YI. 3. p. 171. ~ul j-«p-oi OAl')'"P):,l1t.ol ('T•UTO J'iJt.«101) OTI

;., J'6~~· 'T~ <JrAtlOVI OU<Tl'1." Jt.<L'Td <Jr°A~a., i'"'P oua-i"" cp<t<rl Jt.pivt<r9<LJ liir. Fur­

ther: ToiiTo 11.upior ;,,.7,,,_071 ,,_·, oi wA<lou, 11.«l ,;, To 7lµnµ« wMlor. If out

of lO rich men and 20 poor, 6 of the rich and 5 of the poor voted on the one

side, 4 of the rich and 15 of the poor on the other, then ~woTIP"'' T~ Tiµ•µ"­

ii11"tfTtlru, a-uv«p19µouµl, ..v clµ,oT•P"' t11.«T¥•"• TouTo 11.up101. He cannot

posssibly have meant individuals here, for this would have led to intermina­

ble calculations,-but vrµµopi«1

'

I must also advert for a moment to the division into classes established by

Solon; for with an apparent likeness to that of Servi us, it has a totally differ­

ent character. The former related wholly to the eligibility to offices, tht>

latter to elections. No comitia according to the four classes were certainly

eve~ held at Athens : but as the archons in old times could only be chosen

out of the first (Plutarch Aristid. c. 1.), and the fourth was excluded from all

offices, so the second' must also have had certain privileges above the third.

In the Attic classes the houses and the commonalty were intermixed, even if

the expression of Demetrius Phalereus quoted in the passage just referred to

--t11. 7,., ,,.,,., 7r.v. 7« µIi''"""- 71µ6µ:t.T« Jt.t1t-rnpsvfl!r-authorize us to con­

clude that among the pentacosiomedimns none but the members of the houses

1.-ssHISTORY OF ROME.

338

The ground was laid for Rome to become a warlike state, when

military service and civic rights were connected with the hereditary

landed property of the plebehns: no freeman however was to feel

himself excluded; and those trades which were indispensable to

the army, but which a plebeian was not allowed to carry on, were

in their corporate capacity placed in a station, which was probably

advantageous, and higher than the individuals would have occupied

by the general principles of the census. For this reason the five

classes had the single centuries attached to them.

Scipio in Cicero's dialogue declines entering into a detailed re­

port of the Servian constitution of the centuries, it being a matter

well-known to his friends: in like manner I too may be excused

from countiug up how the 170 centuries were distributed among the

five classes. There are two points however which I would not

pass over. In the first place the Romans knew only of five classes:

so that Dionysius, who calls such as gave in less than 12,500 ases

a sixth class, is just as much mistaken in this as when he allows

them only one century. Next, here again the regularity of the

· scale assuredly puts it beyond a question that his statement of the

fortune of the fifth class at 12,500 ases or 1250 drachms, and not

Livy's at 11,000 ases, is the correct one. 'Vhether the last was oc­

casioned by Livy's finding it somewhere mentioned perhaps, that

the difference between the limit of the fifth class and the proleta­

rians amounted to 11,000 ases,_:or whether the account which gave

the first class 110,000 ases, estimated the fifth at a tenth of this,

as the sum in Dionysius would be a tenth of the 125,000 ases

which' others assign to the first class,-cannot be decicled; though.

the first is the more probable solution: but it is not a waste of time

to consider how such an error may have arisen. ,

The classes, and they alone, were divided into centuries of the

juniors and the seniors, equal in number; the former destined for

service in the field, the latter for the defence of the city: the age of

the seniors began with the completion of the forty-fifth year 1018,

The theology of the Romans taught 19 that twelve times ten solar

years were the term fixed by Nature for the life of man, and that

beyond this the gods themselves had no power to prolong it; that

Fate had narrowed its span to thrice thirty; that Fortune abridges

were allowed to draw lots for the dignity of the. archon eponymus. And

even the landed property was only rated at the value of the crops.

