The Latin League. The realization of the racial unity of the [pg 26]Latins was expressed in the annual festival of Jupiter Latiaris celebrated on the Alban Mount. For a long time also the Latin cities formed a league, of which there were thirty members according to tradition. Actually, about the middle of the fifth century there were only some eight cities participating in the association upon an independent footing. The central point of the league was the grove and temple of Diana at Aricia, and it was in the neighborhood of Aricia that the meetings of the assembly of the league were held. The league possessed a very loose organization, but we know of a common executive head—the Latin dictator.
II. The Origins of Rome
The site of Rome. Rome, the Latin Roma, is situated on the Tiber about fifteen miles from the sea. The Rome of the later Republic and the Empire, the City of the Seven Hills, included the three isolated eminences of the Capitoline, Palatine and Aventine, and the spurs of the adjoining plateau, called the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Caelian. Other ground, also on the left bank of the river, and likewise part of Mount Janiculum, across the Tiber, were included in the city. But this extent was only attained after a long period of growth, and early Rome was a town of much smaller area.
The growth of the city. Late Roman historians placed the founding of Rome about the year 753 B. C., and used this date as a basis for Roman chronology. However, it is absolutely impossible to assign anything like a definite date for the establishment of the city. Excavations have revealed that in the early Iron Age several distinct settlements were perched upon the Roman hills, separated from one another by low, marshy ground, flooded by the Tiber at high water. These were probably typical Latin walled villages (oppida).
At a very early date some of these villages formed a religious union commemorated in the festival of the Septimontium or Seven Mounts. These montes were crests of the Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills, perhaps each the site of a separate settlement.
But the earliest city to which we can with certainty give the name of Rome is of later date than the establishment of the Septimontium. It is the Rome of the Four Regions—the Palatina, Esquilina, Col[pg 27]lina and Sucusana (later Suburana)—which included the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian and Palatine hills, as well as the intervening low ground. Within the boundary of this city, but not included in the four regions, was the Capitoline, which had separate fortifications and served as the citadel (arx). It may be that the organization of this city of the Four Regions was effected by Etruscan conquerors, for the name Roma seems to be of Etruscan origin, and, for the Romans, an urbs, as they called Rome, was merely an oppidum of which the limits had been marked out according to Etruscan ritual. The consecrated boundary line drawn in this manner was called the pomerium.
The Aventine Hill, as well as the part of the plateau back of the Esquiline, was only brought within the city walls in the fourth century, and remained outside the pomerium until the time of Claudius.
The location of Rome, on the Tiber at a point where navigation for sea-going vessels terminated and where an island made easy the passage from bank to bank, marked it as a place of commercial importance. It was at the same time the gateway between Latium and Etruria and the natural outlet for the trade of the Tiber valley. Furthermore, its central position in the Italian peninsula gave it a strategic advantage in its wars for the conquest of Italy. But the greatness of Rome was not the result of its geographic advantages: it was the outgrowth of the energy and political capacity of its people, qualities which became a national heritage because of the character of the early struggles of the Roman state.
Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the result of a fusion of several racial elements—Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people. In language, in religion, in political institutions, they were characteristically Latin, and their history is inseparably connected with that of the Latins as a whole.