With regard to the purpose of the Servian constitution to impart an equal share in the consular government to the plebeians, every one may frame surmises at his pleasure: that it granted them the right of taking part in elections and in legislation, is known to all.

Servius, as for the sake of brevity I will call the lawgiver in accordance with the writers of antiquity, would have communicated these rights in the simplest manner by following the same method whereby in feudal states the commons obtained a station alongside of the barons, and by ordaining that all national concerns should be brought both before the council of the burghers and that of the commonalty, and that the decree of the one should not have force without the approval of the other, and should be made null by its rejection. This was the footing the plebeian tribes subsequently stood on for some time in relation to the curies: not however until the ties of an amicable intercourse between the two orders had already become so manifold, that their tranquillity was no longer troubled except by a few very wrongheaded incendiaries; not until all had recognized the necessity of labouring for the good of their common country, conformably to the institutions which actually existed.

When we reach the borders of mythical story, which without a miracle could not be immediately followed by annals, we are constrained to adopt a division of time into periods: so that I am not to be reproached for its being immethodical. The opinion we are to form with regard to the pretended histories of the period just marked out, is evident from a comparison of the two historians. Livy under 251 and 252 narrates a war against Pometia and the Auruncians, and repeats the same again afterward, under the year 259, as a war against the Volscians; of an oversight like this Dionysius could not be guilty, and he relates it only in the latter year. On the other hand Livy, who on this point is the more inconsiderate of the two, displays much greater judgement on occasion of the Sabine wars; mentioning nothing about them except two triumphs out of the Fasti; without a syllable on the military occurrences of the five campaigns circumstantially recounted by Dionysius.

Nor does the latter go less into detail in describing the events of the Latin war; concerning which nothing but the battle of Regillus is narrated in Livy; except under 255, where it is said, as briefly as possible, that Fidenæ was besieged, Crustumeria taken, Præneste came over to the Romans.

I combine these two nations, not for the sake of intimating an affinity between them, but because both alike were unconnected, so far at least as we know, with the history of Italy until the later times of the Roman republic, and both dwelt to the south of the Alps only as parts of nations which out of Italy were widely diffused; in very early times too they seem to have been contiguous in the plain of the Po.

The Ligurians are among those nations which the short span of our history embraces only in their decline. Philistus, in representing the Sicelians as Ligurians, who had been expelled by Umbrians and Pelasgians, is not only blind to the identity of the Siculians and the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians; he is certainly no less mistaken as to the extraction of the Ligurians: but his mistake arises only from the very common errour, of confounding two irruptions which the same country has experienced at different times; as the nations that have successively inhabited Dacia, the Getes and Goths, the Huns and Hungarians, are taken one for the other; and in obscure traditions the same people appears, in some as invading, in others as driven out. During his banishment, which he passed in the countries on the Adriatic, Philistus may have learnt among the Umbrians themselves, out of their ancient books, that their forefathers and the Siculians had expelled Ligurians out of Tuscany; and it would be unwise to treat this information with contempt on account of his having understood it confusedly.

It is impossible to believe that the ancient lays in their original form spoke of Damaratus as the father of L. Tarquinius: but Polybius must have found this account already extant in the Roman Annals; and it may also have occurred in Ennius; nay even in the later forms assumed by the old poem, when the stories of Zopyrus and Periander were woven into it. Such lays, even in the hands of learned bards, are perpetually altering their features, shifting and changing until they vanish away.

When Cypselus, the offspring of a marriage of disparagement, by uniting with the commons had overthrown the oligarchy at Corinth, and was taking vengeance on the persons who had aimed at his life, many of the Bacchiads fled, among the rest Damaratus. Commerce had not been esteemed disreputable among the Corinthian nobility; as a merchant, Damaratus had formed ties of friendship at Tarquinii; he settled there. He brought great wealth with him; the sculptors Euchir and Eugrammus, and Cleophantus the painter, accompanied him; and along with the fine arts of Greece he taught the Etruscans alphabetical writing. Renouncing his country for ever, he took an Etruscan wife, and to the sons whom she bare him, gave the names and education of their own land, together with the refinements of Greece.

