BY
ARTHUR E. R. BOAK, Ph. D.,
Professor of Ancient History
in the University of Michigan

COPYRIGHT, 1921.
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1921.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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PREFACE

This sketch of the History of Rome to 565 A. D. is primarily intended to meet the needs of introductory college courses in Roman History. However, it is hoped that it may also prove of service as a handbook for students of Roman life and literature in general. It is with the latter in mind that I have added the bibliographical note. Naturally, within the brief limits of such a text, it was impossible to defend the point of view adopted on disputed points or to take notice of divergent opinions. Therefore, to show the great debt which I owe to the work of others, and to provide those interested in particular problems with some guide to more detailed study, I have given a list of selected references, which express, I believe, the prevailing views of modern scholarship upon the various phases of Roman History.

I wish to acknowledge my general indebtedness to Professor W. S. Ferguson of Harvard University for his guidance in my approach to the study of Roman History, and also my particular obligations to Professor W. L. Westermann of Cornell, and to my colleagues, Professors A. L. Cross and J. G. Winter, for reading portions of my manuscript and for much helpful criticism.

A. E. R. Boak.

University of Michigan,
October, 1921

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

[pg xi]

LIST OF MAPS

[pg xiii]

INTRODUCTION

The Sources for the Study of Early Roman History

The student beginning the study of Roman History through the medium of the works of modern writers cannot fail to note wide differences in the treatment accorded by them to the early centuries of the life of the Roman State. These differences are mainly due to differences of opinion among moderns as to the credibility of the ancient accounts of this period. And so it will perhaps prove helpful to give a brief review of these sources, and to indicate the estimate of their value which is reflected in this book.

The earliest Roman historical records were in the form of annals, that is, brief notices of important events in connection with the names of the consuls or other eponymous officials for each year. They may be compared to the early monastic chronicles of the Middle Ages. Writing was practised in Rome as early as the sixth century B. C. and there can be no doubt that the names of consuls or their substitutes were recorded from the early years of the republic, although the form of the record is unknown. It is in the annals that the oldest list of the consuls was preserved, the Capitoline consular and triumphal Fasti or lists being reconstructions of the time of Augustus.

The authorship of the earliest annals is not recorded. However, at the opening of the second century B. C. the Roman pontiffs had in their custody annals which purported to run back to the foundation of the city, including the regal period. We know also that as late as the time of the Gracchi it was customary for the Pontifex Maximus to record on a tablet for public inspection the chief events of each year. When this custom began is uncertain and it can only be proven for the time when the Romans had commenced to undertake maritime wars. From these pontifical records were compiled the so-[pg xiv]called annales Maximi, or chief annals, whose name permits the belief that briefer compilations were also in existence. There were likewise commentaries preserved in the priestly colleges, which contained ritualistic formulæ, as well as attempted explanations of the origins of usages and ceremonies.

Apart from these annals and commentaries there existed but little historical material before the close of the third century B. C. There was no Roman literature; no trace remains of any narrative poetry, nor of family chronicles. Brief funerary inscriptions, like that of Scipio Barbatus, appear in the course of the third century, and laudatory funeral orations giving the records of family achievements seem to have come into vogue about the end of the same century.

However, the knowledge of writing made possible the inscription upon stone or other material of public documents which required to be preserved with exactness. Thus laws and treaties were committed to writing. But the Romans, unlike the Greeks, paid little attention to the careful preservation of other documents and, until a late date, did not even keep a record of the minor magistrates. Votive offerings and other dedications were also inscribed, but as with the laws and treaties, few of these survived into the days of historical writing, owing to neglect and the destruction wrought in the city by the Gauls in 387 B. C.

Nor had the Greeks paid much attention to Roman history prior to the war with Pyrrhus in 281 B. C., although from that time onwards Greek historians devoted themselves to the study of Roman affairs. From this date the course of Roman history is fairly clear. However, as early as the opening of the fourth century B. C. the Greeks had sought to bring the Romans into relation with other civilized peoples of the ancient world by ascribing the foundation of Rome to Aeneas and the exiles from Troy; a tale which had gained acceptance in Rome by the close of the third century.

The first step in Roman historical writing was taken at the close of the Second Punic War by Quintus Fabius Pictor, who wrote in Greek a history of Rome from its foundation to his own times. A similar work, also in Greek, was composed by his contemporary, Lucius Cincius Alimentus. The oldest traditions were thus wrought into a connected version, which has been preserved in some passages of Polybius, but to a larger extent in the fragments of the Library of Universal History compiled by Diodorus the Sicilian about 30 B. C. [pg xv]Existing portions of his work (books 11 to 20) cover the period from 480 to 302 B. C.; and as his library is little more than a series of excerpts his selections dealing with Roman history reflect his sources with little contamination.

Other Roman chroniclers of the second century B. C. also wrote in Greek and, although early in that century Ennius wrote his epic relating the story of Rome from the settlement of Aeneas, it was not until about 168 that the first historical work in Latin prose appeared. This was the Origins of Marcus Porcius Cato, which contained an account of the mythical origins of Rome and other Italian cities, and was subsequently expanded to cover the period from the opening of the Punic Wars to 149 B. C.

Contemporary history soon attracted the attention of the Romans but they did not neglect the earlier period. In their treatment of the latter new tendencies appear about the time of Sulla under patriotic and rhetorical stimuli. The aim of historians now became to provide the public with an account of the early days of Rome that would be commeasurate with her later greatness, and to adorn this narrative, in Greek fashion, with anecdotes, speeches, and detailed descriptions, which would enliven their pages and fascinate their readers. Their material they obtained by invention, by falsification, and by the incorporation into Roman history of incidents from the history of other peoples. These writers were not strictly historians, but writers of historical romance. Their chief representative was Valerius Antias.

The Ciceronian age saw great vigor displayed in antiquarian research, with the object of explaining the origin of ancient Roman customs, ceremonies, institutions, monuments, and legal formulæ, and of establishing early Roman chronology. In this field the greatest activity was shown by Marcus Terentius Varro, whose Antiquities deeply influenced his contemporaries and successors.

In the age of Augustus, between 27 B. C. and 19 A. D., Livy wrote his great history of Rome from its beginnings. His work summed up the efforts of his predecessors and gave to the history of Rome down to his own times the form which it preserved for the rest of antiquity. Although it is lacking in critical acumen in the handling of sources, and in an understanding for political and military history, the dramatic and literary qualities of his work have ensured its popularity. Of it there have been preserved the first ten books (to [pg xvi]293 B. C.), and books 21 to 45 (from 218 to 167 B. C.). A contemporary of Livy was the Greek writer Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a work called Roman Antiquities, which covered the history of Rome down to 265 B. C. The earlier part of his work has also been preserved. In general he depended upon Varro and Livy, and gives substantially the same view of early Roman history as the latter.

What these later writers added to the meagre annalistic narrative preserved in Diodorus is of little historical value, except in so far as it shows what the Romans came to believe with regard to their own past. The problem which faced the later Roman historians was the one which faces writers of Roman history today, namely, to explain the origins and early development of the Roman state. And their explanation does not deserve more credence than a modern reconstruction simply because they were nearer in point of time to the period in question, for they had no wealth of historical materials which have since been lost, and they were not animated by a desire to reach the truth at all costs nor guided by rational principles of historical criticism. Accordingly we must regard as mythical the traditional narrative of the founding of Rome and of the regal period, and for the history of the republic to the time of the war with Pyrrhus we should rely upon the list of eponymous magistrates, whose variations indicate political crises, supplemented by the account in Diodorus, with the admission that this itself is not infallible. All that supplements or deviates from this we should frankly acknowledge to be of a hypothetical nature. Therefore we should concede the impossibility of giving a complete and adequate account of the history of these centuries and refrain from doing ourselves what we criticize in the Roman historians.

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PART I

THE FORERUNNERS OF ROME IN ITALY

A HISTORY OF ROME TO 565 A. D.

CHAPTER I

THE GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY

Italy, ribbed by the Apennines, girdled by the Alps and the sea, juts out like a “long pier-head” from Europe towards the northern coast of Africa. It includes two regions of widely differing physical characteristics: the northern, continental; the southern, peninsular. The peninsula is slightly larger than the continental portion: together their area is about 91,200 square miles.

Continental Italy. The continental portion of Italy consists of the southern watershed of the Alps and the northern watershed of the Apennines, with the intervening lowland plain, drained, for the most part, by the river Po and its numerous tributaries. On the north, the Alps extend in an irregular crescent of over 1200 miles from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic. They rise abruptly on the Italian side, but their northern slope is gradual, with easy passes leading over the divide to the southern plain. Thus they invite rather than deter immigration from central Europe. East and west continental Italy measures around 320 miles; its width from north to south does not exceed seventy miles.

The peninsula. The southern portion of Italy consists of a long, narrow peninsula, running northwest and southeast between the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas, and terminating in two promontories, which form the toe and heel of the “Italian boot.” The length of the peninsula is 650 miles; its breadth is nowhere more than 125 miles. In striking contrast to the plains of the Po, southern Italy is traversed throughout by the parallel ridges of the Apennines, which give it an endless diversity of hill and valley. The average height of these mountains, which form a sort of vertebrate system for the peninsula (Apennino dorso Italia dividitur, Livy xxxvi, 15), is about 4,000 feet, and even their highest peaks (9,500 feet) are [pg 4]below the line of perpetual snow. The Apennine chain is highest on its eastern side where it approaches closely to the Adriatic, leaving only a narrow strip of coast land, intersected by numerous short mountain torrents. On the west the mountains are lower and recede further from the sea, leaving the wide lowland areas of Etruria, Latium and Campania. On this side, too, are rivers of considerable length, navigable for small craft; the Volturnus and Liris, the Tiber and the Arno, whose valleys link the coast with the highlands of the interior.

The coast-line. In comparison with Greece, Italy presents a striking regularity of coast-line. Throughout its length of over 2000 miles it has remarkably few deep bays or good harbors, and these few are almost all on the southern and western shores. Thus the character of the Mediterranean coast of Italy, with its fertile lowlands, its rivers, its harbors, and its general southerly aspect, rendered it more inviting and accessible to approach from the sea than the eastern coast, and determined its leadership in the cultural and material advancement of the peninsula.

Climate. The climate of Italy as a whole, like that of other Mediterranean lands, is characterized by a high average temperature, and an absence of extremes of heat or cold. Nevertheless, it varies greatly in different localities, according to their northern or southern situation, their elevation, and their proximity to the sea. In the Po valley there is a close approach to the continental climate of central Europe, with a marked difference between summer and winter temperatures and clearly marked transitional periods of spring and autumn. On the other hand, in the south of the peninsula the climate becomes more tropical, with its periods of winter rain and summer drought, and a rapid transition between the moist and the dry seasons.

Malaria. Both in antiquity and in modern times the disease from which Italy has suffered most has been the dreaded malaria. The explanation is to be found in the presence of extensive marshy areas in the river valleys and along the coast. The ravages of this disease have varied according as the progress of civilization has brought about the cultivation and drainage of the affected areas or its decline has wrought the undoing of this beneficial work.

Forests. In striking contrast to their present baldness, the slopes of the Apennines were once heavily wooded, and the well-tilled [pg 5]fields of the Po valley were also covered with tall forests. Timber for houses and ships was to be had in abundance, and as late as the time of Augustus Italy was held to be a well-forested country.

Minerals. The mineral wealth of Italy has never been very great at any time. In antiquity the most important deposits were the iron ores of the island of Elba, and the copper mines of Etruria and Liguria. For a time, the gold washings in the valleys of the Graian Alps were worked with profit.

Agriculture. The true wealth of Italy lay in the richness of her soil, which generously repaid the labor of agriculturist or horticulturist. The lowland areas yielded large crops of grain of all sorts—millet, maize, wheat, oats and barley—while legumes were raised in abundance everywhere. Campania was especially fertile and is reported to have yielded three successive crops annually. The vine and the olive flourished, and their cultivation eventually became even more profitable than the raising of grain.

The valleys and mountain sides afforded excellent pasturage at all seasons, and the raising of cattle and sheep ranked next in importance to agricultural pursuits among the country’s industries.

The islands: Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica. The geographical location of the three large islands, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, links their history closely with that of the Italian peninsula. The large triangle of Sicily (11,290 sq. mi.) is separated from the southwest extremity of Italy by the narrow straits of Rhegium, and lies like a stepping-stone between Europe and Africa. Its situation, and the richness of its soil, which caused it to become one of the granaries of Rome, made it of far greater historical importance than the other two islands. Sardinia (9,400 sq. mi.) and Corsica (3,376 sq. mi.), owing to their rugged, mountainous character and their greater remoteness from the coast of Italy, have been always, from both the economic and the cultural standpoint, far behind the more favored Sicily.

The historical significance of Italy’s configuration and location. The configuration of the Italian peninsula, long, narrow, and traversed by mountain ridges, hindered rather than helped its political unification. Yet the Apennine chain, running parallel to the length of the peninsula, offered no such serious barriers to that unification as did the network of mountains and the long inlets that intersect the peninsula of Greece. And when once Italy had been welded [pg 6]into a single state by the power of Rome, its central position greatly facilitated the extension of the Roman dominion over the whole Mediterranean basin.

The name Italia. The name Italy is the ancient Italia, derived from the people known as the Itali, whose name had its origin in the word vitulus (calf). It was applied by the Greeks as early as the fifth century B. C. to the southwestern extremity of the peninsula, adjacent to the island of Sicily. It rapidly acquired a much wider significance, until, from the opening of the second century, Italia in a geographical sense denoted the whole country as far north as the Alps. Politically, as we shall see, the name for a long time had a much more restricted significance.

