them all, we meet with hardly any traces of art. The nations of Italian race, and even the Romans, stern and practical as they were, followed more freely and successfully the impulse of Greek art than their rudely luxurious neighbors. The · influence of the Greeks over the Romans he places very early and very high, tracing it in the institutions of Servius Tullius, in the games of the Ludi Romani (almost identical with those of Olympia), in the very early supplanting of the Roman flute by the Greek lyre, in the forms of building in stone, in the alphabet, and in the correspondence of Greek with Roman measures, amphora, modius (from μédiuvos), congius (from Xocus), hemina, cyathus, &c. So far from the Romans having borrowed the alphabet from the Etruscans, they did not even use the same modification of the original Greek alphabet; the Romans having received theirs, as he learns by internal evidence, from Sicily, and having even introduced, from time to time, the changes it underwent in Sicily, while the Etruscans used an older and very different form, obtained, it is likely, from Athens.

Inductions like the above, derived from comparison of alphabets, etymology, weights and measures, coins, &c., are frequently introduced, and are always curious as well as valuable. Thus in the fact that the oldest Greek colonies in Italy used the coins and weights of Asia Minor, rather than of Greece, he finds a corroboration of the tradition that it was the Phocæans who first of the Greeks penetrated the Western seas. Again, he proves that the list of the Latin cities given by Dionysius was not a contemporary one, from the fact that Gabii stands in the alphabetical order of G, while the letter G did not come into use until long after this period; it would therefore have stood among the C's, had it been the original list. But perhaps the most valuable of this class of results are found in those pages in which he investigates the height of civilization reached by the Greek and Italian races, first at their separation from the Indo-Germanic stock, and again when they separated from each other. By a few simple comparisons of words in the different languages, he shows that at this earlier period the various families were living a pastoral life, agriculture probably not having been yet introduced. But before the second division of

races

that of the Italians from the Greeks took place, the agricultural must have taken the place of the pastoral mode of life, because, while pastoral terms, as well as those expressing ⚫ domestic relations and other very primitive ideas, agree in the three languages, agricultural terms agree in the Greek and Latin languages, but differ from those in the Sanscrit. Thus the Sanscrit gaus is Latin bos, Greek Boûs; Sanscrit avis, Latin ovis, Greek ois; Sanscrit açvas, Latin equus, Greek TπOS; while the Sanscrit aritram does not correspond in meaning to the Latin aratrum, but means an oar, in which signification we trace its root in épeтuós, remus, and the English rudder. This example shows that, although the plough had not been invented at the dispersion of the races, water-travel was known, the word originally signifying oar having been afterwards applied by the Græco-Latin races to the instrument which turns up the land, as that does the water, thus reversing our modern metaphor of ploughing the waters. But he shows further that, although the boat was known,- Sanscrit nâus, Latin navis, Greek vaûs and the oar in use, the advance to sail-navigation was made by the Greeks and Romans independently, velum being a wholly distinct word from ioriov. It would be easy to cite illustrations of this process of comparative philology, which is susceptible of very wide application, but we will only adduce one, taken from another part of the work. He shows in the chapter on Metrology (Mass und Schrift) that the primitive mode of reckoning time among all nations was by months, and that a considerable time elapsed before the important step was taken of combining these into years. "For this reason," he continues," the names of the years are among the Indo-Germanic peoples as recent and various as the name of the month is primitive and identical (uralt und gleichartig)." (p. 193.)

With regard to the vexed questions of the Roman Constitution, there is perhaps less room for originality; but the reader is struck with the freshness given a hackneyed subject by a writer of genius, who is able to bring to it all the erudition of his own nation, illuminated by a common sense equal to the English,- of the institutions of which nation he is an evident admirer and careful student. According to his view, the family, with its absolute head, the pater-familias, is the type of Roman

institutions; "the form of the political community (Staatsgemeinschaft) is in particulars as well as in general copied from the family." (p. 59.) "As the head of the family is in the house, not the most powerful, but the only powerful, so is the. king, not the first, but the only possessor of power in the state." (p. 60.) "The king is thus only a common citizen, whom merit or fortune, but, above all, the necessity that there must be one master in every house, has placed over his equals, the peasant over peasants, the warrior over warriors." (p. 62.) As the power of the pater-familias is limited by the family council, that of the chief magistrate is by the senate, neither having power to command, but only to advise. And as the family relation involved the existence of a dependent, protected class, by the side of the free members, so the state consisted of the free citizens (patricians), and the residents (Insassen). From these "there grew up by the side of the citizens (Bürgerschaft) a second Roman community; out of the clients was developed the Plebs." "In point of law there is no difference between the client and the plebeian, the dependant and the man of the people; but in point of fact a very important one, inasmuch as the one title gives prominence to the relation of dependence on some one of the citizens, with full political rights, while the other merely indicates the want of such rights." (p. 80.) This ingenious decision of a question which has been disputed ever since the time of Niebuhr, would reconcile many difficulties if admitted.

