Chap. IV.]
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.
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associated with the locality, was probably appropriated by these "Hill-men" as well as by those of the "Mounts;" and the former perhaps designated themselves as "Romans of the Hill" (Romani Collini). That a diversity of race may have lain at the foundation of this distinction between the two neighbouring cities is possible; but evidence sufficient to warrant our pronouncing a community established on Latin soil to be of alien lineage is, in the case of the Quirinal community, totally wanting.[1]
Relation between the Palatine and Quirinal communities. Thus the site of the Roman commonwealth was still at this period occupied by the Mount-Romans of the Palatine and the Hill-Romans of the Quirinal as two separate communities confronting each other and doubtless in many respects at feud, in some degree resembling the Montigiani and the Trasteverini in modern Rome. That the community of the Seven Mounts greatly preponderated over that of the Quirinal, even at an early period, may with certainty be inferred both from the greater extent of its newer portions and suburbs, and from the position of inferiority in which the former Hill-Romans were obliged to acquiesce under the later Servian arrangement. But even within the Palatine city there was hardly a true and complete amalgamation of the different constituent elements of the settlement. We have already mentioned- ↑ The evidence alleged for this (comp. e. g. Schwegler, R. G. i. 480) mainly rests on an etymologico-historical hypothesis started by Varro, and as usual unanimously echoed by later writers, that the Latin quiris and Quirinus are akin to the name of the Sabine town Cures, and that the Quirinal hill accordingly had been peopled from Cures. The linguistic affinity of these words is probable; but how little warrant there is for deducing from it such a historical inference must be obvious at once. That the old sanctuaries on this eminence (where, besides, there was also a "Collis Latiaris") were Sabine, has been asserted, but has not been proved. Mars Quirinus, Sol, Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus, or Deus Fidius, were indeed Sabine, but they were also Latin divinities, formed evidently during the epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. When a name like that of Semo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of the Quirinal, which afterwards diminished in importance (comp. the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from a neighbouring land. In so speaking we do not mean to deny that it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated in producing this state of things; but if such was the case, they have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the constitution of Rome are only fitted seriously to warn us against such baseless speculations leading to no result.
