remnants of an older population.

They were mainly an agricultural and pastoral people, who had settled on
the land in _pagi_, or cantons, naturally or artificially defined rural
districts. The _pagus_ constituted a rude political and religious unit.
Its population lived scattered in their homesteads. If some few of the
homesteads happened to be grouped together, they constituted a _vicus_,
which, however, had neither a political nor a religious organization.

At one or more points within the cantons there soon developed small towns
(_oppida_), usually located on hilltops and fortified, at first with
earthen, later with stone, walls. These towns served as market-places and
as points of refuge in time of danger for the people of the _pagus_. There
developed an artisan and mercantile element, and there the aristocratic
element of the population early took up their abode, i. e., the wealthier
landholders, who could leave to others the immediate oversight of their
estates. And so these _oppida_ became the centers of government for the
surrounding _pagi_. It is very doubtful if the Latins as a whole were ever
united in a single state. But even if that had once been the case, this
loosely organized state must early have been broken up into a number of
smaller units. These were the various _populi_; that is, the cantons with
their _oppida_. The names of some sixty-five of these towns are known, but
before the close of the sixth century many of the smaller of them had been
merged with their more powerful neighbors.

*The Latin League.* The realization of the racial unity of the Latins was
expressed in the annual festival of Jupiter Latiaris celebrated on the
Alban Mount. For a long time also the Latin cities formed a league, of
which there were thirty members according to tradition. Actually, about
the middle of the fifth century there were only some eight cities
participating in the association upon an independent footing. The central
point of the league was the grove and temple of Diana at Aricia, and it
was in the neighborhood of Aricia that the meetings of the assembly of the
league were held. The league possessed a very loose organization, but we
know of a common executive head--the Latin dictator.

II. THE ORIGINS OF ROME

*The site of Rome.* Rome, the Latin _Roma_, is situated on the Tiber about
fifteen miles from the sea. The Rome of the later Republic and the Empire,
the City of the S