O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti.
O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti.
O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti.
O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta tyranne tulisti.
The existence of a Sabine town on the Quirinal hill isconfirmed by the number of Sabine chapels which undoubtedly stood there, as Varro still knew, who proved from this fact that the Sabine ritual was received by the Romans. This Sabine element in the Roman worship has almost always been mistaken.[56]
The legend that by the rape of the virgins war had arisen between the Sabines and Romans, is without doubt a symbolical account of the relation between the two places, when as yet there was no intermarriage between them. The Sabines had the upper hand, and denied it; the Romans conquered it by force of arms. The Sabines were certainly originally the masters; but by some movement of the Romans, other Sabine places like Antemnæ and Fidenæ, were subjected, and the Sabines were thus isolated from their countrymen. The Romans again insisted upon their independence, and from thence arose war, the issue of which may have been that which is handed down to us,—only that Romulus is to be set aside,—namely, that both places formed a sort of confederacy as two closely united towns, each with a senate of a hundred men and a king, with an offensive and defensive alliance; and that in common deliberation, the assembly of their clans met on that spot between the two cities which afterwards bore the name of Comitium. Thus they formed against the foreigner only one state.
The account of a double state existed already among the ancients; yet the only proofs of it which have been preserved are scattered notices here and there, chiefly among the scholiasts. The head of Janus which in the earliest times is represented on the RomanAs, is symbolical of it. Roman antiquaries have quite correctly understood this. The empty royal throne by the side of the Curule seat of Romulus refers to the time whenthere was one king only, and is emblematical of the equal but dormant right of the other people.[57]
It is also historical that this agreement was not of long duration; and that the Roman king usurped the rule over the Sabines; and that the two councils combined and formed one senate under one king, it being also settled that the king should by turns be a Roman and a Sabine; and that each time the king should be chosen by the other people, yet that no one should be forced upon the non-electing people whom they did not like, but that he should only be able to enter upon theimperium, if in the first place the auguries were favourable, and moreover the whole people had confirmed him. The other tribe had therefore the right of recognising or rejecting the king elect. This is told of Numa as a fact; yet it is merely a representation of the right taken from the books of rituals. This strange double act of election, which seems such a riddle, and was formerly so entirely misunderstood, is in this manner quite intelligible.
When the two states amalgamated, after having existed separately perhaps for ages, the towns ceased to be towns, and the collective mass of their clans formed itself into tribes. The nation consisted therefore of two tribes. From the earliest times the style of addressing the Roman people was,Populus Romanus Quirites, out of which, when the origin was forgotten,Populus Romanus Quiritiumwas made; just aslis vindiciæafterwards was intolis vindiciarum. This change is older than Livy; yet the correct use of the phrase is still met with in his time, though much encroached upon by the false one. The old tradition says that the nameQuiriteshad after the union of the two tribes been adopted as a common one. But this is false. The name first becomes common at a very late period only. When for a long time there had been no more difference betweenRomans and Sabines, nor between these and the Luceres; and even later, when that between the patricians and plebeians had become almost wholly extinct, this denomination still remained, and was transferred to the plebeians. Thus the two towns stood side by side as tribes (tribus), and it is merely in acknowledgment of the old tradition that we call the Latins Ramnes, and the Sabines Tities. That the derivation from Romulus and T. Tatius is incorrect, does not impair the truth of the main assertion.
Dionysius, who had good materials, and made use of very many of them, must indeed, for the time of the Consuls, have sometimes had more than he gives; especially concerning one important change in the constitution, where he has a few words only, and has either not seen clearly, or has been careless.[58]Yet with regard to the olden times of the kings he was clear. He says that there had been a dissension between the two tribes concerning the senates, which Numa had compromised, by not taking any thing for the Ramnes as the first tribe, but bestowing honours upon the Tities. This is perfectly plain. The senate, which at first consisted of one hundred, but now of two, was divided into ten decuries, each of which had a president. These are thedecem primi, and these were taken from the Ramnes. They formed among themselves theCollegium, which, when there was no king, held the government by rotation; each for five days, yet so that the same always came back in their turn, as we must correctly assume with Livy. As for Dionysius, he brings in his Greek notions, taken from the Attic Prytanies; and Plutarch quite misunderstands the matter.
Not only the senate, but also the augurs and pontiffs, were doubled in number; so that each college consisted of four members, two of them from the Ramnes, and two from the Tities. These changes were attached indeedby Dionysius and Cicero to the names of certain kings; yet this must not hinder us from acknowledging them as quite historical.
Thus was Rome in the second stage of its development. This state of compromise is that of peace, and is described as the reign of Numa. Concerning him the traditions are simple and short. They had the ideal of a peaceful period, with a holy man at the head of affairs like Nicholas Von der Flue in Switzerland. People pictured to themselves Numa inspired by the goddess Egeria, whom he married in the grove of the Camenæ; who introduces him among the quire of her sisters, afterwards melts into tears at his death, and gives her name to a well springing from them. Such a peace of forty years, during which no people had risen against Rome, because Numa’s piety had had its influence upon the other nations, is a fine idea; but it is historically impossible at that time,—evidently a poetical fiction.
With Numa the firstsæculumcloses, and quite a new epoch begins; just as in Hesiod the ages succeed each other. The age of the heroes is followed by the iron era: it is evidently a period;—quite a different order of the world is supposed to be commencing. Hitherto we had mere poetical fiction; but now with Tullus Hostillus a sort of history begins, i. e. events which on the whole must be taken as historical, being foreign to history only from the light in which they appear. Thus the destruction of Alba is historical, very probably also the reception of the Albans into Rome. The conquests of Ancus Marcius are very credible: this point of real history stands like an oasis in the midst of legends. Something like this we once find in the Chronicle of Cologne. In the Abyssinian annals, there occurs in the thirteenth century one story, quite explicitly given, which we recognise as a piece of contemporary narrative. Before and after that, nothing historical is met with.
The history which now follows is like an image seenfrom behind, like phantasmagoria. The names of the kings are entirely fictitious. How long the Roman kings have reigned, no mortal man can know, as we do not know how many have reigned. For seven was fixed upon for the sake of the number only, which is found in connexion with many proportions, especially some important astronomical ones. The chronological dates are therefore utterly worthless. One ought to look upon the interval, from the origin of Rome to the times when people were able to execute those gigantic works which were really executed under the kings, and which vied with those of the Egyptians,—the sewers, the wall of Servius, and other buildings, as at least a succession of centuries. Romulus and Numa are to be wholly set aside; yet there follows a long period in which the races gradually amalgamate with each other, and spread, until the regal government disappears, and makes way for a republic.
For remembrance sake, we must, however, give the history as we have it. Between Rome and Alba there is not the least connexion, not even in those writers who suppose Rome to be an offshoot from Alba. Yet all at once, under Tullus Hostilius, they appear as enemies; each of the nations seeks for war, and the only question is to gain the favour of Fortune, on the strength of each party pretending to be the injured one, and wishing to declare war. Both mutually sent envoys to demand satisfaction for depredations committed. The form was, that these envoys, the Fetiales, told to every one they met the grievances of their town; then they proclaimed them in the market-place of the foreign town, and if after three times ten days no satisfaction were given, they said, “We have done enough and now return,” whereupon the senators at home deliberated about the manner of the satisfaction. In this formula, therefore, theres, the giving up of the guilty, and the restitution of the body was to be demanded. Now we are told, that the two nations at exactly the same time,sent such envoys; but that Tullus Hostilius had for a while detained the Albans sent to him, until he had learned for certain that the Romans had not had right done them at Alba, and had there declared war. He now first admitted the envoys into the senate, and to their complaints it was answered, that they themselves had not redressed the grievances of the Romans. Livy therefore thus continues:bellum in trigesimum diem dixerant. Yet the formula ispost trigesimum diem; why did Livy or the annalist whom he followed, alter this? Quite naturally. One rides from Rome to Alba in a couple of hours; so that it was impossible that the Alban envoys should have been detained in Rome for thirty days, without being apprised of what was in the meanwhile going on at Alba. Livy saw this, and therefore altered the formula. But to the old poet this was of no consequence: he did not let it trouble him. He enlarged in his imagination the distance, and made Rome and Alba great states.
