The History of Rome (Mommsen)/Book 1/Chapter 7

by Theodor Mommsen

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

THE HEGEMONY OF ROME IN LATIUM.

 

Extension of the Roman territory. The brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked occasion for feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country nourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become gradually changed into wars, and raids for pillage into regular conquests, and political powers must have begun to assume shape. No Italian Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations is moulded and expressed, like the mind of the man in the sports and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the outward development of power and comparative resources in the several cantons of Latium. It is only in the case of Rome, at the utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power and of its territory. The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the united Roman community have been already stated (P. 48); in the landward direction they were on an average just about five miles distant from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (Ostia), at a distance of somewhat more than fourteen miles from Rome. "Larger and smaller tribes," says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome, "surrounded the new city, some of whom dwelt in independent villages, and were not subordinate to any national union." It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions of the Roman territory took place.

Territory on the Anio. The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and between the Tiber and the Anio, Antemnæ, Crustumerium, Ficulnea, Medullia, Cænina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia, were those which pressed most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans. The only community that retained independence in this district in after times was Nomentum; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance with Rome. The possession of Fidenæ, the tête du pont of the Etruscans on the left bank of the Tiber, was contested between the Latins and the Etruscans, in other words, between the Romans and Veientes, with varying result. The struggle with Gabii, which held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a long period equally balanced: down to late times the Gabine dress was deemed synonymous with that of war, and Gabine ground the prototype of hostile soil.^[1] By these conquests the Roman territory was probably extended to about 190 square miles. Alba. Another very early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops. How the collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell: the battle of the three Roman with the three Alban brothers born at one birth, is nothing but a personification of the struggle between two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at least was triune. We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome.^[2]

It is not improbable, although wholly a matter of conjecture, that, at the same period when Rome was establishing herself on the Anio and on the Alban hills, Præneste, which appears at a later date as mistress of eight neighbouring townships, Tibur, and others of the Latin communities were similarly occupied in enlarging the circle of their territory and laying the foundations of their subsequent far from inconsiderable power.

Treatment of the earliest acquisitions. We feel the want of accurate information as to the legal character and legal effects of these early Latin conquests, still more than we miss the records of the wars in which they were won. Upon the whole it is not to be doubted that they were treated in accordance with the system of incorporation, out of which the tripartite community of Rome had arisen; excepting that the cantons, who were compelled by arms to enter the combination, did not, like the primitive three, preserve some sort of relative independence as separate regions in the new united community, but became so entirely merged in the general whole as to be no longer traced (P. 88). However far the power of a Latin canton might extend, in the earliest times it tolerated no political centre except the proper capital, and still less founded independent settlements, such as the Phœnicians and the Greeks established, thereby creating in their colonies clients for the time being and future rivals to the mother city. In this respect, the treatment which Ostia experienced from Rome deserves special notice: the Romans could not and did not wish to prevent the rise de facto of a town at that spot, but they allowed the place no political independence, and accordingly they did not bestow on those who settled there any local burgess-rights, but merely allowed them to retain, if they already possessed, the general burgess-rights of Rome.^[3] This principle also determined the fate of the weaker cantons, which by force of arms or by voluntary submission became subject to the stronger. The stronghold of the canton was razed, its domain was added to the domain of the conquerors, and a new home was instituted for the inhabitants as well as for their gods in the capital of the victorious canton. This, indeed, must not be understood absolutely to imply a formal transportation of the conquered inhabitants to the new capital, such as was the rule at the founding of cities in the East. The towns of Latium at this time can have been little more than the strongholds and weekly markets of the husbandmen: it was quite sufficient that the market and the seat of justice should be transferred to the new capital. That even the temples often remained at the old spot is shown in the instances of Alba and of Cænina, towns which must still after their destruction have retained some semblance of existence in connection with religion. Even when the strength of the place that was razed rendered it really necessary to remove the inhabitants, they would be frequently settled, with a view to the cultivation of the soil, in the open hamlets of their old domain. That the conquered, however, were not unfrequently compelled, either as a body or in part, to settle in their new capital, is proved, more satisfactorily than all the several stories from the legendary period of Latium could prove it, by the maxim of Roman state-law, that only he who had extended the boundaries of its territory was entitled to advance the wall of the city (the pomerium). The conquered, whether transferred or not, were of course, as a rule, compelled to accept the legal position of clients;^[4] but particular individuals or gentes, also, probably had burgess-rights, or, in other words, the patriciate conferred upon them. Even in the time of the empire the Alban clans were still recognized which were introduced among the burgesses of Rome after the fall of their native seat; amongst these were the Julii, Servilii, Quinctilii, Clœlii, Geganii, Curiatii, Metilii: the memory of their descent was preserved by their Alban family shrines, among which the sanctuary of the gens of the Julii at Bovillæ again rose, under the empire, into great repute.

