This isolated grouping of the Italian peoples may have been partly due to the great mixture of the populations of Italy south of the Alps and south even of the Apennines; but the earliest Italian history reveals the fact that even the closely-related races of Latins, Umbrians, and Sabellians were not connected by much closer ties of an international character than those which bound each to the Etruscan, the Iapygian, the Gaul, and the Greek. It is true that with the progress of time something like an ethnic sentiment was created in the purely Italian group, with vast consequences to the history of the world. After the Umbrian power, which had once extended from sea to sea, had been weakened, on the left by the Etruscan, on the right by the Celt, Rome becomes the great frontier power, the bulwark of the group of blood-related nations against the foreign-speaking Tuscan and the Gaul whose kinship with herself she had forgotten; but the relation soon became political, and, therefore, more than international. That aggregation of vague human sentiments, which is called International Law, was not juristically stronger within the sphere of the blood-related than it was within the sphere of the Italian group of peoples. Within this wider sphere of humanity, that was not yet “Italian,” there are traces of the observance by Rome of customs relating to the conduct of war and to negotiations for procuring peace—customs which by their very existence show that, though the early Roman employed the same word to designate the stranger and the enemy, a state of war was not considered as the permanent relation even between _hostes_; which prove, by their elaboration, the antiquity of some sense of international obligation, and which exhibit, by the constancy with which they were applied, the existence of reciprocal forms and duties owed by the hostile state to Rome. The functions of the _Fetiales_, the priestly ambassadors (_oratores_)[1386] who demand reparation, declare war and ratify a peace, seem never to have been confined to those peoples with whom Rome had treaty relations, but to have been extended to any nation which had not by specific acts waged war on Rome. Four of the priestly guild of _Fetiales_ were appointed to seek redress. These elected one of their number to become their representative, to be for the time the “ratifying father of the Roman people” (_pater patratus populi Romani_). At the borders of the offending tribe the _pater_ with many imprecations called Jupiter to witness that the grievance was established, the demand reasonable. Three times did he make the same appeal—to the first sojourner he met in the stranger’s territory, to the sentinel at the gate, and to the magistrate within the walls. Thirty days were allowed for the reply; on the first of these the standard was hoisted on the citadel of Rome, and the burgess army gathered for the threatening war. If an appeasing answer were not returned within these days of grace, the