Just as undeniably poetical is the whole representation of the state of affairs in which Alba’s fate was decided. We shall dwell a little on this point, in order to show how a semblance of history may be got up.
There was between Rome and Alba a ditch,fossa CluiliaorCloelia; and moreover there must have been a tradition that here the Albans had pitched their camp. In Livy and Dionysius we find it mentioned, that a general of the Albans, Cluilius, had given it this name, and had also died in that spot. The latter circumstance must have been told to account for the general being afterwards a different man, Mettius Fuffetius, and yet that it should be still possible to connect the name of that ditch with the Albans. The two states commit the issue of the feud to single combat. Dionysius says that the traditions were not unanimous, as to whether the Roman champions were called Horatii or Curiatii; yet he as well as Livy gives them the name of Horatii, in all likelihood, because the larger number of the annalistsso had it. Who, without that passage of Dionysius, would have guessed any thing of that uncertainty? The combat of the three twin-born children is symbolical of both the states being at that time divided into three tribes. Attempts have indeed been made to clear away the improbability by denying the triple birth,—one of them is even mentioned as the youngest; yet the legend goes still farther, the brothers being said to have been the sons of two sisters, and to have been born on the same day. This is to represent the absolute equality between Rome and Alba. The issue was the complete subjection of Alba. Yet Alba did not remain faithful. In the struggle with the Etruscans which followed, Mettius Fuffetius shows himself a traitor to Rome; but he is prevented from executing his plan, and afterwards falls on the fugitive Etruscans; Tullus by way of punishment caused him to be torn in pieces, and Alba to be demolished; and the most distinguished Alban clans were transferred to Rome.
Equally poetical is the legend of the death of Tullus. He foolishly undertakes conjurations like Numa, and thereby draws the thunderbolt upon his own head.
If we try to make out the historical substance of these legends, we come to a period when Rome no longer stands alone, but has already colonies with Roman settlers, who possess a third of the soil, and who hold the sway. This is the case with a number of towns, most of them old Siculian ones. So much is certain, that Alba was destroyed, and that after its fall, the towns of the Prisci Latini formed an independent and compact confederacy. How Alba was destroyed is involved in great obscurity. Whether, as it is said, it was ever forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome; whether it was destroyed by Romans and Latins combined, or by Latins or Romans alone, are questions which no human sagacity can solve. The destruction by the Latins rising against Alba’s superiority is the most probable; but whether in that case Rome received the Albans into her bosom, will everremain uncertain. That Alban clans were settled at Rome we cannot doubt, as little as that the Prisci Latini from henceforth existed as a consolidated state. Yet if we consider that Alba lies in the middle of the Latin country; that the Alban hill was their common sanctuary, the grove of Ferentina their place of assembly; the greater probability is this, that Rome did not destroy Alba, but that the latter perished in the insurrection of the Latin towns, and that the Romans strengthened themselves by the admission of the Albans.
Whether the Albans first built on the Cælius, is more than we can ascertain. The account which places the foundation of the town on the Cælius in the times of Romulus, tends to prove that before the reception of the Albans, a town already existed here. But what weight has that account? A third tradition represents it as an Etruscan colony of Cæles Vibenna.
The destruction of Alba had an extraordinary effect on the greatness of Rome. At all events there now existed a third town on the Cælius and part of the Esquiliæ, which seems to have been very populous. Such a settlement quite close to other towns was made for the sake of mutual protection. Between the two older towns there was a perpetual marsh and morass; the Roman town was likewise bordered on its south side by a piece of stagnant water; but between the third town and Rome there was dry ground. Rome had also a considerable suburb towards the Aventine, behind a wall and ditch, as is represented in the legend of Remus. The latter is a personification of the plebeians: he jumps from the side of the Aventine over the ditch.
The Sabine town had without doubt the name of Quirium; for the πολιτικόν of it isQuiris. This is certain. Almost as little do I doubt but that the town on the Cælius was Lucerum; because, when it was united with Rome, its citizens were calledLucertes(Luceres). The ancients derive this name from Lucumo king of the Tuscans, or from Lucerus king of Ardea. The meaningof the latter may perhaps be this, that the tribe was Tyrrheno-Latin, since Ardea was the chief town of that tribe. Thus Rome was enlarged by a third element, which is not, however, on an equal footing with the other two, but is in subjection to them, just as Ireland was to Great Britain before the year 1782. Yet although they were obliged to acknowledge this supremacy, they were already looked upon as being a part of the whole, as a thirdtribuswith an independent administration, though with inferior rights. What here shows us our way is the statement of Festus, who on the subject of Roman antiquities is very trustworthy, inasmuch as he makes extracts from Verrius Flaccus. In a few points only has one of the two in my opinion made a mistake; all the rest may be accounted for by the deficiency of the extract, as Festus did not always understand Verrius Flaccus. The statement of Festus, which I am now speaking of, is this, that Tarquin the Proud had reduced the number of the vestals to six, so that each tribe might have two of them. In connexion with this is to be taken the passage in the tenth book of Livy, which asserts that the augurs were to represent the three tribes. The numbers in the Roman priestly colleges may always be divided either by two or by three: by three, those of the vestal virgins, of the great flamens; by two, those of the augurs, the pontiffs, the fetiales; these last represented only the two first tribes. Before the passing of the Ogulnian law, there were only four augurs; and when afterwards five plebeian ones were added, the basis of this increase was indeed a different[59]one; yet the ancient form of divisibility by three was kept up. The pontiffs, of whom there were likewise four, had at that time only four added to them. This then would seem to be an inconsistency; but a passage of Cicero on the subject has been overlooked, in which he tells us that the number of those added had beenfive, evidently counting the Pontifex Maximus with them, which Livy does not.—In the same manner there were twenty Fetiales, ten for each tribe; and Numa added to the Palatine Salii, another brotherhood of the same kind on the Quirinal. Every where the two first tribes are plainly opposed to each other on an equal footing, while the third is left in the background.
The third rank accordingly consisted of free citizens; yet it had not the same rights as the two first. Nevertheless it thought itself better than all other people; it stood in the same position as that in which the Venetian citizens of the mainland did to the nobili. The nobleman of Venice treated one of these citizens with more regard than he showed to any of the others, so long as he did not take upon himself to claim to have a voice in political matters. Whoever belonged to the Luceres called himself a Roman; and if the dictator of Tusculum had come to Rome, the man of the third tribe in it would have looked down upon him as an inferior, although he himself was of no account.
Tullus is succeeded by Ancus. Tullus makes his appearance as one of the Ramnes, as a descendant of Hostus Hostilius, one of the companions of Romulus; but Ancus on the contrary is a Sabine, and a grandson of Numa. His story has an historical air: there is none of the colouring of poetry in it. The development of the state advances in his reign another step. Rome and the Latin towns are, according to the old description, at war with each other, and the Romans carry it on with success. How many of the details of which we are told here, are historical, I cannot decide: that a war took place is credible enough. It is said that Ancus after this war led away many thousand Latins, and established them on the Aventine. The ancients judged differently of him: he at one time appears ascaptator auræ popularis, and at another he is calledbonus Ancus. Like the three first kings, he is also stated to have been a lawgiver: of the later ones this is no more mentioned.He is said besides to have founded the colony of Ostia, and therefore to have extended his rule to the mouth of the Tiber.
