 CHAPTER III. Now when he was in full possession of power there appeared one day before him a strange woman who offered for sale nine books of divine prophecies which the inspired symbol of Kumai had written on loose leaves. But because she asked a high price Tarquinius laughed at her and let her go. Then the woman burnt three of the books before his eyes and returned and offered to sell the other six for the same price which she had at first asked for the nine. But Tarquinius laughed at her still more and thought she was mad. Then she burnt three more of the books and offered the last three for the original price. Thereupon Tarquinius began to reflect seriously and he felt persuaded that the woman was sent to him by the gods and he bought the books. In this manner the king obtained the Sibyline prophecies and he carefully preserved them and appointed two men who knew the language of the Greeks in which the books were written to take charge of them and to consult them in time of great danger or dearth or pestilence to the end that the will of the gods might be known and that their wrath might be averted from the people. Up to this time Tarquinius had been always fortunate in his undertakings and he became ever more and more haughty and cruel. But when he had grown old he was frightened by dreams and wonderful signs and he determined to consult the oracle of the Greeks at Delphi. Then he sent his two sons to Delphi and with them, Junius, his sister's son, who on account of his silliness was called Brutus. But the silliness of Brutus was only assumed to deceive the tyrant who was an enemy of all wise men because he feared them. Now when the king's sons brought costly presents to the Delphin god, Brutus gave only a simple staff. His cousins laughed at him but they did not know that the staff was hollowed out and filled with gold. After they had executed the commission of their father they asked the god to tell them who would reign in Rome after Tarquinius and the answer of the oracle was that he should reign who should first kiss his mother on their return. But Brutus perceived the real meaning of the oracle and when they had left the temple he pretended to stumble and fell down and kissed the ground for the earth he thought was the common mother of all men. Now when Tarquinius had reigned twenty-four years it came to pass that he besieged Ardia, the town of the Rudilean Latium and one evening when the king's sons were supping with their cousin Tarquinius Colatinus who lived in Colatia they talked of their wives and each praised the virtue and thriftiness of his own wife. Thereupon they agreed to go and see which of the ladies deserved the highest praise. Without delay they mounted their horses and galloped quickly to Rome and then to Colatia to take the ladies by surprise. They found the daughters-in-law of the king enjoying themselves at a feast but Lucretia the wife of Colatinus was found sitting up late at night with her maids busy with household work. Therefore Lucretia was acknowledged to be the matron most worthy of praise. But Sextus Tarquinius when he had seen Lucretia conceived a base design and came again one evening alone to Colatia. Having been kindly received and led to his chamber he rose in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep in the house and came into Lucretia's chamber and surprised her alone. And when she refused to yield herself to him he threatened to slay her and put a murdered slave to lie beside her and then to tell her husband that he had found her an adultery. Then Lucretia resisted no longer and the next morning Sextus went away and returned to the camp before Ardia. But Lucretia sent messengers to Rome and to Ardia to fetch her father Lucretius and her husband Colatinus. These two hastened to Colatia and with them came Junius Brutus and the noble Publius Valerius Poplicola and they found Lucretia in her room clothed in mourning. When they were all collected together Lucretia told them of the deed of Sextus and of the shame brought upon her and she made the men swear that they would avenge her and when she had ended her words she drew a knife and plunged it into her heart and died. Then the men were overwhelmed with grief and they carried her corpse to the marketplace and told the people what had happened and sent messengers with the news to the army before Ardia. But Brutus assembled the people together and spoke to them and called upon them to resist the tyrant and the people determined to expel king Tarquinius and his whole house to abolish the regal power and to suffer no king any more in Rome. In the place of a king they chose two men who should rule for one year and should be called not kings but consuls and for the management of the sacrifices which the king had to offer they chose a priest who should be called the king of sacrifices but should have no power in the state and should be subject to the high pontiff. Otherwise they altered nothing in the laws and ordinances of the state but they let them all remain as they had been during the time of the kings. For the first consuls they chose Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Colotinus. Then they shut the gates against Tarquinius and the Roman army before Ardia abandoned the hated king and went back to Rome. Thus the death of Lucretia was avenged and Rome became a free city after it had been subject to kings for two hundred and forty years. But the wicked Tarquin did not give up all hope of regaining his power. He had still a strong party in Rome especially among the younger patricians. Therefore he sent messengers to Rome on the plea of asking the people to give up his movable property. But the messengers secretly consulted with his adherents how the king could be brought back to Rome. Now one day when the conspirators were conferring privately together they were overheard by a slave who betrayed them to the consuls. Wherefore they were all seized and thrown into prison but the slave was rewarded with freedom and the Roman citizenship. Then Brutus who was consul with Tarquinius Colotinus showed how a true Roman must love his country more than his own blood. For when it was found that his two sons were among those who wished to bring Tarquin and his family back to Rome he condemned them to death as traitors even as he condemned the other conspirators and did not ask mercy for them of the people but had the youths bound to the stake before his eyes and gave orders to the lictor to scourge them and to cut off their heads with the axe. The people were now still more embittered against the banished Tarquins and the senate declined to give up their goods and divided them among the people. But the field between the town and the Tiber which belonged to the Tarquins and was sewn with corn they consecrated to the god Mars and called it the Field of Mars and the corn they caused to be cut and thrown into the Tiber. It drifted down the bed of the river to a shallow place where it became fixed and as in the course of time mud and earth collected there an island was formed in the river which was afterwards surrounded by embankments and walls so that large buildings and temples could be erected on it. Now after the conspiracy had been discovered and punished the senate and the people made a law that all who were of the Tarquinian race should be banished forever and all the secret adherents of the royal party left the town and joined the expelled king. But Tarquinius Colatinus who was consul with Brutus was a friend of the people and an enemy of the tyrant and his house on account of the shame which sex this Tarquinius had brought upon Lucretia his wife. But as he was of the race of the Tarquins he obeyed the law, laid down his office and went into exile and the people chose Publius Valerius to be consul in his place. Now when the plan of Tarquinius to regain his dominion by cunning and fraud had been defeated he went to the town of Tarquinii in the land of the Etruscans which was the home of his father and he moved the people of Tarquinii and of Vei to make war upon Rome. Then the Romans marched out against the Etruscans and fought with them near the wood Arsia and in the battle Arons the son of Tarquinius saw Brutus at the head of the Roman army and thinking to revenge himself upon the enemy of his house he put spurs to his horse and ran against him with his spear. When Brutus saw him he did the same and each pierced the other through the body with his spear so that both fell down dead from their horses. But the battle was fierce and bloody and lasted until the evening without being decided and in the night when both armies were encamped on the field of battle the voice of the God Sylvanus was heard coming out of the wood saying that the Romans had conquered for among the Etruscans one man more was slain than among the Romans. Then the Etruscans went away to their homes and the Romans also marched home taking the body of Brutus with them and the Roman matrons mourned for him a whole year because he had so bravely avenged the wrongs of Lucretia. Thereupon Tarquinius the tyrant but took himself to Clusium to King Porcena who ruled over all the Etruscans and he implored help of him against the Romans. Then Porcena collected a powerful army and marched against Rome to restore Tarquinius to his kingdom and coming on suddenly he took the hill Janiculus which lies on the right side of the Tiber opposite the capital and drove the Romans down the hill toward the river. Then the Romans were seized with great fear and did not venture to oppose the enemy and to defend the entrance of the bridge but they fled across the bridge back into the city. When Horatius who was surnamed Cochleus or the one-eyed saw this he placed himself opposite to the enemy at the entrance of the bridge while two warriors who were called Lartius and Herminius stayed at his side. These three men stirred not from the place but fought alone with the whole army of the Etruscans and held their post while the Romans broke the bridge behind them. And when only a few planks were left Lartius and Herminius hurried back but Horatius would not move until the hole was broken down and fell into the river. Then he turned round and with his arms upon him just as he was spraying into the Tiber and swam back unhurt. Thus Horatius saved Rome from the Etruscans and the Romans rejoiced and led him in triumph into the city and afterwards they erected a monument to him on the comitium and gave him as much land as he could plow in one day. Meanwhile the town was hard-pressed by Porcena and there arose a famine in Rome and the people were driven to despair. Then Mucius a noble Roman determined to kill King Porcena and he went into the Etruscan camp even into the king's tent but as he did not know the king he slew the treasurer who sat near him distributing the pay to the soldiers and he was seized and threatened with death. Then to show that he was not afraid of death he stretched out his right hand into the fire which was burning on an altar and kept it in the flame without flinching until it was burnt to ashes. But Porcena when he saw it was amazed at the firmness of the youth and forgave him and allowed him to return to his home. To show his gratitude for the magnanimity of Porcena Mucius revealed to him that three hundred Roman youths had sworn to attempt the same deed that he had undertaken and that they would not rest until they had taken his life. When Porcena heard this he feared to distress the Romans any longer and made peace with them. He took no land from them except seven villages of the Veintines which the Romans had conquered in former times and having received hostages he insisted no longer that they should receive Tarquin again as their king. Among the hostages was a noble virgin called Clelia who would not suffer herself to be kept captive among the Etruscans. Therefore when the night came she slipped out of the camp, reached the river and swam across to Rome. But the Romans although they honoured her courage blamed her conduct and brought her back to Porcena because she had acted in opposition to the treaty they had sworn. Then Porcena admired the faith of the Romans and released Clelia and as many of the other hostages as she selected and when he went away from Rome he left his camp there and gave to the Romans all the things contained in it. When Porcena had become tired of the war he went home to Clusium, but he sent his son Arans with an army against Elisha, a chief town of the Latins, where the people of Latium were accustomed to meet for counsel. But Aristodemus, the Greek tyrant of Cumae helped the Latins and the Etruscans