The exceedingly ancient Emissarius is still preserved, and through its vault a canal was drawn, _fossa Cluilia_. In this vault, beneath the centroni, we have still a traceable work, more ancient than any Roman one. Yet that Alba was the capital; that it had the dominion over Latium; that its temple of Jupiter was the central point of the nations under its rule; and the _gens Silvia_ the reigning family, is all that can be said about Alba and the Latins of that time. It is not to be doubted, that the number of the Latin towns was really thirty, as well as that of the Alban boroughs. This number afterwards is again met with in the later Latin towns, and in the thirty Roman tribes; and it is also at the bottom of the account of Lavinium’s being founded by thirty households, in which the union of the two races may be traced.[50] The account that Lavinium was a Trojan colony, and afterwards abandoned, but again restored by Alba; that, moreover, the sanctuary could not be transferred from thence to Alba; however much it may bear the stamp of antiquity, is after all merely an adaptation of the Trojan and the native tradition. For, Lavinium is nothing else but a general name for Latium, as Panionion for Ionia. _Latinus_, _Lavinus_, _Lavicus_ are one and the same name; as Servius also acknowledges. Lavinium was the central point of the Prisci Latini, and without doubt there existed in earlier times, when Alba had not yet the rule over Lavinium, a communion of worship in Alba and Lavinium; as afterwards in Rome at the temple of Diana in the Aventine, and at the Roman and Latin holidays on the Alban mount. The characters therefore in the Trojan legend are thus to be analysed. Turnus is no other than Turinus, the Τυῤῥηνός of Dionysius; Lavinia, the beautiful maiden, is the name of the Latin people; perhaps they are so distinguished as the inhabitants of the coasts are more especially called Tyrrhenians, those of the interior country, Latins. As the Latins after the battle at the Regillus, are found together with thirty towns in the league with Rome, we cannot doubt but that the number of those towns, of which the dominion belonged in the earliest times to Alba, was also thirty. Only there were not always the same towns in this league; many afterwards perished, others were received in their stead.