Ancus seems, like Tullus, to be historical; only we can hardly suppose that the one was the immediate successor of the other, and that the events which are placed in their reigns really belonged to those times. These events must be considered in the following manner. When at the end of the fourth reign, the Romans, after a long feud, came to an agreement with the Latins about the renewal of the long neglected league, Rome dropped her claims to a dominion which she could not preserve, and in exchange enlarged herself on another and a safer side. The eastern colonies coalesced with the preserved Latin towns, although this is nowhere expressly stated. Part of the Latin country was yielded to Rome, the rest entered into relations of friendship, and perhaps of isopolity with it. Rome in this acted wisely, as England did when she acknowledged the United States of North America.
In this manner Rome acquired adistretto(district). The many thousand settlers whom Ancus is said to have led to the Aventine, are the population of the Latin towns which fell to Rome, a much more numerous one than that of the two old tribes, even with the addition of the third, which was already much the largest. In this rural district lay the strength of Rome; from it was the army raised with which the Romans carried on their wars. Now it would have been natural to admit this population as a fourth tribe, but this did not please the Romans: the constitution of the state was closed, and it was looked upon as a trust in which nothing must be changed. As our forefathers in their different tribes clung to their own peculiar laws (the emperor Otho made a question arising out of the law of inheritance to be decided by an appeal to the judgment of God), so was it likewise among the Greeks and Romans. A town in Sicily had ChalcidianNomima, another hadDoric ones, although the population was entirely mixed: in the former there were four; in the latter, three tribes.[60]The division into three tribes was an indigenous Latin one; but it may be that the Sabines in their towns had the division into four.
Here we have the first beginning of the plebes.Although the story that Ancus led the Latins away from their homes, and transplanted them in Rome, deserves no credit, because it is impossible; yet it is not to be doubted that Ancus Marcius is justly mentioned as the builder of a town on the Aventine. Here arose a town, which to the very latest times kept itself politically separated from Rome proper, and which for a very long period, as a byetown, was not comprehended in the Pomœrium.
Ancus is succeeded by Tarquinius Priscus, who is represented as a half Etruscan, son of an Etruscan woman and of Damaratus. The latter is said to have been a Bacchiades, who in the revolution of Cypselus had left Corinth with great treasures, and emigrated to Tarquinii. His heir was his son Lucius Tarquinius, as an elder son, Aruns, had previously died, leaving behind him a wife whom the father did not know to be with child. This account is very generally believed, because Polybius, though a Greek, mentions Tarquin as a son of Damaratus, and because the time corresponds. Yet this is after all merely an illusion. The whole agreement hinges upon the correctness of our chronological dates of the Roman kings, according to which Tarquinius Priscus ascended the throne in the year of the city 132; but if we must place him at a later time, the story of Damaratus and Cypselus, which pretty certainly belongs to the thirtieth Olympiad, falls at once to the ground. Now it has already been remarked in the general review of the sources of Roman history, that all the old annalists,with the single exception of subtle Piso, have never doubted but that Tarquin the Proud was the son of Tarquinius Priscus; and consequently the date assigned for the latter must be altogether incorrect. And therefore the connexion with Damaratus becomes impossible.
Damaratus belongs to the old tradition about the connexion between Greece and Etruria, and of the civilization which came from Greece to Etruria. As Evander did to the Latins, so does Damaratus bring the letters of Cadmus to the Etruscans, or Tyrrhenians; and he also belongs, according to the most ancient Greek tradition, to equally early times. The alleged connexion with Tarquinius Priscus arose from the circumstance that the old legend speaks of Tarquinii as the place where Damaratus settled. Of his descent as a Bacchiad, the tradition certainly knew nothing: it was added by later historizing accounts, which every where tried to keep up a sort of link with history. The reason for referring Damaratus to Tarquinii was partly this, that Tarquinii was an important town, and partly also that between Tarquinii and Corinth there is a connexion not to be mistaken. Formerly the vases and vessels found in Tuscany were taken for Etruscan; but afterwards people most justly gave up that opinion, though they now believed that such vases had never existed in ancient Etruria. But there have been vessels dug up at Corneto which are perfectly similar to the oldest Greek ones,—not to those which were formerly called Etruscan but to the real Greek ones from the earliest times, especially to the Corinthian ones which Dodwell has copied.[61]Fragments of the same kind are only found there near the old Tarquinii. In all the rest of Tuscany such a vessel has hardly been met with more than once or twice; whilst in the north-eastern part of the country, near Arezzo and Fiesole, the Arretinian vessels ofbaked red clay with embossed figures of quite a peculiar style of art are quite common, which, on the other hand, are nowhere found near the coast. This connexion of the art of Tarquinii with that of Greece, especially Corinth, explains the tradition that the artists Eucheir and Eugrammos had accompanied Damaratus from Corinth.
When once Tarquinius Priscus was connected with Tarquinii, and the tradition besides was remembered, that the solemn worship of the Greeks had first been introduced by him, it was said, “this is the work of the old Greeks;” and now it became necessary to compare the Roman chronology, as laid down in the books of the pontiffs, with the Greek one, which could already be done, as Timæus had written. Then it was found that the connexion became possible, if Damaratus was made the father of Tarquin. This Tarquinius Priscus or Lucumo, it was said, had with his wife Tanaquil, an Etruscan soothsayer, betaken himself to Rome, being only a half citizen at Tarquinii; and on his journey thither, a miracle happens to him. Of his reign many glorious things are told. Yet here the accounts differ: one, that of Livy, is very modest; another makes him conquer all the Etruscan towns. This is to be read at length in Dionysius; the story of it has its place in the Roman annals, so that Augustus even had these victories marked in the triumphal Fasti as three triumphs with definite dates, as we see from the fragments which remain.[62]Now the Romans had so much the more reason for believing these statements, as Tarquinius Priscus is always mentioned as the man who united the two towns, that of the Sabines, and that of the Romans, and built the gigantic works by which also the valleys were filled up.
The same account, generally calls Tarquinius Priscus Lucumo; yet this was never a name, but the Etruscantitle of a prince. Whenever the Romans want to invent any thing about the Etruscans, they always call the men Lucumo, Aruns, or Lars. The last of these probably means king. Aruns is a common name, as we may see from the inscriptions of the Etruscan tombs, of which we cannot indeed understand one word, but yet may recognise the names. I have looked over all the Etruscan inscriptions, and have arrived at this conviction, that there is in them an entirely different language, of which we can only guess some words: for instance,ril avilmeansvixit annos. Lucumo is nowhere found on them; and the old philologians also, as Verrius Flaccus, knew that it was no name. The Romans had several traditions concerning a Lucumo who acts a part in Roman history; one, for instance, was a companion of Romulus. No one else is meant by any of them but Lucius Tarquinius Priscus; that is to say, the tradition referred every thing to him that was told of the others. Livy says that he had given himself at Rome the name of L. Tarquinius Priscus, for which the philologians reproach him as guilty of a great oversight, which, however, is only to be deemed one if we suppose that he had explained Priscus to mean “The Old.” Yet Livy might often in the first book have written down the narrative under the conviction that all that had not really so happened, and that something different might be understood as its meaning. Priscus is a common name with the Romans. Among the Patricians we find it in the family of the Servilii; Cato was called Priscus before he got the name of Cato, i. e. Catus, the prudent one, with the emphatic termination o; and besides these a whole series of families bear this cognomen. I am convinced that Tarquinius has been brought into connexion with Tarquinii only because of his name, and that on the contrary he was in reality a Latin. This is supported by the mention of Tarquinians, who after the expulsion of the kings reside at Laurentum; and likewise by the fact that Collatinus betook himself to Lavinium,a Latin town. The whole story of the descent of Tarquinius Priscus from Damaratus falls besides to the ground, as Cicero, Varro, and even Livy acknowledge the existence of agens Tarquinia; and how utterly different is agensindeed from a family which only consists of two houses, that of the kings and that of Collatinus? Varro says expressly,omnes Tarquinios ejecerunt, ne quam reditionis per gentilitatem spem haberet.
