12.  It is only an unreflecting misconception that can discover in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.

13.  I. XII.  Nature of the Roman Gods

14.  I. XII.  Priests

15. -Sors- from -serere-, to place in row.  The -sortes- were probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts one in mind of the Runic characters.

16.  I. X. Hellenes and Latins

17.  I. VII.  Servian Wall

18.  I. II.  Indo-Germanic Culture

19.  I. IV.  Tities and Luceres

CHAPTER XIII

Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce

Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the constitution and the external history of states, that the former must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter.  We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and particularly of Roman economics.

Agriculture

It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians into the peninsula.  Agriculture continued to be the main support of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans no less than of the Latins.  There were no purely pastoral tribes in Italy during historical times, although of course the various races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation of the soil.  The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture.  In the case of Rome in particular—­and it is only in its case that we can speak of agrarian relations with any sort of certainty—­the Servian reform shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the pith and marrow of the community.  When in the course of time a large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently, by treating the members of the community without reference to their political position once for all according to their freeholding, and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders—­a step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed by the concession of public rights.