LITMIR.BIZ

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name of their general, or of some town in which they had taken up their temporary residence; now Æne'a and Æ'nus were common names of the Pelasgic towns; the city of Thessaloni'ca was erected on the site of the ancient Æne'a; there was an Æ'nus in Thrace,5 another in Thessaly,6 another among the Locrians, and another in Epi'rus:7 hence it is not very improbable but that some of the Pelasgic tribes which entered Latium may have been called the Æne'adæ; and the name, as in a thousand instances, preserved after the cause was forgotten. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact, that temples traditionally said to have been erected by a people called the Æne'adæ, are found in the Macedonian peninsula of Pall'ene,8 in the islands of De'los, Cythe'ra, Zacy'nthus, Leuca'dia, and Sicily, on the western coasts of Ambra'cia and Epi'rus, and on the southern coast of Sicily.

      The account of several Trojans, and especially Æne'as, having survived the destruction of the city, is as old as the earliest narrative of that famous siege; Homer distinctly asserts it when he makes Neptune declare,

      – Nor thus can Jove resign

      The future father of the Dardan line:

      The first great ancestor obtain'd his grace,

      And still his love descends on all the race.

      For Priam now, and Priam's faithless kind,

      At length are odious, to the all-seeing mind;

      On great Æneas shall devolve the reign,

      And sons succeeding sons the lasting line sustain.

ILIAD, xx.

      But long before the historic age, Phrygia and the greater part of the western shores of Asia Minor were occupied by Grecian colonies, and all remembrance of Æne'as and his followers lost. When the narrative of the Trojan war, with other Greek legends, began to be circulated in Lati'um, it was natural that the identity of name should have led to the confounding of the Æne'adæ who had survived the destruction of Troy, with those who had come to La'tium from the Pelasgic Æ'nus. The cities which were said to be founded by the Æne'adæ were, Latin Troy, which possessed empire for three years; Lavinium, whose sway lasted thirty; Alba, which was supreme for three hundred years; and Rome, whose dominion was to be interminable, though some assign a limit of three thousand years. These numbers bear evident traces of superstitious invention; and the legends by which these cities are successively deduced from the first encampment of Æne'as, are at variance with these fanciful periods. The account that Alba was built by a son of Æne'as, who had been guided to the spot by a white sow, which had farrowed thirty young, is clearly a story framed from the similarity of the name to Albus (white,) and the circumstance of the city having been the capital of the thirty Latin tribes. The city derived its name from its position on the Alban mountain; for Alb, or Alp, signifies lofty in the ancient language of Italy, and the emblem of a sow with thirty young, may have been a significant emblem of the dominion which it unquestionably possessed over the other Latin states. The only thing that we can establish as certain in the early history of La'tium is, that its inhabitants were of a mixed race, and the sources from whence they sprung Pelasgic and Oscan; that is, one connected with the Greeks, and the other with some ancient Italian tribe. We have seen that this fact is the basis of all their traditions, that it is confirmed by the structure of their language, and, we may add, that it is further proved by their political institutions. In all the Latin cities, as well as Rome, we find the people divided into an aristocracy and democracy, or, as they are more properly called, Patricians and Plebeians. The experience of all ages warrants the inference, which may be best stated in the words of Dr. Faber: "In the progress of the human mind there is an invariable tendency not to introduce into an undisturbed community a palpable difference between lords and serfs, instead of a legal equality of rights; but to abolish such difference by enfranchising the serfs. Hence, from the universal experience of history, we may be sure that whenever this distinction is found to exist, the society must be composed of two races differing from each other in point of origin."

      The traditions respecting the origin of Rome are innumerable; some historians assert that its founder was a Greek; others, Æneas and his Trojans; and others give the honour to the Tyrrhenians: all, however, agree, that the first inhabitants were a Latin colony from Alba. Even those who adopted the most current story, which is followed by Dr. Goldsmith, believed that the city existed before the time of Rom'ulus, and that he was called the founder from being the first who gave it strength and stability. It seems probable that several villages might have been formed at an early age on the different hills, which were afterwards included in the circuit of Rome; and that the first of them which obtained a decided superiority, the village on the Palatine hill, finally absorbed the rest, and gave its name to "the eternal city".

      There seems to be some uncertainty whether Romulus gave his name to the city, or derived his own from it; the latter is asserted by several historians, but those who ascribe to the city a Grecian origin, with some show of probability assert that Romus (another form of Romulus) and Roma are both derived from the Greek ῥωμη, strength. The city, we are assured, had another name, which the priests were forbidden to divulge; but what that was, it is now impossible to discover.

      We have thus traced the history of the Latins down to the period when Rome was founded, or at least when it became a city, and shown how little reliance can be placed on the accounts given of these periods by the early historians. We shall hereafter see that great uncertainty rests on the history of Rome itself during the first four centuries of its existence.

       CHAPTER III.

      THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ROME

      Full in the centre of these wondrous works

      The pride of earth! Rome in her glory see. —Thomson.

      1. The city of Rome, according to Varro, was founded in the fourth year of the sixth Olympiad, B.C. 753; but Cato, the censor, places the event four years later, in the second year of the seventh Olympiad. The day of its foundation was the 21st of April, which was sacred to the rural goddess Pa'les, when the rustics were accustomed to solicit the increase of their flocks from the deity, and to purify themselves for involuntary violation of the consecrated places. The account preserved by tradition of the ceremonies used on this occasion, confirms the opinion of those who contend that Rome had a previous existence as a village, and that what is called its foundation was really an enlargement of its boundaries, by taking in the ground at the foot of the Palatine hill. The first care of Ro'mulus was to mark out the Pomœ'rium; a space round the walls of the city, on which it was unlawful to erect buildings.

      2. The person who determined the Pomœ'rium yoked a bullock and heifer to a plough, having a copper-share, and drew a furrow to mark the course of the future wall; he guided the plough so that all the sods might fall inwards, and was followed by others, who took care that none should lie the other way. 3. When he came to the place where it was designed to erect a gate, the plough was taken up,9 and carried to where the wall recommenced. The next ceremony was the consecration of the commit'ium, or place of public assembly. A vault was built under ground, and filled with the firstlings of all the natural productions that sustain human life, and with earth which each foreign settler had brought from his own home. This place was called Mun'dus, and was supposed to become the gate of the lower world; it was opened on three several days of the year, for the spirits of the dead.

      4. The next addition made to the city was the Sabine town,10 which occupied the Quirinal and part of the Capitoline hills. The name of this town most probably was Qui'rium, and from it the Roman people received the name Quirites. The two cities were united on terms of equality, and the double-faced Ja'nus stamped on the earliest Roman coins was probably a symbol of the double state. They were at first so disunited, that even the rights of intermarriage did not exist between them, and it was probably from Qui'rium that the Roman youths obtained the wives11 by force, which were refused to their entreaties. 5. The

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