The reason of Tarquin’s being connected with Etruria was, besides his name, the necessity of accounting for an Etruscan influence on Rome. The Romans made Servius Tullius, who was an Etruscan, a Latin from Corniculum; andvice versa, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, who was a Latin, an Etruscan. Thus the whole story of his descent is a fiction, and this is also decidedly the case with Tanaquil, inasmuch as the Romans so name every one of the women who were stated to have been Etruscans, it being a common Etruscan name, which is often met with in inscriptions. In the old native tradition Tarquin was married to a Latin woman, Caia Cæcilia, a name which must be traced back to Cæculus the founder of Præneste. Her image was set up in the temple of Semo Sancus; for she was worshipped as the guardian goddess of female domestic virtue. This bears a genuine stamp of nationality. In the old legend, she is such a familiar personage that the girdle of her brazen image was filed off, and the filings were used as remedies.
It is therefore a matter of history, that there was a Latin Tarquinius Priscus; yet he in all likelihood belongs to the Luceres. He introduces the Luceres into the senate; to the two hundred councillors a hundred more are added, summoned by the king asgentes minoresafter thegentesof the two first tribes; in the rebellion of his son against Servius Tullius, they are his faction. His time seems to be parted from the former one by a great gulf: in his reign, Rome appears under quite a different form from what she had before. Theconquests which are ascribed to Ancus Marcius are confined within a very narrow space. He first conquers the mouth of the Tiber, and fortifies Ostia. But now a state of things is mentioned, the consequences of which we still see, even to this hour. To this very day there stands unchanged the great river vault, theCloaca maxima, with the name of which one incorrectly associates a base meaning. It is not a mere sewer, though it is also used as such. Its real object was no less than that of draining the great branch of the river’s bed, which went forth from the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Aventine, and the Palatine, and between the Palatine and Capitoline, and then extended in marshes to the space between the Quirinal and the Viminal, and of thereby gaining solid ground. This work consisting of three half circles of huge blocks of free stone without mortar, which even to this present moment have not given way the breadth of the back of a knife, drew off the water from the surface, received it under ground, carried it into the Tiber, and formed a firm soil. At the same time, because the Tiber had also muddy banks, a great wall was built as a dyke, the greater part of which is still in preservation. This construction is equal in extent and bulk to the pyramids; in difficulty it very far surpasses them. It is such a gigantic fabric, that one does not comprehend it when one sees it: even the aqueducts of the Emperors are indeed nothing great when compared to it. They were of brick, with a cast of mortar in the middle; but here, all is of hewn Alban freestone, with immensely deep foundations.
Whether theCloaca Maximawas executed by Tarquinius Priscus, or by his son Superbus, is a point in which the ancients differ from each other, and we also can decide nothing. This much, however, we may say, that the building must have been completed before the town was enclosed within the circuit of the seven hills, and formed a whole; yet this was done by the last king but one, and therefore, if we will avail ourselves of thepersonification, in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. But such a work could not possibly have been executed with the resources of the State as we know it to have been at that period, when its territory extended from the river about two leagues in breadth, and at most six to eight leagues in length, and consequently was not as large as that of Nuremburg; especially if we think of all the difficulties of an age in which trade and commercial wealth were in no wise in existence. Here are evidently all the intervening stages leaped over, and we see at once an Empire before us quite different from the former one, in which Rome rules far and wide. Of this sway we find no mention in Livy, although he too is astonished at these buildings. Livy fancies that time to be a state of childhood for the city, and is therefore under the same delusion by which Cicero, and the later writers especially are beguiled; that the period of the kings was to be looked upon as the age of Rome’s greatest weakness. Much more correct might be the account given by Dionysius, according to which the Etruscan towns, the Latins, and the Sabines paid homage to Tarquinius Priscus. Only all the narratives of the manner in which this had come to pass are so fabulous, that one cannot be mistaken as to their being invented by those who had wished to solve the riddle. Here history entirely fails us. But whatever relation Tarquinius Priscus may have to the Tuscan legends of the conquests of Tarchon, this much we may say; that Rome itself ruled at that time with an extensive sway, or else that it was the seat of foreign rulers, so that at all events a state of things had existed in which Rome was the centre of a foreign empire.
Another undertaking quite as enigmatical is assigned to the same reign of Tarquinius Priscus. It is said that Tarquin had wished to double the RomuleanTribus, that is to say, to add three new tribes bearing his own and his friend’s names. To this the Augur Attius Navius had objected, as three tribes were enjoined bythe auspices. Probably the legend was not as Livy, but as Dionysius has it; that Tarquin had himself cut through the whet stone, and in doing so had wounded his hand. The king had not indeed then formed three new tribes, but had annexed new centuries to the old ones. In this legend therefore the immutability of the tribes is spoken of, as well as the intention of the ruler to double the community by new citizens, which scheme the old citizens set their face against, pleading the sacred character of the original number. But we see here a ruler, who is not a mere magistrate, but governs by arbitrary force:—he yields as to the form, but alters the substance, making second centuries. Centuries and tribes are originally the same thing, since thetribushad a hundred clans. How it was with the second centuries is utterly hidden from us. One hypothesis is this, that as many of the old clans had died away, Tarquin formed new ones; for instance, that when the Ramnes had dwindled to fifty, he added to fill up the number fifty new clans, assecundi Ramnes. We have the example of the Potitii, who became extinct in the time of Appius Claudius, though they still consisted, as we are told, of twelve families. The rolls of exclusive families show with what rapidity they become extinct. In Styria there were formerly two thousand noble families, and now there exist scarcely a dozen of them; in the duchy of Bremen, the equestrian body admissible to the diet dwindled within fifty years to half its number, merely because they intermarried only with those of their own cast. In Luneburg the government formerly belonged to the noble houses; now there is only one house left. Perhaps Tarquin collected the remnants of the old Curies, and then made up clans which were wanting. What recommends this supposition is this, that there remained some difference between the old and new clans. Certainly the new centuries had not the weight which they would have had as independent tribes.
It is a very uncertain thing to seek allegories in historical statements, and to try and draw from them again historical facts. Thus as Ancus Marcius is the founder of theplebes, and the murder of Tarquin is said to have been brought about by the Marcii, one might surmise that Tarquin, who was one of the Luceres and had introduced them into the senate, had perished owing to rebellion of the plebeians. Yet this is one of the most hazardous hypotheses, and therefore I did not choose to have it printed. In proffering it, I support myself on a credit to which he may lay claim, who for eighteen years has almost incessantly devoted himself to these researches, after having been fondly attached to them for many a year before.