1018 Varro in Censorinus 14. Dionysius iv. 16. AllM>r-'l'ou' ri71'ep 'l'n·

'l'<tpiiJtoM'tt. 'x<tl ?l'fv'Tf

h~

)'l)'O>O'l'<t' i71'0 'T(l)V

19 Servius on lEn. 1v. 653.

i;tonr.or

IT<rp<t'T!r}ITl(.<01 'l"MV n1>.1xf<1.V.HISTORY OF ROME.

339

even this period by a variety of chances: against these the protection

of thegods was implored. Of the length assigned to man's life by

Fate, just half is marked off by the above mentioned limit: and

since boyhood according to Varro ceased with the fifteenth year,

after the close of which the prmtexta was exchanged for the manly

toga at the next Liberalia 1020 , we here again find the number thirty, a

third part of man's whole lifetime,_ as the number of the years con­

tained in the vigorous prime of life. Here again the numbers them­

selves are a sure thread to guide us; and with reference to the

original institution of Servius, what Gellius states on the authority

of Tubero, that persons were not reckoned to be seniors until the

completion of their forty-sixth year"', is _certainly erroneous. The

term of military service may always have been denoted by the ex­

pression, minoi· ·annis sex et quadraginta 22 : this however meant

the person who had not yet entered into his forty-sixth year 2•. I

have not overlooked. that this. year is included by Polybius in the

military age 24 : but the extension wall brought about by the want of

a more plentiful choice of men hardened by service;· and for this

purpose advantage was taken of an expression, the meaning of

which naturally became indistinqt, when the general connexion run­

ning through the ancient institutions had been lost sight of. In the

same manner Tubero, a contemporary of Cicero, a man of busi­

ness, and no antiquarian, accounts the sixteenth year a part of boy­

hood25; in oppositon to Varro and to the evidence afforded by the

symmetry of the numbers: and unquestionably Nature did not

allow herself to be dictated to by such forms; nor did the lad of

'of fifteen put on strength for a campaign together with the manly

1020 Noris Cenotaph. Pi.s. r. p. 116. ff. Diss. 11. 4. So al.most the whole

of the sixteenth year might elapse previously.

21 x. 28. Ad annum quadragesimum sextum juniores, supra eum an­

num seniores appellasse.

'

22 Livy XLIII. 14.

23 ·Such as were mirwrcs annis viginti quinque were prohibited, with a

few exceptions, from holding offices of trust or dignity: but annus vigesimus

quintus coeptus pro pleno habetur: Ulpian I. 8. D. de muneribus (L. 4). In an

affair connected with constitutional law the expression was interpreted after

the ancient legal practice.

. •

24 The Romans are liable to the conscription iv Toi, TaTT<1.pa'.&onet. &«1

·~ ~TfO'IY ..,,.. i'"'"'· VI. l!J.

25 Gellius x. 28. Pueros esse existimasse, qui minorcs essent annis

scptemdecim: that is, according to the explanation in the text, who had not

yet entered upon their seventeenth year. The next clause-inde ab anno

scptimodccimo militcs scripsisse-settlcs the question in favour of the disputed

reading, juniores ab annis l:leptemdecim scribunt, in Livy xxu. 57 .. ,340

llISTORY OF ROME.

