Although it is thus evident that, at different periods, seven-fold division was carried out in ancient Rome, it was not until after the reign of Theodosius, according to some authors, that the seven-day [pg 465] period was imported from Alexandria and the term “septimana” adopted in Rome. “Previously to this Rome had counted her periods by eight days, the eighth day itself being originally called Nundinæ—a term later applied to the whole cycle” (Chambers' Encyclopædia). Noting that the period of eight (=2×4) days accords with the quadruplicate system applied to the primitive state, I draw attention to the numerical classification of the citizens of Rome employed during centuries, which so curiously agrees with the system carried out in Peru at a widely sundered period (see p. [141]).
Ten households formed a gens (clan or family); ten clans or one hundred households formed a curia or wardship; and ten wardships, or one hundred clans, or one thousand households formed a populus, civitas or community. As it is stated that, at one time, Rome consisted of four cities, it is obvious that the above numbers, quadrupled, constituted the state which thus included forty wardships, four hundred gentes and four thousand households. As each gens possessed a chieftain, endowed with paternal authority over its members, there must, at one time, have been four hundred of these “patricians,” whose number is thus found to correspond to the Greek “Council of 400” and curiously enough to the “four hundred Tochtli” or governors of the ancient Mexican commonwealth.
A noteworthy feature of the attempt to institute the Decemvirate in Rome (5th century B.C.) was the arrangement that the ten chosen men exercised office in prescribed rotation for one day, each ruling, in consequence, for thirty-six days in the year which, like the Egyptian, then consisted of three hundred and sixty days and of an epact of five days. The assignment of a day to each chieftain finds its parallel not only in Assyria but also in ancient America (see p. [181]).
In connection with the Roman communal organization, attention is drawn to what appears to be a remarkable survival of an extremely ancient and natural mode of distinguishing the wardships. It is well known that, according to tradition, the republic of Siena, Italy, was founded at a remote period “by the sons of Remus, the twin brother of Romulus.” The following facts prove that, to this day, certain features of its social organization exhibit an affinity to that of primitive Rome. “Siena, from the earliest day, has been divided into contrade or parishes. Each contrada has its special church, generally of great antiquity, and each contrada is [pg 466] named after some animal, or natural object, these names being symbolical of certain trades or customs. There are now the wolf, giraffe, owl, snail, tower, wave, goose, tortoise, etc., in all seventeen. Each has its colors, heralds, pages, music, flags; all the mediæval paraphernalia of republican subdivision” (Frances Eliot, Diary of an idle woman in Italy i, p. 19).
The employment of the names of animals and natural objects as distinctive marks for a wardship offers a curious analogy to the American institution of tribal names and totems.
The circumstance that, in remotest times, the king of Rome, the acknowledged metropolis or mother city, was accompanied, on public occasions, by twelve lictors or administrators of justice, each carrying the axe tied in a bundle of rods, shows that, at one time, the government was administered by thirteen individuals—a method we shall find again in ancient Ireland and Scandinavia. The history of Rome reveals that the different variants of governmental scheme adopted, one after the other, under influences emanating from Greece and Egypt, were reared upon the familiar universal plan. The most striking instance of this is, however, furnished by the details preserved of the groundwork on which Constantine founded (A.D. 330) the city he intended to be the capital of a universal empire, and named the New or Second Rome.
Historians relate that the peninsula of Byzantium offered striking resemblances to the sites of Carthage and Rome. The design of Constantine embraced the entire peninsula with the seven hills upon it. “On foot, with a lance in his hand, professing to be under the guidance of divine inspiration, the emperor directed the line which was traced as the boundary of the destined capital.” ... “In imitation of Rome at that period, the city was divided into 2×7=fourteen wards (regiones).... Its centre was marked by a column ... surmounted by a bronze colossus of Apollo. The church of S. Sophia, built on the site of an ancient temple of Wisdom, was subsequently dedicated to 'the Holy Eternal Wisdom' by Justinian. In the court called the Forum Augusteum, one side of which was formed by the palace and the other by the church, stood the Milliarium Aureum, not, as at Rome, a gilt marble pillar, but a spacious edifice, the centre from which all the roads of the empire were measured and on the walls of which the distances to all the chief places were inscribed.... In the new reunited empire quadruple division was maintained, the [pg 467] empire being divided into four parts, each forming a prætorian prefecture under a prætorian prefect, who, being the lieutenant of the emperor, ruled over the governors and people of the province with absolute power. The four prefectures were subdivided into thirteen dioceses, each governed by a vice-prefect named vicarius, the total number of dioceses being fifty-two.”
This system of numeration is of particular interest as it is not only identical with the system of a modern pack of cards, the origin of which is unknown, but is also the same as the Mexican year cycle (see p. [297]). Vestiges of sevenfold organization are traceable in the appointment by Constantine, of “seven ministers of the palace” who exercised “sacred” functions about the person of the emperor, and the division of all Gaul into seven provinces placed under the governorship of the Vicar of the Seven Provinces. In conclusion I venture to point out that the four-storied amphitheatre of Vespasian (A.D. 71), the Pantheon of Agrippa (A.D. 23) and the Mausoleum of Hadrian (A.D. 138) appear to have a cosmical character, the first having been planned to hold the entire population of Rome, around a central space in which, originally, the circling chariot simulated the circuit of the celestial “plaustrum” or “carro”=chariot, the Latin name given to Ursa Major.
While, on public festivals, the amphitheatre must have appeared as a synopsis of the whole empire and may also have been originally used for nocturnal, religious or political assemblages, the great Pantheon enclosing the images of twelve deities, may well have been a conscious attempt to represent the all-embracing Cosmos of Egyptian and Greek philosophy, the framed view of the heaven, seen through the central opening in the dome, being the symbol of the “hidden and invisible god,” of the initiated. To Hadrian, who visited Egypt twice and was undoubtedly acquainted with the idea of Plato's Cosmos or Theos, the idea of building a great circular structure in the centre of which he would be laid to rest, would naturally have suggested itself. Passing from a consideration of the buildings which, with the pyramids, appear to be among the grandest exponents of natural philosophy and religion ever reared by the hand of man, and clearly appear to have been planned under the direct influence of Egyptian and Greek philosophy, let us briefly glance at the mode in which the identical fundamental scheme was perpetuated among some northern peoples.
ANCIENT IRELAND, BRITAIN AND WALES.