Part 11

Besides Lavinium, which was fabulously said to be a Trojan colony, there existed on that coast, between the Tiber and Antium, two other places, LAURENTUM and the Rutulian ARDEA, which are familiar to us from the Aeneid. The ending _entum_ in Laurentum is Pelasgian, as in the case of Maluentum and others; but it is Latinised, the native form probably was οῦς, Λαυροῦς. After the Volscian calamity, when the whole Latin confederacy broke up, Ardea was a separate town: it received a Romano-Latin colony, and accordingly entered into an entirely new relation. Cyclopean walls are still found there, but the place is so desolate, that at present it has only thirty houses with about eighty inhabitants.

The most important of the Latin towns in the vicinity of Rome was TUSCULUM; it was distant only a few miles and could be seen from Rome, being situated above Frascati. During the middle ages, it was destroyed by the degenerate Romans, and never restored on the height, but the survivors were obliged to settle at the foot of the hill, which was the origin of the modern Frascati. The ruins of Tusculum which have been dug out are very important; the theatre was found with very beautiful statues in it, but it has been covered over again. A number of pedestals with inscriptions also were found, which are no doubt as ancient as the persons they described; some are as old as the period after the Hannibalian war, as for example, the one of Fulvius Nobilior, the conqueror of Aetolia: nowhere have so many ancient stones been brought to light; but the number of inscriptions belonging to the earlier times and even to the Augustan age is extremely small. The whole district belongs to Lucien Bonaparte, who has made excavations, in the process of which very many things of importance have been discovered. If he had continued them, extraordinary things would certainly have been brought to light; but he has no interest for anything except works of art, statues and the like, and it is impossible to make him see the importance of the remains of antiquity. He has the most unhistorical mind, and is unable to understand of what interest antiquities can be to history: the most beautiful things have been sold by him. He is one of those men who enjoy a high degree of celebrity without deserving it: he is lively, but absurd, and an extremely bad epic poet. He has laid out a garden on a hill, and on a box-tree in it he has inscribed in order the names of the greatest epic poets, beginning near the root: out of modesty he has put his own name lowest, and ascends up to Homer. It was impossible to induce him to make excavations according to a regular plan. I have often been in despair about it: this is a grief which a man may often have to bear in Italy, because excavations can be so easily made. The Fasti Capitolini are of extreme importance in Roman history; three large pieces of them had been found behind the church of S. Maria Liberatrice, and I implored the authorities to grant me permission to dig there, offering to bear the expenses myself; but I could not obtain permission, and was told that it would be done in due time, and that our descendants also must have something to do. Such things are a severe trial of one’s patience. If excavations were made at Tusculum, a Roman Herculaneum would be found. I do not mean to say that buildings equally well preserved would be discovered, but the ruins are very large, and the streets would certainly be found. When I was there, excavations were accidentally made below a wall, but they were afterwards stopped, for Lucien Bonaparte was inexorable. Once, during excavations which were continued only for a few weeks, a whole street with the walls of the houses up to a certain height was discovered; it was of the most perfect construction, although it was only the street of a country town, for Tusculum was certainly not larger than Coblenz. The street was completely filled with pieces of architecture, which had fallen down during the barbarous process of destruction: columns of the most beautiful marble were found, but broken to pieces, and statues of the most exquisite workmanship, such as one might expect to find at Rome during its most brilliant period. The architecture is that of the imperial period; the street also contained a well, the water of which was carried down from a hill. Very ancient inscriptions also were found, one of which contained the name of A. Sicinius, who is mentioned by Livy in the war against Perseus. If the Forum were laid open, Fasti and law-tables would no doubt be brought to light; it is still possible to say whereabouts it must have been situated. In like manner the site of the Forum of Praeneste was known, and fragments of the Fasti of Verrius Flaccus were found there, although the excavations were made very carelessly. In later times Tusculum was the most brilliant among the Latin towns.

The second Latin town in point of rank was TIBUR, now celebrated, under the name of Tivoli, for its waterfalls, the charming nature of the country, and the beauty of its ruins. Some persons erroneously consider the sepulchral monument of Cellius, built in the age of Augustus, to be a temple of the Sibyl. Tibur ruled over a considerable number of dependent towns. Its present circumference dates from the middle ages, for in antiquity it was considerably smaller. All these towns were very little, though they have a great name in history. Two learned Jesuits, Cabral and Del Ré, have written a very good topographical history of Tivoli.