were beaten in a great battle so that few escaped alive. These the Romans received hospitably, nursing them and healing their wounds, and to those who wished to remain in Rome they gave dwellings in that part of the town which after them was called the Etruscan quarter. But Tarquin had not given up all hopes of regaining his kingdom, therefore he went to Tuscalim, to his son-in-law, Octavius Mamillius, and persuaded the Tuscalins and the other Latins to make war upon Rome. And the Romans trembled before the strength of the Latins, and not trusting in the divided command of the two consuls they nominated a dictator, who should have power over Rome like a king and be sole leader of the army for six months. For this purpose they chose Marcus Valerius. After this a great battle was fought between the Romans and the Latins near the Lake Regulus, and the Romans began to give way when the Banished king, at the head of a band of Roman exiles, came against them. Then the Roman dictator vowed a temple to Castor and Pollux if they would assist the Romans in battle, and suddenly two youths rode on white chargers at the head of the Roman horse and pressed down upon the enemy. And the Romans saw that they were the sacred twins, and take courage they overthrew the Latins and killed many of them. Now when the battle was lost Tarquin gave up all hope of regaining his kingdom, and he went to Kumai to the tyrant Aristodemus and dwelt there till he died. Chapter 4 Examination of the Legends of the Kings, Part 1 From what has been said before it is clear that the story of the Roman kings is not based even indirectly upon contemporary records of any kind. The only claim which it can possibly make upon our acceptance is that some portions of it embody a faint national tradition preserved for many generations without the aid of writing. What these portions are we have no external criteria to indicate. We must therefore examine the substance of the traditions in the hope that we may succeed in extricating a residuum of truth hidden under a vast super incumbent mass of fiction. The most easily accomplished task is the rejection of all that is absolutely fabulous. Herein the credulous analysts themselves have preceded us. Even they could not make their minds to believe in the miraculous conception of the twins and in the equally miraculous suckling she-wolf. They tried to explain away these miracles in a rationalistic way by suggesting that some lover of Ray Sylvia assumed the form of Mars and that a woman belonging to the disreputable class vulgarly known as the she-wolves Lupi acted as the nurse of the infant twins. This mode of explaining away miracles has lost all favor with modern critics. It is evident that the miracle in the story is not a casual external ornament which can be cast aside, but that it is the very German center of the story, the most important and essential part of it, and that without it the narrative is nothing but an empty shell. It is therefore absolutely impossible to save the old miracles of the birth and preservation of Romulus and his brother. In a like manner his ascension into heaven must be sacrifice, though that also was at one time sagaciously supposed to be the poetical version of a very plausible event, namely his murder by his enemies during the sudden darkness of a thunderstorm. The fact that his body could not be found after the storm was easily accounted for, the senators who murdered him, cut it up, and carried the pieces away under their togas. We need not rehearse the vain conceits with which the other miracles were turned into plausible history. They are all equally futile and we have no alternative left, but to draw our pen through the whole of them, though thereby we reduce the substance of the so-called history of the kings very considerably and deprive it of those parts which make it most lively and attractive. Not only the stories which offend against physical laws must be expunged, we must, in the interest of truth, be equally merciless where the stories are incompatible with moral laws. For the world of human feelings and actions is governed by laws as constant as the laws of outward nature, though they are more subtle in their working and less clear to our comprehension. The statement that during the forty-three years of Numa's reign, Rome enjoyed uninterrupted peace, cannot be looked upon as anything but a fiction or a dream. No waking and sober mind could imagine that the turbulent Romans and their neighbors, who in the time of Romulus, which preceded, and in the time of Tullus Hustilius, which followed, hardly sheathed their swords, would, out of respect for a pious and peaceful king, sit down quietly to work and pray for forty-three years. The peace of Numa's reign is a miracle, not less startling than his intercourse with the nymphageria, or his trick of intoxicating the god Faunus by pouring wine into the fountain of which he drank. Objections, hardly less weighty than those just mentioned, have been raised against the truthfulness of the stories of the kings on the score of chronology. The period assigned to the seven kings embraces two hundred and forty years, which is an average of thirty-four years for each king. Considering that four of the seven kings died by violence, and that one was expelled fifteen years before his death, it is not possible that such a long period should be covered by the reigns of seven elective monarchs. The first to draw attention to this circumstance was Sir Isaac Newton, and now there is no difference of opinion on the point. It suffices to compare the average duration of the reigns of the doges of Venice who were like the Roman king's elective princes. In five centuries, from eight-oh-five to thirteen-eleven A.D., forty doges occupied the ducal chair. This gives an average of twelve years and a half to each, or not much more than one-third of the duration assigned to a Roman king. The Roman figures, therefore, may safely be pronounced to be contrary to the laws of nature. Difficulties of a like kind arise when we scrutinize the data which refer to the lives and reigns of the tutarquinii. The elder of them is said to have left his native town because it offered him no scope for his ambition. He must therefore have been a man at least approaching middle-age. He was then married and removed with his wife Tanaquil to Rome. Here he lived sixteen years under Ancus Marcius. His own reign lasted thirty-eight years. He was then murdered at the instigation of the sons of Ancus who by the by had waited patiently these thirty-eight years before they tried to recover their father's inheritance. Tarchuinius must have been upwards of eighty years old when he died, and his wife more than seventy. Yet his children are represented as of tender age. If we assume that the eldest of them was ten years old on the death of his father, he had reached the age of fifty-four when he rose against Servius Tullius and hurled him down the steps of the Senate House, acting like a man in the first vigor of youth and heat of passion. But if the story, inconsistent with itself, represents the children of the elder Tarchuinius sufficiently grown up at the beginning of the reign of Servius to enable the latter to marry them with his own children, the subsequent events become still more incredible. Tarkuinius II must then have approached the venerable age of seventy when he rose against his father-in-law, must have been more than ninety when he besieged Ardia, and a hundred and eight or ten when he fought in the Battle of Lake Regulus. These are reflections which do not disturb the poet or the narrator of legends, but the historian is bound to have an eye to the computation of years. Consequently, the inherent improbabilities of the story roused the suspicion even of some ancient analysts, and Piso but thought himself of a means of remedying the fault. He inserted a whole generation between the elder and the younger Tarkuinius and made the latter the grandson instead of the son of the former. This ingenious little trick of leisure domain met with the approbation of Dionysius, but Livy more honestly tells the story in the old unadulterated form, leaving to his readers the task of reconciling it with the laws of nature. The objections which we have raised hitherto to the credibility of the ancient story are so obvious and palpable that they have presented themselves even to minds endowed with a very moderate amount of critical acumen, and in ages long preceding the birth of historical criticism. Yet there are other objections in reserve perhaps less patent at the first glance, but not less destructive of our faith in the traditional story. The narrative proceeds on the assumption that the Roman people was formed by Romulus into a distinct national body out of heterogeneous and, as it were, atomic elements. The individuals who compose it flock together from different quarters and are molded into a political society by the will of an omnipotent lawgiver. They had no laws before. The organization of the state, the laws which regulate private and public life, are all the creation of Romulus. In like manner the first settlers had hardly a national religion. It was Numa who told them how to pray and worship, who appointed priests, sacrifices, and all that belongs to a public worship. The presumption upon which these accounts rest is altogether Romulus. The study of a great variety of nations has shown us that people who live together in any sort of community might just as well be supposed to be without a common language as without common political institutions and without religious notions and worship. None of these essential conditions for the existence of man can be said to have been at any time artificially made for them by any prophet or lawgiver. The utmost that legislators can effect is to modify, to improve, to purify existing systems and institutions. To none of them that we know of in history was it given to find a void which he could fill with a theory of his own invention. Laws are not made but grow. Even now in our time of restless and over prolific parliamentary lawmaking, new laws mark only the endeavors of legislators to find the forms in which the general feeling of justice is to be expressed or in which nuance, felt by the community, are to be satisfied under public authority. If we approach the history of the kings with such convictions we shall at once see that it cannot lay the least claim to authenticity. With the aid of two new sciences, comparative mythology and comparative philology, we can trace back the religion and the social institutions of Rome to an age which preceded the separation of the Latin race from the Sabine, nay, further back than that, to the period when the forefathers of Italians and Greeks and of all the nations of the Aryans stocked wealth together and were bound together by unity of language, religion, and social institutions. The received story breaks down in the very attempt to carry out the principle upon which it proceeds. It wishes to represent Numa as the founder of the Roman religion, but it makes Romulus the son of a national god and of a priestess of Vesta, a goddess whose worship was as original and essential as the domestic hearth is for the establishment of a house. All the stories, therefore, referring to the origin of Roman institutions, which, whether religious, political, or social, are anterior to contemporary history or genuine tradition, must be looked upon as fabrications of a later age as endeavors to divine the mysterious process by which law and religion spring into existence. A great portion of the matter that fills up the early history is entirely made up of such endeavors. They take the form of myths and have been properly called ideological myths, that is, myths accounting for causes. Wherever an old ceremony, right or custom, presented itself which seemed to be susceptible of an explanation, the story was invented which satisfied a credulous age as to its origin and meaning. To give an illustration of such ideological myths, we will glance at the story of the Rape of the Savines. It was a custom at Roman nuptials for the bridegroom to pretend to carry off the bride by force from her parents' home. A similar custom is found in Greece, and no doubt prevailed very largely if not universally in antiquity, as traces of it can be discovered even now in many parts of Europe. To what extent this simulated violence was the remnant and reflex of real violence used in still earlier ages we need not now inquire. It suffices to know that the custom existed. This custom seemed to require an historical explanation. How and when, people asked, did it originate? An answer was found in the story of the Rape of the Savines. It was said that the custom originated in the violence committed by Romulus, whereas the relation of cause and effect is the very reverse. The story originated in the custom, not the custom from the story, and this is therefore not a genuine tradition of a real event, but a fiction pure and simple, or an ideological myth. Such fictions were at first shame-faced and modest. At least they did not pretend to historical truth. Therefore the number of the Savine women carried off by the Romans was stated to have been thirty. That is to say, as many as there were couriers at Rome. In this form it was on the very face of it a fable intended to please and to amuse. But by and by such fables were worked up into historical statements. It was plain that the number of thirty was too small. What were thirty women among so many men? Consequently some ingenious analysts gravely asserted that the number of the Savines, all counted, was exactly five hundred and twenty-seven. Who could now doubt the accuracy of the report? It was evident that the number must have been taken from a memorandum entered by Romulus himself, or at least by the first Pontifex maximus in the public archives. End of Section 8. Section 9 of Early Rome by Wilhelm Ena. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 4 Examination of the Legends of the Kings, Part 2 Not only laws and customs, but also the names and characteristics of locality supply the materials for ideological myths. In the Roman Forum there was a spot called Lacus Curteus, marked by a peculiar pavement or an enclosure. According to a statement preserved by Varro, this spot was struck by lightning in the year 445 B.C., and Curteus, one of the consuls of the year, enclosed it by order of the Senate. This is in all probability the true account. But it was either forgotten or it did not satisfy the popular fancy. Accordingly a more striking story was invented. Once upon a time the earth opened in the forum, and no efforts would avail to close it. Then the soothsayers declared that the gods of death demanded the life of the bravest citizen, whereupon Curteus mounted his charger and fully armed, leapt into the gulf which instantly closed upon him. Hence the spot where the chasm had been was called the Curtean Lake. Here was an evident miracle, but some rational analysts who was above the faith in childish miracles wanted sober sensible facts which could be given out as historical. So he set to work and related how that in the war between Romulus and Titus Taceus a certain Sabine horsemen named Curteus, charging the Romans, plunged into and was with difficulty extricated from a swamp in the valley between the two hills where afterwards the forum was laid out. After this Sabine warrior the spot was named forever afterwards the Lake of Curteus. It would be useless to enumerate and discuss all the ideological myths of which the history of the kings is full. They all bear the same character and are easily stripped of their deceitful historical mask and exhibited in their own fabulous hollowness. Some of the liveliest and most attractive portions of the early annals of Rome are stories of Greek origin smuggled in at a time when Greek slaves and poets began to flatter their Roman patrons, either by trying to connect the early history of the two nations or by adorning the dry and barren waste of the Roman annals with flowers culled in the luxurious gardens of their own imagination. These Greek stories are easily detected not only from their intrinsic character but because we can sometimes point out the very spot in the literature of Greece from which they were taken. The story of the Tarquinii especially is enlivened by such contributions from Greek fiction. The stratagem by which Sextus, the son of Tarquin, gained the confidence of the people of Gabyi is copied from Herodotus who relates it of Zopyrus and Aureus. The dumb message sent by Tarquin to his son at Gabyi, giving him to understand that he should cut off the heads of the foremost men, is identical with one which according to the same author was sent by Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus to his friend Periander of Corinth. The embassy to the Delphian Oracle is another instance of Greek fiction mixed up with Roman annals, for how could the Romans have consulted Greek oracles more than two hundred years before even the name of Rome was heard in Greece? But a legend far more intimately connected with the most essential part of Roman story than the anecdotes just referred to is no doubt an importation from Greece, namely the legend of the miraculous birth and preservation of Romulus and Remus. We have already had an opportunity of remarking that dideities of the Roman pantheon were not invested like those of the Greek myths with human forms and attributes. At least it may be affirmed that the faculty of personifying their gods was possessed by the Romans only in a rudimentary condition. They looked upon the gods as either male or female, it is true, but there is no trace of a Roman theogony of a Roman Olympus where the gods lived in the fashion of men marrying and begetting children. All the myths therefore which tell of the loves of the gods in a human form may be suspected of being borrowed from Greece. Hence the apparition of Mars in full armor to the affrighted Vestal and his becoming the father of Romulus and Remus are features which portray the Greek origin of the legend. The wonderful preservation of the exposed children especially the suckling by the she-wolf are features clearly taken from similar myths which appear to have been numerous in Greece and the east and of which that of the infant Cyrus afterwards king of Persia is a type. From the same source sprung the story of the apotheosis of Romulus for though the Romans worshipped the spirits of the departed as divine beings able to bless or to hurt the living yet they were ignorant of the genuine hero worship which filled the Greek cities with shrines and sepulchres of local deities supposed to be sprung from a mortal race. Whatever we may think of the origin of these myths whether they are as we suppose imported from Greece or whether they grew on Italian soil nobody will deny that they are myths or pretend that they contain even a residuum of genuine historical traditions. We now come to another force which has been active in the formation of the legendary history of the Roman kings and which is due to the poverty of imagination characteristic of the Roman people to which we have already referred. Not endowed with a fertile fancy enough to invent stories sufficient to fill the period of two hundred and forty years the Roman Pontiffs or whoever drew up the first systematic plan of the earliest history multiplied events by varying the detail of the same original story and relating the different versions successively. It is possible that before the first attempt at a systematic arrangement of the details which make up the history of the kings these details were separately current as conceptions which different people had formed independently of one another about the primeval period. The compilers thereupon made use of as much as suited their purpose adjusting and fitting the materials so as to fit a plausible story consistent in itself and free from palpable contradictions but their success was not great. As shown above they could not even assign the proper place to the political and to the religious law giver. In their endeavor to attribute to each of the kings some peculiar policy which might fill his reign they were driven to represent a whole generation of Romans as destitute of the fundamental religious institutions. Other defects in the story may easily be discovered. Those which refer to the chronology have been already pointed out but the repetition of the same facts under a slight disguise of different names and circumstances is perhaps the most decisive proof of the flimsiness of that web which is so fair to look at but which falls to pieces as soon as it is touched by the hand of criticism. We will give a few specimens. It cannot have escaped the most careless reader that there is a great resemblance between Romulus and Tullus Hustilius. They are both warlike, both double the number of Roman citizens, the one by union with the Sabines, the other by the reduction of Alba. The war with Alba again has its prototype in the war with Titus Taceus. As Tullus Hustilius is opposed to Medius Pufedius, so under Romulus, Hastus Hustilius fights with Medius Cirtius. The two Hustiliii and Metiiii are so clearly identical that the addition of second names which is intended to disguise the identity cannot deceive us. Besides Tullus as well as Romulus has grown up among shepherds, both join Mount Kylius to the city, both organize the Roman army, both introduce the insignia of regal power, the Sela Corulus or chair of state, the Lictors and the Embraider Toga. Both degenerate into tyrants and finally both are removed from earth amidst thunder and lightning and are seen no more. The similarity thus apparent between Romulus and Tullus Hustilius has its counterpart in the stories of Numa and Ancus. The latter is evidently the shadow of the former. Both are essentially priests. The former nominates a high pontiff, Numa Marceus, to whom he confides the sacred books. Evidently this Numa Marceus who combines the names of the two kings is a creature of the same fiction which represented the founder of the Roman worship as a sacerdotal king. As Numa's reign had been emphatically peaceful he could not be made to establish the religious ceremonies to be observed in declaring war. Consequently this task was given to Ancus and a war with the Latins was ascribed to him which helped to make the stories of the two kings look different. Nevertheless the original identity of Numa and Ancus is sufficiently apparent. Both are bridge makers. Numa is pontifex, as it was supposed, from Pawn's bridge and Fakere to make, although the word denoted properly the priestly leader of a procession. And to Ancus is ascribed, the construction of the wooden bridge over the Tiber. Finally the two are the only kings who die a natural and peaceful death. The original identity of the first and second Tarquin need hardly to be demonstrated but there are sufficient indications to show that they were also looked upon as the political and military law givers of Rome, in fact that they were identical with Romulus and Tullus. Servius Tullius combines in himself the character of the two classes of Roman kings who alternate in the analytic scheme of the primeval period. He is the author of social and peaceful order and of civil law like Numa and he also introduces a military organization which makes him identical with Romulus. According to a casually preserved tradition, his birth was as miraculous as that of the founder of the city. His mother was a Vestal version and his father a god who appeared to her on the hearth, the domestic altar of which she had the charge. By this birth he is really characterized as the founder of the city, for it appears from other similar legends that Italian cities ascribe their origin as a rule to sons of Vestals and the gods of the hearth. It is generally supposed that the latter portion of the legendary history of Rome has a more historical character than the earlier. Scholars who are prepared to give up Romulus and Numa as fabulous beings and who look upon Tullus and Ancus as prehistoric would feign persuade themselves that the stories of Servius Tullius and the Tarquins contain a great deal of genuine historical truth. Unfortunately this is an assumption which upon examination appears to be unfounded. If on the whole the family history of the Tarquinian dynasty has not so mythical a character as that of the preceding kings, it is perhaps even more full of arbitrary fiction and untrustworthy statements. We have referred already to the chronological absurdities which pervade it and to the stories of foreign growth with which it is decked out, nor is the supernatural element wanting. Not to speak of the miraculous birth of Servius and the light which blazed round the head of the sleeping child, we see that the prophetic queen Toniquil, the arrival in Rome of the weird Sebilla, and the stories of prodigies with which the narrative is interwoven are not of a character to give us more confidence. So much for the bona fide miracles. Let us see if the story shows more respect for the canons of historical probability than for physical laws. King Servius is