In this way most of the myths and legends of primitive Roman history contain a deposit of historic memories and views, which can be recovered if each myth is traced back to the general fundamental conception which forms its genetic motive.

It should hardly be necessary to vindicate this view of primitive Roman history, and of the myth in general, against such objections as have recently been brought forward, as when the objectors profess to find the “ frivolity and the "vain and idle play of fancy" displayed in such myth-invention incompatible with the severity of manners and the practical genius of the old Roman races. These objections would only hit the mark if the myths were arbitrary and conscious inventions- if they were deliberate falsehoods. But this is so little their character that we may rather say that they are the only language in which a race in a certain stage of civilisation could give expression to its thoughts and ideas. For example, at the stage which the Roman people had reached when the myth was invented, they had no vocabulary which could have furnished them with a definite and exhaustive exposition of the conflict between Tarquinian and pre-Tarquinian ideas in the body politic; and they therefore had recourse to the expedient of symbolising that conflict and the course of events connected with it, and presenting them in a single significant scene, a scene which, regarded empirically, is certainly non-historic, but which is nevertheless at bottom historically true.

Let us imagine any people feeling, in a particular stage of civilisation, the need of contemplating its original character, of forming a mental image of primitive conditions concerning which it has no historical knowledge, of basing its political and religious traditions upon their first causes - how can it satisfy this need except by myth-invention? As long as it is not intellectually mature enough to advance the statements which, on the basis of its present consciousness, it makes concerning its origin as historical hypotheses, it must of necessity express these statements in symbolical form, that is, in the language of myth.

In the foregoing pages we have shown the various motives and modes of origin of the Roman legends and traditions. The legends which originated in these ways were then spun out and linked together by rational reflection; and thus there gradually came into being the whole body of legendary lore which the Roman historians found ready to their hand and set down in writing. The legend of Silvius Postumus, the ancestor of the Alban Silvii, may serve as an example of this spinning-out process. This Silvius, the story goes, was so-called because he was born in the forest-evidently an etymological myth. Therefore, the deduction proceeds, at the time of his birth his mother Lavinia must have been sojourning in the forest; therefore, she must have fled thither, presumably after the death of her husband Æneas; therefore, probably in fear of her stepson Ascanius.

It is obvious that all these statements are not founded upon tradition but are mere sophistries. Similarly, the legend of the reputed origin of Rome. from a mixed rabble, and the tale that for this reason the ambassadors whom Romulus sent with offers of connubium (the right to intermarry) to the neighbouring peoples were repulsed with scornful words, is certainly based on nothing but deductions and conclusions drawn from the (purely mythical) story of the rape of the Sabines. Again, the despotic power which Romulus is said to have exercised in the latter years of his reign, and the bodyguard with which he surrounded himself, seem to be mere inferences drawn from the legend (likewise mythical in origin) of the tearing of his body piecemeal, to serve as an explanation for that enigmatical proceeding.

It is self-evident that it would be impossible to clear up every single point of the traditional history; but the mode of origin of the whole will have been made sufficiently plain by the foregoing observations.c

The Historical Value of the Myths

Although as we proceed with critical examination we find abundant confirmation of a general kind for the assumption that the names of the Roman kings correspond severally to a like number of originally independent communities, it is nevertheless necessary to note at this stage more precisely a hypothesis which is of the greatest moment and consequence in the consideration and investigation of the early history of the city.

In the first place, there can be no doubt that the Tarquins are real historical personages, and must therefore be conceived of in quite another fashion than the more ancient figures about which the various genealogical legends centre, and whose historical existence is due to personification alone. By adding their names to the older names the pontifices arbitrarily connected two entirely different elements, which ought in reality to be kept quite apart. The more ancient figures only-Romulus, Titus Tatius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, and Servius Tullius—are personifications, and of them only does the statement hold good that they are the representatives of diverse and distinct communities and of diverse elements of nationality. Here as everywhere legend and history meet and mingle, combining into a single line personifications and genuine historical figures, which were originally cognate but not equivalent ideas.

As for the actual names of the kings, they, as we shall presently see in individual cases, are either the real names of the communities personified, or appellations taken from special conditions which characterised such communities; they always furnish some pregnant hint concerning the nature of the people personified. It is easy to understand how these names would ultimately stand forth as the names of kings: the "king" was the representative of the community before gods and men, and the nation, if personified, would naturally appear in the status and dignity of its legal representative. Accordingly, in the several Roman kings we must recognise a representation of the several communities under kingly rule which went to make up Rome, set forth under the figure of separate reigning monarchs.

Firmly as we must now hold to the kernel of historic truth underlying these regal figures, we must not disregard the possibility that they have been disguised, overlaid, and distorted, to a very great extent, by a quantity of extraneous accessories, mythical and fictitious.

The first point which we must bear in mind is that every legend of a nation, race, or community, is intimately connected with the religion of that nation or race. In other words, the legends of the ancestral hero, the eponym, tend to be confounded with the myths of the tribal divinity in course of time, the latter are set to the credit (in part at least) of the hero of the former, and the residuum of actual historic fact in the legend becomes more and more distorted and confused. This holds good in the case of the Roman kings. In considering them therefore these mythical elements must be discarded and left out of account.

