Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/77

II the nucleus of the legend of the foundation of Rome by Romulus and Remus. Thus we seem to see from the beginning, as we might have expected, a difference between the character of the Latin village community and that of Greece. The latter seems to have been comparatively isolated, and to have found the process of union slow and difficult; and the same dislike of amalgamation was inherited by the City-State of the Greeks from the communities which had generated it, and acted as a centrifugal force, as we shall see, throughout Greek history. But in Latium, if not elsewhere in Italy, we can trace from the beginning a tendency in the villages to gather in groups, a tendency inherent in the race, and destined to give them a very different future from that of the Greek peoples. They were at all times a practical people, who saw their own advantage and acted upon it; and in their early relations with each other, whether public or private, they showed a power of accommodation which eventually became the natural basis of Roman law — their greatest contribution to civilisation.

There can be little doubt that at a very early period the Latin people were grouped in "cantons," as they have been called, i.e. in clusters of village communities, each owning a citadel of refuge and worship; and further, that the whole race had a common worship and a common political centre on the conspicuous Alban hill (Monte Cavo), whence Jupiter Latiaris, the divine father, looked down upon his people. One of the communities which shared