Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/59

centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, in other words, the inhabitants of the canton, dwelt in villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a town or place of associate settlement in the strict sense. It must, on the contrary, have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained a safer shelter for themselves and their cattle than in their villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was not at all, or but scantily inhabited. Ancient places of refuge, of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present day on the tops of several of the hills in the east of Switzerland. Such a place was called in Italy "height" (capitolium, like ἄκρα, the mountain-top), or "stronghold" (arx, from arcere); it was not a town at first, but the nucleus of a future town, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold, and then became surrounded with the "work" (oppidmn), or "ring" (urbs, connected with urvus, curvus, orbis). The stronghold and town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of gates, of which the stronghold had as few as possible, and the town many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three. Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which prevailed in Italy anterior to the existence of towns: a constitution the nature of which may still be recognized with some degree of clearness in those provinces of Italy which did not, until a late period, reach, and in some cases have not yet fully reached, the stage of aggregation in towns, such as the land of the Marsi and the small cantons of the Abruzzi. The country of the Æquicoli, who even in the imperial period dwelt, not in towns, but in numerous open hamlets, presents a number of ancient ring-walls, which, regarded as "deserted towns" with their solitary temples, have excited the astonishment of the Roman as well as of modern archæologists, who have fancied that they could find accommodation there, the former for their "primitive inhabitants" (aborigines), the latter for their Pelasgians. We shall certainly be nearer the truth in recognizing these structures, not as walled towns, but as places of refuge for the inhabitants of the district, such as were doubtless found in the more