I will not go through these wars. No memory is capable of retaining them; and they are also deficient in authenticity, and that because the historian, weary of them, has read and written them in too great a hurry. After the Latin league, the enemy make a fierce onslaught, without, however, conquering much. Circeii in the time of Sp. Cassius is still a Latin town. An event of relatively great importance for the Romans was the league with the Hernicans (267). Isopolity must already have existed early, if it be true, that under Tarquin the Proud these had a share in the festival of Jupiter Latiaris. A Roman tradition even mentions them as allies of Tullus Hostilius. After the humiliation of Rome by the Etruscans, they must, like the Latins, and the Tyrrhenian towns on the sea coast, have set themselves free. The league restored the relations in a manner very advantageous for them. Romans, Latins, and Hernicans were to be quite on the same footing; the booty, as well in money as in land, was divided in equal shares; if a colony were sent out, the colonists were taken from all the three. Whether the annalists have rightly understood the matter,--Livy and Dionysius differ very much from each other,--or whether they merely took it for granted that whenever a peace is concluded, it must have been preceded by a war, cannot be decided. Yet I am inclined to believe that the league was brought about by mutual necessity, as both were hemmed in by the Volscians and Æquians, and the fortified towns of the Hernicans were of great consequence to the Romans: a war would at least have been very absurd. The Hernicans dwelt in five towns, Anagnia, Alatrum, Ferentina, Frusino, and Verulæ, remarkable for their Cyclopian fortifications, and extending from the West to the East. According to the statements in Servius and the Veronese scholiast on Virgil, whom Mai has incorrectly edited, the Hernicans were a people sprung from the Marsians and Sabines; their name is said to be derived from _hernæ_, which in the Sabine language meant a rock, (Arndt compares to it the German _Firn_[94]), so that they were mountaineers. But it is strange that a people should in its own language have borne a mere epithet as its name, especially as the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians dwelt on much higher mountains. The Sabine descent of the Hernicans is therefore somewhat suspicious; it might, however, be maintained, even if the derivation of the name were a mere subtlety. Another difficulty is this: if they have come forth from the Marsians, they must have broken through the Æquians, which is altogether unlikely; and besides, in the sequel they have no connexion whatever with the Marsians. Julius Hyginus declares them to have been Pelasgians.