n a hundred years the Limagne
would doubtless be as waste, forsaken, and miserable as the Campagna
di Roma is at the present day.

4. In Slavonia, where the patriarchal economy is retained up to
the present day, the whole family, often to the number of fifty
or even a hundred persons, remains together in the same house under
the orders of the house-father (Goszpodar) chosen by the whole
family for life. The property of the household, which consists
chiefly in cattle, is administered by the house-father; the
surplus is distributed according to the family-branches. Private
acquisitions by industry and trade remain separate property.
Instances of quitting the household occur, in the case even of men,
e. g. by marrying into a stranger household (Csaplovies, -Slavonien-,
i. 106, 179). --Under such circumstances, which are probably
not very widely different from the earliest Roman conditions, the
household approximates in character to the community.

5. The Latin festival is expressly called "armistice" (-indutiae-,
Macrob. Sat. i. 16; --ekecheipiai--, Dionys. iv. 49); and a war
was not allowed to be begun during its continuance (Macrob. l. c.)

6. The assertion often made in ancient and modern times, that
Alba once ruled over Latium under the forms of a symmachy, nowhere
finds on closer investigation sufficient support. All history
begins not with the union, but with the disunion of a nation; and
it is very improbable that the problem of the union of Latium, which
Rome finally solved after some centuries of conflict, should have
been already solved at an earlier period by Alba. It deserves to
be remarked too that Rome never asserted in the capacity of heiress
of Alba any claims of sovereignty proper over the Latin communities,
but contented herself with an honorary presidency; which no doubt,
when it became combined with material power, afforded a handle for
her pretensions of hegemony. Testimonies, strictly so called, can
scarcely be adduced on such a question; and least of all do such
passages as Festus -v. praetor-, p. 241, and Dionys. iii. 10,
suffice to stamp Alba as a Latin Athens.

CHAPTER IV

The Beginnings of Rome

Ramnes

About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of
moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the
right, lower on the left bank. With the latter group there has been
closely associated for at least two thousand five hundred years