The History of Rome. Book II

4. Hecataeus (after 257 u. c.) and Herodotus also (270-after 345) only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes its shores (O. Muller, Etrusker, i. p. 140; Geogr. Graeci min. ed. C. Muller, i. p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea, in its more extended sense, first occurs in the so-called Scylax about 418 U. C.

5. II. II. Coriolanus.

6. Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur: rem militarem et argute loqui (Cato, Orig, l. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).

7. It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there is a closer affinity between the Celts and Italians than there is even between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and Celts. This hypothesis commends itself much to acceptance in a geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civilization may very well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian - in fact we know nothing of the earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however, seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples.

8. The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24). But the association of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research; and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may have taken place at a very early period; but the great overflowing of northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half of the third century of the city.

In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority of the legend, but on his own conjecture.

Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that must remain undecided.

9. This is according to the current computation 390 B. C.; but, in fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B. C., and has been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the Roman calendar.

10. I. XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy.

CHAPTER V Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome.

1. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium.

2. The original equality of the two armies is evident from Liv. i. 52; viii. 8, 14, and Dionys. viii, 15; but most clearly from Polyb. vi. 26.

3. Dionysius (viii. 15) expressly states, that in the later federal treaties between Rome and Latium the Latin communities were interdicted from calling out their contingents of their own motion and sending them into the field alone.

4. These Latin staff-officers were the twelve praefecti sociorum, who subsequently, when the old phalanx had been resolved into the later legions and alae, had the charge of the two alae of the federal contingents, six to each ala, just as the twelve war-tribunes of the Roman army had charge of the two legions, six to each legion. Polybius (vi. 26, 5) states that the consul nominated the former, as he originally nominated the latter. Now, as according to the ancient maxim of law, that every person under obligation of service might become an officer (p. 106), it was legally allowable for the general to appoint a Latin as leader of a Roman, as well as conversely a Roman as leader of a Latin, legion, this led to the practical result that the tribuni militum were wholly, and the praefecti sociorum at least ordinarily, Romans.

5. These were the decuriones turmarum and praefecti cohortium (Polyb. vi. 21, 5; Liv. xxv. 14; Sallust. Jug. 69, et al.)  Of course, as the Roman consuls were in law and ordinarily also in fact commanders-in-chief, the presidents of the community in the dependent towns also were perhaps throughout, or at least very frequently, placed at the head of the community-contingents (Liv. xxiii. 19; Orelli, Inscr. 7022). Indeed, the usual name given to the Latin magistrates (praetores) indicates that they were officers.

6. Such a metoikos was not like an actual burgess assigned to a specific voting district once for all, but before each particular vote the district in which the metoeci were upon that occasion to vote was fixed by lot. In reality this probably amounted to the concession to the Latins of one vote in the Roman comitia tributa. As a place in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate suffrage, if the metoeci shared in the voting in the assembly of the centuries-which we do not know-a similar allotment must have been fixed for the latter. In the curies they must have taken part like the plebeians.

7. II. I. Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community.