looming in the distance a dynastically secure universal monarchy of his house — the Classical world fell apart into innumerable petty points, which, almost as soon as they came into existence, started to do that which for Classical mankind was almost a necessity of thought and the purest expression of autarkeia — to destroy one another.[1]
Synœcism with its consequence, the creation of the Polis-type proper, was exclusively the work of aristocracy. It was they that established the Classical city-state, and for themselves alone; it was the drawing-together of country nobility and patriciate that brought it into form. The vocational classes were already on the spot, and the peasantry ceased to count from the class point of view. And by the concentration of noble power at one point the kingship of the feudal period was shattered.
With these glimpses into Greece to go upon, we may venture, though under all reserves of course, to outline the history of primitive Rome. The Roman synœcism — the assembling of widely scattered noble families — is identical with the "founding" of the city, an Etruscan undertaking of the beginning of the seventh century.[2] Facing the royal stronghold of the Capitol, there had long been two other settlements on the Palatine and the Quirinal. To the first of these belonged the ancient goddess Diva Rumina[3] and the Etruscan Ruma clan;[4] the god of the second was Quirinus Pater. From these comes the dual name of Romans and "Quirites," and the dual priesthoods of the Salii and Luperci, which adhered to the two hills. Now, as the three blood-tribes named Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres are in all probability common to all Etruscan localities,[5] they must have existed in both of those which concern us here; and thus are explained, on the one hand, the number six of centuries of equites, of military tribunes, of aristocratic Vestals, and, on the other, the number two of the prætors (or consuls) who were, quite early, attached to the King as representatives of the nobles and gradually deprived him of all influence. Already by 600 the constitution of Rome must have been a strong oligarchy of "Patres" with a shadow-kingship[6] as figure-head. Thus both the older theory of an expulsion of the kings, and the newer of a slow disintegration of the royal power, can stand side by side after all, the former as referring to the fall of the Tarquinian Tyrannis, which (as everywhere else in the Classical world — Pisistratus in Athens, for example) had set itself up in opposition to the oli-
- ↑ This contrast gives rise to a corresponding contrast in idea of colonization. Whereas, e.g., the Prussian sovereigns invited settlers to their land (Salzburg Protestants, French Huguenots), Gelon forcibly transferred the populations of whole cities into Syracuse, which thus became the first megalopolis of the Classical world (c. 480).
- ↑ The Greek lecythi found in graves on the Esquiline date from this period.
- ↑ Wissowa, Religion der Römer, p. 141.
- ↑ W. Schulze, Zur Geschichte lateinischen Eigennamen, pp. 379, et. seq., 580, et seq.
- ↑ See p. 351.
- ↑ This is seen also in the relation of the Pontifex Maximus to the Rex Sacrorum — the latter with the three great Flamens to the kingship, the Pontifices and the Vestals to the aristocracy.