The third Latin place is PRAENESTE, now Palestrina. This metathesis is common in Italian; even when they write correctly, they speak badly from affectation, especially the higher classes: instead of _una capra_, the Roman people usually say _una carpa_. The _l_ and _r_ also are interchanged: at the time of the French revolution, when a republic was forced upon the Romans, they were unable to pronounce the name, and said _la Repubrica_. I have found traces of a form _Penestra_ belonging to the time when the western empire still existed; in the middle ages _civitas_ was always added, and the simple names were thereby completely suppressed; people, therefore, did not say _Lanuvium_, but _civitas Lanuvina_, and so also _civitas Penestrina_. Praeneste was an immense place both in regard to its extent and to its fortifications, and was situated on a hill. Fortuna was its tutelary divinity, whose temple with its _temenos_ occupied the acra, and the whole of the present little town of Palestrina is situated within the ruins of that temple. We still possess descriptions of it belonging to the end of the thirteenth century; many parts of it must then have been preserved; in the fourteenth the town was taken by pope Bonifacius VIII., and everything was then destroyed with barbarous fury; at present we can only admire the immense substructions on the side of the hill, for the town, like many others, was built up the hill in the form of terraces; and when it was intended to enlarge the town, a new terrace was built.

In Roman history Praeneste does not appear as an important town till after the Gallic time. As to the impatience with which it, more than any other Latin town, bore the Roman yoke during the fifth century, from the Samnite wars until the war of Pyrrhus, we have distinct indications, although history is silent about it. The Praenestines made repeated attempts to shake it off; but although they were unsuccessful in this, still they gained the respect of the Romans, and obtained from them an honourable relation, with which they were satisfied. After this, they were the most faithful allies of the Romans, and during the Hannibalian war they were as attached to them as they had previously been intrepid in their struggles for their own independence. During the Social War they obtained the franchise, and were passionate champions of the Marian party. Marius the younger there sustained the terrible siege, after which Sulla took the town, and shewed the first symptoms of his raving cruelty: he butchered the whole population, and established a colony of veterans in the place. The town became quite desolate. Most of the Latin towns had perished at an early period.

LANUVIUM, afterwards _civitas Lanuvina_, on the Via Appia, still shows remains of a large wall, and indications that it once was a splendid town; it must not, however, be supposed to have been very extensive. Among its buildings, I may notice the temple of Juno Lanuvina, a common sanctuary for the Romans and Latins.

ARICIA was situated on the same road; its arx was on a height, but the town itself in the valley; at present the road most inconveniently and dangerously runs right across the height. Aricia was somewhat nearer Rome than Lanuvium; for a time it seems to have been the first among the Latin towns, I allude to the period after the banishment of the kings, when Rome and Latium were separated. The temple and grove of Diana Aricina were near the beautiful lake of Nemi, not far from Aricia.

GABII, one of the most ancient towns, has a traditional greatness in the earliest history of Rome. Dionysius still saw its extensive walls, of which at present every vestige has disappeared, but the ruins of the cella of a vast temple of Juno may still be seen. History does not inform us when the town was destroyed, but it was probably during the period of the Aequian wars, for after them it is no longer mentioned in the history of the republic; and in the age of Cicero it was a deserted place. Excellent remains were found there during the excavations made by Prince Borghese; he came upon ruins of the Forum, various works of art, many inscriptions and statues, which, though not of the first order, are yet of good workmanship. Under the Roman emperors a population appears to have again assembled in several of those towns, which were situated on high roads; whence they rose again, though they remained small places with a wretched population of vagabonds from all parts, who did not form a civil community, although they had a civic constitution. Hence Gabii at a later period had a bishop. This also accounts for the fact, that works of art belonging to a late period of Rome are found in those early destroyed places. At present Gabii is quite deserted.

The place for the general assemblies of the Latins was near the Alban lake, which, like a crater, is environed by a high ridge of surrounding hills. The place of meeting is supposed, and I think justly, to have been on the other side of this crater; but there is no evidence to support this view. The spot is now occupied by the town of Marino, below which there is a beautiful well, generally believed to be the well of Ferentina.

