Most scholars have wisely avoided bringing the myth of the asylum[217] into the argument. Pellegrino,[218] however, identifies the refugees at that place with the entire plebeian body. As the asylum was not an Italian but a Greek institution,[219] the story connected with it is doubtless a myth. It seems to have been invented by the Greeks of southern Italy, most probably in the fourth century B.C. At that time they began to view with alarm the southward advance of the Romans, and to disparage them accordingly by falsifications representing their origin as obscure and disreputable.[220] Similar calumnies against other peoples were concocted by their Greek enemies.[221] Notwithstanding the fact that the story had not even a kernel of historical truth the Romans accepted it with more or less modification[222] and used it to some extent for partisan objects.[223] They could not oppose the plebs to patricians as foreigners to natives, however, for (1) they supposed that plebeians as well as patricians participated in the original settlement of Rome, (2) they derived patrician as well as plebeian families from foreign sources.[224] We are warranted in concluding that in adopting the Greek myth of the asylum they looked upon it as a cause of increase in the plebeian population without finding in it the origin of the plebeian class. To the theory of an exclusively patrician populus the following objections may be summarily urged: (1) It is opposed by the unanimous testimony of the ancient authorities. (2) It rests upon a wrong explanation of the words patres, patricii, as designations of the nobles. (3) It is further propped up by reasons so feeble as to testify at once to its weakness, the more substantial basis having been overthrown partly by Mommsen himself. (4) The number of patricians is too small for the theory.[225] (5) It ignores the meaning of the word plebs, which evidently signifies “the masses,” in contrast with the few nobles, and hence could not apply to a class gradually formed by the liberation of clients, or by the admission of foreigners. No one who holds the theory has attempted to show what these liberated clients were called when they were but few compared with the patricians—before they became “the multitude.” (6) It is contradicted by everything we know of Rome’s attitude towards aliens. So far back as our knowledge reaches, she was extremely liberal in bestowing the citizenship, even forcing it upon some communities. Only when she acquired the rule over a considerable part of Italy did she begin to show illiberality in this respect. Down to 353 the citizenship thus freely extended included the right to vote.[226] (7) It assumes the existence of a community politically far advanced yet showing no inequalities of rank among the freemen—a condition outside the range of human experience. It aims to explain the origin of the social classes on purely Roman ground, ignoring the fact that distinctions of rank