Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/223

Rh cluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protecagainst inferior manufactures. Indeed there is no aspect of the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is so scanty as that of the Roman trades.

Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves. Fairs (mercatus), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly markets (nundinæ), were of great antiquity in Latium. In Home they were not originally perhaps connected, as was usual at a later period, with the ludi publici, but rather were associated with the celebration of the festival at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this purpose to Borne every year on the 13th August, probably embraced at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business iu Rome and of purchasing there their necessary supplies. A similar and perhaps still greater importance attached in the of Etruria to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps near Montefiascone) in the territory of Volsinii—an assembly which served at the same time as a fair, and was regularly frequented by Roman as well as native traders. But the most important of all the Italian fairs was that which was held at Soracte in the grove of Feronia, a situation than which none could be found more favourable for the exchange of commodities among the three great nations. That high isolated mountain, which appears to have been set down by nature herself in the midst of the plain of the Tiber as a goal for the pilgrim, lay on the boundary which separated the Etruscan and Sabine lands (to the latter of which it appears mostly to have belonged), and it was likewise easily accessible from Latium and Umbria. Roman merchants regularly made their appearance there, and the wrongs of which they complained gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.

Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traffic were carried on at these fairs long ere the first Greek or Phœnician vessel entered the western sea. When bad harvests had occurred, adjoining regions supplied each other at these fairs grain; there, moreover, they exchanged cattle, slaves, metals, and whatever other articles were deemed needful or desirable in those primitive times. Oxen and sheep formed oldest medium of exchange, ten sheep being reckoned