The tunnel of the Alban lake, a wonderful work, is one of the curiosities of Latium; it runs nearly three Roman miles under ground towards the place of its destination, and was intended to carry off the water of the lake, which, when, in consequence of earthquakes, the subterraneous passages had become blocked up, rose above the ridge of the crater and inundated the country. I have already spoken about this extraordinary structure in my History of Rome,[32] and shall, therefore, confine myself to a brief recapitulation. It is difficult to form a clear idea of the matter. Imagine the crater filled to the edge, and bear in mind that it was intended to give to it a level about 200 feet lower. In order to attain this, a line was first drawn in the contemplated direction of the tunnel, and by this line it could be seen how deep it must be to answer its purpose. In order to obtain the level, and at the same time to employ a great many hands, shafts were sunk along the whole line at a distance of less than a hundred feet from one another. It was easy to calculate how deep each shaft ought to be, so as to bring the bottom of the tunnel to the level which it was intended to give to it. These numerous shafts also facilitated the running off of the water on account of the pressure of the air, and at the same time rendered access to the tunnel easy. On any other plan only few persons could have been employed at a time, whereas now from every shaft two parties worked in opposite directions and broke through the rock. This working of different parties towards one another also insured their keeping the exact level. This tunnel, which was the admiration even of ancient Rome, has now existed for a period of 2500 years; it is still entire, and will exist in all time to come, unless some great revolution of the earth shall break it to pieces. The Roman cloacae are of the same character, and will endure until the last day of the earth. There are many such tunnels in the Roman territory, of which at present the advantages alone are perceptible, but whence they carry the waters can no longer be ascertained. Such is the case near lake Nemi: the whole valley of Aricia was formerly a lake, which is now perfectly drained. There, too, a great thing was effected by a little tunnel: the valley of Aricia is one of the most fertile in the world, and is still the same as it is described by Pliny. The fertility in Italy is so great that wheat, unless it is weeded, cannot grow; agriculture there requires a degree of industry of which we have no idea; if any one were to introduce there the system of Flemish or English agriculture, it would lead to ruin.

The _Vallis Albana_ is the modern valley of Grotta Ferrata.

In the east of Latium, in its narrower sense, we have the towns of

THE HERNICANS.

We know only five of them; ANAGNIA was the capital, to which the others were opposed as a political body. We here again find a parallel phenomenon: the same relation which existed between Alba and the Albensian towns, and between Rome and the Latin towns, appears to have existed between Anagnia and the towns of the Hernicans. This is briefly, but officially, alluded to in the Triumphal Fasti, where Q. Marcius Tremulus triumphs _de Anagninis Hernicisque_. The other towns were _Frusino_, _Ferentinum_, _Verulae_, and _Alatrium_. There can, however, be no doubt that they had more towns; some must have been taken from them by the Volscians and Aequians, while others may have continued to exist, but decayed and perished, so that we have no information about them. Livy, in speaking of the last war against the Hernicans, says, _omnes Hernici nominis populi_, except three. I have a conjecture which is a combination of several traces, and according to which their number was forty. All the five above-mentioned places still exist; they are generally small and poor, with the exception of Anagnia, which is a place of some consequence; but all of them are still imposing on account of their ruins and their mighty Cyclopean walls, in which towers and gates are still preserved.

Servius, on the Aeneid, and the ancient Scholia on Virgil, fragments of which were published about ten years ago by A. Mai from a Veronese MS., state that the name _Hernici_ is derived from the Sabine word _hernae_, which Arndt very happily compares with the Swiss _firn_ (mountain); as there exists a radical affinity between the two languages, such a comparison is certainly admissible. According to this, the Hernicans were a Sabine or Marsian colony. Another statement, however, though of very weak authority, in Julius Hyginus, makes the Hernicans Pelasgians. If we consider that the Sabines pressed forward at a comparatively late period, perhaps about the time of the foundation of Rome, and that the Hernicans dwelt on the other side of the Oscan nation of the Aequians, it is probable that the Hernicans, like the Latins, were of Tyrrhenian origin. An etymology like that mentioned before is very captivating, and it is not easy to get rid of it; but if we ask ourselves, What is the ground of the derivation? How could the name come from their habitations? Did the other Sabines call them Hernicans in the same manner in which the Scotch Lowlanders call the Gael in the mountains Highlanders? It is possible that the name Hernicans is only a surname to another national name; they may, in this case, have belonged to a different race, and have received that surname from the Sabines. That a people should call itself mountaineers from its habitations is very surprising. The derivation may be very accidental: in like manner the Thuringians might be said to owe their name to the old word _Taure_, which signifies “mountain.” If we assume that the Hernicans were Tyrrhenians, they occupied exactly the district in which they could have maintained themselves against the shock of the Ausonians, who were pressed on by the Sabines. But nothing decisive can be said on this point, we can only form conjectures; and we must carefully distinguish between what is conjectural and what is certain.[33]

There is no occasion for saying anything more about the towns of the Hernicans which I have mentioned. On the side of a rock, near the town of Ferentinum, there still exists a fragment of a will engraved in the stone. A wealthy citizen leaves a legacy, and fixes the interest of his landed property. The late Madame Dionigi, who made a drawing of it and published it, states that two of the pieces of land still exist in that district and bear the same name. A great many things of this kind continue to exist in some parts of Italy from ancient times; he who lives there in intimate familiarity with every-day affairs, and who does not mind spending months in those places, may recover the past to an extent which we believe altogether impossible.