toga. According1y during the first year he was kept merely to

bodily exerci8es, and instructed how to demean himself among

men: and so long as this schooling lasted, it can hardly have been

the custom for him to vote in his century: thus, even if he had the

right, the matter was put off; and if the time to be spent among,the

juniors was still reckoned at thirty years, men would only be­

come seniors with the forty-seventh. Accor<ling to what Gellius

farther quotes out of Tubero, all who were above forty-six would

have been numbered among ·the seniors: according to a different

well-known statement, only such as had not yet closed their sixtieth

year; with which all civic rights expired. , This opinion rests upon

respectable authorities; and the obligation of the seniores to defend

the city, as we read in Livy, speaks strongly for their having

been separate from the senes. The same is also confirmed by the

principles of Greek law; for though Aristotle considers the old men

who have obtained their dismissal, as well as the boys who are not

yet enrolled, in the light of citizens, it is only as imperfect ones 102 e,

Every body sees that one of the fundamental principles in this

ronstitution was to adapt the distribution of power, and of arms as

the means of maintaining power, to the scale of property 2 1; a

scheme akin to the theory which regar<ls a state as a joint-stock

c,ompany. Now in this relation between the juniors and the seniors

yet another purpose displays itself. The ancient nations often en•

trusted the charge of taking counsel for the common weal to the

elders exclusively; and in a like spirit the seniors are placed on a par

with the juniors as to the number of their centuries: nor can we

fail to perceive here the justness of Cicero's words, that. throughout

the whole of the system the aim was to withdraw the power of

deciding from the majority*: for in this way the minority were to

preponderate even within the same class. That is to say, the

seniors. v;hether we take them in the wider or the narrower extent,

were much fewer than the juniors. Returns of population, arranged

according to the different periods of human life, are rare ; nor do

I know of any Italian one; and certainly the relative numbers must

10~6 Politics lIJ. 1. Kctl '71"11.'ilct, <rou' f'~'ll""' Ji iiA111.lctr t')'')'t)'f"f'Plrovr

x.ctl

)'tponct, <r•u' d<;>ttµhou' <;>ct<re•r,eir«I µiv.,..,, 9TOAi'Tct'• oux, ,:11'1'.ll>' 11.

Though great generals were sometimes called to the command of armies at a

very advanced age, there is the less force in this argument with regard to

Rome, because the knights were not divided according to their time of life.

~7 The equestrian order, as has just been remarked, stands apart from

this system.

·

" De Re p. 11. 22. Curavit-ne plurimum valcant plurfoii. ,

'I'.•"'IIISTOR Y OF ROME.

341

inevitably vary in different climates: but assuredly we shall no where

be far from the mark, if we assume that the number of men living

who have completed their forty-fifth year and are under sixty-one,

amounts to less than a third, that of all who have passed their

forty-fifth year, only to about half, of those. living between seven­

teen and forty-six; in the tweQty-eight years which we must take

as the actual period of military service in the field, and of the cor­

responding franchise 1028 • Here again we find a numerical propor­

tion which makes it likely that in the scheme of the centurial con­

stitution the ratio of one to two was in reality taken as a basis,

whatever limit we may draw for the age of the seniors.

The difference among the nunibers contained in the centuries of

different classes must have been exceedingly great: the principle

of their original arrangement has already been pointed out 2 u; name­

ly, the proportion between the aggregate taxable property of each

class and that of the whole body •. Three persons of the first class,

four of the second, six of the third, twelve of the fourth, four and

twenty of· the fifth, stood on a level, taking an average, in poipt of

fortune; and consequently likewise in their votes : therefore the

numbers in the centuries of the lower classes must have increased

at the same rate. The second, third, and fourth classes must each

have possessed property amounting to a fourth of the aggregate for­

tune of the first: the fifth, to three-eighths ; for else it would not

have had thirty centuries. Accordingly the number of citizens in

the second class came to a third, that in the third to half, of those

in the first; that in the fourth was equal to it; that in the fifth

thrice as great. By the principle of this division, out of thirty-five

citizens six: belonged to the first class, twenty-nine to the other

four. Moreover if the juniors of the first class had not actually

been about 4000, there was no reason to make forty centuries of

them: the inconvenience of so large. a number for voting cannot

have escaped the legislator. If the seniors of the same class were

taken to be half the juniors, the numbers just set down came out in

thousands, giving 6000 for the first class, 35,000 .for the whole

five 80 , This sum in no way disagrees with the one recorded as the

1028 I have deduced this result from the English population-returns of the

year 1821. The· relative numbers for the males, accurately expressed, are,

from 17 to 45, 0.6637; from 45 to 60, 0.2035; above 60, 0.1328; or the total

above 45, 0.3363. Calculating from the close of the fifteenth year, the pro­

portion would be that of 0.6863 to 0.3137.

