Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/153

 LATIUM. from those which surrounded them, from the Vol- wciiins and Acquians on tlie one hand, as well as from the Sabines and Etruscans on the other. But the views and traditions recorded by the same writers concur also in representing them as a mixed people, produced by the blending of diflerent races, and not as the pure descendants of one common Ktock. The legend most commonly adopted, and which gradually became firmly established in the popular belief, was that which represented Latium as inhabited by a people termed Aborigines, who received, shortly after the Trojan War, a colony or band of emigrant Trojans under their king Aeneas. At the time of the arrival of these strangers the Aborigines were governed by a king named Lati- nus, and it was not till after the death of Latinus and the union of the two races under the rule of Aeneas, that the combined people assumed the name of Latini. (Liv. i. 1,2; Dionys. i. 45, GO ; fcjtrab. v. p. 229; Appian, Rom. i. 1.) But a tra- dition, which has nmch more the character of a national one, preserved to us on the authority both of Varro and Cato, represents the population of Latium, as it existed previous to the Trojan colony, as already of a mixed character, and resulting from the union of a conquering race, who descended from the Central Apennines about Keate, with a people whom they found already established in the plains of Latium, and who bore the name of Siculi. It is strange that Varro (according to Dionysius) gave the name of Aborigines, which must originally have been applied or adopted in the sense of Autochthones, as the indiyenous inhabitants of the country [Abo- KrGiNEs], to these foreign invaders from the north. Cato apparently used it in the more natural signi- fication as applied to the previously existing popula- tion, the same which were called by Dionysius and Varro, Siculi. (Varr. ap. Dionys. i. 9, 10; Cato, ap. I'riscian. v. 12. § 65.) But though it is impossible to receive the statement of Varro with regard to the mime of the invading population, ihefact of such a migration having taken place may be fairly ad- mitted as worthy of credit, and is in accordance with all else that we know of the progress of the popula- tion of Central Italy, and the course of the several successive waves of emigration that descended along the central line of the Apennines. [Italia, pp. 84, 85.] The authority of Varro is here also confirmed by the result of modern philological researches. Niebuhr was the first to point out that the Latin language bore in itself the traces of a composite character, and was made up of two distinct elements ; the one nearly resembling the Greek, and therefore probably derived from a Felasgic source; the other closely connected with the Oscan and Umbrian dialects of Central Italy. To this he adds the important observation, that the terms connected with war and arms belong almost exclusively to the latter class, while those of agriculture and domestic life have for the most part a strong resemblance to the corresponding Greek terms. (Niebuhr, vol. i. pp. 82, 83; Donaldson, Var- ronkmius, p. .3.) We may hence fairly infer that the conquering people from the north was a rare akin to the Oscans, Sabines and Umbrians, whom we find in historical times settled in the same or adjoining re- gions of the Apennines : and that the inhabitants of the plains whom they reduced to subjection, and with whom they became gradually mingled (like the Nor- mans with the Saxons in England) were a race of relasgic extraction. This last circumstance is in LATIUM. 137 accordanc« with the inferences to be drawn from several of the historical traditions or statements trans- mitted to us. Thus Cato represented the Aborigines (whom he appears to have identified with the Siculi) as of Hellenic or Greek extraction (Cato, ap. Dionys. i. 11, 13), by which Roman writers often mean no- thing more than Pelasgic: and the Siculi, where they reappear in the S. of Italy, are found indissolubly connected with the Oenotrians, a race whose Pelasgic origin is well established. [Siculi.] The Latin people may thus be regarded as com- posed of two distinct races, both of them members of the great Indo- Teutonic family, but belonging to dif- ferent branches of that family, the one more closely related to the Greek or Pelasgic stock, the other to that race which, under the various furms of Umbrian, Oscan and Sabellian, constituted the basis of the greater part of the population of Central Italy. [Italia.] But whatever value may be attached to the his- torical traditions above cited, it is certain that the two elements of the Latin people had become indissolubly blended before the period when it first appears in his- tory : the Latin nation, as well as the Latin language, is always regarded by Roman writers as one organic whole. We may safely refuse to admit the existence of a third element, as representing the Trojan settlers, who, according to the tradition commonly adopted by the Romans themselves, formed an integral portion of the Latin nation. The legend of the arrival of Aeneas and the Trojan colony is, in all probability, a mere fiction adopted from the Greeks (Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. vol. i. pp. 310—326) : though it may have found some adventitious support from the existence of usages and religious rites which, being of Pelasgic origin, recalled those found among the Pelasgic races on the shores of the Aegean Sea. And it is in ac- cordance with this view that we find traces of similar legends connected with the worship of Aeneas and the Penates at difierent points along the coasts of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, all the way from the Troad to Latium. (Dionys. i. 46 — 55 ; Klausen, Aeneas u. die Penaten, book 3.) The worship of the Penates at Lavinium in particular would seem to have been closely connected with the Cabeiric wor- ship so prevalent among the Pelasgians, and hence probably that city was selected as the supposed ca- pital of the Trojans on their first settlement in Italy. But though these traditions, as well as the sacred rites which continued to be practised down to a late period of the Roman power, point to Lavinium as the ancient metropolis of Latium, which retained its sa- cred character as such long after its political power had disappeared, all the earliest traditions represent Alba, and not Lavinium, as the chief city of the La- tins when that people first appears in connection with Rome. It is possible that Alba was the capital of the conquering Oscan race, as Lavinium had been that, of the conquered Pelasgians, and that there was thus some historical foundation for the legend of the trans- ference of the supreme power from the one to the other : but no such supposition can claim to rank as more than a conjecture. On the other hand, we may fairly admit as historical the fact, that, at the period of the foundation or first origin of Rome, the Latin people constituted a national league, composed of nu- merous independent cities, at the head of which stood Alba, which exercised a certain supremacy over the rest. This vague superiority, arising probably from its greater actual power, appears to have given rise