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CHAPTER II

PREHISTORIC CIVILIZATION IN ITALY

Accessibility of Italy to external influences. The long coast-line of the Italian peninsula rendered it peculiarly accessible to influences from overseas, for the sea united rather than divided the peoples of antiquity. Thus Italy was constantly subjected to immigration by sea, and much more so to cultural stimuli from the lands whose shores bordered the same seas as her own. Nor did the Alps and the forests and swamps of the Po valley oppose any effectual barrier to migrations and cultural influences from central Europe. Consequently we have in Italy the meeting ground of peoples coming by sea from east and south and coming over land from the north, each bringing a new racial, linguistic, and cultural element to enrich the life of the peninsula. These movements had been going on since remote antiquity, until, at the beginning of the period of recorded history, Italy was occupied by peoples of different races, speaking different languages, and living under widely different political and cultural conditions.

As yet many problems connected with the origin and migrations of the historic peoples of Italy remain unsolved; but the sciences of archaeology and philology have done much toward enabling us to present a reasonably clear and connected picture of the development of civilization and the movements of these peoples in prehistoric times.

The Old Stone Age. From all over Italy come proofs of the presence of man in the earliest stage of human development—the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. The chipped flint instruments of this epoch have been found in considerable abundance, and are chiefly of the Moustérien and Chelléen types. With these have been unearthed the bones of the cave bear, cave lion, cave hyena, giant stag, and early types of the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and elephant, which Paleolithic man fought and hunted. In the Balzi Rossi caves, near Ventimiglia in Liguria, there have been found human skeletons, some of which, at least, are agreed to be of the Paleolithic Age. But the [pg 8]caves in Liguria and elsewhere, then the only habitations which men knew, do not reveal the lifelike and vigorous mural drawings and carvings on bone, which the Old Stone Age has left in the caves of France and Spain.

The New Stone Age. With the Neolithic or New Stone Age there appears in Italy a civilization characterized by the use of instruments of polished stone. Axes, adzes, and chisels, of various shapes and sizes, as well as other utensils, were shaped by polishing and grinding from sandstone, limestone, jade, nephrite, diorite, and other stones. Along with these, however, articles of chipped flint and obsidian, for which the workshops have been found, and also instruments of bone, were in common use. The Neolithic people were also acquainted with the art of making pottery, an art unknown to the Paleolithic Age.

Like the men of the preceding epoch, those of the Neolithic Age readily took up their abode in natural caves. However, they also built for themselves villages of circular huts of wicker-work and clay, at times erected over pits excavated in the ground. Such village sites, the so-called fonde di capanne, are widely distributed throughout Italy.

They buried their dead in caves, or in pits dug in the ground, sometimes lining the pit with stones. The corpse was regularly placed in a contracted position, accompanied by weapons, vases, clothing, and food. Second burials and the practice of coloring the bones of the skeletons with red pigment were in vogue.

Climatic change. The climate of Italy had changed considerably from that of the preceding age, and a new fauna had appeared. In place of the primitive elephant and his associates, Neolithic men hunted the stag, beaver, bear, fox, wolf and wild boar. Remains of such domestic animals as the ox, horse, sheep, goat, pig, dog, and ass, show that they were a pastoral although not an agricultural people.

A new racial element. The use of polished stone weapons, the manufacture of pottery, the hut villages and a uniform system of burial rites distinguished the Neolithic from the Paleolithic civilization. And, because of these differences, especially because of the introduction of this system of burial which argues a distinctive set of religious beliefs, in addition to the fact that the development of this civilization from that which preceded cannot be traced on Italian [pg 9]soil, it is held with reason that at the opening of the Neolithic Age a new race entered Italy, bringing with it the Neolithic culture. Here and there men of the former age may have survived and copied the arts of the newcomers, but throughout the whole peninsula the racial unity of the population is shown by the uniformity of their burial customs. The inhabitants of Sicily and Sardinia in this age had a civilization of the same type as that on the mainland.

The Ligurians probably a Neolithic people. It is highly probable that one of the historic peoples of Italy was a direct survival from the Neolithic period. This was the people called the Ligures (Ligurians), who to a late date maintained themselves in the mountainous district around the Gulf of Genoa. In support of this view it may be urged (1) that tradition regarded them as one of the oldest peoples of Italy, (2) that even when Rome was the dominant state in Italy they occupied the whole western portion of the Po valley and extended southward almost to Pisa, while they were believed to have held at one time a much wider territory, (3) that at the opening of our own era they were still in a comparatively barbarous state, living in caves and rude huts, and (4) that the Neolithic culture survived longest in this region, which was unaffected by the migrations of subsequent ages.

The Aeneolithic Age. The introduction of the use of copper marks the transition from the Neolithic period to that called the Aeneolithic, or Stone and Copper Age. This itself is but a prelude to the true Bronze Age. Apparently copper first found its way into Italy along the trade routes from the Danube valley and from the eastern Mediterranean, while the local deposits were as yet unworked. In other respects there is no great difference between the Neolithic civilization and the Aeneolithic, and there is no evidence to place the entrance of a new race into Italy at this time.

The Bronze Age. The Bronze Age proper in Italy is marked by the appearance of a new type of civilization—that of the builders of the pile villages. There are two distinct forms of pile village. The one, called palafitte, is a true lake village, raised on a pile structure above the waters of the surrounding lake or marsh. The other, called terramare, is a pile village constructed on solid ground and surrounded by an artificial moat.

The palafitte. The traces of the palafitte are fairly closely confined to the Alpine lake region of Italy from Lake Maggiore to Lake [pg 10]Garda. In general, these lake villages date from an early stage of Bronze Age culture, for later on, in most cases, their inhabitants seem to have abandoned them for sites on dry land further to the south. The lake-dwellers were hunters and herdsmen, but they practised agriculture as well, raising corn and millet. In addition to their bronze implements, they continued to use those of more primitive materials—bone and stone. They, too, manufactured a characteristic sort of pottery, of rather rude workmanship, which differs strikingly from that of the Neolithic Age. In the late Bronze Age, at any rate, they cremated their dead and buried the ashes in funerary urns. For their earlier practice evidence is lacking.

The terramare. The terramare settlements are found chiefly in the Po valley; to the north of that river around Mantua, and to the south between Piacenza and Bologna. Scattered villages have been found throughout the peninsula; one as far south as Taranto. The terramare village was regularly constructed in the form of a trapezoid, with a north and south orientation. It was surrounded by an earthen wall, around the base of which ran a wide moat, supplied with running water from a neighboring stream. Access to the settlement was had by a single wooden bridge, easy to destroy in time of danger. The space within the wall was divided in the center by a main road running north and south the whole length of the settlement. It was paralleled by some narrower roads and intersected at right angles by others. On one side of this main highway was a space surrounded by an inner moat, crossed by a bridge. This area was uninhabited and probably devoted to religious purposes. The dwellings were built on pile foundations along the roadways. Outside the moat was placed the cemetery. The dead were cremated and the ashes deposited in ossuary urns, which were laid side by side in the burial places. The remains were rarely accompanied by anything but some smaller vases placed in the ossuary.

The terramare civilization. With the terramare people bronze had almost completely supplanted stone instruments. Bronze daggers, swords, axes, arrowheads, spearheads, razors, and pins have been preserved in abundance. However, articles of bone and of horn were also in general use. The terramare civilization had likewise its special type of hand-made pottery of peculiar shapes and ornamentation. A characteristic form of ornamentation was the crescent-shaped handle (ansa lunata). The terramare peoples were both agricultural and [pg 11]pastoral, cultivating wheat and flax and raising the better known domestic animals; while they also hunted the stag and the wild boar.

The peoples of the palafitte and the terramare. Owing to their custom of dwelling in pile villages, their practice of cremating their dead, and other characteristics peculiar to their type of civilization, the peoples of the palafitte and the terramare are believed to have introduced a new racial element into Italy. The former probably descended from the Swiss lake region, while the latter probably came from the valley of the Danube. These peoples, abandoning the lakes and marshes of the Po valley, spread southward over the peninsula. Because of this expansion and because of the striking similarity between the design of the terramare settlements and that of the Roman fortified camps, it has been suggested that they were the forerunners of the Italian peoples of historic times.

Other types of Bronze Age culture in Italy. The Neolithic population of northern Italy developed a Bronze Age civilization under the stimulus of contact with the terramare people and the lake-dwellers. In the southern part of the peninsula and in Sicily, however, the Bronze Age developed more independently, although showing decided traces of influences from the eastern Mediterranean. Only in its later stages does it show the effect of the southward migration of the builders of the pile villages.

The Iron Age. The prehistoric Iron Age in Italy has left extensive remains in the northern and central regions, but such is by no means the case in the south. The most important center of this civilization was at Villanova, near Bologna. Here, again, we have to do with a new type of civilization, which is not a development of the terramare culture. In addition to the use of iron, this age is marked by the practice of cremation, with the employment of burial urns of a distinctive type, placed in well tombs (tombe a pozzo). In Etruria, to the south of the Apennines, the Early Iron Age is of the Villanova type. It seems fairly certain that both in Umbria and in Etruria this civilization is the work of the Umbrians, who at one time occupied the territory on both sides of the Apennines. Regarding the migration of the Umbrians into Italy we know nothing, but it seems probable that their civilization had its rise in central Europe. The later Iron Age civilization both in Etruria and northward of the Apennines has been identified as that of the Etruscans.

Latium. In Latium the Iron Age civilization is a development un[pg 12]der Villanovan influences. Here a distinctive feature is the use of a hut-shaped urn to receive the ashes of the dead. This urn was itself deposited in a larger burial urn. This civilization is that of the historic Latins, to whom belong also the hill villages of Latium and the walled towns, constructed between the eighth and the sixth centuries B. C.

Elsewhere in the northern part of Italy in the Iron Age we have to do with a culture developing out of that of the terramare period. Likewise in the east and south of the peninsula the Iron Age is a local development under outside stimulus.

The preceding sketch of the rise of civilization in Italy has brought us down to the point where we have to do with the peoples who occupied Italian soil at the beginning of the historic period, for from the sixth century it is possible to attempt a connected historical record of the movements of these Italian races.

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CHAPTER III

THE PEOPLES OF HISTORIC ITALY: THE ETRUSCANS; THE GREEKS

I. The Peoples of Italy

At the close of the sixth century B. C., the soil of Italy was occupied by many peoples of diverse language and origin.

The Ligurians. The northwest corner of Italy, including the Po valley as far east as the river Ticinus and the coast as far south as the Arno, was occupied by the Ligurians.

The Veneti. On the opposite side of the continental part of Italy, in the lowlands to the north of the Po between the Alps and the Adriatic, dwelt the Veneti, whose name is perpetuated in modern Venice. They are generally believed to have been a people of Illyrian origin.

The Euganei. In the mountain valleys, to the east and west of Lake Garda, lived the Euganei, a people of little historical importance, whose racial connections are as yet unknown.

The Etruscans. The central plain of the Po, between the Ligurians to the west and the Veneti to the east, was controlled by the Etruscans. Their territory stretched northwards to the Alps and eastwards to the Adriatic coast. They likewise occupied the district called after them, Etruria, to the south of the Apennines, between the Arno and the Tiber. Throughout all this area the Etruscans were the dominant element, although it was partly peopled by subject Ligurians and Italians. Etruscan colonies were also established in Campania.

The Italians. Over the central and southwestern portion of the peninsula were spread a number of peoples speaking more or less closely related dialects of a common, Indo-germanic, tongue. Of these, the Latini, the Aurunci (Ausones), the Osci (Opici), the Oenotri, and the Itali occupied, in the order named, the western coast from the Tiber to the Straits of Rhegium. Between the valley of the upper Tiber and the Adriatic were the Umbri, while to the south of these, in the valleys of the central Apennines and along the [pg 15]Adriatic coast, were settled the so-called Sabellian peoples, chief of whom were the Sabini, the Picentes, the Vestini, the Frentani, the Marsi, the Aequi, the Hernici, the Volsci, and the Samnites. As we have noted, one of these peoples, the Itali, gave their name to the whole country to the south of the Alps, and eventually to this group of peoples in general, whom we call Italians, as distinct from the other races who inhabited Italy in antiquity.

The Iapygians. Along the eastern coast from the promontory of Mt. Garganus southwards were located the Iapygians; most probably, like the Veneti, an Illyrian folk.

The Greeks. The western and southern shores of Italy, from the Bay of Naples to Tarentum, were fringed with a chain of Hellenic settlements.

The peoples of Sicily. The Greeks had likewise colonized the eastern and southern part of the island of Sicily. The central portion of the island was still occupied by the Sicans and the Sicels, peoples who were in possession of Sicily prior to the coming of the Greeks, and whom some regard as an Italian, others as a Ligurian, or Iberian, element. In the extreme west of Sicily were wedged in the small people of the Elymians, another ethnographic puzzle. Here too the Phoenicians from Carthage had firmly established themselves.

Iberians in Sardinia and Corsica. The inhabitants of Sardinia and Corsica, islands which were unaffected by the migrations subsequent to the Neolithic Age, are believed to have been of the same stock as the Iberians of the Spanish peninsula. The Etruscans had their colonies in eastern Corsica and the Carthaginians had obtained a footing on the southern and western coasts of Sardinia.

From this survey of the peoples of Italy at the close of the sixth century B. C., we can see that to the topographical obstacles placed by nature in the path of the political unification of Italy there was added a still more serious difficulty—that of racial and cultural antagonism.

