sen was born at Garding in Schleswig on November
30, 1817. He studied at Kiel University for three years,
examined Roman inscriptions in France and Italy from 1844 to
1847, and attained his first professorship at Leipzig in 1848,
and the Berlin Chair of Ancient History in 1858. His greatest
work was the "History of Rome," published in 1854, and its
successor, the "Roman Provinces." On this work he brought to
bear a research and a scholarship of almost unparalleled range
and completeness. He was a man capable of vehement and
occasionally unreasonable partisanship, and a strict and
cold-blooded impartiality would have tempered the enthusiasm
of some of his portraits and the severity of others. These
defects, however, are less obvious when his history is
condensed in small compass. There are cases in which his
judgments are open to adverse criticism. But at the present
day it may safely be affirmed that there is no extant history
of Rome down to the establishment of the empire which can be
regarded as rivalling that here presented. Upwards of 900
separate publications remain as a monument of Mommsen's
industry. He died on November 1, 1903.

Iapygians, Etruscans, and Italians, the last certainly Indo-Europeans,
are the original stocks of Italy proper. Of the Italians there are two
divisions, the Latin and the Umbro-Sabellian. Central Italy was occupied
by the Latins, who were established in cantons formed of village groups;
which cantons at an early age formed themselves into the loose Latin
League, with Alba at its head.

The Roman canton, on both banks of the Tiber, concentrated itself on the
city earlier than others. The citizens consisted of the families which
constituted the larger groups of clans or gentes, formed into those
tribes. The remainder of the population were their dependents or slaves.
At the head of the family was the father, and the whole community had
its king, standing to it in the same relation as the father to the
family. His power, within the law, was absolute; but he could not
override it or change it on his own authority. This required the formal
assent of the assembled citizens. The heads of the clans formed a
separate body--the Senate--which controlled the appointment of the king,
and could veto legislation.

By admission of aliens and absorption of other communities, swelling the
number of depend