This centralizing process, by which sever small communities became absorbed in a larger one, of course was not an idea specially Roman. Not only did the development of Latium and of the Sabellian stocks hinge upon the distinction between national centralization and cantonal independence; the case was the same with the development of the Hellenes. Rome in Latium, and Athens in Attica, arose out of such an amalgamation of many cantons into one state; and the wise Thales suggested a similar fusion to the hard-pressed league of the Ionic cities as the only means of saving their nationality. But Rome adhered to this principle of unity with more consistency, earnestness, and success than any other Italian cantons and just as the prominent position of Athens in Hellas was the effect of her early centralization, so Rome was indebted for her greatness simply to the same system far more energetically applied.

The hegemony of Rome over Latium. While the conquests of Rome in Latium may be mainly regarded, accordingly, as direct extensions of her territory and people presenting the same general features, a further and special significance attached to the conquest of Alba. It was not the problematical size and presumed riches of Alba that led tradition to assign a prominence so peculiar to its capture. Alba was regarded as the metropolis of the Latin confederacy, and had the right of presiding among the thirty communities that belonged to it. The destruction of Alba, of course, no more dissolved the league itself than the destruction of Thebes dissolved the Bœotian confederacy;^[5] on the contrary, in entire consistency with the strict application of the jus privatum which was characteristic of the Latin laws of war, Rome now claimed the presidency of the league as the heir-at-law of Alba. What sort of crisis preceded or followed the acknowledgment of this claim, or whether any crisis at all, we cannot tell. Upon the whole, the hegemony of Rome over Latium appears to have been speedily and generally recognized, although particular communities, such as Labici, and above all Gabii, may for a time have declined to own it. Even at that time Rome was probably a maritime power as opposed to the Latin "land," a city as opposed to the Latin villages, and a single state as opposed to the Latin confederacy; even at that time it was only in conjunction with and by means of Rome that the Latins could defend their coasts against Carthaginians, Hellenes, and Etruscans, and maintain and extend their landward frontier in opposition to their restless neighbours of the Sabellian stock. Whether the accession to her material resources which Rome obtained by the subjugation of Alba was greater than the increase of her power by the capture of Antemnæ or Collatia, cannot be ascertained: it is quite possible that it was not by the conquest of Alba that Rome was first constituted the most powerful community in Latium; she may have been so long before; but she did gain in consequence of that event the right to preside at the Latin festival, a right which was the basis of the future hegemony of the community of Rome over the whole Latin confederacy. It is important to indicate as definitely as possible the nature of a relation so influential.