II. The Etruscans

Etruria. About the opening of the eighth century, the region to the north of the Tiber, west and south of the Apennines, was occupied by the people whom the Greeks called Tyrseni or Tyrreni, the Romans Etrusci or Tusci, but who styled themselves Rasenna. Their [pg 16]name still clings to this section of Italy (la Toscana), which to the Romans was known as Etruria.

The origin of the Etruscans. Racially and linguistically the Etruscans differed from both Italians and Hellenes, and their presence in Italy was long a problem to historians. Now, however, it is generally agreed that their own ancient tradition, according to which they were immigrants from the shores of the Aegean Sea, is correct. They were probably one of the pre-Hellenic races of the Aegean basin, where a people called Tyrreni were found as late as the fifth century B. C., and it has been suggested that they are to be identified with the Tursha, who appear among the Aegean invaders of Egypt in the thirteenth century. Leaving their former abode during the disturbances caused by the Hellenic occupation of the Aegean islands and the west coast of Asia Minor, they eventually found a new home on the western shore of Italy. Here they imposed their rule and their civilization upon the previous inhabitants. The subsequent presence of the two elements in the population of Etruria is well attested by archaeological evidence.

Walled towns. The Etruscans regularly built their towns on hill-tops which admitted of easy defence, but, in addition, they fortified these towns with strong walls of stone, sometimes constructed of rude polygonal blocks and at other times of dressed stone laid in regular courses.

Tombs. However, the most striking memorials of the presence of the Etruscans are their elaborate tombs. Their cemeteries contain sepulchres of two types—trench tombs (tombe a fossa) and chamber tombs (tombe a camera). The latter, a development of the former type, are hewn in the rocky hillsides. The Etruscans practised inhumation, depositing the dead in a stone sarcophagus. However, under the influence of the Italian peoples with whom they came into contact, they also employed cremation to a considerable extent. Their larger chamber tombs were evidently family burial vaults, and were decorated with reliefs cut on their rocky walls or with painted friezes, from which we derive most of our information regarding the Etruscan appearance, dress, and customs. Objects of Phoenician and Greek manufacture found in these tombs show that the Etruscans traded with Carthage and the Greeks as early as the seventh century.

Etruscan industries. The Etruscans worked the iron mines of Elba and the copper deposits on the mainland. Their bronzes, espe[pg 17]cially their mirrors and candelabra, enjoyed high repute even in fifth-century Athens. Their goldsmiths, too, fashioned elaborate ornaments of great technical excellence. Etruria also produced the type of black pottery with a high polish known as bucchero nero.

Etruscan art. In general, Etruscan art as revealed in wall paintings and in the decorations of vases and mirrors displays little originality in choice of subjects or manner of treatment. In most cases it is a direct and not too successful imitation of Greek models, rarely attaining the grace and freedom of the originals.

Architecture. In their architecture, however, although even here affected by foreign influences, the Etruscans displayed more originality and were the teachers of the Romans and other Italians. They made great use of the arch and vault, they created distinctive types of column and atrium (both later called Etruscan) and they developed a form of temple architecture, marked by square structures with a high podium and a portico as deep as the cella. Their mural architecture has been referred to already.

Writing. Knowledge of the art of writing reached the Etruscans from the Greek colony of Cyme, whence they adopted the Chalcidian form of the Greek alphabet. Several thousand inscriptions in Etruscan have been preserved, but so far all attempts to translate their language have failed.

Religion. The religion of the Etruscans was characterized by the great stress laid upon the art of divination and augury. Certain features of this art, especially the use of the liver for divination, appear to strengthen the evidence that connects the Etruscans with the eastern Mediterranean. For them the after-world was peopled by powerful, malicious spirits: a belief which gives a gloomy aspect to their religion. Their circle of native gods was enlarged by the addition of Hellenic and Italian divinities and their mythology was greatly influenced by that of Greece.

Commerce. The Etruscans were mariners before they settled on Italian soil and long continued to be a powerful maritime people. They early established commercial relations with the Carthaginians and the Greeks, as is evidenced by the contents of their tombs and the influence of Greece upon their civilization in general. But they, as well as the Carthaginians, were jealous of Greek expansion in the western Mediterranean, and in 536 a combined fleet of these two peoples forced the Phoceans to abandon their settlement on the island [pg 18]of Corsica. For the Greeks their name came to be synonymous with pirates, on account of their depredations which extended even as far as the Aegean.

Government. In Etruria there existed a league of twelve Etruscan cities. However, as we know of as many as seventeen towns in this region, it is probable that several cities were not independent members of the league. This league was a very loose organization, religious rather than political in its character, which did not impair the sovereignty of its individual members. Only occasionally do several cities seem to have joined forces for the conduct of military enterprises. The cities at an early period were ruled by kings, but later were under the control of powerful aristocratic families, each backed by numerous retainers.

Expansion north of the Apennines, in Latium and in Campania. In the course of the sixth century the Etruscans crossed the Apennines and occupied territory in the Po valley northwards to the Alps and eastwards to the Adriatic. Somewhat earlier, towards the end of the seventh century, they forced their way through Latium, established themselves in Campania, where they founded the cities of Capua and Nola, and gradually completed the subjugation of Latium itself. This marks the extreme limits of their expansion in Italy, and before the opening of the fifth century their power was already on the wane.

The decline of the Etruscan power. It was about this time that Rome freed itself from Etruscan domination, while the other Latins, aided by Aristodemus, the Greek tyrant of Cyme, inflicted a severe defeat upon the Etruscans at Aricia (505 B. C.). A land and sea attack upon Cyme itself, in 474, resulted in the destruction of the Etruscan fleet by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse. The year 438 B. C. saw the end of the Etruscan power in Campania with the fall of Capua before a Samnite invasion. Not long afterwards, as we shall see, a Celtic invasion drove them from the valley of the Po. The explanation of this rapid collapse of the Etruscan power outside Etruria proper is that, owing to the lack of political unity, these conquests were not national efforts but were made by independent bands of adventurers. These failed to assimilate the conquered populations and after a few generations were overthrown by native revolutions or outside invasions, especially since there was no Etruscan nation to protect them in time of need. Thus failure to develop a strong [pg 19]national state was the chief reason why the Etruscans did not unite Italy under their dominion, as they gave promise of doing in the course of the sixth century.

The significance of the Etruscans in the history of Italy. Our general impression of the Etruscans is that they were a wealthy, luxury-loving people, quick to appreciate and adopt the achievements of others, but somewhat lacking in originality themselves. Cruel, they took delight in gladiatorial combats, especially in Campania, where the Romans learned this custom. Bold and energetic warriors, as their conquests show, they lacked the spirit of discipline and coöperation, and were incapable of developing a stable political organization. Nevertheless, they played an important part in the cultural development of Italy, even though here their chief mission was the bringing of the Italian peoples into contact with Hellenic civilization.

III. The Greeks

Greek colonization. As early as the eighth century the Greeks had begun their colonizing activity in the western Mediterranean, and, in the course of the next two centuries, they had settled the eastern and southern shores of Sicily, stretched a chain of settlements on the Italian coast from Tarentum to the Bay of Naples, and established themselves at the mouth of the Rhone and on the Riviera. The opposition of Carthage shut them out from the western end of Sicily, and from Spain; the Etruscans closed to them Italy north of the Tiber; while the joint action of these two peoples excluded them from Sardinia and Corsica.

In the fifth century these Greek cities in Sicily and Italy were at the height of their power and prosperity. In Sicily they had penetrated from the coast far into the interior where they had brought the Sicels under their domination. By the victory of Himera, in 480 B. C., Gelon of Syracuse secured the Sicilian Greeks in the possession of the greater part of the island and freed them from all danger of Carthaginian invasion for over seventy years. Six years later, his brother and successor, Hieron, in a naval battle off Cyme, struck a crushing blow at the Etruscan naval power and delivered the mainland Greeks from all fear of Etruscan aggression. The extreme southwestern projection of the Italian peninsula had passed com[pg 20]pletely under Greek control, but north as far as Posidonia and east to Tarentum their territory did not extend far from the seaboard. In these areas they had occupied the territory of the Itali and Oenotrians, while on the north of the Bay of Naples Cyme, Dicaearchia, and Neapolis (Naples) were established in the land of the Opici (Osci). The name Great Greece, given by the Hellenes to South Italy, shows how firmly they were established there.

Lack of political unity. However, the Greeks possessed even less political cohesion than did the Etruscans. Each colony was itself a city-state, a sovereign independent community, owning no political allegiance to its mother city. Thus New Greece reproduced all the political characteristics of the Old. Only occasionally, in times of extreme peril, did even a part of the Greek cities lay aside their mutual jealousies and unite their forces in the common cause. Such larger political structures as the tyrants of Syracuse built up by the subjugation of other cities were purely ephemeral, barely outliving their founders. The individual cities also were greatly weakened by incessant factional strife within their walls. The result of this disunion was to restrict the Greek expansion and, eventually, to pave the way for the conquest of the western Greeks by the Italian “barbarians.”

The decline of the Greek power in Italy and Sicily. Even before the close of the fifth century, the decline of the Western Greeks had begun. In Italy their cities were subjected to repeated assaults from the expanding Samnite peoples of the central Apennines. In 421, Cyme fell into the hands of a Samnite horde, and from that time onwards the Greek cities further south were engaged in a struggle for existence with the Lucanians and the Bruttians, peoples of Samnite stock. In Sicily the Carthaginians renewed their assault upon the Greeks in 408 B. C. For a time (404–367) the genius and energy of Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, welded the cities of the island and the mainland into an empire which enabled them to make head against their foes. But his empire had only been created by breaking the power of the free cities, and after his death they were left more disunited and weaker than ever. After further warfare, by 339, Carthage remained in permanent occupation of the western half of the island of Sicily, while in Italy only a few Greek towns, such as Tarentum, Thurii, and Rhegium, were able to maintain themselves, and that with ever increasing difficulty, against the rising tide of the [pg 21]Italians. Even by the middle of the fourth century an observant Greek predicted the speedy disappearance of the Greek language in the west before that of the Carthaginians or Oscans. However, their final struggles must be postponed for later consideration.

The rôle of the Greeks in Italian history. It was the coming of the Greeks that brought Italy into the light of history, and into contact with the more advanced civilization of the eastern Mediterranean. From the Greek geographers and historians we derive our earliest information regarding the Italian peoples, and they, too, shaped the legends that long passed for early Italian history. The presence of the Greek towns in Italy gave a tremendous stimulus to the cultural development of the Italians, both by direct intercourse and indirectly through the agency of the Etruscans. In this spreading of Greek influences, Cyme, the most northerly of the Greek colonies and one of the earliest, played a very important part. It was from Cyme that the Romans as well as the Etruscans took their alphabet. The more highly developed Greek political institutions, Greek art, Greek literature, and Greek mythology found a ready reception among the Italian peoples and profoundly affected their political and intellectual progress. Traces of this Greek influence are nowhere more noticeable than in the case of Rome itself, and the cultural ascendancy which Greece thus early established over Rome was destined to last until the fall of the Roman Empire.

[pg 23]

PART II

THE PRIMITIVE MONARCHY AND THE REPUBLIC:
FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES TO 27 B. C.

[pg 25]

CHAPTER IV

EARLY ROME TO THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

I. The Latins

Latium and the Latins. The district to the south of the Tiber, extending along the coast to the promontory of Circeii and from the coast inland to the slopes of the Apennines, was called in antiquity Latium. Its inhabitants, at the opening of the historic period, were the Latins (Latini), a branch of the Italian stock, perhaps mingled with the remnants of an older population.

They were mainly an agricultural and pastoral people, who had settled on the land in pagi, or cantons, naturally or artificially defined rural districts. The pagus constituted a rude political and religious unit. Its population lived scattered in their homesteads. If some few of the homesteads happened to be grouped together, they constituted a vicus, which, however, had neither a political nor a religious organization.

At one or more points within the cantons there soon developed small towns (oppida), usually located on hilltops and fortified, at first with earthen, later with stone, walls. These towns served as market-places and as points of refuge in time of danger for the people of the pagus. There developed an artisan and mercantile element, and there the aristocratic element of the population early took up their abode, i. e., the wealthier landholders, who could leave to others the immediate oversight of their estates. And so these oppida became the centers of government for the surrounding pagi. It is very doubtful if the Latins as a whole were ever united in a single state. But even if that had once been the case, this loosely organized state must early have been broken up into a number of smaller units. These were the various populi; that is, the cantons with their oppida. The names of some sixty-five of these towns are known, but before the close of the sixth century many of the smaller of them had been merged with their more powerful neighbors.

The Latin League. The realization of the racial unity of the [pg 26]Latins was expressed in the annual festival of Jupiter Latiaris celebrated on the Alban Mount. For a long time also the Latin cities formed a league, of which there were thirty members according to tradition. Actually, about the middle of the fifth century there were only some eight cities participating in the association upon an independent footing. The central point of the league was the grove and temple of Diana at Aricia, and it was in the neighborhood of Aricia that the meetings of the assembly of the league were held. The league possessed a very loose organization, but we know of a common executive head—the Latin dictator.

II. The Origins of Rome

The site of Rome. Rome, the Latin Roma, is situated on the Tiber about fifteen miles from the sea. The Rome of the later Republic and the Empire, the City of the Seven Hills, included the three isolated eminences of the Capitoline, Palatine and Aventine, and the spurs of the adjoining plateau, called the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Caelian. Other ground, also on the left bank of the river, and likewise part of Mount Janiculum, across the Tiber, were included in the city. But this extent was only attained after a long period of growth, and early Rome was a town of much smaller area.