represented as the author of the scheme which divided the people into five classes according to a property qualification and into one hundred and ninety four centuries as the subdivision of the classes. This is the celebrated Constitution of Centuries, the groundwork of the Kenturiate Commitia of the people which constantly adapted to the changing condition of the times lasted to the end of the Republic. Now we are asked to believe on the strength of the fabulous story of the kings that Servius, having drawn up this elaborate scheme was prevented by his sudden death, though he is reported to have reigned forty-four years, from actually bringing it into operation, that it remained a dead letter during the whole reign of Tarquin the Younger, and that upon his expulsion Brutus availed himself of this ready-made Constitution to establish the Republic upon it. Although the people had never yet been called upon to meet in the Kenturiate Assemblies for electoral or legislative purposes, they fell in so readily with the political ideas of Servius that forthwith Kenturiate Commitia could be held. The monarchy abolished by a vote of the people thus assembled and the new Republican order started in all its completeness with two annual and responsible consuls instead of a king for life and with the modifications of the old laws consequent upon the change. It need hardly be said that such a process is all but miraculous. History shows that constitutional changes which have any life in them and are destined to last, are not concocted in the closet of a lawgiver nor put into working order without much difficulty and opposition. The ease and facility with which Tarquinius is deposed at Rome and the Republic established without bloodshed resembles a genuine revolution as much as a military review or a sham fight resembles a genuine battle. How can we suppose that a powerful king like Tarquinius, without having suffered so far any check either at home or in foreign war, a king who is represented as acknowledged Lord of Latium and who after a time marshals all Latium against Rome should be thus cast out of his kingdom, not in consequence of a long prepared conspiracy and a powerful and organized opposition, but by a sudden and unexpected explosion of popular passion caused by an outrage committed not by the king himself but by one of his sons? And to enter into the detail of this alleged outrage what can be more absurd than the dispute in the camp among the young princes concerning the domestic virtues of their wives, the night ride to Rome and Colatia and all that follows? How, for instance, can it be supposed that Sextus did not know his cousin's wife until he saw her working late among her servants on this occasion? Lucretia's death may be a good subject for the epic or dramatic poet, but in the pages of sober history it is an idle tale. The foreign history of this period is not a Whitmore plausible or credible. We will select two portions, the war with Porcena and the Latin War, to show that our doubts are fully justified. If we succeed in this it will hardly be necessary to subject the remainder of the story to a similar examination, for it will not be supposed likely that the earlier portions of the narrative deserve more credit than the later. The war with Porcena is among those parts of early Roman history which first attracted and justified the skepticism of modern scholars, and in truth the narrative in itself is so absurd and contradictory that even without any external testimony we may safely pronounce the events to be unreal. Porcena is represented as a great king of Etruria who undertakes a war for the purpose of restoring Tarquin to his throne. He drives the Romans into their city, lays siege to it, and compels the people by famine to sue for peace and actually to give hostages. Nevertheless at the conclusion of the peace no mention is made of the object for which the war was undertaken. Tarquinius is not brought back to Rome. Porcena disappears from the stage proving in the end not an enemy but a benefactor of the Romans, restoring the hostages, leaving the Romans his camp for public use, and giving them back the land on the right bank of the Tiber of which he had intended to deprive them. So much of contradiction is contained in the narrative of Livy, but this narrative seems colored in the interest of Roman vanity. Pliny has preserved a statement that Porcena in the Treaty of Peace forbade the Romans to use iron for any other purpose than agriculture. This statement, so humiliating to Roman pride, would not have been made if the fact of the subjugation of Rome by an Etruscan king had not been incontestable. The supremacy of this Etruscan king was according to Dionysius formally acknowledged by the Romans in as much as they sent him the insignia of royalty, a scepter, a purple robe, and an ivory chair. It seems clear therefore that a war so successful could not have been a resultless episode of the struggle which the Romans had to make to maintain their independence. The War of Porcena, as it is described in the Annals, if it be not a mere fiction, must belong to a different period. As for the detail with which the account of the war is filled, it is, if not miraculous, at least a poetical ornament admirably suited for such lays as Macaulay has given us of ancient Rome, but not for a Roman history. The stout Horatius who kept the bridge so well in the brave days of old, is a hero like the Homeric Ajax fighting with a host of Trojans to defend the Grecian ships. He reminds us suspiciously of the other Horatius who fought as the champion of Rome in the time of King Tullus. The story of the undaunted Moetius Skyvilla, who burnt his right hand and thus became left-handed, is apparently nothing but an attempt to explain the origin of the name Skyvilla, which means left, and which was a surname of a branch of the Moetian house. Nor is it a very plausible fiction. The Etruscan king, seeing his soldiers receive their pay, the paymaster looking like the king, the Roman edging his way into the royal tent and, after all, striking the wrong man, the king lost in admiration of the stout-hearted Roman, and at the same time so terrified that he grants peace to the enemies whom he had conquered, all these are features of a story too childish to be tolerated in history. The war of Porcena must therefore be struck out of the annals which propose to recount the establishment of the Republic. The Latin war which terminated with the Battle of Lake Regulus is of a different character. It seems to be real and to have taken place about the time assigned to it, but its aim and object are entirely misstated and the detail is fictitious. We will endeavor to prove the first part of this assertion lower down when we review the historical residuum of the fables and traditions of this period. Here we will only direct attention to the perversion of truth and to the arbitrary fiction apparent in the Vulgar narrative. The description given of the Battle of Lake Regulus is altogether poetical and seems almost copied from Homer. The leaders engage in single combat and perform feats of personal prowess. It is essentially a cavalry engagement. The infantry, in which we know that the strength of the Roman armies always consists it goes for nothing. Victory is decided in the end by the charge of the Roman knights headed by the divine twins, Caster and Pollux. This feature shows that the poetic coloring of the story is Greek, for the identical legend of aid given by Caster and Pollux in battle occurs in the annals of the Greek city of Locri in southern Italy. The time when the Battle of Lake Regulus is fought is variously stated by various authors. It seems strange that if the battle was so decisive, as is generally assumed, its date should be uncertain. But we may entertain grave doubts about its decisiveness when we find that the Latins, who are reported to have been utterly crushed in it, concluded a league with Rome soon afterwards on a footing of equality. The Five Phases of the History of Rome in the Regal Period We have now examined the salient features of the History of the Kings and we have come to the conclusion that it is no history at all. Shall we rest here satisfied with this negative result? Shall we cut off all that precedes the establishment of the Republic as mere idle play of the imagination? Or is it possible to save something out of the wreck and to substitute a few great outlines for the elaborate drawing with all the fanciful detail? Can we suppose that after all the memory of some events of the earliest period did remain in the popular mind with sufficient distinctness to supply the earliest analysts with an historical substratum for their narrative? Or are there, perhaps, in the institutions of the Republic certain features from which we may infer what sort of institutions preceded them? We think we may safely proceed upon the former as well as upon the latter hypothesis and assert that by disclaiming the intention of giving a consecutive narrative, by passing over most of the names and dates with which we have been teased so long, we shall be able to draw a picture necessarily imperfect but historically true of the political condition of the Roman people in the earliest period and of the national and political revolutions through which it passed. There is every reason for believing that long before Rome became powerful the whole of Latium was filled with the number of independent city communities. In fact, this is the assumption upon which the Roman tradition itself proceeds. It is quite credible, also, that these Latin cities had established a sort of confederacy and at the head of this confederacy was Alba Longa. In historical times Alba Longa lay in ruins. Nevertheless, the people of Latium annually assembled near its site where the Temple of Jupiter Latiarius had been left standing, and there they celebrated the Latin games, Ferii Latini, and offered a joint sacrifice to Jupiter as a sign and memorial of there being all members of a national confederation. Rome had then the presidency of these meetings, occupying the place which originally no doubt belonged to Alba Longa. It is not likely that such a custom would have been introduced after the fall of Alba, whereas we can easily understand the diff established at the time of Alba in predominance it was continued in the same spot ever after in that spirit of conservatism which is natural to all religions but was especially characteristic of the religion of Rome. We may suppose that in this period of the power of Alba the hills of Rome were occupied by Latin settlers, like all the sites in Latium, which were capable of being easily converted into strongholds. The Romans of that period therefore were Latins, and the Roman language had thus retained forever after the name of Latin, testifying thereby the original identity of race. This, then, is the first phase of Roman history. The second stage begins with the invasion of Latium by a kindred race the Sabines. That such an invasion took place at an early period is certain, even if the story of Titus Taceus and the people of Churace, coming down the valley of the Tiber, conquering the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills, and settling in Rome, were not related in the annals and did not bear the aspect of a genuine tradition. For among the oldest and most permanent institutions of Rome, among their religious rites and their deities, there are some which are admitted on all sides to be of Sabine origin. It is therefore highly probable that Sabines settled on some of the hills of Rome, as the annals relate, and also that at the same time other Latin cities passed into the hands of the same invaders, for it is not likely that the hills of Rome were the only attraction, as the story of the rape would make us believe, and we do find that actually some of the cities of Latium between the Tiber and the Annio were Sabine and Population. Perhaps it was in the course of this Sabine invasion that all Belonga the head of Latium was taken and destroyed. This is the second phase of the history of Rome. The annals have preserved traditions of hostilities between the original Latin settlers on the Palatine and the invaders who held the capital and the Quirinal. Such hostilities might safely be assumed to have taken place even if no tradition had preserved the memory of them. As we have seen above, nothing is more likely than that the independent communities living in such proximity to one another found it more advantageous to come to terms and to live in peace and friendship than to harass each other in