The kingly power lasted a hundred and forty-four years, and at its fall Rome had become the most powerful state in Latium. The town was of vast extent, for, even at that epoch, the seven hills were nearly all inclosed within a wall protected internally and externally by a consecrated space called the Pomœrium.[9]
This line of inclosure remained long the same, although the increase of the population had led to the establishment of immense suburbs, which finally inclosed the Pomœrium itself.[10]
The Roman territory properly so called was circumscribed, but that of the subjects and allies of Rome was already rather considerable. Some colonies had been founded. The kings, by a skilful policy, had succeeded in drawing into their dependence a great number of neighbouring states, and, when Tarquinius Superbus assembled the Hernici, the Latins, and the Volsci, for a ceremony destined to seal his alliance with them, forty-seven different petty states took part in the inauguration of the temple of Jupiter Latialis.[11]
The foundation of Ostia, by Ancus Martius, at the mouth of the Tiber, shows that already the political and commercial importance of facilitating communication with the sea was understood; while the treaty of commerce concluded with Carthage at the time of the fall of the kingly power, the details of which are preserved by Polybius, indicates more extensive foreign relations than we might have supposed.[12]
Social Organisation.
II. The Roman social body, which originated probably in ancient transformations of society, consisted, from the earliest ages, of a certain number of aggregations, called gentes, formed of the families of the conquerors, and bearing some resemblance to the clans of Scotland or to the Arabian tribes. The heads of families (patresfamilias) and their members (patricii) were united among themselves, not only by kindred, but also by political and religious ties. Hence arose an hereditary nobility having for distinctive marks family names, special costume,[13] and waxen images of their ancestors (jus imaginum).
The plebeians, perhaps a race who had been conquered at an earlier period, were, in regard to the dominant race, in a situation similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons in regard to the Normans in the eleventh century of our era, after the invasion of England. They were generally agriculturists, excluded originally from all military and civil office.[14]
The patrician families had gathered round them, under the name of clients, either foreigners, or a great portion of the plebeians. Dionysius of Halicarnassus even pretends that Romulus had required that each of these last should choose himself a patron.[15] The clients cultivated the fields and formed part of the family.[16] The relation of patronage had created such reciprocal obligations as amounted almost to the ties of kindred. For the patrons, they consisted in giving assistance to their clients in affairs public and private; and for the latter, in aiding constantly the patrons with their person and purse, and in preserving towards them an inviolable fidelity: they could not cite each other reciprocally in law, or bear witness one against the other, and it would have been a scandal to see them take different sides in a political question. It was a state of things which had some analogy to feudalism; the great protected the little, and the little paid for protection by rents and services; yet there was this essential difference, that the clients were not serfs, but free men.
Slavery had long formed one of the constituent parts of society. The slaves, taken among foreigners and captives,[17] and associated in all the domestic labours of the family, often received their liberty as a recompense for their conduct. They were then named freedmen, and were received among the clients of the patron, without sharing in all the rights of a citizen.[18]
The gens thus consisted of the reunion of patrician families having a common ancestor; around it was grouped a great number of clients, freedmen, and slaves. To give an idea of the importance of the gentes in the first ages of Rome, it is only necessary to remind the reader that towards the year 251, a certain Attus Clausus, afterwards called Appius Claudius, a Sabine of the town of Regillum, distinguished, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, no less for the splendour of his birth than for his great wealth, took refuge among the Romans with his kinsmen, his friends, and his clients, with all their families, to the number of five thousand men capable of bearing arms.[19] When, in 275, the three hundred Fabii, forming the gens Fabia, offered alone to fight the Veians, they were followed by four thousand clients.[20] The high class often reckoned, by means of its numerous adherents, on carrying measures by itself. In 286, the plebeians having refused to take part in the consular comitia, the patricians, followed by their clients, elected the consuls;[21] and in 296, a Claudius declared with pride that the nobility had no need of the plebeians to carry on war against the Volsci.[22] The families of ancient origin long formed the state by themselves. To them exclusively the name of populus applied,[23] as that of plebs was given to the plebeians.[24] Indeed, although in the sequel the word populus took a more extensive signification, Cicero says that it is to be understood as applying, not to the universality of the inhabitants, but to a reunion of men associated by a community of rights and interests.[25]