The legend which makes Tarquin the acknowledged chief of the twelve Etruscan towns, leads us to speak of the Etruscans. They are perhaps of all the nations of antiquity that on which the most different disquisitions have been made with the smallest apparatus of authorities, and about which also the greatest number of deceptions have been circulated. The forgeries of one Annius of Viterbo, of one Inghirami, and others, are impudent in the highest degree; and yet they have nevertheless become the sources of many later works. By them Dempster, and by him Winkelmann in his turn, was led astray. In the eighteenth century, the Italians did not indeed forge any more documents; but with the greatest recklessness they gave themselves the air of being able to explain what could never be explained. Indeed, many written documents existed of the Etruscans; yet only a few great ones. Five years ago an altar was dug up, written all over on three sides; a cippus in Perugia; a coffin at Bolsena, &c.; and descriptions have been published of them, some separately, and some collectively; especially by Lanzi. On works of art also, inscriptions are found. To interpret these is a matter of great interest, since, if we could read them, much light would dawn upon us; butthis has given rise to the definite presupposition that they were capable of being explained, and thus the most arbitrary things were done. Eastern languages, and the Celtic were applied to it; at last Lanzi acted on the supposition that it was a sort of Greek, and, in defiance of all the rules of grammar, he formed at his own pleasure a spurious Greek. With all these relics, we stand without knowing any thing, as we did with regard to the hieroglyphics, until Champollion arose. Longinscriptiones bilinguesonly could help us out. We may positively assert that the Etruscan has not the least resemblance to the Latin and Greek, nay, to any language which is known to us, as Dionysius already has justly observed. This passage of Dionysius has purposely been overlooked, or its absolute meaning has been wrested into a conditional one. The Umbrian on the Eugubian tablets, has some resemblance to the Latin.
Dionysius had this information, that the Etruscans considered themselves as an indigenous people, which descended from no other, and, knowing nothing of the name of Tyrrhenians and Etruscans, called themselves Rasena.[63]Of the traditions of the Greeks they knew nothing. Yet the latter had two distinct traditions concerning the Tyrrhenians, which they referred to the Etruscans; the one, that of Hellanicus, that the Pelasgians from Thessaly had settled at the mouth of the Po, at Spina, from whence they had crossed over the mountains to Etruria; the second, that of Herodotus, according to which the Lydians at the time of Atys, were visited by a famine, so that part of the people under Tyrrhenus were obliged to emigrate to Italy. Dionysius controverts the latter statement in that good style of criticism which we sometimes find in him, on the ground that neither the language nor the religion of the Etruscans bore any resemblance to those of theLydians; and that neither the Etruscans, nor the Lydian writer Xanthus,—whose work, as O. Müller shows, was unjustly suspected among the Greeks of not being genuine,—know any thing about it. Dionysius in this judged rightly, because he did not work from books, but from immediate observation. With the other tradition he deals differently: he does not altogether drop it; but he refers it, not to the Etruscans, but to the aborigines. The Italian antiquaries, on the contrary, stuck to the Lydian tradition; or they also referred the emigration of the Pelasgians from Thessaly to the Etruscans, and said, in spite of all the assertions of Herodotus, that the inhabitants of Cortona (Croton) were not at all different from the people of the neighbourhood. And here I will now set forth the simple results of my researches concerning the Etruscans. I have (in the new edition of the first volume of my Roman history) shown that the name of Tyrrhenians was transferred by the Greeks to the Etruscans, as we use that of Britons when speaking of the English, or that of Mexicans and Peruvians, of the Spaniards in America; because those nations dwelt originally in these countries, whilst a newly immigrating people founded quite a new order of things, and that so completely that we no more recognise any traces of an earlier condition, than if the former had never existed. The Tyrrhenians were quite a different people; yet they inhabited the shores of Etruria, as well as the whole coast to the south, as far as Œnotria proper, i. e. Calabria and Basilicata. These Tyrrhenians were Pelasgians, as well as those of the Peloponnesus and Thessaly: and when Sophocles speaks of Τυῤῥηνοὶ πελασγοί in Argos; when in Æschylus king Pelasgus, son of Palæchthon, rules in Argos; when Tyrrhenians, according to Thucydides, reside near Athos, and in Lemnos, and, according to Herodotus, in Attica near the Hymettus, these are all branches of one and the same stock. In Asia Minor we must fill up the gap in history after the destruction of Troy by makingthe Lydians, Carians, and Mysians, push forward from the interior country nearer to the coast in the neighbourhood of the fallen city, partly subjugating, partly expelling, the Meonians and other Pelasgian nations. The Meonians, who are always distinguished from the Lydians, are likewise Tyrrhenians, and are called so by Ovid in the Bacchian fable. Now these Tyrrhenians have given to the coast of Western Italy and to the Tyrrhenian Sea their names: the Romans call themTusci. Both names passed to the Rasena, who came down the Alps as conquerors. Thus the whole statement of Herodotus becomes clear. It is a usual genealogical explanation to show how Tyrrhenians could have been in Lydia, and also in Italy. This opinion is now generally received in Germany and in England.
The only difficulty, which indeed does not damage the evidence for this representation, but is surprising as a fact, is this, that after the Etruscan conquest of the Tyrrhenian country, the language of the Rasena is the only one preserved on so many monuments; and that no trace of inscriptions is to be seen in the tongue which was akin to the Greek, as we must presume the Tyrrhenian to have been. But, in the first place, these inscriptions were almost all of them found in the interior of the country near Perugia, Volterra, Arrezzo, &c., where the original population was Umbrian; and on the sea coast near Pisa, Populonia, Cære, Tarquinii, and elsewhere, only in very small numbers. Some have been lately discovered near Tarquinii, but they have not yet been published: one might therefore say, that if no Tyrrhenian inscriptions have yet been met with, they may still be found. But no stress is to be laid on such special pleading. In conquests which bring a heavy yoke upon the conquered, the language of the vanquished often becomes wholly extinct. In Asia and many other countries, the use of the native tongue was forbidden, in order to prevent treason. The Moors were in many respects mild rulers in Spain, and the countryflourished under their sway; yet in Andalusia, at the advance of the Christians, a king forbade his people on pain of death to speak Latin, so that a hundred years afterwards no more trace of that language is to be found. As late as in the eighteenth century, the whole Christian population of Cæsarea spoke Greek: a bashaw forbid them to do so, and after a lapse of thirty or forty years, when my father came to the place, not a soul was any more able to converse in that language. In Sicily, at the time of the Norman conquest, the language was exclusively Greek and Arabic; even under the Emperor Frederic the Second, the laws were still promulgated in Greek; afterwards this language all at once utterly disappears. In the Terra di Lecce, and the Terra di Otranto also, the names were afterwards Italian, but conversation was in Greek; and at the end of two hundred years, in the fifteenth century, it became extinct also here. In Pomerania and Mecklenburg, without any immigration of Germans, merely owing to the predilection of the princes, the Vandal language has vanished in the course of one or two generations. The conquerors of the march of Brandenburg forbade the use of the Vandal tongue on pain of death, and nothing soon was spoken but the Low German, (plattdeutsch). The Etruscans had quite an aristocratical constitution, and they lived in their towns in the midst of a large subjected country; under such circumstances, it could not but be of great importance to them, that the people should adopt their language.