Relation of Rome to Latium. The form of the Roman hegemony over Latium was, in general, that of an alliance on equal terms between the Roman community on the one hand and the Latin confederacy on the other, establishing a perpetual peace throughout the whole domain, and a perpetual league for offence and defence. "There shall be peace between the Romans and all communities of the Latins, as long as heaven and earth endure; they shall not wage war with each other, nor call enemies into the land, nor grant passage to enemies: help shall be rendered by all in concert to any community assailed, and whatever is won in joint warfare shall be equally distributed." The stipulation that there should be equality of rights in trade and exchange, in commercial credit and in the law of inheritance, tended, by the manifold relations of commercial intercourse to which it led, still further to interweave the interests of communities already connected by the ties of similar language and manners, and, in this way produced an effect somewhat similar to that of the abolition of customs-restrictions in our own day. Each community certainly retained, in form, its own law: down to the time of the federal war Latin law was not necessarily identical with Roman: we find, for example, that the enforcing of betrothal by action at law, which was as abolished at an early period in Rome, continued to subsist in the Latin communities. But the simple and purely national development of Latin law, and the endeavour to maintain as far as possible uniformity of rights, led at length to the result, that the law of private relations was in matter and form substantially the same throughout all Latium. This uniformity of rights comes very distinctly into view in the principle laid down regarding the loss and recovery of freedom on the part of the individual burgess. According to an ancient and venerable maxim of law among the Latin stock no burgess could become a slave in the state wherein he had been free, or suffer the loss of his burgess-rights while he remained within it: if he was to be punished with the loss of freedom and of burgess-rights (which was the same thing), it was necessary that he should be expelled from the state, and should enter on the condition of slavery among strangers. This maxim of law was now extended to the whole territory of the league; no member of any of the federal states might live as a slave within the bounds of the league. Applications of this principle are seen in the enactment embodied in the Twelve Tables, that the insolvent debtor, in the event of his creditor washing to sell him, must be sold beyond the boundary of the Tiber, in other words, beyond the territory of the league; and in the clause of the second treaty between Rome and Carthage, that an ally of Rome who might be taken prisoner by the Carthaginians should be free so soon as he entered a Roman seaport. It has already (P. 42) been indicated as probable that the covenanted uniformity of rights also included intercommunion of marriage, and that every full burgess of a Latin community could conclude a legitimate marriage with any Latin woman of equal standing. Each Latin could of course only exercise political rights where he was enrolled as a burgess; but, on the other hand, it was implied in an equality of private rights, that any Latin could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds; or, to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by side with the special burgess-rights of the individual communities, a general right of settlement co-extensive with the confederacy. It is easy to understand how this should have turned substantially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban enjoyments, and how the number of metœci in Rome should have increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to live in perpetual peace with Rome.

The constitution and administration of the several communities not only remained independent and sovereign, in so far as their federal obligations were not concerned, but, what was of more importance, the league of the thirty communities retained its autonomy as distinguished from Rome. When we are assured that the position of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities attained autonomy, this may indeed have been the case, in so far as Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the league than of a member included in it; but just as the states of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba probably was in reality an honorary right (P. 43) like that of the German emperors, the protectorate of Rome was probably from the first a supremacy like that of Napoleon. In fact Alba appears to have exersed the right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves, under the presidency, as it appears, of an officer selected from their own number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium, and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome, the temple of Diana on the Aventine, so that thenceforth sacrifice was offered on the one hand on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, on the other on Latin soil for Latium and Rome. With equal deference to the interests of the league, the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community—a stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions not without reason felt by the confederacy with reference to the powerful community at their head. The position of Rome not so much within as alongside of Latium, and the footing of formal equality subsisting between the city on the one side and the confederacy on the other, are most clearly discernible in their military system. The federal army was composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly shows, of a Roman and a Latin force of equal strength. The supreme command was to alternate between Rome and Latium, and on those years only when Rome appointed the commander the Latin contingent was to appear before the gates of Rome, and to salute at the gate by acclamation the elected commander as its general, when once the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council to take the auspices had assured themselves of the satisfaction of the gods with the choice that had been made. In like manner the land and other property acquired in the wars of the league were equally divided between Rome and Latium. While thus in all internal relations the most complete equality of rights and duties was adhered to with jealous strictness, the Romano-Latin federation can hardly have been at this period represented in its external relations merely by Rome. The treaty of alliance did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council must have had a right to take part in the conduct as well as in the termination of the war. Practically indeed Rome in all probability possessed the hegemony even then, for wherever a single state and a federation enter into permanent connections with each other, the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.