29 Above p. 337.

30 This ancient numerical proportion rnay 'VerY. probably contain the342

HISTORY OF RO.ME.

result of the first census, 84,700 1031 ; a number which however has no

better claim to pass for historical, tpan the statements in the Fasti

of the days on which king Servius triumphed. From all appear­

ance some calculation adapted to the above mentioned proportion

lies at the bottom of this number; it certainly was not hit upon at

random: but there is little chance of our being able so to combine

what we know, as to divine the number assumed for the knights

and for the centuries not included in the classes. From the very .

first the numbers in the classes can have afforded nothing more

than an approximation to the object aimed at,.of representing the

taxable property: in process of time, and as the nominal value of

things altered, they must have departed so far from any such rela­

tion, that, as is the fate of all similar forms, this too became utterly

unfit for use and unmeaning.

·

A second. division of the centuries was into, the assiduers or locu­

pletes and the proletarians. The former must have included the

craftsmen attached to the first and fifth class. The name of· assi­

duers however was given to all whose fortune came to 1500 ases 8 ~

and upward: so that they also comprised. all between this limit and

the fifth class : and since on pressing emergencies the proletarians

were called out and equipped with arms at the public expense, it

plainly follows that these assiduers, though comprehended in no

class, can still less have been exempted from military service; nor

can they have been without the right of voting, in which the pro­

letarians and the capitecensi partook. They must doubtless have

been the accensi, who, Livy says, voted like the musicians with

the fifth class: or, more correctly speaking, as we now know from

Cicero, they formed two centuries, the accensi and velati; which

were probably distinguished from each other by their census as well

as in other respects; so that those were perhaps called accensi, who

were rated at more than say 7000 ases; those velati, ·whose return

fell between that sum and the proletarians. It has already been

noticed as a peculiarity in old Latin, especially in te~hnical and

official phrases, that the names of two objects, which, whether from

reason why, when a century, as Cicero says (pro Plancio 20(49)), was only

a part of a tribe, the number 'of tribes was raised to just five and thirty, and

no higher.

31 Dionysius rv. 22. The odd thousands are wanting in Livy, where

we find the round number 80000; doubtless only through the carelessness of

the person to whom we owe our revision of the text. For Eutropius, who

takes every thing from Livy, speaks of 83000 (1. ,7). The statement of the

census found in some manuscripts of the epitome of Livy is an interpolation.

32 , Cicero de Re p. n. 22. · Gellius xvi. 10.HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

343

their contrast ·or affinity, were habitually referred to each other,

were combined by mere juxtaposition, without any conjunction; as

empti venditi, locati conducti, socii Latini, Prisci Latini*: thus it

was the practice to say and to write accensi velati; a practice fa­

voured by their being united, as is certain, in the one battalion of

the accensi. When the body of reserve no longer followed the

standards, as it had done under the old system; when the obligation

to military service and the mode of raising levies had been entirely

remodelled after a new plan; and yet centuries of accensi and velati,

though doubtless composed of persons of a very different sort, were

still subsisting-being preserved, it may be supposed, because by

the ritual the beadles who attended upon the magistrates even when

offering sacrifices were taken from amongst them 1033- ; the usage of

ancient times was then so totally forgotten, that writers spoke of

an accensus velatus, just as of a socius Latinus, which would have

offended Cato's ears as a gross solecism. Their military duty was

the lightest in the whole army; since they followed the legion

without any b_usiness or burthen; nor were they marched in troops

against the enemy; but one by one they filled up the gaps that

were made, and received arms for that purpose 34·: besides they acted

as orderlies to the officers down to ~he decurion 81 • A great many

of them must have returned home from the short Roman campaigns

without having ever come to blows,' and frequently not without

booty.

