Just a caveat: I tend to read argumentatively, but it doesn’t mean that I think I know more or better than the author. I find it a productive way of reading, and recommend it to others.

Mommsen’s belief in the superiority of the culture of certain ethnicities appears again at the start, when he attempts to trace the settlements of the Italians and to show how the Latins maintained their own culture while others, through contact with the superior culture of the Greeks, were either conquered and Hellenized, or weakened and succumbed to the Sabines (rivals to the equally superior Latins).

The rest of the chapter focuses, naturally, on the Latins, who gave their name to the language–and presumably their culture to state–of the Romans.

Latium

Mommsen begins with an overview of the geography and neighboring peoples, the sort of thing that could be well represented graphically but that you can never quite find. (Who has a clear conception of how Latium stands, and its landmarks, like the Alban range and Mt. Circeo, how the hills and valleys may have shaped life, and why the place was settled at all?)

He justifies an etymology of the name Latium (supposedly from the root in latus, lateris, ‘flank,’ akin to Greek platys, ‘flat’) with reference to its geography, but has to dance around the fact that it isn’t really flat: ‘the “plain,” as it appears to the observer from the heights of Monte Cavo.’

Why would someone name a place that is not a plain for the illusion of a plain from one particular vantage point in the Alban Hills? And then why take that name for themselves? (Look down there! It looks like a plain. We shall be ‘the people of the plain!’)

We may not be able to root out the name’s origin, but why not derive it from the P.I.E. root *lat- (found in Latin latex) and meaning wet (or swampy)? Latium as the ‘wetland’ works better, and corresponds with Mommsen’s picture of ‘that noxious fever-laden atmosphere’ filled with ‘bad air’ (malaria) from poor drainage. He assumes that the Latins arrived before their neighbors in the hills (wondering why else the Sabellians would have ‘settled’ for the mountains), but it seems more likely to me that the early settlers avoided the swamp, and it was the Latins (the ‘wetlanders’?) who made do and even excelled with less than ideal land. (Think of the legend of the Etruscan king, Tarquinius Priscus, draining the swamp between the hills to build the Roman forum. It was wetness, not flatness, that defined the region.)

You can decide for yourself whose speculation you prefer, and whether it really matters.

Mommsen is puzzled, however, that Latin culture flourished in such a place, and ascribes this to primitive man’s heartiness and readiness to conform to nature. He’s stuck on the notion that the Latins arrived as a strong, agricultural people who chose the land (because how else could the masters of the world have begun?), rather than rising above the limitations of their geography.

Latin Settlements: Clan Villages, Cantons, and Localities of the Oldest Cantons

This is largely conjecture but seems sounds enough: Latin society was an outgrowth of the clans, which formed a network. (I’m reminded of Caesar’s description of the Gauls who ‘differ among themselves in language, customs, and laws.’ The Latins did not so differ.) They were organized, he says, by some association with a walled fortification, and plays more with doubtful etymology, but it seems like a natural sort of development. He locates these fortifications at places central to the pre-history of Rome:

The Latin League

Mommsen says that these fortifications were among those that formed the old Latin League, centered at Alba Longa, and likened to the various Greek confederacies as opposed to the Delphic Amphictyony (the source of a few ‘sacred wars’ and a tool of power, if you know your Greek history). From this beginning as a collection of independent clan centers with a common culture, Mommsen suggests, Rome rose eventually to dominate and to unify the Latins as a nation. It’s at times like these that his words sound ominous, though I’m sure he had no idea.