daily strife. Accordingly they agreed to a kind of international alliance and in doing so they followed the example of the Latin cities and as far as we can see the custom of all the Italian races to have formed confederacies where circumstances favored or necessitated them. This is the third phase of the history of Rome. The alliance of Romans and Sabines was the condition of the future greatness of Rome for the strength of the several communities instead of being worn out by internal strife was now combined and soon gave Rome a preponderance over the smaller Latin towns. But the proximity to each other of the members of the Roman confederacy was such their intercourse so frequent their interests so nearly identical that a mere international alliance was soon found an insufficient bond of union and thus it was developed into some sort of closer political union or a federal state. This step is indicated in the tradition of the analysts when they say that the senate was raised from one hundred to two hundred members that the number of the citizens was doubled and that the two kings Romulus and Taceus agreed to reign in common. The Roman state had now outgrown the political organization at which the leagues of the Latins and of the other Italian peoples stopped. All the other leagues were international leaving each member free to support or to oppose the policy of the majority. The Romans starting from the same point advanced further and bound up the free will and independence of the members in the national will declared by the decisions of a common senate and a popular assembly. This was the fourth phase of the history of Rome. Rome had now become a federal state consisting of a union of families which formed curiace and tribes. The head of this community was a king elected for life and combining the functions of high priest with those of judge and military chief. But of these three functions the first seems to have been by far the most prominent and important in the earliest period of the monarchy as will appear more fully lower down. Religion is older than any other element in human society. Political institutions and civil laws are modeled upon religious institutions and divine law and are a secondary development in the history of nations. Though in the conventional arrangement of the Roman kings, Romulus precedes Numa, the institutions of Numa must be older than those of Romulus. In other words, the oldest kings of Rome were pre-eminently priests and the oldest constitution was more akin to a federation of half independent families than to a fully developed state. How long this kind of priest-king ship lasted we cannot tell. It was followed by a military monarchy which abolished the old sacerdotal constitution, raised the military and civil power over that of the priestly order, consolidated and strengthened the state, and thus intensified the preponderance of Rome over the other Latin cities. This is the fifth phase in the history of Rome. It appears in the traditional story as the reigns of the Tarquins and Servius Tullius and it seems to coincide with the influence of Etruscan domination over Latium. The nation of the Etruscans differed widely from the Latins and their kinsmen, the Sabines. They spoke a language not understood by their neighbors. They were far advanced in civilization, in architecture and the other arts, in trade, navigation and manufactures, when the Romans were still half barbarians. Their settlements stretched at one time from the Alps to Campania. Latium lay between Campania and Etruria proper. It was therefore the country through which the Etruscans had to pass if they proceeded southwards by land. Nor are traces of Etruscan dominion wanting in Latium. The city of Tuscalum betrays by its very name a Tuscan, that is, an Etruscan origin. The town of Fidenae, close to Rome, is admitted to have been Etruscan. Misentius, an old Etruscan king, is said to have ruled in Latium, and the story of Porcena relates the victory of an Etruscan king over the Romans. Finally, what is perhaps the most significant hint, the insignia of the Roman kings, were those of the kings of Etruria. If in addition to all these indications we find that some of the Roman kings were supposed to have come from Etruria, we have no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that these kings were Etruscan conquerors. In accordance with this view we find that the Roman tradition ascribes to the elder Tarquin changes in the old institutions of Rome in which he had to face the opposition of the native priesthood. In the new organization of the army Tarquinius Priscus is obliged to yield so far as the objections of Otis Navius the augur, that he adapts his reforms to the old names and divisions. In removing some old Sabine sanctuaries from a site where he wishes to build a great temple of the Etruscan trinity of gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, he is obliged to respect the shrines of Juventus and Terminus. It is but a link in this chain that the second king in this line, Servius, gives a secular and military character to the Roman institutions by devising the Conturriate Assembly, an organization on the basis of property qualifications for the purpose of government and war. This organization effectually did away with the old religious couriotic assemblies from which all political power was now taken. If we are justified in supposing that simultaneously the old sacerdotal king, the Rex, was stripped of his influence, and that the chief priesthood was conferred on the pontiffs, we shall understand in its totality the great change which raised Rome from an aristocratic confederacy under a sacerdotal head to a military monarchy in which the priesthood was subordinate to the state and in which law and policy were no longer ecclesiastical but secular. The old aristocracy appears to have been dissatisfied because the military kings curtailed their influence. The power of the senate was abridged, but the common people were well disposed toward the kings who were their natural protectors. In the relation of Rome to Latium a change seems to have taken place. If hitherto Rome had been only a member of the Latin Confederacy she now became its head. Nay, the preponderance of Rome under the Etruscan kings seems to have assumed the form of actual dominion. How long this period lasted we have no means of judging. It seems, however, not to have continued long enough to change the national character or to affect the language of the Romans and the Latins. At last a reaction took place. Political opposition seems to have been backed by national animosity. The Etruscan kings were expelled. The Romans and the Latins regained their independence at the same time. A partial but not a total restoration then took place. The old federal and sacerdotal institutions were not revived. The title of sacerdotal king, Rex Sacrophiculus or Rex Sacrorum, was allowed to continue, but the office remained stripped of all political influence and limited to some insignificant religious formalities. The old Commedia of Curiace were also preserved, but they no longer possessed any power in the state. The sovereignty of the people was lodged in the Conturriate Commitia and the executive power in magistrates who were not chosen for life and consequently invested with irresponsible power but whose tenure of office was limited to the space of one year. To this limitation was added another. Two men were elected to fill the chief office as colleagues so that each might be a check on the other if he acted unlawfully. Otherwise the prerogatives of the royal office, as exercised by the late kings, were not curtailed. Thus the period of the military monarchy, though it was not destined to last forever and though it did not last perhaps for many generations, was the means of developing out of the old saccharodotal institutions under a priest king that military organization which was equal to the task of making Rome the mistress of Italy and of the world. With the Republic began the sixth phase in the history of Rome. CHAPTER VI. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE TIME OF THE KINGS Giving up all details of the traditional history of the kings, we have tried to discover through the haze of fiction a few prominent landmarks by which we have traced the probable course of events from the time when the first settlers arrived on the Seven Hills of Rome to the establishment of a regular Republican government under annually elected magistrates. We will now endeavor to draw a picture of the public life of the Roman people in that primeval period so that we may have a starting point from which to measure the advance made in the succeeding ages and a background to relieve the life and action of historical times. How, it may be asked, shall we obtain the materials for this picture as the history of the time to which the picture belongs is lost? Shall we not fall into an error as great as that for which we blame the analysts? Shall we not be obliged to draw upon our fancy alone, and will not our picture be as worthless as the legends which we have condemned? Fortunately it is not so. The advance of historical science since the days of the Roman analysts has enabled us to reproduce pictures of the society of even prehistoric ages with almost as much objective truth as the geologist can reproduce the fauna and flora of ages preceding the creation of man and the present conformation of the earth's surface. The heroic period of Greek national life, the Age of the Trojan War, and of all that follows down to the Doric migration is lost to history as much as the period of the Roman kings. Yet it is possible to form a full and accurate conception of life in this period of the state of society, of government and religion, nay of domestic arrangements and even of articles of dress and furniture. This we are unable to do because the epic poetry of Greece, though it cannot be trusted as evidence to prove historical events, invests its ideal personages with real properties, attributes and qualities abstracted from what actually came under the poet's observation. If the author of the Odyssey tells of Nausikia and her troop of maid servants washing the family linen by the river outside the town, we shall infer not that there ever lived a real princess called Nausikia, but that in the heroic times the daughters of kings were in the habit of superintending the family washing. This is well understood nowadays, but the case is somewhat different when we approach the prehistoric period of Rome. Here we have no epic poems originating in the age we wish to study and therefore representing the general state of society correctly. The Romans, as we have had occasion to remark, had no national epic poetry. Memory unaided by poetry may preserve striking events of national importance, but will it linger on habits and customs which have passed away? We can hardly think this possible, and we must therefore draw our information concerning the institutions of the regal period from other sources. Fortunately, these are not altogether wanting. We have already referred to the conservative spirit of the Romans which induced them to preserve the forms and outward observances of old institutions long after those institutions were practically abolished and the forms had become empty and unmeaning. Wherever therefore we can discover such forms we are justified in concluding that they had once possessed life and vigor, and from the totality of such isolated fragments we can reconstruct the outlines of the old social and political life. We start with a fact which we have had occasion to refer to in a previous chapter, namely that religious ideas and institutions are the oldest inheritance of a nation and that they precede those which are secular and political. The earliest periods in the history of every nation may be called sacrodotal or religious. All human action was then inspired, directed and judged from a religious point of view. The laws were the laws of God. The people was a community of worshipers. The temple of the national deity was the center of the state. The priests, as the interpreters of the Divine Will, ruled and regulated society, the national wealth and the national strength were devoted to uphold this system. The truth of this statement is born out by what we know of the Oriental nations, the Egyptians, the Jews and Hindus, based their political institutions upon a religious foundation. The sacred books which contained the religious laws were at the same time the code which regulated social and political life. Obligations towards the national