[220] Pais, ibid. 217 ff. Dionysius, i. 4. 2 f., expressly states that this story is a Greek falsification.
[221] See the examples collected by Pais, ibid.
[222] Cf. Livy i. 8. 5.
[223] Cf. ibid. ii. 1. 4.
[224] Dionysius, i. 85. 3, states that the colonists from Alba were mostly plebeians, but that a considerable number of the highest nobility accompanied them. It is a significant fact, however, that no patrician family is known to have derived its origin from this earliest colony. Those who claimed Alban and Trojan descent preferred to connect their admission to citizenship with the Roman annexation of Alba Longa, e.g. the Tullii, Servilii, Quinctii, Geganii, Curiatii, and Cloelii; Livy i. 30. 2. On the Alban and Sabine origin of most of the nobility, Livy iv. 4. 7. In so far as the local cognomina are indicative of origin (cf. Willems, Sén. Rom. i. 11 ff.), they point to a diversity of foreign connections. The Tarquinian gens, which in later time was thought of as patrician, came from Etruria, ultimately from Greece. The Aemilii were Greek (Plut. Aem. 1; Fest. ep. 23) or Sabine (Plut. Num. 8) or Oscan (Fest. 130. 1).
[225] Cf. p. 31 above. For details, see Pol. Sci. Quart. xxii. 679 ff.
[226] That Caere was the first community to receive the civitas sine suffragio may justly be inferred from the expression “Caerite franchise,” which designates this kind of limited citizenship (cf. p. 62). The general fact stated in (6) is further confirmed by the law which granted the right of extending the pomerium to those magistrates only who had acquired new territory for Rome; Gell. xiii. 14. 3; Tacitus, Ann. xii. 23.
[227] Since the publication of the Staatsrecht, writers have made slight modifications or extensions of the conventional theory. Greenidge, in Poste, Gaii Institutiones, xix, suggests that the dual forms in Roman law may have as their basis a racial distinction between the patricians and the plebeians. A serious objection to this kind of reasoning is that if we are on the lookout for dualities, trinities, and the like, we shall find them in abundance everywhere. All sorts of theories as to the racial connections of the two social classes have been proposed. Zöller, Latium und Rom, 23 ff., supposes that the patricians were Sabine and the plebeians Latin. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, i. 257, holds that the plebeians were Ligurians, whereas Conway, in Riv. di Stor. ant. vii (1903). 422-4, prefers to consider them Volscians. These notions are equally worthless. Undoubtedly race is a potent factor in history; but Gumplowicz, Rassenkampf (1883), has killed the theory by overwork.
Among the writers who have rejected the conventional view are Soltau, Altröm. Volksversamml. (1880); Bernhöft, Röm. Königsz. (1882); Pelham, Outlines of Roman History (1893; reprint of his article on “Roman History,” in the Encycl. Brit.); Meyer, Gesch. d. Alt. ii (1893); Holzapfel, in Beitr. z. alt. Gesch. i (1902). 254.
[228] Meyer, Gesch. d. Alt. ii. 80; Featherman, Social History of the Races of Mankind, ii. 408; Hellwald, Culturgeschichte, i. 175; Barth, Philosophie der Geschichte, i. 382. It would be practicable by the citation of authorities to prove the existence of such distinctions in nearly every community, present or past, whose social condition is sufficiently known.