"Cantons ... having their rendezvous in some stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the primitive political unities with which Italian history begins. At what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium, cannot be determined with precision; nor is it a matter of special historical interest. The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the new comers. Here accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between the Alban lake (Lago di Castello) and the Alban mount (Monte Cavo) extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of Rome, as well as of all the other Old Latin communities. Here, too, on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium, Aricia, and Tusculum. ... All these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign, and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors. Nevertheless the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself in an important religious and political institution--the perpetual league of the collective Latin cantons. The presidency belonged originally, according to the universal Italian as well as Hellenic usage, to that canton within whose bounds lay the meeting-place of the league; in this case it was the canton of Alba. ... The communities entitled to participate in the league were in the beginning thirty. ... The rendezvous of this union was, like the Pambœotia and the Panionia among the similar confederacies of the Greeks, the 'Latin festival' (feriæ Latinæ) at which, on the Mount of Alba, upon a day annually appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the 'Latin god' (Jupiter Latiaris)." _T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 3._ ALSO IN _Sir W. Gell, Topography of Rome, volume 1._ {31} ALBA DE TORMES, Battle of. See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER). ALBAIS, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES. ALBAN, Kingdom of. See ALBION; also, SCOTLAND: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES. ALBANI, The. See BRITAIN, TRIBES OF CELTIC. ALBANIANS: Ancient. See EPIRUS and ILLYRIANS. ALBANIANS: Mediæval.