religion, its creed and worship, were not distinguished from moral obligations, nor moral obligations from those of civil law. The whole life of those nations was bound up in subjection to one idea, the idea of religion. As long as the nations of antiquity preserved independent national existence, every religion was strictly a national religion, every God, a national God, whose authority extended no further than the boundaries of the state. The God of one state could not claim worship from the citizens of another. Nay, he repudiated such worship as sacrilegious and illegitimate. And in a citizen it would have been treason of the worst kind, if he had paid homage to any other than the national gods. Purity of religion was a civic virtue, devotion to the altars of the gods was essential to patriotism. Exclusion from the national worship was equivalent to political banishment. A man who had lost his altar had lost his home. This unity or oneness of state and religion impresses on all the ancient communities a more or less hierarchical character, although the nations of the West, both Greeks and Italians, differed widely from those of the East, in as much as they never made themselves the slaves of a priestly caste, and early emancipated the state from the bondage of laws which claimed to be divine and therefore unchangeable. Yet the earliest period of the Roman people may emphatically be called religious or rather sacerdotal. The law was in the custody of the pontiffs. The punishment of offenses consisted in an offering or payment made to the gods in the form of a fine or ransom, poena, or it was a solemn act of supplication addressed to the gods to appease their anger by the punishment supplicium of the offender. Civil claims were prosecuted by a sacramentum by depositing a sum in the hands of priests which the losing party forfeited to the gods. Every political association was placed under the control of a protecting deity for every action, whether private or public, the consent of the deity had first to be obtained. The father of every family was a priest, every house, gins, or association of families had its sanctuary, so had the courier or association of houses, every quarter of a town, every tribe, and finally the state itself. The temple of Vesta was the symbolic hearth of the whole nation in the old Sabino Latin town. The temple of Jupiter erected by the Tarquins on the capital was the center of the enlarged state. The temple of Diana on the Aventine united the Romans and their allies, the Latins, as fellow worshipers and fellow citizens, as the old temple of Jupiter Ladiaris on the Albin Mount had anciently united all the members of the Latin Confederacy. The pervading influence of religion in the first formation of society and political institutions is thus sufficiently clear, and it follows that to understand the true character and working of these institutions we must try to understand the nature of that religion. The religion of the Romans, though belonging to that class of polytheism that prevailed as far as we can see, among all the branches of the Aryan race, differed widely not only from that of the Asiatic nations, but also from that of the Greeks, their nearest neighbors. It agreed insofar as it was a worship of the powers of nature, both material and spiritual. The heavens, the sun and the moon, light, water, the earth, the powers presiding over generation and destruction, health and sickness, the ruling passions of the human heart, the protectors of law and society, all were singled out from the all-pervading Godhead, the life and spirit of the world, to receive separate and special worship from man. While other nations speculated with more or less perseverance on the nature and attributes of the divine beings, and laid down elaborate systems of the birth and genealogy of the gods, investing them with human forms and passions, the Romans never indulged in such speculations, but were satisfied to look upon their gods as spiritual beings, all powerful to hurt or to benefit man, they never worked out a philosophical system of religion. In fact, they had no theology and no sacred books to base it on. Before they became directly or indirectly acquainted with the Greeks, they had at best only a rudimentary mythology, and consequently there are no myths of genuine Roman growth. It is related that in the beginning of the regal period there were no images of gods but only symbols such as a lance or a stone. The representations of the gods in human forms were introduced by the Etruscans, who had borrowed them from the Greeks of the Italian Peninsula. Thus began a regular process of naturalization of the Greek deities, the whole system of Greek theology, their myths and their sacred art, were bodily transplanted to fill the void which the unimaginative and unspeculative character of the Romans, and in fact of all the Italians, had left in their religion. Zeus was identified with Jupiter, Hera with Juno, Athena with Minerva, Aries with Mars, although the original conceptions of their nature might have been very different. Some Greek and even some Asiatic deities were adopted into the family of the Roman national gods. In short, as far as the speculative and imaginative part of religion was concerned, that is the theological system where the Articles of Faith, if we might use this expression, the religion of Rome became identified with that of Greece. But the case was different with respect to that part of religion which springs not from reflection and fancy, but from feeling. The relation between God and man, the sentiments with which the gods were approached, the duties which they exacted, the worship prescribed for their service, in short, the law, or the practical as distinguished from the theoretical part were peculiarly Roman, and remain so even when the whole host of the Greek Olympus had migrated to Rome. What the Romans understood by religion was confined to this second part, as by far the more important. Through it alone religion could exercise an influence on real life, private as well as public, and it is this which must therefore engage our special attention. If the religion of the Greeks was more fully and richly developed than that of the Romans on the side of speculation, the Romans on the other hand cultivated the law with more zeal and earnestness. In fact they almost resemble some Oriental nations, Arian and Semitic, in the scrupulous minuteness into which they bent the most trifling transactions of life under the yoke of religious duties. It is true they were free from the minute regulations concerning eating, which in the East were an important and characteristic part of religious law. They did not know the difference between clean and unclean animals, nor were the Eastern laws of fasting and manifold washings imposed upon them. All asceticism was unknown to them. But nevertheless the observances prescribed by their religion were so numerous and imperative that no transaction of any importance was free from them. Prayers, offerings, vows, religious ceremonies minutely regulated for every emergency were of vital importance. The least oversight, the least neglect, might draw down the anger of the gods. Even ignorance was no excuse for the divine interpreters of the will of the gods were at hand to expound the law and to prescribe for every occasion the proper right of worship. On the other hand, in return for faithful service the devout Roman had a right to expect from his gods help, protection, and all the blessings of life. The gods had made a covenant with him, and they were bound to perform their part of the mutual obligation if he was scrupulous in performing his own. In fact the word religion is of the same root as obligation, and whereas the latter is applied to denote a covenant entered into between one citizen and another according to the rules of civil law, the word religion denotes that bondage or service which man owes to the gods on the understanding that he is entitled to an equivalent. But in as much as man is the weaker party in wisdom as well as in power, he must be most attentive to perform minutely his part of the agreement. Religion therefore turns out to be the fear lest the gods should punish man for neglect. It is a constant anxiety about duties they have to perform, a scrupulousness which makes them watch their own actions and all external events, lest the anger of the gods should be roused and it is often not to be distinguished from superstition. Such a religion would have struck paralyzing terror into the hearts of men and would have rendered them ignoble, crouching slaves if a protection had not been found in the law itself to shield mortal man from the superior power of the gods. The religion of Rome was a fully and carefully elaborated legal system. It laid down minutely the duties of man and the fines to be paid on every transgression. It regulated the intercourse between gods and men and showed how the goodwill and cooperation of the gods could be obtained by a certain and infallible process. It was like the civil law full of fictions and casuistry. It imposed no obligations but those which could be accurately circumscribed by the number and quality of sacrifices and services. It suggested no such thing as love or trust or hope. The notion of virtue in our sense of the word was unknown. Cicero defines piety as justice toward the gods and he adds the significant words, what piety is due to those from whom we have received no benefit. It is clear that the human conscience played a very subordinate part in such a religion. Morality had nothing to do with it. Every iniquitous action was allowed by the state religion provided a man could show that he was formally in the right. Even the gods might be cheated lawfully if a man was quick and sharp enough to avail himself of some formality in the divine law or could interpret a doubtful injunction in his favor. An omen sent by the gods might be accepted or rejected or interpreted in the most convenient and profitable way. A false and lying announcement by an auger had the efficacy of a true one, provided it was duly made in the prescribed form. Unlucky signs were not allowed to prevent any undertaking upon which a Roman magistrate was bent. It was only necessary to repeat the process of divination until the desirable favorable signs appeared. If the entrails of the first animal were found faulty, a second was slaughtered and a third and so forth until heart and liver were found to be such as foretold success. If no favorable birds would appear on the first inspection of the sky the auger had only to continue his observations long enough until he saw what he wished to see. The whole of this complicated system of divine law was in the keeping of the pontiffs, but neither the pontiffs nor the other priests constituted an independent power in the state. They could declare what the law was, but they could not enforce it on their own authority. They were entirely subordinate to the civil magistrates and their principal duty was to serve the state. A conflict between the state and the priesthood was impossible. Even if the national religion had not been so intimately bound up with and dependent upon the existence of the state, the priests could not have constituted a body distinct from the rest of the community and bound together by interests of their own. They possessed none of the conditions of such independence. They did not like the priests of India and Egypt form a separate caste, but they were elected for life from among the body of citizens, the high pontiff being himself generally a man of mark among the political leaders. Though not magistrates in the full sense of the word they discharged public functions as necessary for the welfare of the state as any which were committed to the civil servants. Among these services none were more important than that of the augurs who presided over the public auspices, the characteristic procedure by which the Roman people kept up their official intercourse with the gods. As a clear insight into the nature of the auspices is necessary for understanding the relative position of religion in the state we must delay a while to examine them. Every nation of antiquity had its peculiar method for ascertaining the will of the gods. The Greeks had their oracles and dreams, the Kaldians consulted the stars, the nations of Italy looked upon striking an unusual natural phenomena as special revelations, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, meteoric appearances of unexplained character or terrifying effect, abnormal or monstrous formations in men or animals, all this came under the head of prodigies, awakened the religion, that is the superstitious fear of the people, and called for explanation on the part of the initiated priesthood, or in case of necessity, for expiatory sacrifices and services. But apart from these casual manifestations of the divine will there were methods by which men might ascertain the will of the gods whenever occasion required it. This was regularly done before any act or enterprise of importance whether in private life or in the matters of state. No election, no trial, no legislative vote could take place, no war could be undertaken, no battle commenced before the ascent of the gods had been given. The gods allowed their worshipers to approach and to consult them at all times and never refused to reply if the proper forms were employed. They sent their auspices to the magistrates of the Roman people through the interposition of the augers, who understood the nature and the meaning of the prophetic signs. The auspices formed in some respect the very heart and center of the practical religion of the Romans. They were the means by which every action of life was directed conformably with the divine will. Every private citizen could employ the augers and consult the gods for his own guidance, but the magistrates alone could act on the part of the whole people and require the augers to take public auspices. The auger on such occasions took his station in a templum, that is, a consecrated plot of ground within certain defined limits. He divided the sky above him with his augural staff, the lituus, into four quarters and watched for the appearance of the sacred birds sent by Jupiter. As they appeared in one or other of the divisions he had made, so they were pronounced favourable or unfavourable. No other answer was vouchsafed by the gods but this simple yay or nay to the question whether the enterprise in hand was acceptable to them or not. No direction of any kind, no indication of what should be done to secure the desired end was ever given. All this was left to the free choice of men. If they failed to adopt the right means, it was their fault. The gods did not guarantee success, but simply declared their approbation or disapprobation of the undertaking concerning which they were consulted. This system of taking the auspices prevailed in Rome as long as the ancient religion lasted and was only overthrown by the victory of Christianity, but it did not always continue to be animated by that spirit of faith which had given it birth. In the Republican period it became gradually a mere formality. The augers announced as the will of the gods whatever they were expected to announce, the gods were no longer allowed to put in their veto. The mode of taking the auspices was even adapted to the altered circumstances, and domestic fowls kept in cages were made to indicate by their eagerness or slowness in eating whether the gods approved or condemned an enterprise. But this indifference of later times must not mislead us with regard to the influence exercised at an early period by the auspices under the management of the priests. There can be no doubt that an unfavorable sign was in the old time a sufficient motive for abandoning any measure resolved upon by the civil power. Even the augers themselves may be supposed to have been honest, and to have been frightened by unpropitious or encouraged by favorable birds. They would be prevented by their own religion from announcing signs which they had not really seen. Such a priesthood, firm in its own faith, exercised no doubt an influence in the state which gave to the whole scheme of government a hierarchical character. This was the character of the earliest period. Every institution of a religious nature was then in full vigor. The secular and military institutions were still in their infancy, and grew up under the shadow of the hierarchy. Law and civil policy received their impulse and first impression from religion, and only in proportion as the religious force of the national mind was spent and unable to send forth new offshoots, or even to keep life in the old roots, did the development of civil institutions take its own independent course. It is certain that after the establishment of the Republic no new religious rights grew up spontaneously, whilst many of the old ones were preserved merely in outward form. We are therefore entitled to say that the early regal period was governed chiefly by sacerdotal influence, and that in it all those institutions were in full working efficiency with which we become acquainted only in the period of their decay, when they are more and more superseded by the political institutions of an age inclined to be skeptical and indifferent in religious matters. CHAPTER VII CHARACTER OF THE MONARCHY The chief magistrate of this age, the king, Rex, was really the high priest of the nation. He was elected for life, not for a term of years or an uncertain period. The man once chosen for the service of the gods was consecrated forever, and this principle was applied to the priests even after the establishment of the Republic when the office of the civil magistrates was held for a definite period. The king was, after his election, formally inaugurated. That is, the gods were consulted by the augurs, whether they approved of him as their servant. This ceremony of inauguration was afterwards preserved only for the pontiffs and other priests. The consuls did not require it. But probably it was not really by popular election that the king was appointed. We know that the priests, even of the Republican period, were not elected by the suffrages of the people, but were nominated by other priests. We may therefore infer that when the hierarchical principle was in full force, that is, in the regal period, the kings were nominated by the between kings into reges, that is, by those senators who, according to a prescribed form, were selected from among the senators for the purpose of appointing a successor. The king we are informed did not judge in his own person, but nominated judges, Duom Wiri, Perdui Eleonis, and Coistores Perikidii, to try offenders. It is quite consistent with the sacred character of a priest king that he should not in person exercise criminal jurisdiction. It is more difficult to decide the question whether the priest king ever took the command of the army in war. According to the traditional story, Numapon Pilius, who is the type of a sacerdotal king, enjoyed a perpetual peace. Perhaps the first compilers of the tales of the kings intended thereby to express the idea that it did not agree with the sacred character of the king to take the field. But if the sacerdotal king was disqualified from military command, it follows that in case of war he had to find a substitute. The question now arises whether there is any trace of magistrates who might have served as commanders of the army in the earliest period of Roman history. In historical times we often hear of the appointment of dictators in times of extraordinary dangers. We are told that they were anciently called masters of the people, Magistri Papuli, and we also hear of the office of chief praetor, praetor Maximus, which appears to have been identical without of master of the people. The custom of appointing masters of the people or chief praetor certainly preceded the establishment of the republic. It is not unlikely therefore that they were the officers who in the time of the sacerdotal kings took the command of the army. The dictators were not elected by popular suffrage like the other republican magistrates. They were nominated by one of the consuls, and after nomination they had to assemble the people to obtain their promise of obedience. This process of appointment appears to date from pre-republican times, and we may perhaps venture to say that a similar process was adopted on the appointment of the ancient masters of the people, that the sacerdotal king nominated them when occasion required and that they obtained the formal sanction of the people by a resolution which pledged the people to acknowledge their authority. If this was the constitutional process in the regal period, we can easily imagine how it came to pass that the old sacerdotal king was superseded by a military monarch. We need only supposed that a Magistri Papuli, favored by circumstances, refused to lay down the power lodged in his hands. The temporary chief of the army would thus become a ruler for life, and the constitution of the state would be changed. But in all probability the revolution resulted not in a violent abolition of all existing institutions. It was in some respects a development and consolidation of certain pre-existing elements, and it was a decided progress. It strengthened the internal unity of the state, abolished the remnants of the old federal system, toned down the undue prominence of the religious element, and the predominance of the priests, and brought out the national strength by organizing a new popular assembly and a new army. It destroyed the exclusive privilege of a ruling class of noble houses and thus laid the foundations upon which, with very few changes, the republic could be established. By the side of the old sacrodotal king there was evidently no room for another chief of the national religion. There could have been no high pontiff at the time when a priest king like Numa presided over the religious institutions of the people. This inference is borne out by the legendary account. Numa is related to have appointed a pont effects of the name of Numa Marshus. This Numa Marshus is evidently no other person than Numa Pompilius himself, for the addition of the second name is in this case, as in many others, nothing but a feeble attempt of the analysts to make two persons out of one. Moreover the identity of pont effects and king in the old time is sufficiently proved by the fact that the ancient palace of the king, the regia, was at the same time the official dwelling of the pont effects maximus. This identity of king and pontiff could only last as long as the king was essentially a priest and the head of the national religion. When a military chief usurped the supreme power the old sacrodotal king must have been stripped of his political authority. It was most probably by this revolution that the pontifical duties were separated from the political and transferred to a purely sacrodotal officer, the pont effects. The military king could no more take upon himself the exercise of all the purely sacrodotal functions than in an earlier period the priest king could have commanded the army. A new arrangement was made, the priests were made dependent on the magistrates and religion became the handmaid of politics. Thus it was that the primeval policy of Rome which was essentially religious or sacrodotal passed over into a military monarchy. When at a later stage the monarchy was overthrown the old institutions were not reestablished but the republican magistrates stepped into the place of the military kings and religion lost more and more the influence which it had once possessed. The title and office of priest king Rex Sacrorum was indeed preserved for religious scruples forbade their formal abolition but this king of the sacrifices was debarred from all political influence. He was not allowed to hold any civil office and even in his own peculiar department he was made subordinate to the chief pontiff. CHAPTER VIII. THE SENATE OF THE REGAL PERIOD If in the earliest constitution of Rome the king was rather the head of the national religion than a chief executive officer it follows that the community required some other central authority invested with political power able to bind together the federative elements of which the state consisted and to direct the government. This authority was lodged in the senate, a body of men consisting of all or the most influential heads of families and therefore appropriately called fathers, patres. They must have formed a kind of representative assembly although the idea of representation in the modern sense was foreign to the whole ancient world. If it is reported that Romulus chose at first one hundred men to be senators that this number was doubled on the union with the Savines and that under Tarquin one hundred more were added we understand that the earliest analysts considered three hundred to have been the normal number of senators and that this number was reached gradually. Now this number agreed with the division of the people in the prehistoric time, namely the three tribes, Romnes, Titias and Luceres, divided into thirty curies and probably three