The growth of the city. Late Roman historians placed the founding of Rome about the year 753 B. C., and used this date as a basis for Roman chronology. However, it is absolutely impossible to assign anything like a definite date for the establishment of the city. Excavations have revealed that in the early Iron Age several distinct settlements were perched upon the Roman hills, separated from one another by low, marshy ground, flooded by the Tiber at high water. These were probably typical Latin walled villages (oppida).

At a very early date some of these villages formed a religious union commemorated in the festival of the Septimontium or Seven Mounts. These montes were crests of the Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills, perhaps each the site of a separate settlement.

But the earliest city to which we can with certainty give the name of Rome is of later date than the establishment of the Septimontium. It is the Rome of the Four Regions—the Palatina, Esquilina, Col[pg 27]lina and Sucusana (later Suburana)—which included the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian and Palatine hills, as well as the intervening low ground. Within the boundary of this city, but not included in the four regions, was the Capitoline, which had separate fortifications and served as the citadel (arx). It may be that the organization of this city of the Four Regions was effected by Etruscan conquerors, for the name Roma seems to be of Etruscan origin, and, for the Romans, an urbs, as they called Rome, was merely an oppidum of which the limits had been marked out according to Etruscan ritual. The consecrated boundary line drawn in this manner was called the pomerium.

The Aventine Hill, as well as the part of the plateau back of the Esquiline, was only brought within the city walls in the fourth century, and remained outside the pomerium until the time of Claudius.

The location of Rome, on the Tiber at a point where navigation for sea-going vessels terminated and where an island made easy the passage from bank to bank, marked it as a place of commercial importance. It was at the same time the gateway between Latium and Etruria and the natural outlet for the trade of the Tiber valley. Furthermore, its central position in the Italian peninsula gave it a strategic advantage in its wars for the conquest of Italy. But the greatness of Rome was not the result of its geographic advantages: it was the outgrowth of the energy and political capacity of its people, qualities which became a national heritage because of the character of the early struggles of the Roman state.

Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the result of a fusion of several racial elements—Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people. In language, in religion, in political institutions, they were characteristically Latin, and their history is inseparably connected with that of the Latins as a whole.

III. The Early Monarchy

The tradition. The traditional story of the founding of Rome is mainly the work of Greek writers of the third century B. C., who desired to find a link between the new world-power Rome and the older centers of civilization: while the account of the reign of the [pg 28]Seven Kings is a reconstruction on the part of Roman annalists and antiquarians, intended to explain the origins of Roman political and religious institutions. And, in fact, owing to the absence of any even relatively contemporaneous records (a lack from which the Roman historians suffered as well as ourselves) it is impossible to attempt an historical account of the period of kingly rule. We can improve but little on the brief statement of Tacitus (i, 1 Ann.)—“At first kings ruled the city Rome.”

The kingship. The existence of the kingship itself is beyond dispute, owing to the strength of the Roman tradition on this point and the survival of the title rex or king in the priestly office of rex sacrorum. It seems certain, too, that the last of the Roman kings were Etruscans and belong to the period of Etruscan domination in Rome and Latium. As far as can be judged, the Roman monarchy was not purely hereditary but elective within the royal family, like that of the primitive Greek states, where the king was the head of one of a group of noble families, chosen by the nobles and approved by the people as a whole. About the end of the sixth century the kingship was deprived of its political functions, and remained at Rome solely as a lifelong priestly office. It is possible that there had been a gradual decline of the royal authority before the growing power of the nobles as had been the case at Athens, but it is very probable that the final step in this change coincided with the fall of an Etruscan dynasty and the passing of the control of the state into the hands of the Latin nobility (about 508 B. C.).

Institutions of the regal period. The royal power was not absolute, for the exercise thereof was tempered by custom, by the lack of any elaborate machinery of government, and by the practical necessity for the king to avoid alienating the good will of the community. The views of the aristocracy were voiced in the Senate (senatus) or Council of Elders, which developed into a council of nobles, a body whose functions were primarily advisory in character. From a very early date the Roman people were divided into thirty groups called curiae, and these curiae served as the units in the organization of the oldest popular assembly—the comitia curiata. Membership in the curiae was probably hereditary, and each curia had its special cult, which was maintained long after the curiae had lost their political importance. The primitive assembly of the curiae was convoked at the pleasure of the king to hear matters of interest [pg 29]to the whole community. It did not have legislative power, but such important steps as the declaration of war or the appointment of a new rex required its formal sanction.

Expansion under the kings. Under the kings Rome grew to be the chief city in Latium, having absorbed several smaller Latin communities in the immediate neighborhood, extended her territory on the left bank of the Tiber to the seacoast, where the seaport of Ostia was founded, and even conquered Alba Longa, the former religious center of the Latins. It is possible that by the end of the regal period Rome exercised a general suzerainty over the cities of the Latin plain. The period of Etruscan domination failed to alter the Latin character of the Roman people and left its traces chiefly in official paraphernalia, religious practices (such as the employment of haruspices), military organization, and in Etruscan influences in Roman art.

IV. Early Roman Society

The Populus Romanus. The oldest name of the Romans was Quirites, a name which long survived in official phraseology, but which was superseded by the name Romani, derived from that of the city itself. The whole body of those who were eligible to render military service, to participate in the public religious rites and to attend the meetings of the popular assembly, with their families, constituted the Roman state—the populus Romanus.

Patricians and Plebeians. At the close of the regal period the populus Romanus comprised two distinct social and political classes. These were the Patricians and the Plebeians. A very considerable element of the latter class was formed by the Clients. These class distinctions had grown up gradually under the economic and social influences of the early state; and, in antiquity, were not confined to Rome but appeared in many of the Greek communities also at a similar stage of their development.

The Patricians were the aristocracy. Their influence rested upon their wealth as great landholders, their superiority in military equipment and training, their clan organization, and the support of their clients. Their position in the community assured to them political control, and they had early monopolized the right to sit in the Senate. The members of the Senate were called collectively patres, whence the name patricii (patricians) was given to all the members of their [pg 30]class. The patricians formed a group of many gentes, or clans, each an association of households (familiae) who claimed descent from a common ancestor. Each member of a gens bore the gentile name and had a right to participate in its religious practices (sacra).

Patrons and clients. Apparently, the clients were tenants who tilled the estates of the patricians, to whom they stood for a long time in a condition of economic and political dependence. Each head of a patrician household was the patron of the clients who resided on his lands. The clients were obliged to follow their patrons to war and to the political arena, to render them respectful attention, and, on occasion, pecuniary support. The patron, in his turn, was obliged to protect the life and interests of his client. For either patron or client to fail in his obligations was held to be sacrilege. This relationship, called patronatus on the side of the patron, clientela on that of the client, was hereditary on both sides. The origin of this form of clientage is uncertain and it is impossible for us to form a very exact idea of position of the clients in the early Roman state, for the like-named institution of the historic republican period is by no means the one that prevailed at the end of the monarchy. The older, serf-like, conditions had disappeared; the relationship was voluntarily assumed, and its obligations, now of a much less serious nature, depended for their observance solely upon the interest of both parties.

The patrician aristocracy formed a social caste, the product of a long period of social development, and this caste was enlarged in early times by the recognition of new gentes as possessing the qualifications of the older clans (patres maiorum and minorum gentium). But eventually it became a closed order, jealous of its prerogatives and refusing to intermarry with the non-patrician element.

The Plebs. This latter constituted the plebeians or plebs. They were free citizens—the less wealthy landholders, tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers—who lacked the right to sit in the Senate and so had no direct share in the administration. Beyond question, however, they were included in the curiae and had the right to vote in the comitia curiata. Nor is there any proof of a racial difference between plebeians and patricians. It is not easy to determine to what degree the clients participated in the political life of the community, yet, in the general use of the term, the plebs included the clients, who later, under the republic, shared in all the privileges won by the [pg 31]plebeians and who, consequently, must have had the status of plebeians in the eye of the state.

The sharp social and political distinction between nobles and commons, between patricians and plebeians, is the outstanding feature of early Roman society, and affords the clue to the political development of the early republican period.

[pg 33]

CHAPTER V

THE EXPANSION OF ROME TO THE UNIFICATION OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA: c. 509–265 B. C.

I. To the Conquest of Veii—392 b. c.

The alliance of Rome and the Latin League, about 486 B. C. At the close of the regal period Rome appears as the chief city in Latium, controlling a territory of some 350 sq. miles to the south of the Tiber. But the fall of the monarchy somewhat weakened the position of Rome, for it brought on hostilities with the Etruscan prince Lars Porsena of Clusium, which resulted in a defeat for Rome and the forced acceptance of humiliating conditions.

This defeat naturally broke down whatever suzerainty Rome may have exercised over Latium and necessitated a readjustment of the relations between Rome and the Latin cities. A treaty attributed by tradition to Spurius Cassius was finally concluded between Rome on the one hand and the Latin league on the other, which fixed the relations of the two parties for nearly one hundred and fifty years. By this agreement the Romans and the Latin league formed an offensive and defensive military alliance, each party contributing equal contingents for joint military enterprises and dividing the spoils of war, while the Latins at Rome and the Romans in the Latin cities enjoyed the private rights of citizenship. The small people called the Hernici, situated to the east of Latium, were early included in this alliance. This union was cemented largely through the common dangers which threatened the dwellers in the Latin plain from the Etruscans on the north and the highland Italian peoples to the east and south. For Rome it was of importance that the Latin cities interposed a barrier between the territory of Rome and her most aggressive foes, the Aequi and the Volsci.

Wars with the Aequi and Volsci. Of the details of these early wars we know practically nothing. However, archæological evidence seems to show that about the beginning of the fifth century B. C. the [pg 34]Latins sought an outlet for their surplus population in the Volscian land to the south east. Here they founded the settlements of Signia, Norba and Satricum. But this expansion came to a halt, and about the middle of the fifth century the Volsci still held their own as far north as the vicinity of Antium, while the Aequi were in occupation of the Latin plain as far west as Tusculum and Mt. Algidus. Towards the end of the century, however, under Roman leadership the Latins resumed their expansion at the expense of both these peoples.

Veii. In addition to these frequent but not continuous wars, the Romans had to sustain a serious conflict with the powerful Etruscan city of Veii, situated about 12 miles to the north of Rome, across the Tiber. The causes of the struggle are uncertain, but war broke out in 402, shortly after the Romans had gained possession of Fidenae, a town which controlled a crossing of the Tiber above the city of Rome. According to tradition the Romans maintained a blockade of Veii for eleven years before it fell into their hands. It was in the course of this war that the Romans introduced the custom of paying their troops, a practice which enabled them to keep a force under arms throughout the entire year if necessary. Veii was destroyed, its population sold into slavery, and its territory incorporated in the public land of Rome. By this annexation the area of the Roman state was nearly doubled.

Recent excavations have shown that Veii was a place of importance from the tenth to the end of the fifth century B. C., that Etruscan influence became predominant there in the course of the eighth century, and that, at the time of its destruction, it was a flourishing town, which, like Rome itself, was in contact with the Greek cultural influences then so powerful throughout the Italian peninsula.

II. The Gallic Invasion

The Gauls in the Po Valley. But scarcely had the Romans emerged victorious from the contest with Veii when a sudden disaster overtook them from an unexpected quarter. Towards the close of the fifth century various Celtic tribes crossed the Alpine passes and swarmed down into the Po valley. These Gauls overcame and drove out the Etruscans, and occupied the land from the Ticinus and Lake Maggiore southeastwards to the Adriatic between the mouth of the Po and Ancona. This district was subsequently known as Gallia [pg 35]Cisalpina. The Gauls formed a group of eight tribes, which were often at enmity with one another. Each tribe was divided into many clans, and there was continual strife between the factions of the various chieftains. They were a barbarous people, living in rude villages and supporting themselves by cattle-raising and agriculture of a primitive sort. Drunkenness and love of strife were their characteristic vices: war and oratory their passions. In stature they were very tall; their eyes were blue and their hair blond. Brave to recklessness, they rushed naked into battle, and the ferocity of their first assault inspired terror even in the ranks of veteran armies. Their weapons were long, two-edged swords of soft iron, which frequently bent and were easily blunted, and small wicker shields. Their armies were undisciplined mobs, greedy for plunder, but disinclined to prolonged, strenuous effort, and utterly unskilled in siege operations. These weaknesses nullified the effects of their victories in the field and prevented their occupation of Italy south of the Apennines.

The sack of Rome. In 387 B. C., a horde of these marauders crossed the Apennines and besieged Clusium. Thence, angered, as was said, by the hostile actions of Roman ambassadors, they marched directly upon Rome. The Romans marched out with all their forces and met the Gauls near the Allia, a small tributary of the Tiber above Fidenae. The fierce onset of the Gauls drove the Roman army in disorder from the field. Many were slain in the rout and the majority of the survivors were forced to take refuge within the ruined fortifications of Veii. Deprived of their help and lacking confidence in the weak and ill-planned walls, the citizen body evacuated Rome itself and fled to the neighboring towns. The Capitol, however, with its separate fortifications, was left with a small garrison. The Gauls entered Rome and sacked the city, but failed to storm the citadel. Apparently they had no intention of settling in Latium and therefore, after a delay of seven months, upon information that the Veneti were attacking their new settlements in the Po valley, they accepted a ransom of 1000 pounds of gold (about $225,000) for the city and marched off home. The Romans at once reoccupied and rebuilt their city, and soon after provided it with more adequate defences in the new wall of stone later known as the Servian wall.

