Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/418

 402 ROME and weekly), and eight churches. Rome was incorporated in 1847. It was occupied by the forces of Gen. Sherman, May 19, 1864, during the advance on Atlanta. ROME (Lat. and It. Roma), the chief city of ancient Italy, ultimately the capital of the Ro- man empire, and now the capital of the king- dom of Italy. Its origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, for modern criticism has dispelled nearly all belief in the legends which for many centuries passed as historic testimony respect- ing the primitive city. There are grounds for the supposition that small fortified towns or villages stood on each of the seven hills now comprised within the walls of Rome. On the Palatine hill there were probably two such fortresses in prehistoric times, one Etruscan, the other either Pelasglc or Sabine. The more fully developed city and state seems to have risen from a union of the inhabitants on the Palatine with the Etruscans, Sabines, and Pe- lasgians, and perhaps also with other peoples, Plan of tbo Boman Hilte. long previously settled on the adjacent hills. (See ITALIC RACES AXD LANGUAGES.) This union seems to have reached a state of politi- cal and constitutional perfection about 5| cen- turies B. C., in the reign of that monarch who is known as Servius Tullius, and toward the close of the regal period. During that period a Roman state hai grown up (according to the legends, ruled successively by Romulus, the re- puted founder about 753 B. 0., Numa Pompi- iius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martins, Tarquin the Elder, Servius Tullius, and Tarquin the Proud), which seems to have been a power- ful monarchy, and which may have been, as Milller thinks it was, in the times of the Tar- quins and Servius, ruled by an Etruscan dy- nasty, by whom Etruscan usages were intro- duced into Rome. Its mythology resembled that of the Greeks. (See MYTHOLOGY, vol. xii., p. 118.) This monarchy embraced a portion of southern Etruria and the whole of Latium. What is known as the fall of the Tarquins was probably the overthrow of the Etruscan pow- er. The population of Rome then consisted of the patricians and their clients, and of ple- beians. The patricians were the original Ro- man people, and were divided into three tribes, the Ramnenses, the Titienses, and the Luceres, who represented the Latin, the Sabine, and the Etruscan elements of that population. The clients were the dependants of the patricians. The plebeians, or commons, were freemen, but had originally no political rights. They owed their existence to conquest and other causes, and they were mostly of Latin origin. By the Servian constitution they were incorpo- rated into the state. This change was long regarded as the subversion of a popular con- stitution, by the substitution of an aristocrati- cal polity; but Servius, or whoever it was by whom the change was made, did really, by establishing the constitution of the centuries, and constituting the order of equites, a distinct political body, of mixed patrician and plebeian elements, break up the patrician monopoly of power, and prepare the way for those fur- ther political reforms by the success of which Rome became mistress of the ancient world. The change was liberal, and opposition to its facts and its principles was never permanently successful. That regal Rome was powerful, and possessed an extensive territory and a large population, is established by the great- ness of its public works, some of which en- dure to this day ; and also by the terms of the treaty between Rome and Carthage, which, made in the first year of the republic, shows that the whole Latin coast was subject to Rome. The republican polity is supposed to have been established about the year 510 B. C. The most ancient history of Rome of which we have any knowledge was written in Greek by Fabius Pictor, a Roman citizen who served in the Gallic war, 225 B. 0. No fragment of it remains. We know only by vague report of a similar work in Greek by Timssus, a Si- cilian, who brought his history down to about 261. The earliest history of Rome in Latin is by Cato the Censor, who died in 149. The Servian constitution, as a whole, was lost as one of the effects of the overthrow of the monarchy; but it was gradually restored in part, its principles characterizing all the sub- sequent struggles of the plebeians to obtain power in the republic. Early republican Rome was a weak state, and for a century and a half it exercised little influence at home, and none abroad. Not only the kings fell, but the country fell with them. Rome is believed by modern historians to have been conquered by Porsena, and when she recovered her freedom, she was no longer the head of Latium; and during the next 150 years she was employed in recovering the ground she had lost. This slow advance was owing to internal convul- sions. The political contests between the pa- tricians and the plebeians were bitter, and