Extension of the Roman territory after the fall of Alba. The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome, now mistress of a territory comparatively considerable, and, we may venture to say, the leading power in the Latin confederacy, extended still further her direct and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced. There were numerous feuds with the Etruscans and the Veientes, chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenæ; but it does not appear that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in expelling the Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations. On the other hand they maintained apparently undisputed possession of the Janicuium and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber. As regards the Sabines and Æqui Rome appears in a more advantageous position; the connection afterwards drawn so close with the more distant Hernici must have had at least its beginnings under the monarchy, and the united Latins and Hernici enclosed on two sides and kept down their eastern neighbours. On the south frontier, however, the territory of the Rutuli (and still more that of the Volsci) was the scene of perpetual wars. In this direction took place the earliest extension of the Latin land, and it is here that at we first encounter those communities founded by Rome and Latium on the enemy's soil, and constituted as autonomous members of the Latin confederacy, the Latin colonies as they were called, the oldest of which appear to reach back to the regal period. How far, however, the territory reduced under the power of the Romans extended at the close of the monarchy can by no means be determined. Of feuds with the neighbouring Latin and Volscian communities the Roman annals of the regal period recount more than enough; but at the utmost a few detached notices, such as that perhaps of the capture of Suessa in the Pomptine plain, can be held to contain a nucleus of historical fact. That the regal period laid not only the political foundations of Rome, but the foundations also of her external power, cannot be doubted; the position of the city of Rome as rather contradistinguished from than forming part of the league of Latin is is already decidedly marked at the beginning of the Republic, and enables us to perceive that an energetic development of external power must have taken place in Rome during the times of the kings. Successes certainly of no ordinary character have thus passed into oblivion; but the splendour of them lingers over the regal period of Rome, especially over the royal house of the Tarquinii, like a distant evening twilight in which outlines disappear.

Extension of the city of Rome. While the Latin stock was thus becoming united under the leadership of Rome, and was at the same time extending its territory on the east and south, Rome herself, by the favour of fortune and the energy of her citizens, had become converted from a stirring commercial and agricultural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing province, The remodelling of the Roman military system, and the oolitical reform of which it contained the germ, known to us by the name of the Servian constitution, stand in intimate connection with this inward change in the character of the Roman community. But externally also the character of the city cannot but have changed with the influx of ampler resources, with the rising requirements of its position, and with the extension of its political horizon. The amalgamation of the adjoining community on the Quirinal with that on the Palatine must have been already accomplished when the Servian reform, as it is called, took place; and when that reform had united and consolidated the military strength of the community, the burgesses could no longer rest content with the entrenching of the several hills, as one after another they were filled with buildings, and with keeping perhaps the island in the Tiber and the height on the opposite bank occupied so that they might command the river. The capital of Latium required another and more complete system of defence; and accordingly they proceeded to construct the Servian wall. The new continuous city-wall began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light quite recently (1855) at two different places; the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications. The portions of wall thus discovered are as high as those of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo^{[errata 1]} in layers of unequal height, and have risen as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of a national spirit as imperishable as the rock-walls which it built, and in its continued influence more lasting even than they are. The ring-wall further embraced the Cælian, and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a large earthen rampart, imposing even at the present day, supplied the want of a natural slope. From thence it ran to the Capitoline, the steep declivity of which towards the Campus Martius served as part of the city wall, and it again abutted on the river above the island in the Tiber. The Tiber island, with the bridge of piles and the Janiculum, did not belong strictly to the city, but the latter height was probably a fortified outwork. Hitherto the Palatine had been the stronghold, but now that hill was left open to be built upon by the growing city; and on the other hand upon the Tarpeian Hill, free on every side, and from its moderate extent easily defensible, there was constructed the new "stronghold" (arx, capitolium^[6]), containing the stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (tullianum), the treasury (ærarium), the prison, and the most ancient place of assembling for the burgesses (area Capitolina), where still in after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon continued to be made. Private residences of a permanent character on the other hand were not permitted in earlier times on the stronghold hill;^[7] and the space between the two summits of the hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (Ve-Diovis), or as it was termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with wood, and probably intended for the reception of the husbandmen and their herds, when inundations or war drove them from the plain. The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city should have fallen: its gate was probably placed towards what was afterwards the Forum.^[8] The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation by settlement. With this is connected the fact, that for purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants of the city proper (montani), and the guilds of the Capitoline and Aventine districts.^[9] The space enclosed by the new city wall thus embraced, in addition to the former Palatine and Quirinal cities, the two city-strongholds of the Capitol and the Aventine;^[10] the Palatine, as the oldest city proper, was enclosed by the other heights along which the wall was carried, as if encircled with a wreath, and the two castles occupied the middle.