We are next confronted by a unanimous tendency to make the kings, i.e. the communities personified in them, appear as Romans from the outset. The tendency is comprehensible: the name Roman took its rise originally from one community, but in the course of time it had become an honourable

title common to all, the descriptive cognomen of all citizens of the conjoint city, and every man desired to pose as a Roman of the old stock, a good citizen of the Roman commonwealth. This was, however, in direct contravention of history. The greater number of these kings, i.e. of these communities, were in reality originally strangers or even enemies, the destiny of the city had frequently accomplished itself through deadly feuds and bloody battles, and if it had been thought desirable to insist on these facts the ancient history of the city would have worn a very different aspect from that with which we are familiar. But in that case a very questionable light would have been thrown on most of the elements out of which it had grown; and hence there was naturally a general endeavour to obliterate the traces of ancient conflict. The remembrance of those old-world struggles was intentionally confused, or effaced by fictitious additions, modified by tradition, or rejected altogether.

In the only, or almost the only version in which it is known to us, the picture drawn by later hands of the most ancient history of Rome, both of the monarchy and the early days of the republic, conveys no hint, or at least only the remotest, of the crises which the city and state must have passed through before taking the form in which it became the basis of a common life and activity to all elements of the community alike. The attitude assumed by this false patriotism is chiefly responsible for the falsification of the earlier history, especially the records connected with the names of the kings.

Again, a third force which we must take into consideration as exercising a dubious influence on the form into which the primitive history of the city was cast, is the singular love of combination which distinguished the Roman priests and antiquaries. The true and original meaning of the ancient traditions, institutions, and antiquated terms in civil and ecclesiastical law, had passed out of mind in the lapse of years, and yet there was a general desire for enlightenment and a right understanding of these things. Whereupon sacerdotal wisdom, which seldom rose above the level of the schoolboy, combined with an absolute freedom, nay, an amazing boldness of arbitrary interpretation, and attempted by this means to render the ancient and extinct legends, institutions, and ideas, clear and comprehensible. From its confined point of view the most superficial likenesses, the most trivial relations, were naturally the most highly favoured in the interpretation of these traditions, ideas, and institutions. Above all, we must lay stress in this connection upon the incredible passion of these exponents for etymology. The remotest assonance of words or phrases sufficed to bring the underlying ideas into connection in their minds and to make them derive the one circumstantially from the other. These combinations and interpretations are handed on to us by antiquaries who either made them out for themselves or borrowed them as authoritative explanations and definitions from the priestly circles, or the writings of pontifices, augurs, etc. In every single case the keenest critical acumen is required to separate these manufactured combinations and deductions from the genuine deposit of older traditions.

Finally we must mention, as the last force which contributed to the distortion of primitive Roman history, the unbounded vaingloriousness of later times. The Romans suffered the expression is permissible—from the vastness of the proportions of their state and city at a subsequent period. Theoretically they could still persuade themselves and believe that Rome had once been small, but the realisation of the fact in practical detail was

beyond them. Thus, in the idea of the city current in later days, it appears as a metropolis from the time of its foundation; the peasant fights become mighty wars skilfully conducted between powerful states and cities, detail and colour being provided by the observation and technical knowledge of a later date. Before attempting to explain the conditions of the Roman monarchy we must therefore always reduce them from the scale on which they are presented to us in this picture to the scale which really befits their original proportions. The gradual rise of the city, its inception and growth step by step from the federal union of villages and settlements, must first besought for and studied in such instances as have remained free from the influence of sacerdotal handling and vainglory.d

THE people or citizens of Rome were divided into the three tribes of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres,1 to whatever races we may suppose them to belong, or at whatever time and under whatever circumstances they may have become united. Each of these tribes was divided into ten smaller bodies called curiæ; so that the whole people consisted of thirty curiæ: these same divisions were in war represented by the thirty centuries which made up the legion, just as the three tribes were represented by the three centuries of horsemen; but that the soldiers of each century were exactly a hundred, is apparently an unfounded conclusion.

We have said that each tribe was divided into ten curiæ; it would be more correct to say that the union of ten curiæ formed the tribe. For the state grew out of the junction of certain original elements; and these were neither the tribes, nor even the curiæ, but the gentes2 or houses which made up the curiæ. The first element of the whole system was the gens or house, a union of several families who were bound together by the joint performance of certain religious rites. Actually, where a system of houses has existed within historical memory, the several families who composed a house were not necessarily related to one another; they were not really cousins more or less distant, all descended from a common ancestor. But there is no reason to doubt that in the original idea of a house, the bond of union between its several families was truly sameness of blood: such was likely to be the earliest acknowledged tie; although afterwards, as names are apt to outlive their meanings, an artificial bond may have succeeded to the natural one; and a house, instead of consisting of families of real relations, was made up sometimes of families of strangers, in the hope that law, and custom, and religion, might together rival the force of nature.

Cf. page 51, note 1.]

[2 According to Meyer, Botsford, and others, however, the gens was not primitive, but a growth of the late regal and early republican periods; the city developing from the canton, a group of villages with a common place of refuge on a hilltop.]