While these held the lowest rank among the assideurs, the car­

penters on the other hand had a place allotted them by the side of

the first class. Cicero only gives them one century: and if we

*

Above pp. 224. 288.

1033 EvE:n Cato in ills time only knew thein as ministratores. Varro de

L. L. vr. 3. p. 92.

34 This is the account given by Varro, in the same place, of the adscrip­

tivi: and the passage quoted from him in Noni us de Doct. lndag. (xn) n. 8. v.

accensi, shows that in the section de adscriptivis he treated of the accensi.

Their identity as a body of reserve is also recognized by Festus in the Epit.

v. adscriptitii : so is that of the velati both there and again v. 'lJelati. Whether

they were really also the same with thefercntarii, as has been asserted, that

is, whether both together were embraced under that name, and whether their

business was to supply the soldiers in battle with arms and drink, are ques­

tions 1 leave undetermined. He that rejects my hypothesis has to show in

what way then those assiduers, who stood below the fifth class, served and

voted; and from what other body the accensi, who in the earlier form of th~

lt>gion made up thirty maniples, can have been taken. Livy too mentions

them along with the fifth class:

35 Varro in the same passage of Nonius.'344

IIISTORY OF ROME.

were reduced to the necessity of adopting the testimony of the most

trustworthy witness, I at least should not hesitate an instant between

him and the two historians. l4>wever here again a sure trace is

afforded us by the relation among the numbers. I shall speak

lower down of the comitia held in the camp*; where consequently

none· but the junior centuries and the five attached to them, the

Jabri, accensi, velati, liticines, and cornicines, were present: in

these no distinction was made between the juniors and the seniors,

any more than among the knights. Now the junior centuries

amounted to eighty-five; so that along with these five they made

up three times thirty, that number which runs through the earliest

institutions. This observation, I conceive, decides the matter; and

at the same time we may here catch a further glimpse of the reason

why, even if the. returns of the census had deviated considerably

from the abovementioned scheme, the number of centuries in the

classes would still have been fixed at just 170.

The proletarians in the most precise sense of the name, accord­

ing to Gellius 1088 , were those who gave in their property under 1500

ases, and above 375 : such as came below this mark, and those who

had noihing at all, were called capitecensi: in a wider sense, and

as contrasted with the assiduers, both these divisions were' com­

yrised under the name of prolefarians. That they formed two

centuries, the proletarians and the capitecensi, we should fincl

expressly stated in Cicero, but that the leaf of the manuscript

with the remainder of his account of the ce~turies, which breaks

off with the word proletariis, has been lost 3 7, It began beyond all

doubt with the words capite censis 8 ". Cicero reckoned 96 centu­

ries for the last four classes and the six odd centuries attached to

them: which number is made up, if, after the accensi, velati, liti­

cines, cornicines, we place two more; to wit, the proletarii and the

capitecensi 39 • Thus there would be 195 in the whole; a number

See the text to· note IO!l4.

1036 XVI. 10.

37 The sixth leaf of the eighteenth quaternion.

38 Let nobody guess that it was the century ni quis scivit; whi?h was

improperly termed a century, and was only called into existence when some

one stated that he had neglected to vote in his own.

39 Cicero has unfolded the whole system of this constitution with admi­

rable skill, at the very time that he declines giving a dry list of the classes.

Ignorant scribes indeed, and that unfortunate set of book-correctors who

waited in the train of the booksellers of antiquity, and who, as they even

boast in the declarations at the end of their manuscripts, improved them for

sale sine libris pro virihus in.genii, found him unintelligible; and thus throughlllSTORY OF ROME.