Later Gallic invasions. For some years the Gauls ceased their inroads, but in 368 another raid brought them as far as Alba in the land of the Aequi, and the Romans feared to attack the invaders. [pg 36]However, when a fresh horde appeared in 348 the Romans were prepared. They and their allies blocked the foe’s path, and the Gauls retreated, fearing to risk a battle. Rome thus became the successful champion of the Italian peoples, their bulwark against the barbarian invaders from the north. In 334 the Gauls and the Romans concluded peace and entered upon a period of friendly relations which lasted for the rest of the fourth century.

III. The Disruption of the Latin League and the Roman Alliance with the Campanians: 387–334 b. c.

Wars with the Aequi, Volsci, and Etruscans. The disaster that overtook Rome created a profound impression throughout the civilized world and was noted by contemporary Greek writers. But the blow left no permanent traces, for only the city, not the state, had been destroyed. It is true that, encouraged by their enemy’s defeat, the Aequi, Volsci and the Etruscan cities previously conquered by Rome took up arms, but each met defeat in turn. Rome retained and consolidated her conquests in southern Etruria. Part of the land was allotted to Romans for settlement and four tribal districts were organized there. On the remainder, two Latin colonies, Sutrium (383) and Nepete (372), were founded. The territory won from the Volsci was treated in like manner.

In 354 the Romans concluded an alliance with the Samnite peoples of the south central Apennines. Probably this agreement was reached in view of the common fear of Gallic invasions and because both parties were at war with the smaller peoples dwelling between Latium and Campania, so that a delimitation of their respective spheres of action was deemed advisable. At any rate, it was in the course of the next few years that Rome completely subdued the Volsci and Aurunci, while the Samnites overran the land of the Sidicini.

The Latin War, 338–336 B. C. Not long afterwards, the Latins, allied with the Campanians, were at war with Rome. Even before this, subsequent to the Gallic capture of Rome, the Romans had fought with individual Latin cities, but now practically all the cities of the Latin league were in arms against them. It is possible that both Latins and Campanians felt their independence threatened by the expansion and alliance of the Romans and the Samnites and that [pg 37]this was the underlying cause of hostilities. However that may be, within two years the Latins had been completely subdued. The Latin league ceased to exist. The individual cities, except Tibur and Praeneste, lost their independence and were incorporated in the Roman state. These two cities preserved their autonomy and concluded new treaties with Rome.

Alliance with the Campanians, about 334 B. C. At about the same time, the majority of the cities of Campania, including Capua, concluded an alliance with Rome upon the conditions of the Roman alliance with the old Latin league. These cities retained their independence, and extended and received the rights of commercium and connubium with Rome. This meant that the citizen of one city could transact any business in another that was party to this agreement with the assurance that his contract would be protected by the law of the second city, while if he married a woman of that city his children would be considered legitimate heirs to his property. By virtue of this close alliance, the military resources of Campania were arrayed on the side of Rome, and Rome and Campania presented a united front against their common foes. The Roman sphere of influence was thus extended as far south as the Bay of Naples.

After the Latin war, the territory previously won from the Volsci and Aurunci was largely occupied by settlements of Roman citizens or by Latin colonies, for even after the dissolution of the Latin league the Romans made use of this type of colony to secure their conquests, as well as to relieve the surplus population of Rome and Latium.

IV. Wars with the Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans: 325–280 b. c.

The conflict of Rome and the Samnites in Campania. The alliance of Rome and Campania brought the Romans into immediate contact with the Samnites and converted these former friends into enemies, since the Samnites regarded Campania as their legitimate field for expansion and refused to submit to its passing under the aegis of Rome. However, they had been unable to prevent the union of Rome with Capua and other cities, for at the time they were engaged with another enemy, the Tarentines, who were assisted by Alexander, king of the Molossians (334–331).

The Samnites formed a loose confederacy of kindred peoples, with [pg 38]no strong central authority. Therefore, although bold and skilful warriors, they were at a disadvantage in a long struggle where unity of control and continuity of policy became of decisive importance. Here Rome had the advantage, an advantage that was increased by the alliances Rome was able to form in the course of her wars against this enemy. For generations the excess population of the Samnite valleys had regularly overflowed into the lowland coast areas, and such migrations had given rise to the Lucanians, Bruttians, and a large part of the Campanians themselves. However, the danger of being submerged by fresh waves of Samnites caused the peoples whose territories bordered on Samnium to look to Rome for support, and so Rome found allies in the Central Italian peoples, and in the Apulians and the Lucanians.

The beginning of hostilities, 325–4. Hostilities broke out over the occupation of Naples by the Romans and its incorporation in the Roman alliance. This step was taken in the interests of the party in the city that sought Roman protection, and was accomplished in spite of Samnite opposition. The war was waged chiefly in Campania, in the valley of the upper Liris, and in Apulia. In 318, a Roman army attempting to penetrate from Campania into Samnium was cut off and compelled to surrender at the Caudine Pass. It is probable that as a result of this defeat the Romans gave up Fregellae (occupied in 328) and other territory on the Liris, and they may even have made a temporary truce. However, hostilities were soon resumed. Once again, in 314, the Samnites won a great victory, this time at Lautulae not far south of Circeii, and their party acquired control in Campania. But this temporary success was quickly counterbalanced by Roman victories in Campanian territory.

The war was prolonged by an Etruscan attack upon Roman territory that necessitated a division of the Roman forces. But in two campaigns (309–7 B. C.), in the course of which a Roman army advanced through Umbria and invaded northern Etruria, the cities which had taken up arms against Rome were forced to make peace.

The war against the Samnites could be energetically prosecuted again. By the construction of the Via Appia the Romans secured a military highway from Rome to Capua which greatly facilitated the conduct of operations in Campania. It is probable, too, that the reorganization of the Roman army, which dates from this period, was beginning to bear fruit. From both Campania and Apulia the [pg 39]Romans took the offensive, and several severe defeats forced the Samnites to seek peace in 304. They retained their independence, but the disputed territory on their borders fell to Rome.

It was about the close of this war that the Aequi, Marsi, Marrucini, Frentani, Paeligni, some of the Umbrians, and other of the peoples of Central Italy became federate allies of Rome. Apulia likewise passed under Roman control. New Latin colonies and new tribal districts marked the expansion of Roman territory.

Wars with the Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans, 298–80 B. C. In 298 war broke out again between the Romans and Samnites, apparently because the Lucanians had deserted the Roman alliance for the Samnites. Soon the Samnites allied themselves with the Etruscans and Gauls, and succeeded in uniting the forces of the three peoples in Umbria. But this host was annihilated by the Romans in the battle of Sentinum (295). With this victory all danger for Rome was over. By systematically ravaging the enemy’s country the Roman consuls in 290 B. C. forced the Samnites to sue for peace. They entered the Roman alliance, and a portion of their land was incorporated in the ager publicus of Rome. A similar fate overtook the Sabines and Picentes, who had taken sides with the Samnites.

The war with the Etruscans and the Gauls still dragged on. But in 285, after suffering a severe blow at the hands of the Gallic Senones, the Romans took vigorous action and drove this people from the land between Ancona and the Rubicon—the ager Gallicus. In the same year the tribe of the Boii, with Etruscan allies, penetrated as far as the Vadimonian Lake, where the Romans inflicted upon them a crushing defeat. Another Roman victory in the next year brought the Boii to terms, and soon the Etruscan cities one by one submitted to Rome, until by 280 all were Roman allies.

V. The Roman Conquest of South Italy: 281–270 b. c.

Italians and Greeks in South Italy. The only parts of the peninsula that had not yet acknowledged the Roman overlordship were the lands of the Lucanians and Bruttians and the few Greek cities in the south that still maintained their independence. Of these latter the chief was Tarentum, a city of considerable commercial importance. From the middle of the fourth century these cities had been engaged in continual warfare with the Lucanians and [pg 40]Messapians, and in the course of their struggles Tarentum had come to assume the rôle of protector of the Hellenes in Italy. But even this city had only been able to make head against its foes through assistance obtained from Greece. In 338, King Archidamus of Sparta, and in 331 Alexander, king of Epirus and uncle of Alexander the Great, fell fighting in the service of the Italian Greeks. In 303, Cleonymus of Sparta, more fortunate than his predecessors, compelled the Lucanians to conclude a peace, which probably included the Romans, at that moment their allies. A little later (c. 300 B. C.) Agathocles, king of Syracuse, assisted the Tarentines against the same foe, and incorporated in his own kingdom the Bruttians and the Greek cities in the southwest. But with his death in 289, his kingdom, like that of Dionysius I, fell apart and the Greeks in the west were left again without a protector. Consequently, when the Lucanians renewed their attacks upon Thurii, that city, being unable to find succor in Greece and distrusting Tarentum, appealed to Rome (282). Rome gave ear to the call, relieved and garrisoned Thurii. But this action brought Roman ships of war into the Gulf of Tarentum contrary to an agreement between the two cities (perhaps that of 303). Enraged, the Tarentines attacked the Roman fleet, sank some Roman triremes, and then occupied Thurii. The ensuing Roman demands for reparation were rejected, their ambassadors insulted, and war began (281).

The war with Pyrrhus and Tarentum. The Tarentines were able to unite against Rome the Messapians, Lucanians, Samnites and Bruttians, but Roman successes in the first campaign forced them to call in the aid of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Pyrrhus was probably the most skilful Greek general of the time, and he brought with him into Italy an army organized and equipped according to the Macedonian system of Alexander the Great, which had become the standard in the Greek world. His force comprised 20,000 heavy-armed infantry forming the phalanx, and 3,000 Thessalian cavalry. Besides, he had a number of war elephants; animals which had figured on Greek battlefields since Ipsus (301). The first engagement was fought near Heraclea (280) and after a severe struggle the Romans were driven from the field. The superior generalship of Pyrrhus, and the consternation caused by his war elephants, won the day, but his losses were very heavy, and he himself was wounded. As fighters the Romans had shown themselves the equal of the foe, and their [pg 41]tactical organization, perfected in the Samnite Wars, had proved its value in its first encounter with that developed by the military experts of Greece. As a result of his victory at Heraclea, Pyrrhus was able to advance as far north as Latium, but withdrew again without accomplishing anything of importance. The next year, he won another hard-fought battle near Ausculum in Apulia. Thereupon the Romans began negotiations which Pyrrhus welcomed, sending the orator Cineas to Rome to represent him. But, before an agreement was reached, the Carthaginians, who feared the intervention of Pyrrhus in Sicily, offered the Romans assistance. Their proffer was accepted; the negotiations with Pyrrhus ended; and Rome and Carthage bound themselves not to make a separate agreement with the common foe, while the Carthaginian fleet was to coöperate with the Romans.

Pyrrhus in Sicily, 278–5 B. C. Nevertheless, Pyrrhus determined to answer an appeal from the Sicilian Greeks and to leave Italy for Sicily. After the death of Agathocles, tyrant and king of Syracuse (317–289), who had played the rôle of another Dionysius I, the Greeks in Sicily had fallen upon evil days. The Carthaginians had renewed their attacks upon them, and a new foe had appeared in the Mamertini, Campanian mercenary soldiers who had seized Messana and made it their headquarters for raiding the territory of the Greek cities. Caught between these two enemies, the Greeks appealed to Pyrrhus who came to their aid, possibly with the hope of uniting Sicily under his own control. His success was immediate. The Carthaginians were forced to give up all their possessions except Lilybaeum, and Pyrrhus stood ready to carry the war into Africa. But, at this juncture, the exactions that he laid upon his Sicilian allies and their fear that his victory would make him their permanent master caused them to desert his cause and make peace with their foes. Deprived of their assistance, and seeing that his allies in Italy were hard pressed by the Romans, he abandoned his Sicilian venture.

The end of the war. Pyrrhus returned to Italy, with the loss of his fleet in a naval battle with the Carthaginians, reorganized his forces, and advanced into Lucania or Samnium to meet the Romans. While manœuvering for an attack, one of his divisions sustained a severe repulse at Beneventum (275), whereupon he abandoned the offensive and retired to Tarentum. Leaving a garrison in that city [pg 42]he withdrew the rest of his forces to Greece, with the intention of attacking Antigonus Gonatas in Macedonia. His initial successes in this enterprise led him to withdraw his garrison from Tarentum and abandon the Western Greeks to their fate. Thereupon the Romans soon reduced the Samnites and Lucanians, while Tarentum and the other Greek cities, one after another, were forced to submit and enter the Roman alliance. By 270 B. C., all South Italy had in this way been added to the Roman dominions.

By 265 B. C. after a few more brief struggles with revolting or still unsubdued communities in central and northern Italy, the Romans had completed the subjugation of the entire Italian peninsula.

