A Manual of Ancient History / Particularly with Regard to the Constitutions, the Commerce, and the Colonies, of the States of Antiquity

by A. H. L. Heeren

General characteristic of Roman history.

1. In certain respects, the history of Rome is always that of one town, inasmuch as until the period of the Cæsars, the city continued mistress of her extensive territory. The main parts of the internal constitution of Rome were formed during this first period; which, considered in an historical point of view, can hardly be said to be void of interest. Whether every fundamental institution had its origin precisely at the epoch to which it is attributed, is a question of little importance; it is sufficient to observe, that they certainly arose in this period; and that the steps by which the constitution was developed are, upon the whole, determined beyond the possibility of a doubt.

Romans of Latin origin.

2. Exaggerated and embellished as the most ancient traditions of the Romans respecting their origin may be, they all agree in this, that the Romans belonged to the race of the Latini, and that their city was a colony of the neighbouring Alba Longa. Long before this the custom seems to have obtained with the Latini, of extending the cultivation of their country by colonies.

The primitive history of Rome is as difficult to reduce to pure historic truth as that of Athens, or any other city of antiquity; this proceeds from its being principally founded on traditions, handled by poets and rhetoricians, and likewise differing from one another; as may be seen in Plutarch's Romulus. As the knowledge of those traditions, such as they are found in Dionysius and Livy, attaches to so many other subjects, it would be improper to pass them over in silence; and that they contained truths as well as poetic fictions is proved most evidently by the political institutions of which they narrate the origin, and which certainly reached back to those times. To attempt to draw a line of demarcation between mythical and historic times would be to mistake the real nature of mythology.

L. de Beaufort, Sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l'histoire Romaine, nouv. éd. à la Haye, 1750, 2 vols. 8vo. Every thing that can be said against the credibility of the primitive Roman history has been developed by Beaufort with abundant, and often with laboured, acuteness.

Kings of Rome.

3. During the first two hundred and forty-five years subsequent to its foundation this city was under the rule of governors, denominated kings; these, however, were not hereditary, still less were they invested with unlimited power, although they exerted themselves to become both perpetual and absolute. On the contrary, in this period was framed a municipal constitution, demonstrative of the existence, even at this early date, of a considerable degree of political civilization; in its principal parts this constitution was, no doubt,—as in every colony,—copied from that of the mother city. Its principal features were: a. Establishment and internal organization of the senate. b. Establishment and progress of the patrician or hereditary nobility, which, supported by the privilege of administering the sacred affairs, and by the introduction of family names, quickly formed, in opposition to the plebeians, a political party ever growing in power, although not, therefore, a mere sacerdotal caste. c. Organization of the people (populus), and modes of popular assembly (comitia), founded thereupon; besides the original division according to heads into tribus and curiæ, another was subsequently introduced according to property into classes and centuriæ, out of which, besides the more ancient comitia curiata, arose the very artificially constructed comitia centuriata. d. Religious institutions, (religiones,) which being most closely connected with the political constitution, formed a state religion, by means of which everything in the state was attached to determined forms, and received a higher sanction. Nor must we omit e. the relations in private life established by law, the clientship, marriage, and especially paternal authority. In consequence of those domestic relations, a spirit of subordination and discipline, from the earliest times, pervaded the people; and to that spirit the Romans were indebted for the glory to which they attained.

Destruction of Alba Longa.