s--the features
of individual life in the case of those earlier ages which are,
so far as history is concerned, all but lost in oblivion; for it
is in this field of research alone that we acquire some idea of
the breadth of the gulf which separates our modes of thinking and
feeling from those of the civilized nations of antiquity. Tradition,
with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends,
resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to
have once been green. Instead of threading that dreary maze and
attempting to classify those shreds of humanity, the Chones and
Oenotrians, the Siculi and the Pelasgi, it will be more to the
purpose to inquire how the real life of the people in ancient Italy
expressed itself in their law, and their ideal life in religion;
how they farmed and how they traded; and whence the several nations
derived the art of writing and other elements of culture. Scanty
as our knowledge in this respect is in reference to the Roman people
and still more so in reference to the Sabellians and Etruscans,
even the slight and very defective information which is attainable
will enable the mind to associate with these names some more or
less clear glimpse of the once living reality. The chief result of
such a view (as we may here mention by way of anticipation) may be
summed up in saying that fewer traces comparatively of the primitive
state of things have been preserved in the case of the Italians,
and of the Romans in particular, than in the case of any other
Indo-Germanic race. The bow and arrow, the war-chariot, the incapacity
of women to hold property, the acquiring of wives by purchase,
the primitive form of burial, blood-revenge, the clan-constitution
conflicting with the authority of the community, a vivid natural
symbolism --all these, and numerous phenomena of a kindred character,
must be presumed to have lain at the foundation of civilization in
Italy as well as elsewhere; but at the epoch when that civilization
comes clearly into view they have already wholly disappeared, and
only the comparison of kindred races informs us that such things
once existed. In this respect Italian history begins at a far
later stage of civilization than e.g. the Greek or the Germanic,
and from the first it exhibits a comparatively modern character.

The laws of most of the Italian stocks are lost in oblivion. Some
information regarding the law of the Latin land alone has survived
in R