VI. The Roman Confederacy

Roman foreign policy. By wars and alliances Rome had united Italy. But it is not to be supposed that this was a goal consistently pursued through many generations by Roman statesmen. Probably it was not until the end was nearly within sight that the Romans realized whither their policy was leading them. Indeed, it is certain that many of Rome’s wars were waged in defence of Rome’s territory or that of the Roman allies. This seems particularly true of the period prior to the Gallic inroad of 387. According to the ancient Roman formula employed in declaring war, that uttered by the Fetiales, war was looked upon as the last means to obtain reparation for wrongs that were suffered at the hands of the enemy. Yet, although the Roman attitude in such matters was doubtless at one time sincere, we may well question how long this sincerity continued, and whether the injuries complained of were not sometimes the result of Roman provocation. Such attempts to place the moral responsibility for a war upon the enemy are common to all ages and are not always convincing. However, if we may not convict the Romans of aggressive imperialism prior to 265, at any rate the methods which they pursued in their relations with the other peoples of Italy made their domination inevitable in view of the Roman national character and their political and military organization. These methods early became established maxims of Roman foreign policy. The Romans, whenever possible, waged even their defensive wars offensively, and rarely made peace save with a beaten foe. As a rule, the enemy was forced to conclude a treaty with Rome which [pg 43]placed his forces at the disposal of the Roman state. This treaty was regarded as perpetually binding, and any attempt to break off the relationship it established was regarded as a casus belli. Possibly, the Romans looked upon this as the only policy which would guarantee peace on their borders, but it inevitably led to further wars, for it resulted in the continuous extension of the frontiers defended by Rome and so continually brought Rome into contact and conflict with new peoples. Nor were the voluntary allies of Rome allowed to leave the Roman alliance: such action was treated as equivalent to a declaration of war and regularly punished with severity. This practice gradually transformed Rome’s independent into dependent allies. From the middle of the fourth century, it seems that Rome deliberately sought to prevent the development of a strong state in the southern part of Italy, and to this end gladly took under her protection weaker communities that felt themselves threatened by stronger neighbors, although such action inevitably led to war with the latter. Furthermore, a conquered state frequently lost a considerable part of its territory. Portions of this land were set aside for the foundation of fortress colonies to protect the Roman conquests and overawe the conquered. The rest was incorporated in the ager Romanus to the profit of both the rich proprietors and the landless citizens. Usually, the Roman soldiers shared directly in the distribution of the movable spoils of war; sometimes a huge booty, as after the subjugation of the Sabines and Picentes in 290. A long series of successful and profitable wars, for Rome was ultimately victorious in every struggle after 387, had engendered in the Roman people a self-confidence and a martial spirit which soon led them to conquests beyond the confines of Italy. During this period of expansion within Italy, Roman policy had been guided by the Senate, a body of unrecorded statesmen of wide outlook and great determination, who not only made Rome mistress of the peninsula but succeeded in laying enduring foundations for the Roman power.

Rome and Italy. But although Italy was united under the Roman hegemony it by no means formed a single state. Rather it was an agglomerate of many states and many peoples, speaking different tongues and having different political institutions. The largest single element, however, was formed by the Roman citizens. These were to be found not only in the city of Rome and its immediate neighborhood, but also settled in the rural tribal districts (35 in [pg 44]number after 241) organized on conquered territory throughout the peninsula. In addition, groups of 300 citizens had been settled in various harbor towns as a sort of resident garrison to protect Roman interests. In all, down to 183 B. C., 22 of these maritime colonies were established, whose members in view of their special duties were excused from active service with the Roman legions. All these were full Roman citizens, but there were others who, while enjoying the private rights of Roman citizenship, lacked the right to vote or to hold office (cives sine suffragio). Such were the inhabitants of most of the old Latin communities and some others which had been absorbed in the Roman state. Such communities were called municipia (municipalities). Some of these were permitted to retain their own magistrates and city organization: others lacked this privilege of local autonomy. Of the former class, Gabii, conquered during the monarchy, is said to have been the prototype. This municipal system had the advantage of providing for local administration and at the same time reconciling the conquered city to the loss of its freedom. It was a distinctly Roman institution, and shows the wisdom of the early Roman statesmen who thus marked out the way for the complete absorption of the vanquished into the Roman citizen body, which was thus strengthened to meet its continually increasing military burdens. By 265, the Roman territory in Italy had an area of about 10,000 square miles. It extended along the west coast from the neighborhood of Caere southwards to the southern border of Campania, and from the latitude of Rome it stretched northeastwards through the territory of the Sabini to the Adriatic coast, where the lands of the Picentes and the Senones had been incorporated in the ager Romanus.

The Latin colonies. Of the non-Romans in Italy the people most closely bound to Rome by ties of blood and common interests were the Latin allies. Outside the few old Latin cities, that had not been absorbed by Rome in 338, these were the inhabitants of the Latin colonies, of which thirty-five were founded on Italian soil. Prior to the destruction of the Latin League seven of these colonies had been established, whose settlers had been drawn half from the Latin cities and half from Rome. After 338, these colonies remained in alliance with Rome, and those subsequently founded received the same status. But for these the colonists were all supplied by Rome. These colonists had to surrender their Roman citizenship and become [pg 45]Latins, but if any one of them left a son of military age in his place he had the right to return to Rome. Each colony had its own administration, usually modelled upon that of Rome, and enjoyed the rights of commercium and connubium both with Rome and with the other Latin colonies. These settlements were towns of considerable size, having 2,500, 4,000 or 6,000 colonists, each of whom received a grant of 30 or 50 iugera (20 or 34 acres) of land. Founded at strategic points on conquered territory, they formed one of the strongest supports of the Roman authority: at the same time colonization of this character served to relieve over-population and satisfy land-hunger in Rome and Latium. In all their internal affairs the Latin cities were sovereign communities, possessing, in addition to their own laws and magistrates, the rights of coinage and census. Their inhabitants constituted the nomen Latinum, and, unlike the Roman cives sine suffragio, did not serve in the Roman legions but formed separate detachments of horse and foot.

The Italian allies. The rest of the peoples of Italy, Italian, Greek, Illyrian and Etruscan, formed the federate allies of Rome—the socii Italici. These constituted some 150 separate communities, city or tribal, each bound to Rome by a special treaty (foedus), whereby its specific relations to Rome were determined. In all these treaties, however, there was one common feature, namely, the obligation to lend military aid to Rome and to surrender to Rome the control over their diplomatic relations with other states. Their troops were not incorporated in the legions, but were organized as separate infantry and cavalry units (cohortes and alae), raised, equipped and officered by the communities themselves. However, they were under the orders of the Roman generals, and if several allied detachments were combined in one corps the whole was under a Roman officer. The allied troops, moreover, received their subsistence from Rome and shared equally with the Romans in the spoils of war. In the case of the seaboard towns, especially the Greek cities, this military obligation took the form of supplying ships and their crews, whence these towns were called naval allies (socii navales). All the federate allies had commercium, and the majority connubium also, with Rome. Apart from the foregoing obligations towards Rome, each of the allied communities was autonomous, having its own language, laws and political institutions.

However, a strong bond of sympathy existed between the local [pg 46]aristocracies of many of the Italian towns and the senatorial order at Rome. As we have seen, the foreign relations of Rome were directed by the Senate, which represented the views of the wealthier landed proprietors, and it was only natural that the senators should have sought to ally themselves with the corresponding social class in other states. This class represented the more conservative, and, from the Roman point of view, more dependable element, while the support of Rome assured to the local aristocracies the control within their own communities. Consequently there developed a community of interest between the Senate and the propertied classes among the Roman allies.

Thus Rome was at the head of a military and diplomatic alliance of many separate states, whose sole point of contact was that each was in alliance with Rome. As yet there was no such thing as an Italian nation. Still it was from the time that this unity was effected that the name Italia began to be applied to the whole of the peninsula and the term Italici was employed, at first by foreigners, but later by themselves, to designate its inhabitants.[1]

[pg 47]

CHAPTER VI

THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF ROME TO 287 B. C.

I. The Early Republic

While the Romans were engaged in acquiring political supremacy in Italy, the Roman state itself underwent a profound transformation as the result of severe internal struggles between the patrician and the plebeian elements.

The constitution of the early republic: the magistrates. Upon the overthrow of the monarchy, the Romans set up a republican form of government, where the chief executive office was filled by popular election. At the head of the state were two annually elected magistrates, or presidents, called at first praetors but later consuls. They possessed the auspicium or the right to consult the gods on behalf of the state, and the imperium, which gave them the right of military command, as well as administrative and judicial authority. Both enjoyed these powers in equal measure and, by his veto, the one could suspend the other’s action. Thus from the beginning of the Republic annuality and collegiality were the characteristics of the Roman magistracy. Nevertheless, the Romans recognized the advantage of an occasional concentration of all power in the state in the hands of a single magistrate and so, in times of emergency, the consuls, acting upon the advice of the senate, nominated a dictator, who superseded the consuls themselves for a maximum period of six months. The dictator, or magister populi, as he was called in early times, appointed as his assistant a master of the horse (magister equitum).

The Senate. At the side of the magistrates stood the Senate, a body of three hundred members, who acted in an advisory capacity to the officials, and possessed the power of sanctioning or vetoing laws passed by the Assembly of the People. The senators were nominated by the consuls from the patrician order and held office for life.

The comitia curiata. During the early years of the Republic, the popular Assembly, which had the power of electing the consuls and passing or rejecting such measures as the latter brought before it, was probably the old comitia curiata. But, as we shall see, it was soon superseded in most of its functions by a new primary assembly.

The priesthoods. In Rome a special branch of the administration was that of public religion, which dealt with the official relations of the community towards its divine protectors. This sphere was under the direction of a college of priests, at whose head stood the pontifex maximus. Special priestly brotherhoods or guilds cared for the performance of particular religious ceremonies, while the use of divination in its political aspect was under the supervision of the college of augurs. With the exception of the pontifex maximus, who was elected by the people from an early date, the priesthoods were filled by nomination or coöptation. The Roman priesthood did not form a separate caste in the community but, since these priestly offices were held by the same men who, in another capacity, acted as magistrates and senators, the Roman official religion was subordinated to the interests of the state and tended more and more to assume a purely formal character.

The lines of constitutional development. Both the consulate and the priestly offices, like the senate, were open only to patricians, who thus enjoyed a complete monopoly of the administration. They had been responsible for the overthrow of the monarchy, and, consequently, at the beginning of the Republic they formed the controlling element in the Roman state.

From conditions such as these the constitutional development in Rome to 287 B. C. proceeded along two distinct lines. In the first place there was a gradual change in the magistracy by the creation of new offices with functions adapted to the needs of a progressive, expanding, community; and, secondly, there was a long struggle between the patricians and the plebeians, resulting from the desire of the latter to place themselves in a position of political, legal, and social equality with the former.

II. The Assembly of the Centuries and the Development of the Magistracy

The Assembly of the Centuries. At a time which cannot be [pg 49]determined with precision, but most probably early in the fifth century, the Assembly of the Curiae was superseded for elective and legislative purposes by a new assembly, called the Assembly of the Centuries (comitia centuriata), of which the organization was modelled upon the contemporary military organization of the state. The land-holding citizens were divided into five classes, according to the size of their properties, and to each class was allotted a number of voting groups, divided equally between the men under 46 years of age (juniores) and those who were 46 and over (seniores). The number of voting groups, called centuries, in each class was possibly in proportion to the total assessment of that class. Thus the first class had eighty centuries, the second, third, and fourth classes had twenty each, while the fifth class had thirty. Outside of the classes, at first six but later eighteen centuries were allotted to those eligible to serve as cavalry (equites) whose property qualification was at least that of the first class; four centuries were given to musicians and mechanics who performed special military service; and one century was assigned to the landless citizens (proletarii). Of the total of 193 centuries, the first class had eighty and the equestrians eighteen: together ninety-eight, or a majority of the voting units. As they had the privilege of voting before the other classes, they could, if unanimous, control the Assembly. The term century, it must be noted, which in its original military sense had been applied to a detachment of 100 men, in political usage was applied to a voting group of indefinite numbers. The organization of this Assembly probably was not completed until near the end of the fourth century, when the basis for enrollment in the five census classes was changed from landed estate to the total property assessment reckoned in terms of the copper as.

The old Assembly of the Curiae was not abolished, but lost all its political functions except the right to pass a law conferring the imperium upon the magistrates elected by the Assembly of the Centuries. In addition to electing these magistrates the Centuriate Assembly had the sole right of declaring war, voted upon measures presented to it by the consuls, and acted as a supreme court of appeal for citizens upon whom a magistrate had pronounced the death penalty. However, the measures which the Assembly approved had for a long time to receive subsequent ratification by the patrician senators (the patrum auctoritas) before they became laws binding on the community. Finally, the importance of this sanction was nullified [pg 50]by the requirement of the Publilian (339?) and Maenian Laws that it be given before the voting took place.

The magistracy: quaestors and aediles. It has been indicated already that the expansion of the Roman magistracy was effected through the creation of new offices, to which were assigned duties that had previously been performed by the consular pair or new functions required by the rise of new conditions in the Roman state.

The first change came in connection with the quaestorship. About the middle of the fifth century, the officials called quaestors, who had previously been appointed by the consuls to act as their assistants, were raised to the status of magistrates and elected by popular vote. Their number was originally two, but in 421 it was increased to four, two of whom acted as officers of the public treasury (quaestores aerarii), while two were assigned to assist the consuls when the latter took the field.

At approximately the same time that the quaestorship became an elective office, the two curators of the temple of Ceres, called aediles, likewise attained the position of public officials. They henceforth acted as police magistrates, market commissioners, and superintendents of public works. As we shall have occasion to note in another connection, these aediles were elected from among the plebeians.

The censors: 443, 435? The next new office to be created was that of censor. The censorship was a commission called into being at five-year intervals and exercised by two men for a period of eighteen months. The original duty of the censors was to take the census of the citizens and their property as a basis for registering the voters in the five classes, for compiling the roster of those eligible for military service, and for levying the property tax (tributum). Probably the reason for the establishment of this office is to be sought in the heavy demands that such duties made upon the services of the consuls and the inability of the latter to complete the census within any one consular year. The censors further had charge of the letting of public contracts, and, by the end of the fourth century had acquired the right to compile the list of the senators. As this latter duty involved an enquiry into the habits of life of the senators, there arose that aspect of the censors’ power which alone has survived in the modern conception of a censorship.

