ROMANS—THE REPUBLICANS.
AUTHORITIES:
Corpus Juris, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Niebuhr, Arnold, Savigny, Puchta, Mommsen, Jhring, Clinton, Carl Hegel, Zumpt, etc.
The primitive occupants of the Mediterranean peninsula—anciently, and at the present time, called Italy—issued from the same Aryan stock as peopled Greece. These immigrants, almost from the first moment of their arrival, seem to have devoted themselves to agriculture, as all the relics still dimly visible in prehistoric twilight certify to this fact. Thus, the domestic legend of the Samnites makes an ox the leader of the primitive colonies, which is only a different version of another tradition, according to which Vitulus or Italus—a legendary king, from whom the name of "Italy" is derived—brought about among his subjects the transition from shepherds to farmers. The name Italia, in ancient Latin, signified a country full of cattle. The oldest of the Latin tribes has the name of Siculi, Sicani, reapers, and another, Opsci, or field-laborers. Among the Italians (or Italos, Italiots), the legends, creeds, laws, and manners all originate in agriculture; while every one knows the use of the plough in the distant background of the legendary foundation of Rome. The oldest Roman matrimonial rite, the confarreatio, also has its name from rye. With agriculture is primarily connected a fixed abode, and thus springs up the love of home and family. From agricultural life arises the tribe or clan, which is simply a community of individuals descending from the same ancestor. In this primitive condition the field-labors and domestic occupations were performed by various members, first of the family, and then of the clan. The servus or servant of that epoch was no more a chattel in the Latin agricultural family and community than was the primitive servant in the tent of the patriarchs (see "Hebrews" and "Aryas"), or than were the servants of the first colonists in New England, Virginia, or the Carolinas. In these primitive households there were no duties for a chattel, for from the earliest time agricultural and household occupations were as sacred to the yeomen and peasants of Latium and Rome as were the domestic hearth, the father, and the family.
From the left bank of the Tiber to the Volscian mountains, and over the plains of the Campagna, lived the Latins—the prisci Latini. They were divided into numerous distinct families or clans, which afterward were the generators of the Roman people. The region where they first appear, in the most ancient times, was therefore settled by separate families, and divided into separate townships and villages. These clans it was which afterward in "the city" constituted the primitive tribus rusticæ or rural tribes.
The Ramnes, Ramneis, Romaneis, Romani or Romans, the founders of Rome, were, in all probability, bold rovers and adventurers from the various tribes and villages of Latium. They lived among the bushes and groves of the Palatine Mount, and what they acquired by depredation was common property. These primitive legendary Romans had no use for slaves; they had no mart in which to sell them, and it is probable that they neither kidnapped nor enslaved any of the neighboring villagers. Neither legend nor history fixes positively how long these Ramnenses or Romans persevered in their wild mode of life. The legend very soon unites them with other settled families, such as the Sabine farmers and peasantry. Then began the specific organized existence of the Romans.
The whole soil of the Roman community constituted an ager Romanus or publicus. Every citizen, as a part of the populus or state, received therefrom a share of the public land for his private use. When the Romans extended their dominions by subduing the neighboring villages and districts, the lands of such districts, their pasturages, etc., were incorporated into the ager Romanus, and the inhabitants were sometimes obliged to settle in Rome or in lands in its vicinity. From these originated the plebeians, who, under certain conditions, received shares or lots in the ager publicus or Romanus. The aim of these primitive wars was neither to kidnap nor enslave the subdued tribes, nor even to transform them into serfs or Helots, at the utmost to make them tributaries.
To the legendary Romulus were attributed the regulations or laws which forbade the massacre or enslavement of the male youth of conquered villages or districts, and prohibited also the transformation of the conquered lands into pasturages, and provided that they should be parcelled into small homesteads for Roman citizens. At first two acres, and afterward seven, constituted such a civic patrimony or homestead. It was the abandonment of this law in after ages which generated slavery and the ruin of the populace.
Only the prisoners made on the battle-field and counted among the spoils, were sold by the state at public auction: sub hasta, "under the spear," and sub corona, "the citizen wearing a crown"—to the citizens or members of the community. Such prisoner, like all other vended booty, became a mancipium, res mancipia, (from manu capere, "taken, caught by the hand.") Such slaves, in all probability, were not numerous. A more prolific source of slavery was the right to enslave a debtor for life. The debtor became a mancipium; and even when the right to enslave him was abolished, the legal formality of catching him or touching by the hand, was maintained.