The Rasena came down from the Alps as conquerors, since, according to Livy and Strabo, not only the Rhætians, but also the other Alpine tribes, the Camunians, the Lepontians on the Lake of Como, were of Etruscan race. That they were forced by the Gallic conquest to retire from the plain into the Alps, has never been said by any of the ancients; and it is absurd to think that a people which fled before the Gauls from the Patavinian plain, should have been able to subdue the mountaineersof the Alps, or have been allowed to have any footing there, unless those regions had already before been occupied by others of the same tribe. We have the tradition, probably from Cato, that the Etruscans had taken three hundred Umbrian towns;—these must be considered as belonging to the interior of Tuscany;—and a long time afterwards, a district in Tuscany is called Umbria, and a river, Umbro. The Etruscans are therefore one of those northern nations which were driven to the south by the pressure of some of those national migrations which are quite as historically certain as the later ones, although we do not find any record of them,—national migrations like that which had driven the Illyrians forward, so that the Illyrian Enchelians, about the fortieth Olympiad, burst into Greece, and sacked Delphi, as Herodotus tells us. Such a national migration drove the Etruscans from the north. They once inhabited Switzerland and the Tyrol; nay, it surely happened to the Etruscans in those countries, as it did also to the Celts in Spain, that some tribes kept their ground longer than the other. The heathen wall on the Ottilienberg in Alsace, which Schweighäuser has described as one of the most remarkable and unaccountable of monuments, is evidently an Etruscan work: it has exactly the character of Etruscan fortification, as we see it at Volterra, Cortona, and Fiesole. Some would have this called the Gallic style of building; yet quite groundlessly, as we may see both from Cæsar’s description, and also from other remains and structures in Gaul. There are two essentially distinct kinds of fortifications in central Italy. The one are the so-called Cyclopian Walls, built in polygons, which alternate with intentional irregularity along the slope of a hill, in such a manner that it has become quite scarped, but at the summit it is without walls. The ascent is by a ledge on the slope of the hill,Clivus, which one may ride up on horseback; at the bottom of it, and at the top there are gates. In this manner the Roman and Latin hillswere fortified. The other are the Etruscan fortifications, which are erected on the crown of a hill of difficult access, the wall being not of polygons, but of parallelopipeds of colossal dimensions, very rarely of hewn stone, which follow the ridge of the hill in all its bendings. Thus it is near Volterra, and such is the one in Alsace just spoken of. Now, I do not assign the origin of this wall to such very ancient times, but to a kindred tribe with the Etruscans, which had long maintained its ground there against the Celts; and yet I would not quote its existence as an irrefragable proof that there had been such a tribe. The Etruscans settled first in twelve towns in Lombardy; about as far as to the present Austrian frontier, on the side of Piedmont (Pavia was not Etruscan); in the south, from Parma to Bologna; in the north, from the Po to Verona; then they spread farther, and founded or enlarged in the country south of the Apennines twelve towns besides, from which they commanded the country. Now it is the common belief that the Etruscans were quite an ancient people in Italy; I was myself for a long time of that opinion. But very old in Tuscany they are not; and in that part of southern Tuscany which now belongs to the States of the Church, they have spread only very late. Herodotus relates that about the year of the city 220, the unfortunate Phocæans had been beaten in a sea-fight by the Agyllæans who dwelt in Corsica, and the Carthaginians, and that those who had been taken prisoners were stoned to death; that the vengeance of heaven for this crime had been made manifest; that the Agyllæans had applied to Delphi, and that Apollo had imposed upon them Greek sacrifices and the worship of Greek heroes. Now Agylla, according to the unanimous account of all writers, bore this name as long as it was Pelasgian: thenceforth it was called Cære by the Etruscans. Mezentius, the tyrant of Cære in the legend which Virgil with his great learning embodies in his poem, may with much probability be taken to be theEtruscan conqueror of Cære. He also appears afterwards as the conqueror of Latium, who claims for himself the tithe of the wine, and even the whole produce of the vintage. The extensions of the Etruscan sway belong to the age of the last kings of Rome: they are connected with the expedition of the Etruscans against Cuma, and in the country of the Volscians. About the time from Olympiad 60 to 70, they spread in those parts; in the year of the city 283, they found Capua, according to Cato’s account, which has certainly great authenticity. The shortness of the period allowed for the growth and decay of the people, the objection started by Velleius, cannot make this improbable: Capua, for instance, had already been built two hundred and fifty years before it became a large town: New York is a case yet more in point. The time, therefore, when Hiero of Syracuse defeated the Etruscans near Cuma, was that in which these people flourished. In the beginning of the fourth century of the city, they declined, while the Romans rose; and in the middle of the century, the Gauls wrested from them the northern part of their territory,—their possessions in the neighbourhood of the Po.
After men had come to the conviction that the Alban origin of Rome was untenable, Rome was believed to be an Etruscan colony. I myself put forth this supposition, and made it the groundwork of the first edition of my History, because I held the Alban Latin descent to be false. This Etruscan origin seemed to me to be confirmed by several circumstances, especially by the statement of a certain Volnius in Varro, that the names of the oldest Roman tribes were Tuscan; and, moreover, by the remark that the secret theology of the Romans was derived from Etruria, and that the sons of the ten first in the Roman senate learned the ordinances of religion there, insomuch that the worship of Jupiter, of Juno, and of Minerva on the Capitol, was in all likelihood after the Etruscan ritual. Yet by unprejudicedresearches I have convinced myself that this is not the case; that the two original elements of the Roman state are the Latins and Sabines, though I would not altogether dispute the existence of an Etruscan one afterwards added to it; that as Rome is much older than the spread of the Etruscans in those parts, the statement of Volnius is either groundless, or the names of the tribes were later than the tribes themselves; yet that the strong influence of the Etruscans at the time which is designated as the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, and of Servius Tullius, is sufficient to account for all the Etruscan institutions in Rome. Moreover no ancient author ever speaks of an Etruscan colony at Rome. The question then is only this, Whether the Etruscans spread so early, that in the times of Tarquinius Priscus they were already in possession of Tarquinii and the neighbouring places? or whether they began only about the sixtieth Olympiad, and later, to appear on the Tiber and beyond it?
Before we now proceed to set forth the changes which manifested themselves in those times, a picture must be drawn of the oldest constitution of Rome previous to them, after we have first told the history of the Etruscans, as far as we have any knowledge of it.
