s settlement in Rome only at a later epoch. Every
Italian, and doubtless also every Hellenic, canton must, like the
Roman, have been divided into a number of groups associated at once
by locality and by clanship; such a clan-settlement is the "house"
(--oikia--) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the --komai--
and --demoi-- originated among them, like the tribus in Rome. The
corresponding Italian terms "house" -vicus-or "district" (-pagus-,
from -pangere-) indicate, in like manner, the joint settlement
of the members of a clan, and thence come by an easily understood
transition to signify in common use hamlet or village. As each
household had its own portion of land, so the clan-household or
village had a clan-land belonging to it, which, as will afterwards
be shown, was managed up to a comparatively late period after the
analogy of household--land, that is, on the system of joint-possession.
Whether it was in Latium itself that the clan-households became
developed into clan-villages, or whether the Latins were already
associated in clans when they immigrated into Latium, are questions
which we are just as little able to answer as we are to determine
what was the form assumed by the management on joint account,
which such an arrangement required,(4) or how far, in addition to
the original ground of common ancestry, the clan may have been based
on the incorporation or co-ordination from without of individuals
not related to it by blood.

Cantons

These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as
independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political
community (-civitas-, -populus-). This first presents itself as an
aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language,
and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal
redress and to united action in aggression and defence. A fixed
local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton
as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in
other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their
villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint
settlement in the strict sense--a town. It must, on the contrary,
have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of
justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members
of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and
amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtai