The History of Rome

The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation of the earliest "rural wards" (tribus rusticae). Tradition informs us as to the tribus Claudia, that it originated from the settlement of the Claudian clansmen on the Anio; and that the other districts of the earliest division originated in a similar manner is indicated quite as certainly by their names. These names are not, like those of the districts added at a later period, derived from the localities, but are formed without exception from the names of clans; and the clans who thus gave their names to the wards of the original Roman territory are, so far as they have not become entirely extinct (as is the case with the Camilii, Galerii, Lemonii, Pollii, Pupinii, Voltinii), the very oldest patrician families of Rome, the Aemilii, Cornelii, Fabii, Horatii, Menenii, Papirii, Romilii, Sergii, Voturii. It is worthy of remark, that not one of these clans can be shown to have taken up its settlement in Rome only at a later epoch.  Every Italian, and doubtless also every Hellenic, canton must, like the Roman, have been divided into a number of groups associated at once by locality and by clanship; such a clan-settlement is the "house" (oikia) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the komai and demoi originated among them, like the tribus in Rome. The corresponding Italian terms "house" vicus or "district" (pagus, from pangere) indicate, in like manner, the joint settlement of the members of a clan, and thence come by an easily understood transition to signify in common use hamlet or village. As each household had its own portion of land, so the clan-household or village had a clan-land belonging to it, which, as will afterwards be shown, was managed up to a comparatively late period after the analogy of household - land, that is, on the system of joint-possession. Whether it was in Latium itself that the clan-households became developed into clan-villages, or whether the Latins were already associated in clans when they immigrated into Latium, are questions which we are just as little able to answer as we are to determine what was the form assumed by the management on joint account, which such an arrangement required[4], or how far, in addition to the original ground of common ancestry, the clan may have been based on the incorporation or co-ordination from without of individuals not related to it by blood.

Cantons