What we know of the history of Cuma is very obscure: the foundation of no Greek town in those parts is dated so early. This would not have been the case if Cuma had not so soon ceased to be a Greek town, and had come into the power of the Oscans before the time when the people in those districts began to write Greek. All towns in fact have surely had eras dating from their foundation; and by this means it became possible to get definite chronological dates, which were afterwards reduced to Olympiads. For it was only at a very late period that the Greeks reckoned by Olympiads. The first who does so is Timæus (Ol. 120 to 130): Theophrastus does not yet use this computation. But when a town like Cuma happened to have been lost to theGreeks, there was then no trace of this era, and consequently nothing on which one could lay hold but the genealogies of its Ctistæ (Founders). If therefore it was stated, that this man or that man had founded a city, people made out his descent as far back as Troy and the heroic age. Thence it comes that Cuma was looked upon as so wonderfully old, as two hundred years older than the neighbouring Greek towns; for the real era of this city was lost at an early period, and it was surely not older than the other Greek towns. What was known of Cuma probably existed in Neapolitan Chronicles, which Dionysius also made use of. His description of the war of the Etruscans against Cuma is indeed mythical: the Volturnus flows back to its source, &c. yet this is only a matter of secondary consideration. Herodotus is also mythical; for instance, at the destruction of the Carthaginian army against Gelon,—yet for all that the war which he relates is not to be doubted of. The people of Cuma were then at the height of their prosperity, and possessed Campania. If therefore the Etruscans besieged Cuma about the sixty-fourth Olympiad, this shows clearly that they were at that time conquerors, which is in perfect agreement with Cato’s account, that Capua had stood only two hundred and sixty years since its foundation; that is to say, it was an Etruscan colony. Thus therefore, with regard to the passage of the Etruscans over the Tiber, we have the date 250 to 280 according to our usual chronology from the building of Rome; and as late as 220 to 230, Herodotus represents Agylla as a town which consults the oracle at Delphi. That this had been done by Etruscans, who thought so much of their own religion, is inconceivable; and the more so, as there existed a deep-rooted hatred between the Etruscans and the Greeks, owing to which it was that the Romans received the command to sacrifice a Gaul and a Gallic woman, and also a Greek and a Greek woman,[64]from theLibri Fatales, which were of Etruscan origin; and not from the Sybilline books, as Plutarch would have us believe. This national hatred already displays itself every where: in Pindar, in the Bacchian fable, it is transferred to the Tyrrhenians, but it is to be understood of the Etruscans. The Etruscans therefore also reach the Tiber at a much later time than is generally supposed; they spread forth by degrees, attain to their meridian height, maintain themselves in it for two generations, and then fall into rapidly increasing decline. Of the earlier Etruscan history, we positively know nothing. We find in Tuscany twelve cities altogether independent of each other, but yet sometimes joined together in a common undertaking. It was customary that a king reigned in each of these towns; still no trace is found in any Italian people of an hereditary rule, as among the Greeks. Moreover these cities are not united in any artificial confederation: a league is formed of itself from their assembling at times at the temple of Voltumna for the purpose of common deliberation; and besides this they had a common priest for the whole nation. It seems, however, true, for, as the Etruscan language was unintelligible to the Romans, we must be very cautious in using their traditions,—that in common enterprises one of the kings was chosen, whose supremacy the other towns acknowledged, and whom they invested with the royal insignia. Yet it would seem that this pre-eminence was not always the result of an election, but that a city often usurped the leadership; as in the war of Porsena, Clusium is the chief town of the Etruscans. The accounts which we have represent Rome as being in the same relation to those towns: the twelve cities are stated to have sent to Tarquinius Priscus the ivory throne and the insignia; according to others, to Servius Tullius. Neither of the two accounts is historical; but this is a sign, that Rome under the last kings was the capital of a mighty empire, much greater than during the first 160 years of the republic,of which also we still have proofs in Rome itself. With regard to Etruria in particular, Rome seems to have been acknowledged as a chief town; yet this is only something transient, which perhaps under the kings already was changed several times.
The Etruscans have all the distinguishing features of an immigrating people, probably not much more numerous than the Germans who settled in Italy at the beginning of the middle ages. The towns bear rule, and in them the clans govern; their territories are large, but have no importance. This oligarchical form of government was the very thing which made Etruria powerless against Rome, as it was dangerous to put arms into the hands of the common people.
Dionysius, who gives the expressions of his authorities with great care, says that the magnates of the Etruscans had assembled with their clients for war. Among the Romans it is only the last resource to call upon the clients, when the plebeians refused to take the field. Other nations also allude to the fact that Etruria was peopled by vassals under a territorial aristocracy. When on the advance of the Gauls the dwellers on the left bank of the Tiber separated from Rome, Rome drew to herself those on the right bank, Cære got isopolity; four new tribes were formed from those who in the war had separated from Veii and Falerii, evidently nottransfugæ, as Livy says, but whole populations which joined Rome to escape from oppression. This plainly appears from analogy; for from the Volscians two tribes only are formed, and as many from the Sabines. Moreover, the history of the insurrection of Vulsinii exhibits the condition of a vanquished people, as I have shown in the first volume of my Roman history. The Vulsinians formed from their serfs aplebesin order to repel the Romans; theplebesafterwards subjects its former rulers, and the latter choose rather to throw themselves into the arms of the Romans, and to allow their town to be destroyed by them. There is every where such anoligarchy; hence it is that we find so very few towns in Etruria. The whole country from the Apennines to Rome had only twelve. For this reason power was only in its rudest state of development: there was no lasting vitality in it, no elements of national existence, as among the Romans, or the Samnites who evidently did not oppress the old Oscan people, but combined into one whole with them, and even adopted their language; whilst on the contrary, the Lucinians, who had emigrated from among the Sabines, stood in quite a different position to the old Œnotrians, or else the numbers of their citizens must have been stated quite differently by Polybius. Here an opposite policy bears opposite fruits. The insurrection of the Bruttians is nothing else but that the Œnotrians, who were already serfs under the Greeks, broke their chains when they became subject to new masters who treated them still more harshly. The Etruscans, in spite of their wealth and their greatness, could not withstand the Romans; their towns did not form a closely connected state as did those [of] the Latins, nor even as the Achæans. Most of the towns laid down their arms in the fifth century, after one or two battles. The only town which defended itself for thirty years, was that very Vulsinii where the serfs were changed into aplebes. The Samnites resisted for seventy years; the Lucanians for a very short time only.
The Etruscans have met with great favour with the moderns; the ancients thought very lightly of them. Among the Greeks, very unfavourable accounts were in circulation concerning their unbounded luxury. In some measure justice is done to them in respect to the fine arts. The technical perfection and quaint effect of their works had great attraction; theSigna Tuscanawere about as much prized at Rome, as old German pictures are now a-days in Germany.
The Etruscans enjoyed particular consideration as a people of priests, who were devoted to soothsaying inall its forms, especially from meteorological or astronomical phenomena, and from the entrails of victims: the augural divinations, on the other hand, are an inheritance of the Sabellian races. Yet we must after all acknowledge this to have been a system of gross fraud. I will not deny that the observations on lightning led the Etruscans to interesting discoveries. They were already aware of the lightnings flashing forth from the earth, which are now generally acknowledged by natural philosophers, but were denied only thirty years ago. That they knew of lightning conductors, as one might suppose from Jupiter Elicius, is now much less probable to me than it was formerly. It would never have been so entirely lost. And, besides, it is not stated that the lightnings were attracted, but called forth.
In history, the Etruscans show themselves in any thing but a favourable light. Unwarlike, inclined to withdraw from impending danger at the price of humiliation; just as in modern times so many states have done between 1796 and 1813. The descriptions of their great luxury may have been exaggerated; yet they had some foundation. For nearly two hundred years, the Etruscans lived in the most profound peace under the Roman dominion, free from every service in war; except in extraordinary emergencies, as in the war of Hannibal. To this period, then, the immense wealth and luxury which Polybius described are to be referred.
