This was long ago recognized by Schwegler (see his Römische Geschichte, passim) on the sufficient ground of the great religious cleavage between the two orders. Such jealousy of mutual contact in religious matters as is apparent all through the history of the city very rarely, if ever, springs from any other source than a real difference of race. This point was developed by Professor W. Ridgeway in his Who were the Romans? (London, 1908), where he points out (a) that the deities tended by the three greater or patrician flamens, namely, Dialis, Martialis, Quirinalis, were all closely connected with the Sabines; (b) further, that the patrician form of marriage, the highly religious ceremony called Confarreatio, differed entirely from the other forms, Usus and Coemptio, which there is reason to attribute to a plebeian origin; (c) that the arms, especially the round shield, carried by the first class in the originally military constitution of Servius Tullius (see below), are characteristic of the warriors of Central Europe in the Early Iron and Bronze Age, whereas those of the remaining classes can be shown to have been in general use during the immediately preceding period in the Mediterranean lands.
For other archaeological evidence separating the patricians from the plebeians, and connecting the patricians closely with the Sabines the reader must be referred to Ridgeway's essay. It is, however, well to make special mention here of the tradition, which is given by Livy (ii. 16. 4), and is undated but not the less probable for being a non-annalistic tradition, preserved in the gens itself, of the prompt welcome given to the Sabine Appius Claudius, the founder of the haughtiest of all the Roman noble families, by the patricians of Rome and his immediate admission to all their political privileges. Ridgeway points out that this implies, at that early time, a substantial identity of race.
On the linguistic side of the question it is well to mention for clearness' sake that this Safine or patrician class marked its ascendancy all over Central and Southern Italy, from the 6th century B.C. onwards, by its preference for forming ethnic names with the suffix -no- which it frequently imposed also upon the communities whom it brought under its influence. Sabini (earlier Safini), Romani, Latini, Sidicini, Aricini, Marrucini, and the like are all names formed in this way (see further Sabini).
2. It may also now be regarded as certain that what we may call the Lower or Earlier Stratum (or Strata) of population in Rome, themselves spoke a language which was as truly Indo-European as the language of their Safine conquerors. In the article Volsci will be found evidence for the conclusion that the language of what has been there entitled the Co-Folk was not less certainly Indo-European, and in some respects probably a less modified form of Indo-European, than that of the Safines. A number of the names formed with the -co- suffix and with the -ati- suffix (which is frequent in the same districts) contain unmistakably Indo-European words such as Graviscae, Marica, dea Marica, Volsci, Casinates, Soracte, Interamnites, Auxumates. The fusion of this earlier population with the patricians is far easier to imagine when it is recognized that the two parties spoke kindred though by no means identical languages. It is the essentially Indo-European character of the early inhabitants of the Latin plain which has led many scholars to doubt that there was any racial distinction at all between patricians and plebeians, but the increase of knowledge of the dialects spoken in the different regions of Italy has now enabled us to judge this question with very much fuller evidence.
3. There arises, however, the important question or questions as to the origin, or at least the ethnic connexions of this earlier stratum. The task of the historic inquirer will not be completely performed until at least some further progress has been made in connecting this earlier population of the western coast of Italy, on the one hand, with one or more of the early races (see Siculi, Veneti, Liguria, Pelasgians) whom tradition declares to have once inhabited the soil of Latium; and on the other, with the people or peoples whom archaeological research reveals to us as having left behind them different strata of remains, all earlier than the Iron or Roman Age, both in Latium and in other parts of Italy. Professor Ridgeway has taken a short way with these problems which may prove to be the true one; he classes together as Ligurian all pre-Safine inhabitants of Italy save such elements as, like the Etruscans, can be shown to have invaded it over sea (see Etruria, § Language). This is one of the most promising fields of investigation now open to scholars, but in view of the confused and mutilated shape in which the traditions current in ancient times have come down to us, it demands an exceedingly careful scrutiny of the archaeological and the linguistic evidence, and exceedingly cautious judgment in combining them. The point of outstanding importance is to determine whether the earlier Indo-European population is to be regarded as having been in Italy from the beginning of human habitation. Archaeologists generally like W. Helbig (Die Italiker der Poebene) and more recently B. Modestov (Introduction à l'histoire romaine, Paris, 1907) have been inclined to regard the Ligurians as the most primitive population of Italy, but to distinguish them sharply from the people who built the Lake Settlement and Pile Dwellings, which appear (with important variations of type):—(1) in the western half of the valley of the Po; (2) in the eastern half of the same; (3) in Picenum; (4) in Latium; and (5) as far south as Tarentum. One of the most important points in the identification is the question of the method of burial employed at different epochs by the different communities. (See the works already cited, with that of O. Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Italie.)
The populus Romanus was, we are told, divided into three tribes, Ramnes, Tities and Luceres,[1] and into thirty curiae. The three names, as Schulze has shown (Lat. Eigennamen, p. 580), are neither more nor less than the names of three Etruscan gentes (whether The people. or not derived from Safine or Latin originals), and the tradition is a striking result of the Etruscan domination in the 6th century B.C.,[2] which we shall shortly consider.
Of far greater importance is the division into curiae. In Cicero's time there were still curies, curial festivals and curiate assemblies, and modern authors are unquestionably right in regarding the curia as the keystone of the primitive political system. It was a primitive association held together by participation in common sacra, and possessing common festivals, common priests and a common chapel, hall and hearth. As separate associations the curiae were probably older than the Roman state, but,[3] however this may be, it is certain that of this state when formed they constituted the only effective political subdivisions. The members of the thirty curiae form the populus Romanus, and the earliest known condition of Roman citizenship is the communio sacrorum, partnership in the curial sacra. Below the curia there was no further political division, for there is no reason to believe that the curia was ever formally subdivided into a fixed number of gentes and families.[4]
At their head was the rex, the ruler of the united people. The Roman “king” is not simply either the hereditary and patriarchal chief of a clan, the priestly head of a community bound together by common sacra, but the elected magistrate of a state, but a mixture of all The king.three.[5] In
- ↑ The tradition connecting the Ramnes with Romulus and the Tities with Tatius is as old as Ennius (Varro, L.L. v. 55). The best authorities on the question, earlier than Schulze's epoch making treatise, are Schwegler i. 505, and Volquardsen, Rhein. Mus. xxxiii. 538.
- ↑ They are traditionally connected only with the senate of 300 patres, with the primitive legion of 3000, with the vestal virgins, and with the augurs (Varro, L.L. v. 81, 89, 91; Livy x. 6; Festus 344; Mommsen i. 41, 74, 75; Genz, Patricisch. Rom, 90).
- ↑ It is possible that the curiae were originally connected with separate localities; cf. such names as Foriensis, Veliensis (Fest. 174; Gilbert i. 213).
- ↑ Niebuhr's supposition of ten gentes in each curia has nothing in its favour but the confused statement of Dionysius as to the purely military δέκαδες (Dionys. ii. 7; cf. Müller, Philologus, xxxiv. 96).
- ↑ Rubino, Genz and Lange insisted on the hereditary patriarchal character of the kingship, Ihne on its priestly side, Schwegler on its elective. Mommsen came nearest to the view taken in the text, but failed to bring out the nature of the compromise on which the kingship rests.