Their work, however, was not complete so long as the ground, protected by so laborious exertions from outward foes, was not also reclaimed from the dominion of the water, which permanently occupied the valley between the Palatine and the Capitol, so that there was a regular ferry there, and which converted the valleys between the Capitol and the Velia and between the Palatine and the Aventine into marshes. The subterranean drains still existing at the present day, composed of magnificent square blocks, which excited the astonishment of posterity as a marvellous work of regal Rome, must rather be reckoned to belong to the following epoch, for travertine is the material employed, and we many accounts of new structures of the kind in the times of the republic; but the scheme itself belongs beyond all doubt to the regal period, although to a later epoch probably than the designing of the Servian wall and the Capitoline stronghold. The spots thus drained or dried supplied large open spaces such as were required to meet the public wants of the newly enlarged city. The assembling-place of the community, which had hitherto been the Area Capitolina at the stronghold itself, was now transferred to the flat space, where the ground falls from the stronghold towards the city (comitium), and which stretches thence between the Palatine and the Carinæ, in the direction of the Velia. At that side of the comitium which adjoined the stronghold, and upon the wall which arose above the comitium in the fashion of a balcony, the members of the senate and the guests of the city had a place of honour assigned to them on occasions of festivals and assemblies of the people; and not far from this there soon came to be built a special Senate-house, which derived from its builder the name of the Curia Hostilia. The platform for the judgment-seat (tribunal), and the stage whence the burgesses were addressed (the later rostra), were erected on the comitium itself. Its prolongation in the direction of the Velia became the new market (forum Romanum). On the west side of the Forum, beneath the Palatine, rose the community-house, which included the official residence of the king (regia) and the common hearth of the city, the rotunda forming the temple of Vesta; at no distance, on the south side of the Forum, there was a second round building erected connected with the former, the store-room of the community or temple of the Penates, which still stands at the present day as the porch of the church Santi Cosma e Damiano. It is a significant feature in the new city, now united in a way very different from the settlement of the "seven mounts," that, over and above the thirty hearths of the curies, which the Palatine e had been content with associating in one building, the an Home presented such a single hearth for the city at large.^[11] Along the two longer sides of the Forum butchers' shops and other traders' stalls were arranged. In the valley between the Palatine and Aventine a space was staked off for races; this became the Circus. The cattle-market was laid out immediately adjoining the river, and this soon became one of the most densely peopled quarters of Eome. Temples and sanctuaries arose on all the summits, above all the federal sanctuary of Diana on the Aventine (P. 111), and on the summit of the stronghold the far-seen temple of father Diovis, who had given to his people all this glory, and who now, when the Romans were triumphing over the surrounding nations, triumphed along with them over the subject gods of the vanquished.