The Etruscans had also annals, of which the emperor Claudius made use. Some few portions of them may have likewise come to Verrius Flaccus and to Varro. Cæles Vibenna is especially celebrated. He offers, in fact, the only historical point which we know from the history of the Etruscans. Cæles Vibenna is said by some to have come to Rome, and to have settled on the Cælius. According to others, and indeed to those who follow the Etruscan traditions, he died in Etruria, and his general, Mastarna, led the remainder of his army to Rome, where he is said to have given theMons Cæliusthe name of his old general. In the narratives we always find him as a condottiere, as the independent leader of a free corps, in no sort of subjection to any of the towns; like the Catalan hosts in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the East Indians in the eighteenth. We do not know any thing more about him; yet the emperor Claudius asserts, from the Etruscan books, that his faithful general, Mastarna, when he had come to Rome and settled on the Cælius, had been received into the Roman state under the name of Servius Tullius. This is possible; whilst, on the other hand, the tradition of the Romans concerning Servius Tullius falls entirely within the sphere of the miraculous. It is said that in the ashes of the altar a vision of the God of fire had appeared to Tanaquil; that she had ordered her maid to lock herself up there, dressed as a bride; that the maid had gotten with child, and had borne Servius Tullius; and that therefore, in token of the latter’s descent from the god of fire, his head had during his childhood been surrounded, when he was asleep, by a halo of fire, and also at the conflagration of a temple, his wooden image in it had remained untouched. With a great deal of circumspection those who refine on history, have attempted to introduce this legend also into authentic history. Many of them find his descent from a bondmaid to be unseemly; and so they make him out to be the son of a man of rank at Corniculum, who had died, and had left her with child, whereupon she had been brought to the royal palace. According to others, his mother was indeed a bondmaid, but his father was the king. The halo of fire also is interpreted as symbolical of his early developed mind:non latuit scintilla ingenii in puero, says Cicero. Yet the old poets meant it seriously. We have the choice either of leaving the descent of Tullius in obscurity, or of believing that the Etruscan histories are true. I am so decidedly of opinion, that the Etruscan literature is older than that of the Romans, that I do not hesitateto give their legends the preference; and still more so, because Tarquinius Priscus has been made to be an Etruscan; since the existence of an Etruscan element was perceived, which, on account of the name, was referred to Tarquinius. Servius Tullius was represented as belonging to another race, chiefly because Rome did not wish to own herself indebted to an Etruscan for the important changes which are ascribed to that king. As he could not, however, be positively assigned to any distinct clan, recourse was had to the mythus; and he was made to be the son of a god like Romulus, just as Numa also was said to be the husband of a goddess. In the case of the son of a god, it is of no consequence who is his mother.[65]Yet we cannot draw from this any farther conclusions; nor can we make any use in history of the notice that he was an Etruscan, and that he led the remainder of the army of Cæles Vibenna up to Rome. Livy speaks of a Veientian war; but he only gives a few outlines, from which it is evident that he knew this was nothing but the fraudulent work of the Fasti.
In the legend we find Servius Tullius as a Latin, who ascends the throne, yet not even by regular election. To him all the political law is traced back, as all the spiritual was to Numa; a proof that to Livy himself they were no historical persons. Thegens Tullia, to which Servius may have belonged, perhaps by adoption, is expressly mentioned as an Alban clan settled on the Cælius, consequently belonging to the Luceres; and thus a king of the third tribe,—or as that and the commonalty are very nearly related, for it is derived from Corniculum,—a king from the commonalty ascends the throne. He is installed in his rule without election;yet he is then acknowledged by the Curies. Now Servius appears important from three different points of view:—as the enlarger of the city, inasmuch as he gave to Rome its legal circuit, even as it remained down to the time of the Emperors, although suburbs were added;—as the author of a constitution, since he constitutes theplebesas the second half of the nation;—and as the founder of the connexion with the Latins, who before that had only been either at war with the Romans, or else in a state of forced dependance upon them.
In these respects he is of such consequence, that we must dwell at some length on the subject. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius, for the sake of clearness, shall here be treated as if they were historical persons; but merely for the designation of relations and causes, their names serving instead of anx. In this manner, as was already remarked, we start from the most ancient form of Rome previous to this change.
In its first form, Rome consisted of a city on the Palatine, surrounded by a wall and ditch, with a suburb, and of a Sabine town on the Quirinal and on the Tarpeian Hill. From the union of both, Rome arose; and from the union of both bodies of citizens, the Roman citizenship. All modern states, with the single exception of the canton of Schwytz, have their governments and subdivisions according to their territory. Every city is divided into districts and wards, and on these, in representative governments, the representation is based: he who has his abode in a district is both an elector, and may also be elected in it. But the view which the ancients took was this, that the land was only the substratum of the state; that the state itself was formed of individuals; and that the relations of these to the whole community were modified in different ways by the corporations. Hence the state was divided into a certain number of associations, each of which again consisted of several families. These associations had among themselves their assemblies, their rights of inheritance,&c. their tribunals, and especially their sanctuaries. Whoever belonged to them, bequeathed these to his children; and wherever he might live, within or without the state, he was always deemed to belong to that association. Whoever, on the contrary, did not belong to it by right of birth, could only come in as an exception, if that association acknowledged him. A man might be received into the state with all the rights which the ancients confined to the citizen as such, he might acquire landed property, he might sue and be sued; and yet, unless he had a share in some association, he was only an inmate, and could not be invested with an office, nor could he vote. This view was generally entertained by all the most ancient states. The state could merely bestow upon an individual the right of abode and civil privileges: it could not command the association to receive any one. In many states, the associations had not even the right of admitting any body. This is the case with the castes which always remain exclusive, and which, being separate, allow of no intermarriage. Such an association, comprehending a number of families from which one may go out, but into which one either cannot enter at all, or only by the adoption of the whole association, is a clan, and by no means what we call family, which implies an origin from a common root; for when these clans have patronymics, they are always merely symbolical, and derived from heroes.[66]I assume it as a certain fact that among the Romans the division of the nation was intogentes, which were analogous to the γένη of the Greeks, and to theGeschlechterof our German forefathers. This is a presupposition to start from, for which, when the time comes, historical proofs will not be wanting. Let us first speak of that people concerning which the accounts are more distinct,—the Greeks. Their γένη are associationswhich, notwithstanding their common name, are not to be looked upon as families sprung from the same ancestors; but as the descendants of those persons, who at the foundation of the state were united in a corporation of this kind. This is expressly stated in Pollux, undoubtedly from Aristotle, wherein it is asserted that theGennetæwere called from the γένη; and that they were connected not by descent (γένει μὲν οὐ προσήκοντες) but by ἱερά which they had in common. Then we have also the evidence of Harpocration concerning the Homerides in Chios; he says that they were agenosin that island, but that according to the opinion of the well-informed they had no relationship whatever with Homer. These γένη are just like the Arabian tribes, the Beni Tai are ten thousand families who cannot all descend from Edid Tai; or like the clans of the Highlanders, who were named after individuals; yet it was only in a poetical sense that they spoke of themselves as the kinsmen and descendants of these. In the Highlands there were five thousand Campbells able to bear arms, who looked upon the Duke of Argyle as their cousin.
Concerning the Romangenteswe have no positive evidence, like that of Pollux and Harpocration (such perhaps as Verrius Flaccus would have given), that they were corporations without relationship; but we have an important definition of Cicero’s in theTopica. He there gives the wordgentilesas a difficult subject for definition; and such it was, because in fact time in its course had wrought a thorough change in the original institution. Thegentesin Cicero’s days had lost much of their former consequence, and their constitution had been affected by law decisions. He says,Gentiles sunt, qui inter se, eodem nomine sunt. Non satis est. Qui ab ingenuis oriundi sunt. Ne id quidem satis est. Quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit. Abest etiam nunc. Qui capite non sunt deminuti. Hoc fortasse satis est.According to this, the Scipios and Sulla weregentiles; for they areeodem nomine, &c. Suppose that one of the Corneliihad beenaddictusas liable to a debt, or condemned to death for a crime, then he wascapite deminutus, and ousted from his tribe, exactly what the English in feudal language call “corruption of blood.” And should he now as an addictus beget children, these also were outcasts, and did not belong to thegens. By the added clausequorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit, all theLibertiniand their descendants were excluded, although bearing the gentile name of their patrons; yet all thePeregriniwere left, whom one might admit if one chose. But this in all likelihood is an addition which was unknown to the old gentile law. For, in my opinion, there was in the earlier times no difference whatever with regard to the Libertini: they belonged to thegensas well as the patrons. Yet this was a moot point, as is shown by the remarkable lawsuit between the patrician and plebeian Claudii (the Marcelli), for the inheritance of aLibertinusin Cicerode Oratore. On that occasion ares judicatawas pronounced by the centuries, that the patrician Claudii could not inherit in a case of this kind; from which the conclusion was afterwards drawn that theLibertinidid not belong to thegens.