345

which is confirmed by another relation. For the 98 centuries

formed by' the knights and the first class being set in opposition to

all the rest so as to outvote them, it is natural that they should

amount to just half the sum total and one more: and such is the

case, if the lesser half consisted of the four lower classes, the six

centuries just mentioned, and the carpenters; in all 97. The car-

careless transcription and stupid and rash alterations did that hideous cor­

ruption arise by which the passage is disfigured. I have the same clear and

conscientious conviction that the restoration I have set forth in another place

is correct, as I have of the truth of my historical propositions. (The emend­

ations suggested by the author in Mai's edition were afterward reconsidered

Ly him in a tract Uebpr die Nacltricltt von den Comitien der Centurien im zwey­

ten Buck Ciceros de re publica, and in a controversial Duplik gegen Iierrn

Steinacker.) Perhaps others will feel no less certain, if they can but clearly

see the manner in which the corruption was produced. That a person not

familiar with manuscripts, and especially with very old ones, however free

he may be from prejudice, or however capable of pronouncing an opinion on

critical questions, will still find it difficult to enter into the following descrip­

tion, may easily be supposed: but this deficiency does not give him any

higher title to pass judgment. The clue in the labyrinth, as must be evident

on a candid consideration of the passage in its disorder, is this: Cicero di­

vided all the centuries into two masses: one contained the first class and the

carpenters attached to it; the other all the rest, the knights and the !J6 centu­

ries. And then he says: if &om among the latter the knights alone joined

the former, the 96 centuries, even if they kept inseparably together, were

outvoted.

The text .in its sound state ran thus': Nunc rationem vidctis esse talem ut

prima dassis, addita centuria qwe ad .mmmum usum urbis fabris tignariis est

data, LXXXI centurias kabeat: quibus ex cuv centuriis, tot enim reliqua: sunt,

equitum cent1triai cum sez suffragiis solflJ si accesserunt etc. In a passage 0£

this kind a reader will commonly go over the calculation; and thus some one

having written on the side decem ct octo, the number of the centuries in the

eque!ltrian order, the words crept into the text of a manuscript; so that the

clause now ran : equitum centurial cum sex suffragiis decem et octo solce si

accesserunt.

Now a line of this was left out-the words eq. c. e. s: Bil.ff. x. et-then sup­

plied in the margin, and in the transcript foisted into the wrong place, after

talem ut; so that now the passage was sheer nonsense, and read as follows:

.N'unr. rationem videtis esse talem ut eqvii:um centuria! cum sex S11jfrtigiis x et

prima classis ad c. q. a. s. u. u. f. t. e. d. LUXI. c. !. q. 11. cxiv. '· tot eni11& re•

liquai sunt octo solce si accesserunt etc.

Next came an ignorant emender, and fancied to put sense into it out of his

own head. The word octo had remained in its place: soon afterward the 96

centuries are spoken of: now as 96 and 8 make 104, cuv was altered into

c1v. In the same way x was struck out further back after sujfragiis, because

it did not give even a shadow of meaning. As to the Lxxxvw1, it arose from

a reader adding up the same vm with the LXXXI.

I.-TT346

HISTORY OF ROME.

penters, though stationed alongside of the first class, were yet by

their nature estranged from the aristocracy of birth and wealth 1040 •

The proletarians and capitecensi were not only inferior to the

locupletes from the insignificance of their share in the right of vot­

ing, but to all the assiduers in their civil capacity and estimation.

It is an obscure question how one citizen was a vindex for an­

other: none however but an assiduer could be so for his fellow"' :

and the phrase locuples testis demonstrates that even in giving evi­

dence there was a distinction humiliating to the poor 41 • Where

such was the case, it is impossible to suppose that the proletarians

were eligible to plebeian offices. But to make amends for this they

were exempted from taxes 42 •

\Vhether the five classes were on a perfect level as to their eli­

gibility to offices, is a point on which nothing, is known. What is

said concerning their being represented by the tribunes when the

number of these was raised to five*, seems certain; and therefore

probably each severally elected its deputy, and out of its own body.