The military tribunes with consular power. During the period 436 to 362, on fifty-one occasions the consular college of [pg 51]two was displaced by a board of military tribunes with consular power (tribuni militum consulari potestate). The number of these military tribunes varied: there were never less than three, more often four or six, while two boards had eight and nine tribunes respectively. As their name indicates, these were essentially military officers, and this lends support to the tradition that they were elected because the military situation frequently demanded the presence in the state of more than two magistrates who could exercise the imperium.

The praetorship. However, by 362 this method of meeting the increased burdens of the magistracy was definitely abandoned. For the future two consuls were annually elected, and, in addition, a magistrate called the praetor, to whom was assigned the administration of the civil jurisdiction within the city. The praetor was regarded as a minor colleague of the consuls and held the imperium. Consequently, if need arose, he could take command in the field or exercise the other consular functions.

The curule aediles. In the same year there was established the curule aedileship. The two curule aediles were at first elected from the patricians only, and, although their duties seem to have been the same as those of the plebeian aediles, their office was considered more honorable than that of the latter.

Promagistrates. The Roman magistrates were elected for one year only, and after 342 reëlection to the same office could only be sought after an interval of ten years. This system entailed some inconveniences, especially in the conduct of military operations, for in the case of campaigns that lasted longer than one year the consul in command had to give place to his successor as soon as his own term of office had expired. Thus the state was unable to utilize for a longer period the services of men who had displayed special military capacity. The difficulty was eventually overcome by the prolongation, at the discretion of the Senate, of the command of a consul in the field for an indefinite period after the lapse of his consulship. The person whose term of office was thus extended was no longer a consul, but acted “in the place of a consul” (pro consule). This was the origin of the promagistracy. It first appeared in the campaign at Naples in 325, and, although for a time employed but rarely, its use eventually became very widespread.

Characteristics of the magistracy. Thus the Roman magistracy attained the form that it preserved until the end of the Republic. [pg 52]It consisted of a number of committees, each of which, with the exception of the quaestorship, had a separate sphere of action. But among these committees there was a regularly established order of rank, running, from lowest to highest, as follows: quaestors, aediles, censors, praetors, consuls. With the exception of the censorship that was regularly filled by ex-consuls, the magistracies were usually held in the above order. Magistrates of higher rank enjoyed greater authority than all those who ranked below them, and as a rule could forbid or annul the actions of the latter. A magistrate could also veto the action of his colleague in office. In this way the consuls were able to control the activities of all other regular magistrates. However, the extraordinary office of the dictatorship outranked the consulship and consequently the dictator could suspend the action of the consuls themselves. The unity that was thus given to the administration by this conception of maior potestas was increased by the presence of the Senate, a council whose influence over the magistracy grew in proportion as the consulate lost in power and independence through the creation of new offices.

III. The Plebeian Struggle for Political Equality

The causes of the struggle. Of greater moment in the early history of the republic than the development of the magistracy was the persistent effort made by the plebeians to secure for themselves admission to all the offices and privileges that at the beginning of the republic were monopolized by the patricians. Their demands were vigorously opposed by the latter, whose position was sustained by tradition, by their control of the organs of government, by individual and class prestige, and by the support of their numerous clients. But among the plebeians there was an ever increasing number whose fortunes ranked with those of the patricians and who refused to be excluded from the government. These furnished the leaders among the plebs. However, a factor of greater importance than the presence of this element in determining the final outcome of the struggle was the demand made upon the military resources of the state by the numerous foreign wars. The plebeian soldiers shared equally with the patricians in the dangers of the field, and equality of political rights could not long be withheld from them. As their services were essential to the state, the patrician senators were far[pg 53]sighted enough to make concessions to their demands whenever a refusal would have led to civil warfare. A great cause of discontent on the part of the plebs was the indebtedness of the poorer landholders, caused in great part by their enforced absence from their lands upon military service and the burden of the tributum or property tax levied for military purposes. Their condition was rendered the more intolerable because of the operation of the harsh debtor laws, which permitted the creditor to seize the person of the debtor and to sell him into slavery.

Evidence that discontent was rife at Rome may be found in the tradition of three unsuccessful attempts to set up a tyranny, that is, to seize power by unconstitutional means, made by Spurius Cassius (478), Spurius Maelius (431), and Marcus Manlius (376), patricians who figure in later tradition as popular champions.

The tribunes of the plebs (466 B. C.), and the assembly of the tribes. The first success won by the plebeians was in securing protection against unjust or oppressive acts on the part of the patrician magistrates. In 466, they forced the patricians to acquiesce in the appointment of four tribunes of the plebs, officers who had the right to extend protection to all who sought their aid, even against the magistrate in the exercise of his functions.[2] The tribunes received power to make effective use of this right from an oath taken by the plebeians that they would treat as accursed and put to death without trial any person who disregarded the tribune’s veto or violated the sanctity of his person. The character of the tribunate and the basis of its power reveal it as the result of a revolutionary movement and as existing in defiance of the patricians. The tribunes were elected in an assembly in which the voting units were tribes, and the number of the tribunes (four) suggests that this assembly was at first composed of the citizens of the four city regions or tribes, and that it was the city plebs who were responsible for the establishment of the tribunate. In this assembly we have the origin of the comitia tributa or Assembly of the Tribes.

The origin of these tribes is uncertain, but by the middle of the fifth century the Roman state was divided into twenty or twenty-one districts, each of which with the citizens resident therein constituted a tribus. Four of these were located in the city: the remainder were [pg 54]rural. In the preceding chapter we have seen how the number of the tribes was increased with the incorporation of conquered territory within the Roman state and its occupation by Roman colonists. The tribes were artificial divisions of the community, and served as a basis for the raising of the levy and the tributum.

Plebeian aediles. Associated with the tribunes as officers of the plebs were two aediles (aediles plebi). It has been conjectured that they were originally the curators of the temple of Ceres (established 492?), which was in a special sense a plebeian shrine. As we have seen they later became magistrates of the whole people.

The codification of the law. About the middle of the fifth century the plebeians secured the codification and publication of the law. Hitherto the law, which consisted essentially of customs and precedents, and was largely sacral in character, had been known only to the magistrates and to the priests, that is to members of the patrician order. At this time, two commissions of ten men each, working in successive years (444–2?) drew up these customs into a code, which, with subsequent additions, formed what was later called the Law of the XII Tables. This code was in no sense a constitution, but embodied provisions of both civil and criminal law, with rules for legal procedure and police regulations. Notable is the provision which guaranteed the right of appeal to the Assembly of the Centuries in capital cases.

Development of the tribunate and the comitia tributa. The years which saw the publication of the code mark an important stage in the struggle of the orders. Serious trouble arose between the patricians and the plebs under the second college of law-givers, and the difference was only settled by a treaty which restored the tribunate, that had been suspended when the decemvirs were first elected. Henceforth the number of tribunes was ten instead of four and their position and powers received legal recognition from the patricians. From this time on, too, the comitia tributa, now embracing all the tribes, the rural as well as the urban, was a regular institution of the state. The Assembly of the Tribes was originally, and perhaps always remained in theory, restricted to the plebeians. And it is improbable that the patricians ever sought to participate in it. At any rate, there is no adequate reason for believing in the existence of two assemblies of this sort, the one composed of both patricians and plebeians and the other of plebeians only.

The Assembly of the Tribes not only elected the plebeian tribunes and aediles, but soon chose the quaestors also. Furthermore, the patrician magistrates, finding this Assembly in many ways more convenient for the transaction of public business than the Assembly of the Centuries which met in the Campus Martius outside the pomerium and required more time to register its opinion because of the greater number of voting units, began to convene it to approve measures, which, if previously sanctioned by a decree of the Senate, became law. The tribunes likewise presented resolutions to the Assembly of the Tribes, and these, too, if sanctioned by the Senate, were binding on the whole community. Such laws were called plebiscites (plebi scita) in contrast with the leges passed by an assembly presided over by a magistrate with imperium. It became the ambition of the tribunes to obtain for their plebiscites the force of law without regard to the Senate’s approval.

The lex Canuleia. The social stigma which rested upon the plebeians because they could not effect a legal marriage with the patricians, a disability that had been maintained by the law of the XII Tables, was removed by the Canuleian Law in 437.

The plebs and the magistracy. The plebeians did not rest content with having spokesmen and defenders in the tribunes: they also demanded admission to the consulate and the Senate. In 421 plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship, and by that time the plebeian aediles could be looked upon as magistrates, but the patricians tenaciously maintained their monopoly of the imperium until, in 396, a plebeian was elected a military tribune with consular power.[3]

Perhaps the appearance of plebeian military tribunes at this time may be explained on the ground that the vicissitudes of the war with Veii forced the patricians to accept as magistrates the ablest available men in the state even if of plebeian origin.

With the military tribunate the plebeians had held an office that conferred the right to the imperium. Consequently, when the consulship was definitely reëstablished in 362, they could not logically be excluded from it. In 362 the first plebeian consul was elected, but [pg 56]it was not until 340 that the practice became established that one consul must, and the other might, be a plebeian.

After their admission to the consulship the plebeians were eligible to all the other magistracies. They gained the dictatorship in 356, the censorship in 351, and the praetorship in 337. Eventually, the curule aedileship also was opened to them, and was held by patricians and plebeians in alternate years.

The plebs and the Senate. Since the custom was early established that ex-consuls, and later ex-praetors, should be enrolled in the Senate, with the opening of these offices to the plebs the latter began to have an ever-increasing representation in that body. As distinguished from the patres or patrician senators, the plebeians were called conscripti, “the enrolled,” and this distinction was preserved in the official formula patres conscripti used in addressing the Senate. In this fusion of the leading plebeians with the patricians in the Senate we have the origin of a new aristocracy in the Roman state: the so-called senatorial aristocracy or nobilitas. This consisted of a large group of influential patrician and plebeian families which, for some time at least, was continuously quickened and revivified by the accession of prominent plebeians who entered the Senate by way of the magistracies. Thus the Senate, by opening its ranks to the leaders of the plebs, contrived to emerge from the struggle with its prestige and influence increased rather than impaired.

Appius Claudius, censor, 310 B. C. An episode which illustrates the growing democratic tendencies of the time is the censorship of Appius Claudius, in 310, whose office is memorable for the construction of the Via Appia and the Aqua Appia, Rome’s first aqueduct. In his revision of the Senate, Appius ventured to include among the senators persons who were the sons of freedmen, and he permitted the landless population of the city to enroll themselves in whatever tribal district they pleased. This latter step was taken to increase the power of the city plebs, who had previously been confined to the four city tribes, but who might now spread their votes over the rural districts, of which there were now twenty-seven. However, the work of Appius was soon undone. The consuls refused to recognize the senatorial list prepared by him and his colleague, and the following censors again restricted the city plebs to the urban tribes.

The plebs and the priesthood. The last stronghold of patrician privilege was the priesthood which was opened to the plebeians by [pg 57]the Ogulnian Law of 300 B. C. The number of pontiffs and augurs was increased and the new positions were filled by plebeians. The patricians could no longer make use of religious law and practice to hamper the political activity of the plebs.

The Hortensian Law, 287 B. C. The end of the struggle between the orders came with the secession of 287 B. C. Apparently this crisis was produced by the demands of the farming population who had become heavily burdened with debt as a result of the economic strain put upon them by the long Samnite wars. Refusal to meet their demands led to a schism, and the plebeian soldiers under arms seceded to the Janiculum. A dictator, Quintus Hortensius, appointed for the purpose, settled the differences and passed a lex Hortensia, which provided that for the future all measures passed in the comitia tributa, even without the previous approval of the Senate, should become binding on the whole state. Thus the Assembly of the Tribes as a legislative body acquired greater independence than the Assembly of the Centuries.

The two assemblies of the people. Henceforth, the Assembly of the Tribes tended to become more and more the legislative assembly par excellence, while the Assembly of the Centuries remained the chief elective assembly. For legislative purposes the Assembly of the Tribes could be convened by a magistrate with imperium or by a tribune; for the election of the plebeian tribunes and aediles it had to be summoned by a tribune; while to elect the quaestors and curule aediles it must be called together by a magistrate. For all purposes the Assembly of the Centuries had to be convened and presided over by a magistrate. It elected the consuls, praetors, censors and, eventually, twenty-four military tribunes for the annual levy. It must be kept in mind that these were both primary assemblies, that each comprised the whole body of Roman citizens, but that they differed essentially in the organization of the voting groups. As we have seen the wealthier classes dominated the Assembly of the Centuries, but in the Assembly of the Tribes, which was the more democratic body, a simple majority determined the vote of each tribe.

The increased importance of the tribunate. The importance of the tribunes was greatly enhanced by the Hortensian Law, as well as by various privileges which they had already acquired by 287 or gained shortly after that date. The more important of these powers were the right to sit in the Senate, to address, and even to [pg 58]convene that body, and the right to prosecute any magistrate before the comitia tributa. The first of these powers was a development of the tribunician veto, whereby this was given to a proposal under discussion in the Senate rather than upon a magistrate’s attempt to execute it after it had taken the form of a law or a senatorial decree. To permit the tribunes to interpose their veto at this stage they had to be allowed to hear the debates in the Senate. At first they did so from their bench which they set at the door of the meeting-place, but finally they were permitted to enter the council hall itself. The power of prosecution made the tribunes the guardians of the interests of the state against any misconduct on the part of a magistrate. From this time on the tribunes have practically the status of magistrates of the Roman people.

