FOOTNOTES
[1] Not to the earlier date of 366, as is commonly supposed. The decisive political conflicts out of which the later system of Roman government was evolved fall within the period of the wars of the Latins and Samnites and come to a final end with the Lex Hortensia, in the year 287.
THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
Written Specially for the Present Work
By DR. WILHELM SOLTAU
Professor of Ancient History in Zabern.
The early centuries of the history of Rome are closely bound up with the history of the rest of Italy. We must therefore briefly touch upon the development of the whole country.
About the middle of the second millennium B.C. certain Italic tribes made their way from the north into the Apennine peninsula, which up to that time had been inhabited first by an Iberian and then by a Ligurian race.
The settlement of the Balkan Peninsula was due, to a great extent, to successive immigrations of kindred tribes, who in most cases found a population of their own race in possession. In Italy it was not so. In the east we find the Messapians, a tribe akin to the Illyrians, settled for the most part in Apulia and Calabria. Tuscany and the valley of the Po received from the valleys of the Alps a population of Etruscans, a race whose origin and affinities are an enigma to students to this day. Their language is certainly not Indo-Germanic, their earliest settlements were the pile-dwellings of the Po valley, their later abode the natural fortresses of the Tuscan mountain peaks. Hence they cannot have come into the country by way of the sea. Nevertheless in Egyptian monuments of the thirteenth century B.C. we find mention of the auxiliary troops of the “Turisha.” They appear early to have won a certain reputation as pirates and soldiers in foreign service. Again, the Greeks believed that the Etruscans were akin to the Tyrrhenians of Asia Minor, and inscriptions in a language resembling Etruscan have been found in Lemnos, which seem to confirm this view. Whatever their origin, they represent a very ancient civilisation on Italian soil, and the Indo-Germanic tribes of Italy have been strongly influenced by them.
After the Etruscan immigration two other great tribes, this time of Aryan descent, pressed southward from the valley of the Po. Of these the first to come were probably the Siculi, a tribe which subsequently spread over Sicily and all the southwestern part of the mainland. The Ausonians of Campania belonged to this race, as did the dwellers in the “lowland” south of the Tiber, i.e., in Latium.
The last to come was probably the Sabello-Umbrian race, which entered the country from the north by way of the Apennine valleys. For a long while it kept chiefly to the mountainous tracts of middle Italy, though some members of the tribe pushed forward, like advanced posts, to the west coast. The Umbrian settlement north of the Apennines was the only one which grew to large dimensions.
If we reflect that, besides these immigrations, a steady stream of Greek colonists had been occupying the coast of southern Italy ever since the eighth century B.C., their first settlements dating from two centuries earlier, and that, since the fifth century B.C. at latest, Gauls had been crossing the Alps to the valley of the Po, we can readily understand that Italy inevitably became the scene of violent conflicts. Yet she did not wholly miss the salutary effects of peaceful rivalry between the various racial elements. The population of southern Italy adopted the language, manners, and customs of the Greeks, and in the north the Etruscans served both as exponents of their own peculiar civilisation and as intermediaries between the Greeks and the mountain tribes.
Such were the conditions and influences under which Rome came into being. For centuries the Latins had fixed settlements in their mountain and woodland towns among the Alban Mountains. But the desire to secure themselves against Etruscan invasion on the one hand, and the growth of peaceful intercourse on the other, led them to found a colony on the Palatine “mount,” the last spur of a range of hills along the Tiber. The extremely advantageous situation of this new settlement led to the establishment of others in its vicinity, and ultimately to the conjunction which gave birth to the City of the Seven Hills. The Aventine and Cœlian hills did not as yet belong to it, but it included the Subura and the Velia, in addition to the Palatine mount, the Capitoline mount, the Esquiline mount, and the Quirinal and Viminal hills; and thus was even then one of the most considerable cities in Italy, with its fortified capitol, and its market-place or Forum between Mount Palatine and the “hill-town” (Collina) on the east. The colony soon threw Alba Longa, the mother-city, into the shade. Rome became the chief city of the Latin league. The capital of the confederate towns of Latium, the mistress of a small domain south of the lower Tiber, such is the aspect Rome bears when she emerges into history from the twilight of legend. The purity of the Latin language proves that she did not originate from a mixture of Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan elements as later inventions would have us believe. On the other hand there can be no question that Rome adopted many details of her civilisation and municipal organisation from her Sabine and Etruscan neighbours. A more important point is that she early received an influx of foreign immigrants, especially Tuscans, who in the capacity of handicraftsmen and masons, exercised a salutary influence upon the advance of civilisation among the Latin farmers.
Rome was at that time ruled by kings, assisted by a council of the elders of the city (the hundred senators). In important affairs they had to obtain the assent of the popular assembly (comitia curiata) which voted in thirty curiæ, according to the number of the thirty places of sacrifice in the city. For the rest, the kings had a tolerably free hand in the appointment of magistrates and priests.
From the legendary details of the history of the monarchy one thing only is clear, to wit, that in the sixth century B.C. Rome was ruled by monarchs of Etruscan descent and was to some extent a dependency of the Etruscan rulers of the period.
In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. the Etruscans had both vigorously repulsed the invasions of the Sabellians and taken the offensive on their own account. They had not only maintained and increased their dominion in the valley of the Po, but had established the Tuscan League of the Twelve Cities in Umbria, and thus put an end to Umbrian independence. At this time their sway extended southwards as far as Campania. A Tuscan stronghold (Tusculum) was built on the Alban hills. Etruscan sources of information, and first and foremost the pictures in Tuscan sepulchral chambers, leave no room to doubt that the Etruscan descent of the last three kings of Rome, the Tarquins and Servius Tullius, is a historic fact. Rome was therefore involved in the military operations of Etruscan commanders “Lucumones,” who fortified the city, adorned it with temples and useful buildings (among others the famous cloaca maxima, the first monument of vaulted architecture on Roman soil), and reorganised the army by the introduction of the Servian system of centuries, which afterwards became the foundation-stone of the Roman constitution. The whole body of the people was divided into four urban and sixteen rural recruiting districts (tribus), and all freeholders (assidui) were laid under the obligation of military service on the basis of a property qualification. Classes I to III served as heavy-armed soldiers, classes IV and V as light-armed. The whole number together constituted a body of 170 companies (170 × 100), divided into two legions on the active list and two in reserve, each 4200 strong, or 193 centuries inclusive of the centuries of mounted troops. From the establishment of the republic onwards this army was called together to elect consuls and vote upon laws under the title of the comitia centuriata.