The tribes in the states of antiquity were constituted in two ways; either according to the houses which composed them, or to the ground which they occupied: it may seem as if these two kinds coincided, when at the settlement of a city a whole tract of land was assigned to a tribe consisting of certain houses; this however did not form the bond of union. Dionysius, a diligent investigator of antiquities, expressly makes this distinction between the earlier Roman tribes, which he calls genealogical, and those of Servius which he calls local; wherein he assuredly followed older authors. Aristotle, it is true, takes no notice of the constitution by hereditary tribes, any more than Polybius; for although in their times the ancient forms were still in existence here and there, no one any longer thought of arranging a state according to combinations of families.

The genealogical tribes are more ancient than the local, to which they almost everywhere give way. Their extreme of rigour is in the form of castes; where one is separated from another, without the right of intermarriage, and with an entire difference of rank; each having an exclusive unalterable calling; from which, where need requires it, an individual may be allowed to descend; but to rise is impossible.

The Tarquinii, from what has been said, may have been glad, even more so than any other citizens, of a change, by which the power, until then enjoyed by a single individual, was placed annually within the reach of every noble member of their house, and was secured to them, without being divested of anything but its priestly dignity. For the kingly power was transferred, with no abridgement but this, to the annual magistrates, who in those times still retained the name of prætors. Hence the accurate Dion Cassius, deviating from all other writers, did not use the name of consuls until after the decemvirate; when, as he conceived, the appellation was changed. I allow myself to imitate the example of Livy and Dionysius in giving this glorious name to the immediate followers of the kings. For which reason I here introduce the remark, that this title is neither to be derived from consulting the senate, nor from giving counsel: for, at the beginning of the republic especially, commanding was far more than either the one or the other the distinguishing attribute of the consulate. Without doubt the name means nothing more than simply collegues: the syllable sul is sound in præsul and exsul, where it signifies one who is: thus consules is tantamount to consentes, the name given to Jupiter's council of gods.

I have related the tale of the last king's glory and of his fall no less nakedly than it will have appeared in those homely Annals, the scantiness of which appeared to Cicero to make it his duty, and induced Livy, to throw a rich dress over the story of Rome. That which is harmonious in a national and poetical historian, would be out of tune in a work written more than eighteen hundred years later by a foreigner and a critic. His task is to restore the ancient tradition with greater completeness, by reuniting such features as have been preserved here and there, but have been left out in that classical narrative which has become the current one, and to free it from the refinements with which learning has disfigured it: that distinct and lively view, which his representation also aims to give, is nothing more than the clear and vivid perception of the outlines of the old lost poem. Had a perfectly simple narrative by Fabius or Cato been preserved, I would merely have translated it, have annexed to it whatever remnants I could collect of other accounts, and have added a commentary, such as I now have to write on my own text.

This destruction was the act of the usurper, this the price for which his accomplices allowed him to rule as king, without even the bare show of a confirmation by the curies. Every right and privilege conferred by Servius upon the commonalty was swept away; the assemblages at sacrifices and festivals, which had tended more than all other things to form them into united bodies, were prohibited; the equality of civil rights was abolished again, and the right of seizing the person for debt reestablished: the rich plebeians, like the sojourners, were subjected to arbitrary taxation: the poor were kept at task-work with sorry wages and scanty food, and many were driven by their hardships to put an end to themselves.

Soon however the oppressed had the wretched solace of seeing the exultation of their oppressors turned into dismay. The senators and men of rank were, as under the Greek tyrants, the nearest object for the mistrust and the cupidity of the usurper: after the manner of those tyrants he had formed a body-guard, with which he exercised his sway at pleasure. Many lost their lives; others were banished, and their fortunes confiscated: the vacant places were not filled up: and even this senate, insignificant as its small number made it, was not called together.