The struggle of the orders left its mark on the Roman constitution in providing Rome with a double set of organs of government. The tribunate, plebeian aedileship, and comitia tributa arose as purely plebeian institutions, but they came to be incorporated in the governmental organization of the state along with the magistracies and the assemblies that had always been institutions of the whole Roman people.

IV. The Roman Military System

Upon the history of no people has the character of its military institutions exercised a more profound effect than upon that of Rome. The Roman military system rested upon the universal obligation of the male citizens to render military service, but the degree to which this obligation was enforced varied greatly at different periods. For the mobilization of the man power of the state was dependent upon the type of equipment, methods of fighting, and organization of tactical units in vogue at various times, as well as upon the ability of the state to equip its troops and the strength of the martial spirit of the people.

The army of the primitive state. In all probability the earliest Roman army was one of the Homeric type, where the nobles who went to the battlefield on horseback or in chariots were the decisive factor and the common folk counted for little.

The phalanx organization. However, at an early date, under Etruscan influences according to tradition, the Romans adopted the [pg 59]phalanx organization, making their tactical unit the long deep line of infantry armed with lance and shield. Those who were able to provide themselves with the armor necessary for taking their place in the phalanx formed the classis or “levy.” The rest were said to be infra classem, and were only called upon to act as light troops. But military necessities compelled the state to incorporate with the heavy-armed infantry increasingly large contingents of the less wealthy citizens, who could not provide themselves with the full equipment of those in the classis, but who could form the rear ranks of the phalanx. As a result of this step the citizens were ultimately divided into five orders or classes on the basis of their property, and probably in raising the levy the required number of soldiers of each class was drafted in equal proportions from the several tribes. The first three classes constituted the phalanx, while the fourth and fifth continued to serve as light troops (rorarii). Those who lacked the property qualification of the lowest class were only called into service in cases of great emergency. For such a system the taking of an accurate census was essential, and it is more than likely that the office of censor was instituted for this purpose. As we have seen, it was from this organization of the people for military purposes that there developed the Assembly of the Centuries.

The introduction of pay for the troops in the field at the time of the siege of Veii both lessened the economic burden which service entailed upon the poorer soldiers and enabled the Romans to undertake campaigns of longer duration, even such as involved winter operations.

The manipular legion. How long the phalanx organization was maintained we do not know: at any rate it did not survive the Samnite wars. In its place appeared the legionary formation, in which the largest unit was the legion of about four thousand infantry, divided into maniples of one hundred and twenty (or sixty) men, each capable of manœuvering independently. This arrangement admitted of increased flexibility of movement in broken country, and of the adoption of the pilum, or javelin, as a missile weapon. Both the pilum and the scutum, or oblong shield, were of Samnite origin. While reorganizing their infantry, the Romans strengthened the equites and developed them as a real cavalry force.

Apparently property qualifications no longer counted for much in the army organization, as the men were assigned to their places in [pg 60]the ranks on the basis of age and experience, and the state furnished the necessary weapons to those who did not provide their own. By the third century, all able-bodied men holding property valued at 4000 asses were regularly called upon for military service. The others were liable to naval service, but only in cases of great need were they enrolled in the legions. Ordinarily, the service required amounted to sixteen campaigns in the infantry and ten in the cavalry. The field army was raised from those between seventeen and forty-six years of age: those forty-six and over were liable only for garrison duty in the city. The regular annual levy consisted of four legions, besides 1800 cavalry. This number could be increased at need, and the Roman forces in the field were supplemented by at least an equal number in the contingents from the Italian allies.

The Roman army was thus a national levy: a militia. It was commanded by the consuls, the annually elected presidents of the state. Yet it avoided the characteristic weaknesses of militia troops, for the frequency of the Roman wars and the length of the period of liability for service assured the presence of a large quota of veterans in each levy and maintained a high standard of military efficiency. Furthermore, the consuls, if not always good generals, were generally experienced soldiers, for a record of ten campaigns was required of the candidate for public office. Likewise their subordinates, the military tribunes, were veterans, having seen some five and others ten years’ service. But the factor that contributed above all else to the success of the Roman armies was their iron discipline. The consular imperium gave its holder absolute power over the lives of the soldiers in the field, and death was the penalty for neglect of duty, disobedience, or cowardice. The most striking proof of the discipline of the Roman armies is that after every march they were required to construct a fortified camp, laid out according to fixed rules and protected by a ditch, a wall of earth, and a palisade for which they carried the stakes. No matter how strenuous their labors had been, they never neglected this task, in striking contrast to the Greek citizen armies which could not be induced to construct works of this kind. The fortified camp rendered the Romans safe from surprise attacks, allowed them to choose their own time for joining battle, and gave them a secure refuge after a defeat. It played a very large part in the operations of the Roman armies, especially such as were conducted in hostile territory.

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CHAPTER VII

EARLY RELIGION AND SOCIETY

I. Early Roman Religion

Animism. The Roman religion of the historic republic was a composite of beliefs and ceremonies of various origins. The basic stratum of this system was the Roman element: religious ideas that the Romans probably held in common with the other Latin and Italian peoples. Although traces of a belief in magic; and of the worship of natural objects and animals, survived from earlier stages of religious development, it was “animism” that formed the basis of what we may call the characteristic Roman religious ideas. Animism is the belief that natural objects are the abode of spirits more powerful than man, and that all natural forces and processes are the expression of the activity of similar spirits. When such powers or numina were conceived as personalities with definite names they became ‘gods,’ dei. And because the primitive Roman gods were the spirits of an earlier age, for a long time the Romans worshipped them without images or temples. But each divinity was regarded as residing in a certain locality and only there could his worship be conducted. The true Roman gods lacked human attributes: their power was admitted but they inspired no personal devotion. Consequently, Roman theology consisted in the knowledge of these deities and their powers and of the ceremonial acts necessary to influence them.

The importance of ritual. The Romans, while recognizing their dependence upon divine powers, considered that their relation to them was of the nature of a contract. If man observed all proper ritual in his worship, the god was bound to act propitiously: if the god granted man’s desire he must be rewarded with an offering. If man failed in his duty, the god punished him: if the god refused to hearken, man was not bound to continue his worship. Thus Roman religion consisted essentially in the performance of ritual, wherein the correctness of the performance was the chief factor.

But since the power of the gods could affect the community as well as the individual, it was necessary for the state to observe with the same scrupulous care as the latter its obligations towards them. The knowledge of these obligations and how they were to be performed constituted the sacred law of Rome, which became a very important part of the public law. This sacred law was guarded by the priesthood, and here we have the source of the power of the pontiffs in the Roman state. The pontiffs not only preserved the sacred traditions and customs but they also added to them by interpretation and the establishment of new precedents. The pontiffs themselves performed or supervised the performance of all public acts of a purely religious nature, and likewise prescribed the ritual to be observed by the magistrate in initiating public acts.

On the other hand the power of the augurs rested upon the belief that the gods issued their warnings to men through natural signs, and that it was possible to discover the attitude of the gods towards any contemplated human action by the observation of natural phenomena. For the augurs were the guardians of the science of the interpretation of such signs or auspices in so far as the state was concerned. The magistrate initiating any important public act had to take the auspices, and if the augurs declared any flaw therein or held that any unfavorable omen had occurred during the performance of the said act, they could suspend the magistrate’s action or render it invalid.

So we see that the Roman priests were not intermediaries between the individual Roman and his gods, but rather, as has been pointed out before, officers in charge of one branch of the public administration. They were responsible for the due observance of the public religious acts, just as the head of the household supervised the performance of the family cult.

The cult of the household. It is in the cult of the household that we can best see the true Roman religious ideas. The chief divinities of the household were: Janus, the spirit of the doorway; Vesta, the spirit of the fire on the hearth; the Penates, the guardian spirits of the store-chamber; the Lar Familiaris, which we may perhaps regard as the spirit of the cultivated land; and the Genius of the head of the house, originally, it is probable, the spirit of his generative powers, which became symbolic of the life of the family as a whole.

The Romans, strictly speaking, did not practice ancestor-worship. But they believed that the spirits of the departed were affected by the ministrations of the living, and, in case these were omitted, might exercise a baneful influence upon the fortunes of their descendants. Hence came the obligation to remember the dead with offerings at stated times in the year.

The cult of the fields. As early Rome was essentially an agricultural community, most of its divinities and festivals had to do with the various phases of agricultural life. Festivals of the sowing, the harvest, the vineyard and the like, were annually celebrated in common, at fixed seasons, by the households of the various pagi.

The state cult. The public or state cult of Rome consisted mainly in the performance of certain of the rites of the household and of the pagi by or for the people as a whole. The state cult of Vesta and of the Penates, as well as the festival of the Ambarvalia, the annual solemn purification of the fields, are of this nature. But, in addition, the state religion included the worship of certain divinities whose personalities and powers were conceived with greater distinctness. At the beginning of the Republic the chief of these gods were the triad Juppiter, Juno, and Minerva. Juppiter Optimus Maximus, called also Capitolinus from his place of worship, was originally a god of the sky. But, adorned with various other attributes, he was finally worshipped as the chief protecting divinity of the Roman State. Juno was the female counterpart of Juppiter and was the great patron goddess of women. Another important deity was Mars, at one time an agricultural divinity, who in the state religion developed into the god of warlike, “martial,” activities.

Foreign influences. It was in connection with the state worship that foreign influences were first felt. Indeed, it is probable that the association of Juppiter with Juno and Minerva was due to contact with Etruria. It was from the Etruscans also that the Romans derived their knowledge of temple construction, the earliest example of which was probably the temple of Juppiter on the Capitoline said to have been dedicated in 508 B. C. The use of images was likewise due to Etruscan influences, although here as in other respects Greek ideas may have been at work. In general the Romans did not regard the gods of strange people with hostility, but rather admitted their power and sought to conciliate them. Thus they frequently transferred to Rome the gods of states that they had conquered [pg 64]or absorbed. Other foreign divinities, too, on various grounds were added to the circle of the divine protectors of the Roman state.

Religion and morality. From the foregoing sketch it will be seen that the Roman religion did not have profound moral and elevating influences. Its hold upon the Roman people was chiefly due to the fact that it symbolized the unity of the various groups whose members participated in the same worship; i. e. the unity of the family and the unity of the state. Nevertheless, the idea of obligation inherent in the Roman conception of the relation between gods and men and the stress laid upon the exact performance of ritual inevitably developed among the Romans a strong sense of duty, a moral factor of considerable value. Further, the power of precedent and tradition in their religion helped to develop and strengthen the conservatism so characteristic of the Roman people.

II. Early Roman Society

The household. The cornerstone of the Roman social structure was the household (familia). That is to say, the state was an association of households, and it was the individual’s position in a household that determined his status in the early community. The Roman household was a larger unit than our family. It comprised the father or head of the household (pater familias), his wife, his sons with their wives and children, if they had such, his unmarried daughters, and the household slaves.

The patria potestas. The pater familias possessed authority over all other members of the household. His power over the free members was called patria potestas, “paternal authority”; over the slaves it was dominium, “lordship.” This paternal authority was in theory unrestricted and gave the father the right to inflict the death penalty upon those under his power. But, in practice, the exercise of the patria potestas was limited by custom and by the habit of consulting the older male members of the household before any important action was taken.

The household estate (res familiaris) was administered by the head of the household. At the death of a pater familias his sons in turn became the head of familiae, dividing the estate. The mother and unmarried daughters, if surviving, now passed into the power of a son or the next nearest male relative of the deceased. Although [pg 65]the Roman women were thus continually in the position of wards, they nevertheless took a prominent part in the life of the household and did not live the restricted and secluded lives of the women of Athens and the Greek cities of Asia.

Membership in the household was reckoned only through male descent, for daughters when they married passed out of the manus or “power” of the head of their own household into that of the head of the household to which their husbands belonged.

Education. The training of the Roman youth at this time was mainly of a practical nature. There was as yet little interest in intellectual pursuits and no Roman literature had been developed. The art of writing, it is true, had long been known and was employed in the keeping of records and accounts. Such instruction as there was, was given by the father to his sons. It consisted probably of athletic exercises, of practical training in agricultural pursuits, in the traditions of the state and of the Roman heroes, and in the conduct of public business through attendance at places where this was transacted.

At the age of eighteen the young Roman entered upon a new footing in relation to the state. He was now liable to military service and qualified to attend the comitia. In these respects he was emancipated from the paternal authority. If he attained a magistracy, his father obeyed him like any other citizen.

The discipline and respect for authority which was acquired in the family life was carried with him by the Roman into his public relations, and this sense of duty was perhaps the strongest quality in the Roman character. It was supplemented by the characteristic Roman seriousness (gravitas), developed under the stress of the long struggles for existence waged by the early Roman state. In the Roman the highest virtue was piety (pietas), which meant the dutiful performance of all one’s obligations, to the gods, to one’s kinsmen, and to the state. The Romans were preëminently a practical people, and their practical virtues laid the foundation for their political greatness.

The mos maiorum. We have already referred to the conservatism of the Romans, and have seen how this characteristic was affected by their religious beliefs. It was further strengthened by the respect paid to parental authority and by the absence of intellectual training. In public affairs this conservatism was shown by the influence of [pg 66]ancestral custom—the mos maiorum. In the Roman government this became a very potent factor, since the Roman constitution was not a single comprehensive document but consisted of a number of separate enactments supplemented by custom and precedent and interpreted in the light thereof.

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