In the reform of Servius Tullius he sees only a contrivance for shifting upon the plebeians their share of the burdens of the state, which had hitherto rested exclusively on the full citizens. But although the object was certainly not political equality, this was as certainly once the first step takeninevitable as a result. The institutions of Servius Tullius, purely military in their origin, were soon extended to civil matters, and it was not long before the equality enjoyed in one field was demanded in another. "He who is forced to become a soldier must have it in his power also to become an officer, so long as the state retains its vigor; in Rome, doubtless, plebeians could now be appointed centurions and military tribunes, and with this even the entrance into the Senate, to

which before there was no legal obstacle, was now probably thrown open in fact also, which, of course, did not by any means imply admittance into the body of citizens (Bürgerschaft)." (p. 85.) Thus grew up a division among the plebeians themselves, the rich and noble of them being satisfied to be shut out for a while from the offices of state, in consideration of the more substantial advantages they enjoyed in their senatorial capacity, forming, as they did, a sort of lower order of nobility, and siding rather with their fellow-rulers, the patricians, than with the plebeians from whom they had sprung. We have in consequence three distinct movements of political reform going on side by side: first, the limitation of the power of the magistrates by substituting consuls for kings; secondly, the resistance of the poor to the unjust social laws and the oppressions of the rich; thirdly, the struggles of the plebeians to obtain an equal share of the honors and privileges of the state. These three movements, totally distinct in their actors and their aim, have been confounded by most writers, who have wasted a deal of ingenuity in trying to show how it came that the plebeians, as such, were solely affected by the laws of debt and the system of occupying the land. To Mommsen, who devotes a chapter to each, belongs the merit of having clearly pointed out their distinct natures. The first and third of these we need not now touch upon, but will devote a short space to the second, the most important and least understood.

There were, in general, two ways of disposing of the land acquired by the Roman community in war: first, by assignation, which consisted in the division as property among a number of the poorer citizens of a portion of the conquered land; secondly, by occupation, according to which, following probably some practical regulations of which we know nothing, the possession and usufruct were left, for a small rent or none at all, to the rich Senators, who thus came to hold immense tracts of public land, and to treat it as their own, even buying and selling it. As the Senate had the entire disposal of the public lands, the laws were not, enforced too strictly towards its own members, and in time this "destructive system of occupation" completely supplanted that of assignation, except at the plantVOL. LXVII. - 5TH S. VOL. V. NO. III.

33

ing of colonies, when each colonist received a lot of land, commonly seven jugera. The agrarian dissensions, which Livy deplores, all had their root in this state of things. The poor farmer, forced by the laws of Servius to fight in the army, must leave his land untilled and exposed. If the war was unsuccessful, he returned to find his house in ashes, his farm laid waste, and his wife and children swept into slavery. If successful, he had the poor satisfaction of feeling that he had toiled to win glory for his patrician commander, and new lands for the greedy Senate to monopolize. His crops failing by neglect, or cut up by the Volscians, he must borrow money to live; and when, the next year, like causes prevented him from paying the exorbitant interest, ten per cent was a low rate, -the harsh laws adjudged his person to his creditor, to chain, or scourge, or use as a slave, until the debt was satisfied.* When the people, driven to desperation, refused to serve any longer in wars from which they reaped no benefit, and the Consul had no power to coerce them, a new means was contrived. The regal authority was renewed in the person of a dictator, who had power of life and death, and against whom there was no appeal; so they were driven like gangs of slaves to the battle, where they fought sullenly and without spirit, willing to be beaten that they might disgrace their generals. And when Spurius Cassius, the wisest and most distinguished patrician of the day, saw and strove to heal a disease that then could have been healed, by a law taking the management of the public lands out of the hands of the Senate, he lost caste at once. Patricians and rich plebeians united against this daring disturber of vested rights. Even those whom he sought to protect failed to do him justice; he was charged with aiming at kingly power, tried, condemned, and executed.

And now no alternative was left to the people but absolute slavery or revolution. They chose the latter, took up their position on the Sacred Mount, and threatened to build themselves a new city, since their rights were denied them in the old. This left the patricians in an awkward position; the experi

*That the addictus did become really a slave, is shown by the fact that, when freed, he did not come into the class of libertini, but resumed his old rank in the state.