to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were
aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later
-praenomen-. But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early
disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely
among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual
name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate. It seems as if the small
and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the
Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared
with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks,
were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic
of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote
the free development of personality. The association in communities
of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to
have prevailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear different
enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic polities; yet
it must have already contained the germs out of which the future
laws of both nations were moulded. The "laws of king Italus,"
which were still applied in the time of Aristotle, may denote the
institutions essentially common to both. These laws must have
provided for the maintenance of peace and the execution of justice
within the community, for military organization and martial law
in reference to its external relations, for its government by a
patriarchal chief, for a council of elders, for assemblies of the
freemen capable of bearing arms, and for some sort of constitution.
Judicial procedure (-crimen-, --krinein--, expiation (-poena-,
--poinei--), retaliation (-talio-, --talao--, --tleinai--, are
Graeco-Italian ideas. The stern law of debt, by which the debtor
was directly responsible with his person for the repayment of what
he had received, is common to the Italians, for example, with
the Tarentine Heracleots. The fundamental ideas of the Roman