The names of the men at whose bidding these great structures of the city arose are almost as completely lost in oblivion as those of the leaders in the earliest battles and victories of Rome. Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings—the Senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the Temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and the ringwall to Servius Tullius. Several of these statements may perhaps be correct; and it is apparently not the result of accident that the building of the new ring-wall is associated both as to date and author with the new organization of the army, which indeed bore special reference to the regular defence of the city walls. But upon the whole we must be content to learn from this tradition what is indeed from the nature of the case evident, that this second creation of Rome stood in intimate connection with the commencement of her hegemony over Latium, and with the remodelling of her burgess-army, and that while they originated in one and the same great conception, their execution was not the work either of a single man or of a single generation. It is impossible to doubt that Hellenic influences exercised a powerful effect on this remodelling of the character of the Roman community, but it is equally impossible to demonstrate the mode or the degree of their operation. It has already been observed that the Servian military constitution is essentially of an Hellenic type (P. 108); and it will be afterward shown that the games of the circus were organized on an Hellenic model. The new regia also with the city-hearth was quite a Greek prytaneion, and the round temple of Vesta, looking towards the east, and not consecrated by the augurs, was constructed in no respect according to Italian, but wholly in accordance with Hellenic ritual. With these facts before us, the statement of tradition appears not at all incredible that the Ionian confederacy in Asia Minor to some extent served as a model for the Romano-Latin league, and that the new federal sanctuary of the Aventine was for that reason constructed in imitation of the Artemision at Ephesus.

 