The Hernicans formed part of the Roman and Latin confederacy, and had their share in the Feriae Latinae. In ancient times they were allied with Rome on equal terms, and shared with her and Latium all that they conquered in war. Afterwards this alliance was broken up, as I shall show in the second volume of my History,[34] because being weak and powerless, they could no longer claim their former rights. After the Gallic calamity, when Rome had fallen, they made themselves independent, and thirty years later the ancient treaty was renewed, and remained in force for fifty years, to the great advantage of the Hernicans. They were a small people, which did not extend, while Rome enlarged her dominion immensely. Hence the Romans demanded that the relation which had hitherto subsisted between them should be discontinued. In consequence of this, a war arose between them and the Hernicans, in which the latter had reason bitterly to repent their presumption.

THE VOLSCIANS AND AEQUIANS.

Both these Ausonian nations lived within the boundaries of Latium in its wider sense. The Volscians were subdivided into smaller parts, the Antiatan, Ecetranian, and other Volscians without any definite name. All the coast towns, as far as the upper Liris, were Volscian, as e.g. Anxur or Terracina, Privernum, Sora, Arpinum, Fabrataria, Fregellae, etc. The Aequians, on the other hand, dwelt on the one side as far as Praeneste, and on the other as far as lake Fucinus in the north. The Aequians and Volscians are almost always mentioned together, just as Romans and Latins, whence it is probable that isopolity existed between the two nations. Every man belonging to one nation might take up his abode among the other with which it was in isopolity: he there enjoyed higher rights than an alien; he was not, indeed, a full citizen, but a free member of the community; he was what was termed in the middle ages a pale-burgher. This is a relation which, on the whole, is seldom rightly understood by German jurists, and even by K. F. Eichhorn, who, in other respects, is a man of the greatest merit in matters of German law. Such an isopolity must have existed between the Aequians and Volscians; but besides this, they must have had another political connection, for a large party of the Aequians very frequently made common cause with a numerous body of the Volscians.

It is an important point to decide, as to whether the Volscians always inhabited the towns on the coast from Antium as far as Terracina, which are called Volscian, or whether they took possession of them as conquerors. At first I shared in the general error, thinking that they had always been Volscian; afterwards, I began to doubt—the first step towards truth—and to consider the possibility of its being otherwise; and now I am convinced that the country was originally inhabited by Tyrrhenians, that it was afterwards conquered by the Volscians, and that this event did not occur till after the banishment of the kings. All the places on the coast from Terracina to Antium, as well as Velitrae in the interior, were once Pelasgian, and may be justly called Latin, this being the ancient and common name. Receive this result of my inquiries with confidence; there is no danger of your being mistaken. In like manner, the Aequians extended their dominion in the direction of the Latins and Hernicans at the expense of both.

All the Volscians did not form one common state: the people of Arpinum, Sora, Anxur, Formiae, and Fundi may, at the time of their first conquest, have mutually assisted one another; but when their possessions were secured, when Antium and Ecetrae had become Volscian, the towns situated farther behind probably did not exert themselves for the other Volscian places.

In regard to the Aequians, it would almost seem, as if they had formed one compact state, although each of the several towns could, by itself, do little or nothing; scarcely one of them is deserving of notice. If we possessed the ancient commentaries on the Aeneid, we should know a great deal more about the ethnography and chorography of those parts. Virgil speaks of Nersae as one of the principal towns of the Aequians: _et te montosae misere in proelia Nersae_;[35] editors have unwarrantably changed this into _Nursae_, and referred it to Nursia, which is an Umbrian town in the Apennines beyond the Sabines, to which the Aequians never penetrated. People will not own, that there are things of which they know nothing. The books of Servius unfortunately have come down to us only in a wretched abridgment: if we examine the first two books, of which we have the original, we cannot but feel respect for Servius as a great grammarian. In like manner, the name of mount Vesulus—in the illustration of the boar inhabiting the marshes of the valley of Laurentum and the heights of Vesulus—has been senselessly referred to a hill near the sources of the Padus.[36] The hill must have been in the neighbourhood of Laurentum, in a district which Virgil knew very well, and which must afterwards have lost its name. I can well imagine what kind of a place Vesulus may have been, but it was most assuredly not a glacier of the Alps. This is one specimen of the perverse manner in which Virgil has been commented upon; an able commentary on the Aeneid, not too diffuse, has yet to be written; in regard to the Eclogues and the Georgics, Voss has done everything that can be desired.

The Aequians extended as far as lake Fucinus. When in the middle of the fifth century the Romans subdued them, they destroyed nearly fifty of their places, and forced the franchise upon them. Afterwards they obtained favourable terms and fair treatment, but the first shock of the war was terrible.