In this manner Rome obtained a territory. The many thousand settlers
whom Ancus is said to have led to the Aventine were the population of
the Latin towns which became subject to Rome, and they were far more
numerous than the two ancient tribes, even after the latter had been
increased by their union with the third tribe. In these country
districts lay the power of Rome, and from them she raised the armies
with which she carried on her wars. It would have been natural to admit
this population as a fourth tribe, but such a measure was not agreeable
to the Romans: the constitution of the state was completed and was
looked upon as a sacred trust in which no change ought to be introduced.
It was with the Greeks and Romans as it was with our own ancestors,
whose separate tribes clung to their hereditary laws, and differed from
one another in this respect as much as they did from the Gauls in the
color of their eyes and hair. They knew well enough that it was in their
power to alter the laws, but they considered them as something which
ought not to be altered. Thus when the emperor Otho was doubtful on a
point of the law of inheritance, he caused the case to be decided by an
ordeal or judgment of God. In Sicily, one city had Chalcidian, another
Doric laws, although their populations, as well as their dialects, were
greatly mixed; but the leaders of those colonies had been Chalcidians in
the one case and Dorians in the others. The Chalcidians, moreover, were
divided into four, the Dorians into three tribes, and their differences
in these respects were manifested even in their weights and measures.
The division into three tribes was a genuine Latin institution; and
there are reasons which render it probable that the Sabines had a
division of their states into four tribes. The transportation of the
Latins to Rome must be regarded as the origin of the _plebs_.
PRINCE JIMMU FOUNDS JAPAN'S CAPITAL
B.C. 660
SIR EDWARD REED THE "NEHONGI"
Prince Jimmu is the founder of the Empire of Japan, according to
Japanese tradition. The whole of his history is overlaid with myth
and legend. But it points to the immigration of western Asiatics by
way of Corea into the Japanese islands of Izumo and Kyushu.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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