roved. Mars quirinus, Sol,
Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine,
but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the
epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. If a name like
that of Semo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the
Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of
the Quirinal which afterwards diminished in its importance (comp.
the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed
inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the
high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from
a neighbouring land. In so speaking we do not mean to deny that
it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated
in producing this state of things; but if such was the case, they
have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views
current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the
constitution of Rome are only fitted seriously to warn us against
such baseless speculations leading to no result.

CHAPTER V

The Original Constitution of Rome

The Roman House

Father and mother, sons and daughters, home and homestead,
servants and chattels--such are the natural elements constituting
the household in all cases, where polygamy has not obliterated the
distinctive position of the mother. But the nations that have been
most susceptible of culture have diverged widely from each other
in their conception and treatment of the natural distinctions which
the household thus presents. By some they have been apprehended
and wrought out more profoundly, by others more superficially;
by some more under their moral, by others more under their legal
aspects. None has equalled the Roman in the simple but inexorable
embodiment in law of the principles pointed out by nature herself.

The House-father and His Household

The family formed an unity. It consisted of the free man who upon
his father's death had become his own master, and the spouse whom
the priests by the ceremony of the sacred salted cake (-confarreatio-)
had solemnly wedded to share with him water and fire, with their son
and sons' sons and the lawful wives of these, and their unmarried
daughters and sons' daughters, along with all goods and substance
pertaining to any of its members. The children of daughters on
the other hand were excluded, because, if born in wedlock, they
belonged to the