About the time of the Persian wars, the Etruscans excited the fears and attention of the Greeks, as masters of the Tyrrhenian sea; although Dionysius is mistaken in supposing that the Greeks named the whole west of Italy Tyrrhenia after them: that name belongs to the period of the genuine Tyrrhenians. When they were confined to Tuscany, and even there had become dependent on the sovranty of Rome, their renown passed away, and the contemporaries of Polybius held their former greatness to be fabulous. In Roman history they are of importance only in the period from the kings to the Gallic conquest; afterward in comparison with the Sabellian tribes they are quite inglorious. By, the Greeks they are mentioned mostly to their discredit, sometimes as pirates, sometimes as gluttons; by the Romans only as aruspices and artists: it is not a traditional opinion which has taught the moderns, that, without regard to the extent their empire once had, they were one of the most remarkable nations of antiquity. The ruins of their cities, the numerous works of art which have been discovered, the national spirit of the Tuscans who saw in them ancestors they were proud of; even the tempting enigma of a language utterly unknown; all this has drawn the attention of the moderns toward them above every other Italian tribe; and the Etruscans are at present incomparably more celebrated and honoured, than they were in the time of Livy.

It is one of the most credible traditions handed down from the earliest times, that the primitive race of the Latins had dwelt about mount Velino and the lake of Celano as far as Carseoli and toward Reate, and had been driven thence onward by the Sabines who came from Aquila. This was Cato's account; and if Varro, who enumerated the towns they had possessed in those parts, was not imposed upon, not only were the sites of those towns distinctly preserved, as well as their names, but also other information concerning; them, such as writings alone can transmit through so many centuries. Their capital Lista was lost by a surprise; and the exertions of many years to recover it by expeditions from Reate proved fruitless. Withdrawing from that district, they came down the Anio; and, even at Tibur, Antemnæ, Ficulea, Tellenalo, and farther on at Crustumerium and Aricia, they found Siculi, whom they subdued or expelled. That Præneste was also a town of the Siculi, seems to be implied by the statement, that it formerly bore the Greek name of Stephane.

This primitive race was called by the Romans Aborigines, a word supposed to signify ancestors, but which it is surely simpler to interpret, the original inhabitants of the country, answering to the Greek Autochthones.

In this division of the nation, the preponderance of numbers may not have been so entirely on the side of the plebeians, as it will probably appear to every one, even to him who has thoroughly rid himself of the delusive notion that the patricians of those ages are to be regarded as a nobless; a class, which in fact was to be found within both the estates. Had the superiority of the plebeians been such as to leave no doubt that the issue of a contest with arms, since matters had unhappily gone so far, would be in their favour, they would never have contented themselves with a compact which merely gave them back a part of the rights they had been robbed of. And yet the commonalty, if it stood together as one man, was evidently so strong, that their opponents betrayed the uttermost infatuation in not endeavouring to separate the various classes which composed it; nay, in wronging and outraging them all at once; the noble and rich, by withholding public offices from them; such of the gentry as without personal ambition were attached as honest men to the well-being of their class, by depriving it of its common rights and privileges; the personal honour of both, by the indignities to which such as stood nearest to the ruling party were the most frequently exposed, and by which men of good birth were the most keenly wounded; every one who wanted to borrow money, and all the indigent, by the abominable system of pledging the person and of slavery for debt; in fine high and low, by excluding them from the public domains, where many, who had been stript of their property by the loss of the territory beyond the Tiber, might have found a home.

A computation of time, which ascending from a given point determines its earliest epoch by artificial combinations, may seem unfit for and unworthy of being used in chronology. But for practical purposes nothing more is requisite, than that the point it begins at be fixed relatively: the first year even of our own common era is notoriously misplaced: only such chronological determinateness must not be mistaken for historical certainty. The dignity of Rome purges its era from the blot of having owed its origin to fraud.

History requires more than one era; Asia a different one from Europe: such eras as reckon backward, or are necessarily dependent on a supposition ascertained to be utterly wrong, are positively bad: different eras are suited to different times; thus the Spanish from the battle of Actium was appropriate so long as the Western empire lasted: afterward it ought to have given way to the general Christian era much sooner than it did; as that of Nabonassar was very reasonably made to yield to the Seleucidian. The greater or less value of an era for practical purposes depends on three qualities: that it begin early enough to comprehend the period of such dates as are really historical, within its sphere in its forward course; that this sphere without straining include the history of the most important nations which come within it; and that the reason which entitles the era to preference, remain long unaltered.