1. In like manner the formulas of accursing for Gabii and Fidenæ are characteristic (Macrob. Sat. iii. 9). It cannot, however, be proved, and it is extremely improbable that, as respects these towns, there was an actual historical accursing of the ground on which they were built, such as really took place at Veii, Carthage, and Fregellæ. It may be conjectured that old accursing formularies were applied to those two hated towns, and were considered by later antiquaries as historical documents.
2. There seems to be no good ground for the doubts, recently expressed in a quarter deserving of respect, as to the destruction of Alba having really been the act of Rome. It is true, indeed, that the account of the destruction of Alba is in its details a series of improbabilities and impossibilities; but that is true of every historical fact inwoven into legend. To the question as to the attitude of the rest of Latium in the struggle between Rome and Alba, we are unable to give an answer; but the question itself rests on a false assumption, for it is not proved that the constitution of the Latin league absolutely prohibited a separate war between two Latin communities (p. 42). Still less is the fact that a number of Alban families were received into the burgess-union of Rome inconsistent with the destruction of Alba by the Romans. Why may there not have been a Roman party in Alba just as there was in Capua? The circumstance, however, of Rome claiming to be in a religious and political point of view the heir-at-law of Alba, may be regarded as decisive of the matter; for such a claim could not be based on the migration of individual clans to Rome, but could only be based, as it actually was, on the conquest of the town.
3. Hence was developed the conception, in political law, of the maritime colony or colony of burgesses (colonia civium Romanorum), that is, of a community separate in fact, but not independent or possessing a will of its own in law; a community which merged in the capital as the peculium of the son merged in the property of the father, and which as a standing garrison was exempt from serving in the legion.
4. To this the enactment of the Twelve Tables undoubtedly has reference, Nex[i mancipiique] forti sanatique idem jus esto, that is, in dealings privati juris the "sound" and the "recovered" shall be on a footing of equality. The Latin allies cannot be here referred to, because their legal position was defined by federal treaties, and the law of the Twelve Tables treated only of the law of Rome. The sanates were the Latini prisei cives Romani, or in other words, the communities of Latium compelled by the Romans to enter the plebeiate.
5. The community of Bovillæ appears even to have been formed out of part of the Alban domain, and to have been admitted in room of Alba among the autonomous Latin towns. Its Alban origin is attested by its having been the seat of worship for the Julian gens, and by the name Albani Longani Bovillenses (Orelli—Henzen. 119, 2252, 6019); its autonomy by Dionysius v. 61, and Cicero pro Planco. ix. 23.
6. Both names, although afterwards employed as proper names of locality (capitolium being applied to the summit of the stronghold hill that lay next to the river, arx to that next to the Quirinal), were originally appellatives, corresponding exactly to the Greek ἄκρα and κορυφή; every Latin town had its capitolium as well as Rome. The proper local name of the Roman stronghold hill was Mons Taipeius.
7. The enactment ne quis patricius in arce aut capitolio habitaret probably prohibited only buildings of stone, which apparently were often constructed in the style of fortresses, not ordinary and easily removable dwelling-houses. Comp. Becker, Top. p. 386.
8. For the chief thoroughfare, the Via Sacra, led from that quarter to the stronghold; and the bending in towards the gate may still be clearly recognize! in the turn which it makes to the left at the arch of Severus. The gate itself must have disappeared under the huge structures which were raised in after ages on the Clivus. The so-called gate at the steepest part of the Capitoline Mount, which is known by the name Janualis, or Saturnia, or the "open," and which had to stand always open in time of war, evidently had merely a religious significance, and never was a real gate.
9. Three such guilds are mentioned (1) the Capitolini (Cicero, ad Q. fr. ii. 5. 2), with magistri of their own (Henzen, 6010, 6011), and annual games (Liv. v. 50; Preller, Myth. p. 202); (2) the Mercuriales (Liv. ii. 27; Cicero, l. c.; Preller, Myth. p. 597) also with their magistri (Henzen, 6010), the guild of the valley of the Circus, where the temple of Mercury stood; (3) the pagani Aventinenses also with magistri (Henzen, 6010). It is certainly not accidental that these three guilds, the only ones of the sort that occur in Rome, belong to the Capitol and the Aventine, the very two hills excluded from the four local tribes, but enclosed by the Servian wall; and connected with this is the further fact that the expression montani paganive is employed as a designation of the whole inhabitants in connection with the city (Comp. besides the well-known passage Cic. de Domo. xxviii. 74, especially the law as to the supplies of water to the city in Festus, v. sifus, p. 340; [mon]tani paganive si[fis aquam dividunto]). The montani, properly the inhabitants of the three regions of the Palatine town (p. 56), appear to be put here a potiori for the whole population of the four regions of the city proper. The pagani are, undoubtedly, the guilds of the Capitol and Aventine not included in the tribes.
10. The Servian Rome, however, never looked upon itself as the "City of the Seven Hills;" on the contrary, that name in the best ages of Rome denoted exclusively the narrower old Rome of the Palatine (p. 52). It was not until the times of her decline, when the festival of the Septimontium, which was zealously retained and celebrated with great zest even under the empire, began to be erroneously regarded as a festival for the city generally, that ignorant writers sought for and accordingly found the Seven Mounts in the Rome of their own age. The germ of such a misunderstanding may be already discerned in the Greek riddles of Cicero, ad Att. vi. 5, 2, and in Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69; but the earliest authority that actually enumerates Seven Mounts (montes) of Rome is the description of the city of the age of Constantine the Great. It names as such the Palatine, Aventine, Cælian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican, Janiculum—where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as colles, omitted, and in their stead two "montes" are introduced from the right bank of the Tiber. Other still later and quite confused lists are given by Servius (ad Æn. vi. 783). and Lydus (de Mens. p. 118, Bekker). The enumeration of the Seven Hills as commonly made in modern times, viz., Palatine, Aventine, Cælian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is unknown in any ancient author.
11. Both the situation of the two temples, and the express testimony of Dionysius, ii. 65, that the temple of Vesta lay outside of the Roma quadrata, prove that these structures were connected with the foundation not of the Palatine, but of the second (Servian) city. Posterity reckoned this regia, and the temple of Vesta as structures of Numa; but the cause which gave rise to that hypothesis is too manifest to allow of our attaching any weight to it.

Errata:

1. Original: tufa was amended to tufo: detail