The sums at which the plebeians and rerarians stand rated in

the census, were not the amount of their fortune after our notions,

,which account every source of income capable of transfer by inhe­

ritance or alienation a part of the capital ; but only that of such

property as they held in absolute ownership ; perhaps to the ex­

clusion of many kinds even of this. I have said, the plebeians and

rerarians: because it can hardly be supposed that the patricians ori·

ginally gave in any return of their fortune and paid a tax upon it;

the census furnished no measure for the.ir wealth. For the estates

in the pul:Jlic domains which they possessed and enjoyed the usu­

fruct or made grants of, transmitting by inheritance the same pos­

session and right of making such grants, under. a reservation of the

1040 Consequently Cicero might certainly have expressed himself much

more simply than he does in the passage explained in the last note; if in

treating of this obsolete matter Jie had recollected that the carpenters in rank

belonged to the upper half, in character to the lower. This is a further proof.

that there can have been only one century of them: and so of the other six

each belonged to a particular class of people.

* Gellius xvr. 10 from the twelve tables : Assiduo vindex assiduus

esto : proletario quoi quis volet vindex esto:

41 That locuples and assidu:us were equivalent, we learn from CiceJ:o de

Re p. 11. 22. Gellius too says : Assiduus in duodecim tabulis pro locuplete

et facile facienti dictus.

.

42 The etymology for the name of the opposite class, the assidui, ab asse

danda, from their being liable to be taxed, is evidently right.

* See note 1360.HISTORY OF ROME.

347

sovereign's title to resume the lands and to dispose of them other­

wise, cannot have been returned by them as property. They were

only a possession for a time: such refinements as those by which

modern nations extract a partial value, to be considered as absolute

property 1043, from a life-interest, were. unheard of among the an­

cients. As to the persons liable to taxation, it is clear that all those

things, which, as objects of Quiritary property, were in the strictest

sense called res mancipii 44 ,-such as brass coin, houses, parcels of

land, the rights attached to them, buildings and implements on them,

slaves, beasts of burthen and draught, and horses-were compre­

hended in the census. · But this statement of the jurists was pro­

bably much too confined for the early ages, even as a list of such

tl1ings as belonged to that particular kind of property' : flocks of

smaller cattle appertained to husbandry, just as much as beasts of

. draught and butthen; nor would the transfer of property in them

be attended with fewer formalities ; although it was not worth the

trouble to -employ the balance and to call witnesses for the sale of

a single goat or sheep. Gaius "pronounces silver and gold to be

res nee mancipii : yet Fabricius and Rufinus gave in a return of

their wrought silver to the censor* : and so,- even if res maneipii

and censui eensendo were equivalent from the beginning, we cannot

draw any certain conclusion from the lists in him and in Ulpian as

to the extent of the objects which made up the census of a Roman

c1t1zen. It is at least possible that at one time every thing which

did not come under the head of mere possession, granted ·whether

by the state or by a patron, was res mancipii and was called so ;

that the title to a ship might be maintained in court by the same

proc_ess as . that to a house ; and that all this was reckoned into a

person's capital. But a decisive discovery on this point is just as

little to be hoped foi: as on the mode of assessing the capital. An

actual valuation would have been impracticable : mention is made

of a formulary used by the censors 45 : hereby. we must doubtless

understand a table of rates for every kind and sort of taxable ob­

1043 For the sake of representing a freehold.

44 If scholars, remembering how the genitive Tulli and like are written,

would be content to regard mancipi as the genitive of mancipium, property,

and .would make this apparent by their way of spelling it, we should be rid of

an unprofitable puzzle.·

* F'lorus 1. 18. 2'2: and the passages quoted by Camera in the note.

45 Livy XXIX.15. Placere ccnsum in cploni~s agi ex fonnula ab Roman is

ccnsoribus data.348