According to the numerous forms of the Italian national names, the Umbri must also have been called Umbrici: this the Greeks pronounced Ombrici, and saw therein an allusion to their great antiquity. The name was supposed to indicate that they existed even before the rain-floods, which, according to the creed of the Grecian sages also, had in many countries destroyed earlier races of men. This trifling was probably never meant seriously: but it is certain that the Umbrians were a great nation, before the Etruscans, in the time of the Oenotrians, and that they deserve to be called a most ancient genuine people of Italy. Their city Ameria was built according to Cato 964 years before the war with Perseus, or 381 years before Rome, It is certain too that in ancient times they inhabited a very extensive country; probably, as has been said already, beside what continued to be known as Umbria, the south of Etruria; and, according to definite Roman traditions, the district occupied by the Sabines between the Apennines and the Tiber. On the north-east of the Apennines toward the upper sea and the Po they are said to have spread as conquerors, to have expelled Liburnians and Siculians from the coast, and to have maintained an obstinate contest with the Etruscans for the territory on the lower Po.

History finds the Umbrians restricted to the left bank of the Tiber; with some scattered towns on the coast and near the Po, preserved to them partly, as Ravenna was, by the marshes around them, partly by paying tribute to the Gauls.

In Corsica we find Iberians and Ligurians: in Sicily, before the time of the Sicelians, Sicanians, who were afterward driven back by the Sicelians into the western and southern parts of the island. All historians agree in calling the Sicanians too Iberians: the only dispute was as to their home. They themselves asserted that they were a native primitive race: herein Timæus sided with them, and seemed to Diodorus to have proved it incontrovertibly. Thucydides however assures us it was a settled point, that they had been expelled by Ligurians from Iberia: and Philistus concurred with him. The positive language in which Thucydides expresses his judgement, “this is ascertained as truth,” in the mouth of a man like him, gives great weight to the traditions of western Europe: it can have been only Ligurian or Hispanian traditions, that he admitted as decisive. But even he might be misled by the genealogical prejudice; and where the supposed colony has no similar tradition, the declarations of the pretended original people can scarcely be admitted as evidence: in such cases vanity is very apt to bias.

On the other hand there is no doubt as to the Sicelians, that they themselves deduced their descent by emigration from the Oenotrians. Some Morgetes also inhabited the island; but history names only the more important kindred people.

That the Elymians were Trojans, passed for undoubted; only a tradition introduced Phocians also among the authors of their race. Hellanicus alone brought them from Italy.

The old Roman legend ran as follows: Procas king of Alba left behind him two sons: Numitor, the elder, weak and spiritless, suffered Amulius to wrest the government from him, and reduce him to his father's private property. In the possession of this he lived rich, and, as he desired nothing more, secure: but the usurper dreaded the claims that might be set up by heirs of a different character. He therefore caused Numitor's son to be murdered, and appointed Silvia, his daughter, one of the vestal virgins.

Amulius had no children, or at least only a single daughter; so that the race of Anchises and Aphrodite seemed on the point of expiring, when the love of a god, in opposition to the ordinances of man, gave it perpetuity and a lustre worthy of its origin. Silvia had gone into the sacred grove, to draw pure water from the spring for the service of the temple: the sun quenched its rays; at the sight of a wolf she fled into a cave; there Mars overpowered the timid virgin; and then consoled her with the promise of noble children, as Posidon did Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus.

When Jupiter in the Æneid consoles the weeping goddess, the mother of the hero, by revealing the future to her; how the empire of her son and his posterity was to rise from step to step, increasing still in glory and greatness, up to Rome, to which no limit and no term was assigned; the three years promised for Æneas apply, not to the interval between his landing and his death, but to the duration of the little Troy on the Latian shore, until the building of Lavinium, the city of the united nation; though the former period was also reckoned to consist of the same number of years.

Thirty years afterward his successor led the Latins from the unhealthy low grounds on the coast to the declivity of Monte Cavo, from the summit of which the eye commands a view more ample than the dominion of Rome before the Samnite wars; in the light of the setting sun it can reach Corsica and Sardinia, and sees the hill which is still illustrated by the name of Circe, like an island, beneath the first rays of her divine sire. The site where Alba stretched in a long street between the mountain and the lake, is still distinctly marked: along this whole extent the rock is cut away under it right down to the lake. These traces of man's ordering hand are more ancient than Rome.