XII. named either Albus Regillensis or Tubertus. The best CHAP. known and the most celebrated name for the conqueror in the battle of Regillus was A. Postumius Albus Regillensis. But the first and third of the before-mentioned campaigns against the Sabines (505 and 503 B.c.) are also ascribed to a Postumius who was called P. Postumius Tubertus. In addition to this we find that in the year 495 B.C., immediately after the battle of Regillus, under the consuls Appius Claudius Sabinus, and P. Servilius Priscus, there occurs another Sabine war, although in the year 502 peace had been concluded. The war is, indeed, represented as nothing more than a night attack of the Sabines on the Roman territory, which was quickly repulsed. Yet its identity with the great Latin war is perceptible; for it is not one of the two consuls for the year, but Postumius again, who beats the enemy, though in this year he held no public office. Can there be any doubt that the P. Postumius of 503, and the A. Postumius of 4962 and 495 are one and the same person, and that the victories ascribed to them are repetitions of the same fact? with the The defeat of the Latins at Lake Regillus was followed The treaty in 493 B.C. by the conclusion of the treaty which joined Latins. Latium and Rome as allies, enjoying equal rights. We have already seen that this equality of the two nations is a proof that Latium was not subjected to Rome, but that Latins and Romans united together to free themselves from the Etruscan dominion. Now the man who in the Roman annals was celebrated for the conclusion of this treaty was the consul Sp. Cassius Viscellinus. How strange that the same man is said to have concluded the peace with the Sabines in the year 503! 3 What we have said of the improbability of a collision Narratives 1 Livy, ii. 26. According to Livy (ii. 19) of 499; for the date of the battle of Regillus was uncertain. Dionysius, v. 49. The conclusion of the treaty of peace must, according to Roman notions, be preceded by a victory, and if possible by a triumph; accordingly both are ascribed to Sp. Cassius, with reference to the Sabines. BOOK I. arising from con fusion of names. Family chronicles. of the Romans and the Sabines proper, in the first period If this conjecture is well founded, it suggests a conclusion, with reference to the age of the Roman family chronicles, viz., that, in the Valerian house, such writings were XII. in existence before 414 B.C. At what period these docu- CHAP. ments originated, it is impossible to ascertain, but probably they were not much younger than the decemviral legislation, when the last of the Valerii mentioned in them was consul. If we take this time as the date of the composition of these annals, the contradictions and uncertainties of the statements referring to the earlier Valerii are accounted for. Half a century could not elapse without obscuring the memory of events to an extent which favoured the exaggerating fictions and excused the confusion of the family annalists.' The domestic annals of the Valerii seem to have contained special reference to the office of quæstor. Under Valerius Poplicola the quæstorship is said to have been established. These quæstors were not treasurers, but public prosecutors. (See the Author's Researches, p. 75. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., ii. 131 ff.) The quæstors who acted as prosecutors of Sp. Cassius (485 B.C. Livy, ii. 41) and of M. Volscius (458 B.C., Livy, iii. 25) were Valerii. One of the first quæstors of the treasury (447 B.C., Tacitus, Annal., xi. 22) was a Valerius, and these quæstors were elected in consequence of the leges Valeriæ Horatiæ, after the downfall of the decemvirs. CHAPTER XIII. THE ROMAN PEOPLE IN THE TIME OF THE KINGS. BOOK I. General of the regal history. HITHERTO the result of our researches has been almost exclusively negative. We have seen that the so-called History of the Kings is neither in itself credible nor supcharacter ported by such evidence as to make us believe statements which in themselves are improbable. It rests neither on authentic records nor on real tradition, but it was put together at a comparatively late period, according to a certain artificial design. It consists mainly in attempts to explain, in a connected historical narrative, the origin of political institutions, religious and social customs, the names of places and buildings, and generally the vague conceptions of the people concerning their own antiquities. Hence the great poverty and baldness of these stories, and, in spite of many contradictory statements, a general harmony of the narrative, which gives rise to the suspicion that the whole was worked out according to a uniform plan and design.' The History of the Kings is therefore entirely worthless, in so far as it lays claim to be an account of a gradual development, and to relate events in their regular succession and connection. The whole of the regal period is to us only the given point of departure for the development of the republic, and we must be satisfied if we succeed in gaining out of the scanty materials a picture 'This uniformity is perhaps due to the pontifices, who were naturally the first to feel the desirability of a continuous history from the foundation of the city at a time when they were in the habit of recording, year by year, the events that struck them as important. A body of priests like the pontifices was well calculated to work out a uniform legendary history, and to obtain credence for it from the people. of the political life, the social condition, and the religious views and culture of the Romans in this early period which precedes the beginning of real history. CHAP. XIII. When the Romans first appear on the stage of history Prehistoric as a separate people, they had passed through a long ment of period of national development, along with kindred races, the Roman people. and the groundwork of their religious, legal, and social life was already formed. A division of the people into a ruling and a subordinate class may be traced to the very beginning, and points indisputably to a conquest of the lands, and to the subjection of the former inhabitants, an event which had been preserved in the recollection of the people, and gave rise to the stories of the advance of the Sabines to the Capitol and of the conquest of Latium by the Etruscans. of the people. Thus there arose the contrast between citizens and Divisions subjects, Patricians and Plebeians. The body of the plebeians, again, consisted of two classes. They were either clients, i.e. dependants of patrician houses, or they had no such special connexion with individual patricians, and were subject only to the body of patricians as a whole, i.e. to the Roman state. It was the latter class which, being free from all special subjection to patrician patrons, formed the body of the independent plebs, and carried on the contest for political equality with the privileged order of citizens.' We find similar arrangements among different peoples Treatment of antiquity. Where a state was founded by conquest (and of conquered this was the general rule), the aboriginal inhabitants were peoples. reduced to a state of dependence on the conquerors, which in some places, as for instance in Sparta, was a complete servitude, but under more favourable circumstances was a more or less oppressive political inferiority. The most usual plan was, that the subject population resigned a part of their lands, and kept the rest only under certain onerous conditions. These conditions were principally services to Niebuhr's view on the origin of the plebs. See above, p. 46 ff. * See Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, cap. xlvi. |