hundred Gentes or houses. It would appear therefore that the ancient senate was intended to contain a member of each of the houses and in so far these houses were in fact all represented in the senate. If that was so it seems that the individual members could hardly have been freely chosen by the king as in republican times they were by the consuls and afterwards by the kensors. It would seem more natural that each house had a right to be represented in the senate by its head, Pater, though probably the formal nomination may have been the king's privilege or duty. As a consequence of this inherent right of the heads of the houses to form the senate it would naturally follow that the senate was not merely, as it was in republican times, a consultative body, but that it would share to a certain extent the executive government of the state. This we may moreover infer from certain formal rights which the republican senate retained and which were probably only the remnants of rights more real and extensive of older date. We know that the consent called authority of the fathers, patrim auctoritas, was required for all elections and all legislative acts of the people. This right may be presumed to have been of much more importance in the earlier period. A second privilege of the senate in republican times was the right of deciding when a dictator should be named. It seems a safe conclusion that in the time of the sacerdotal kings it was in like manner the senate, which determined when a magister populi should be elected to take the military command. But the most significant remnant of ancient prerogative possessed by the senators even in historical times was the right of acting as interregis between kings, that is, of taking upon themselves the executive power in the interregnum, the interval between the death of duly elected magistrates, and the installation of their successors. Such an event would more rarely happen in the time of the republic when two chief magistrates were annually appointed, but it regularly occurred in the regal period on the death of a king. Then it was that the senate as a body stepped into the king's place, one senator after another acting as interregs for five days until a new king was appointed. At such times the right to take the auspices which had been possessed by the deceased king passed over to the body of the senators. These men stood forward now as the mediators between the Roman gods and the Roman people. They took care that the link was not broken between the two, that the auspices could be duly taken, and that with the consent of the gods a new king should be appointed. The senate therefore occupied a most influential position under the sacerdotal kings. When the revolution took place which placed military kings at the head of the state, we hear of conflicts between them and the senate. The younger Tarquin is said to have expelled and even murdered many senators, and to have in fact superseded the senate altogether. He was not nominated in due form by an interregs, and was therefore according to the spirit of the ancient public law, a usurper, not entitled to take the public auspices of the Roman people. When he was expelled the power of the senate revived, and new senators were appointed in place of those whom Tarquin had killed. In fact a regular aristocratic restoration took place. The liberty gained by the downfall of the tyrant was not a liberty for the lower classes of citizens, but a liberty for the nobility, who exercised their power in a spirit so hostile to the people that the Tarquins were looked upon with tend to regret. The people were soon driven to rise against their oppressors and to force them to concessions by seceding in a body to the Sacred Hill and threatening to separate themselves from Rome. The secession to the Sacred Hill was the commencement of the growth of popular liberties. To understand it we must examine the condition of the people in the preceding period. CHAPTER IX THE PEOPLE IN THE REGAL PERIOD The Roman people were not a homogeneous mass. Apart from actual slaves who were never classed with the people in any ancient community, we observed two distinct classes of citizens, the patricians and the plebeians, that is, the ruling class of citizens in the possession of the full franchise and an inferior dependent class. A similar distinction between two classes of citizens we find in every state of antiquity. It owes its origin to conquest and to the necessity under which the conquerors found themselves of admitting the conquered races to some sort of civil fellowship. The rule was that the inferior class was allowed to enjoy certain private rights of property and personal security. They were not slaves in the full sense of the word, for slaves never enjoyed the protection of the law for either property or life. But the conquered race was not admitted to civil equality with the conquerors. They had to bear the civil burdens in return for the protection they enjoyed. They had especially to join their rulers in the defense of the common country, but they were excluded from the political rights of the sovereign people, that is, from a voice in the national assemblies, whether for the election of magistrates or for resolutions affecting the national policy or for legislation or finally for the trial of offenders. All these functions accordingly devolved in Rome exclusively on the patricians, that is, the members of those families who had founded the state by conquest. They alone formed what was anciently called the Populus Romanus in opposition to the plebs. This patrician populus was divided into tribes, Curiae and Gentis. The assembly of Curias, Comitia Curriata, was consequently an assembly of patricians only, at least it seems clear that plebeians, if admitted to listen or to be present when the Curias met, took no active part in their decisions. The Comitia Curriata were the only popular assemblies known in the earliest period when the national institutions bore a preeminently religious character and the original confederacy had not yet been fully developed into a real state with a centralized secular government. The assembly voted by Curias, that is, there were thirty votes, all the members of one Curia uniting to form one vote. The king presided and all questions of national importance were here decided, namely the election or perhaps only the inauguration of kings, the investment of a commander with military power, the Lex Curriata de Imperio, declarations of war, the trial of offenders, and finally the adoption of laws if formal legislation can be supposed to have taken place at that time. The Constitution of Rome exhibits, with regard to popular assemblies, a feature not found anywhere else. It is this, that not less than three different forms of such assemblies existed side by side, differently organized and having each its own peculiar functions. The assembly of Curias, of which we have just spoken, was the oldest and for a time the only assembly. In the second period of the kings was organized the Military Assembly of Centuries, which was destined chiefly for the election of military commanders for decisions about peace and war and for the trial of those citizens who had broken the peace and were therefore looked upon as public enemies. The third form of assemblies, the Comitia Tributa, was introduced in consequence of the rising of the plebs. They included only plebeians and were at first confined to the election of plebeian magistrates, the tribunes of the people and the plebeian ideales, and two questions concerning the plebs alone. But in course of time this last assembly acquired more and more importance, and was invested with the character of a national assembly. The peculiar organization of these three assemblies constitutes the distinguishing feature of the three successive periods of the Roman constitution. We shall become acquainted with the Canturian Assembly when we come to review the republican government in its oldest form, and with the assemblies of tribes when we examine the rise and progress of the tribunition power. Of the Curiatric Assembly we need say no more than that as far as real life and influence are concerned it was the thing of the past when Rome emerged from the prehistoric period. It was then one of those unmeaning forms which the Romans preserved from their national veneration for old institutions, and which enabled the historian to form an opinion of times otherwise buried in utter oblivion. The patricians as we have seen formed the ruling body. By the side of them there existed from the earliest times a subordinate class called plebeians, enjoying indeed the name of Roman citizens and entitled to the protection of life and property, differing therefore widely from slaves, but still excluded from a share in the government, from the senate, the assembly of Curiees, the auspices of the state, and from intermarriage with the patricians. They thus formed a distinct body, a subject population bound to bear the burdens of the state without sharing in its government. They had no doubt a separate organization to manage their own affairs, their peculiar sanctuaries, their assemblies, religious and social, their own officers for administration and judicial purposes. But of these things we can only form conjectures based upon the institutions of a later period as no satisfactory evidence can be traced back to the period of the kings. Nor are we better informed of the origin of the plebeians. According to the traditional story it was Romulus, who by his own will and pleasure divided the whole mass of citizens into patricians and plebeians. This account is no more to be trusted than the stories of the legislation of Romulus and Numa. Dependent classes are not made by legislators, they are the result of political revolutions. The Roman plebeians must have been the descendants of a population reduced to subjection by conquest, but when and how this was done is beyond the reach of our knowledge. It is possible that the original population of the country was at one time conquered by an invading host of new settlers and then reduced to the condition of plebeians. It is possible also that the invaders brought with them a class of dependents the result of a previous conquest. We cannot speculate on these possibilities with any prospect of profit and must rest satisfied with the general impression rendered plausible by analogy. A certain number of plebeians were distinguished from the rest by the name of clients. These clients appear to have been attached as her redditary dependence to certain patrician families. Each patrician had a number of whom he was called the patron. He was bound specially to watch over their interests and to act as their legal protector whilst in return they paid him fixed dues and services. The clients seemed to have played an important part in the early period. They are often mentioned as the special partisans of the patricians in their disputes with the plebs. They would appear, therefore, to have been practically a distinct class of citizens, although the law knew only patricians and plebeians and classed the clients among the latter. In course of time the difference between clients and other plebeians disappeared. The old client ship became a thing of the past and was replaced by a new client ship of a somewhat different order with which the early history of Rome has no concern. It is not at all unlikely that the condition of the plebeians was improved by the military kings who limited the power of the more aristocratic form of government in which the heads of patrician houses assembled in the senate ruled the state under the nominal control of a sacrodotal king. The establishment of the Comedia Cantorriata, which first gave political rights to the plebeians, is ascribed to Servius Tullius. The Tarquins, who are represented as hostile to the nobility, must have relied upon the support of the plebeians, and we are told that upon the expulsion of the kings the patricians were compelled to make concessions to the plebeians in order to reconcile them to the republican government. We are told, moreover, that as soon as all danger of a restoration of the kings was passed the patricians showed themselves less conciliatory to the plebeians and that the latter were thus forced into an open rebellion which threatened the state with dissolution and was only brought to an end by fresh concessions on the part of the patricians. This rebellion is the famous secession to the sacred hill, the starting point of plebeian liberties to which we shall soon have to turn our attention. End of section 14