117 



LATH. 



LATINUM JUS, JUS LATH, LATINITAS. 



the temperature of the vaporising liquid is high. A given weight of 

 water vaporised at 212 absorbs less heat than the same quantity 

 vaporised at 180. It was formerly stated that the increase of ktent 

 heat for lower as compared with higher temperatures was equal to the 

 difference of the sensible heats ; so that the latent heat added to the 

 sensible heat would always produce the same sum for the same liquid. 

 Taking 950 as the ktent heat of steam, as the mean of a number of 

 observers, a certain weight of steam at 212 condensed at 32 gives out 

 180 of sensible heat + 950 of latent heat = 1130. The same weight 

 of steam at 250 condensed at 32 gives out 218 of sensible heat, but 

 only 912 of ktent heat, still making the sum 1130. Again, the same 

 weight of steam at 100 condensed at 32 gives out 68" of sensible 

 heat, but as much as 1062 of ktent heat, making together, as before, 

 1130. M. Regnault, in examining this question, has found however 

 that the sum of the ktent and sensible heats is not constant, but 

 increases by a small though constant difference, equal for each degree 

 to an increase of 0'305 Fahr. 



Water furnishes a much larger amount of vapour, bulk for bulk, 

 than any other liquid : a cubic inch of water at 212 expanding to 

 1696 times its volume, or nearly a cubic foot of steam at the same 

 temperature; whereas a cubic inch of alcohol, boiling at 173, forms 

 only 528 cubic inches of vapour ; ether, boiling at 95, produces only 

 298 cubic inches of vapour; and oil of turpentine, boiling at 314", 

 produces only 193 cubic inches of vapour. Now, although the latent 

 heat required to convert such liquids into vapour is much less than 

 that required to convert water into steam, no advantage would be 

 gained in employing them as prime movers, supposing they were as 

 cheap as water, on account of their low expansive force, which must 

 evidently depend on the bulk of vapour produced from a given bulk of 

 liquid. . 



The determination of the latent heat of vapour is a difficult and 

 delicate inquiry. The subject has been investigated of late years by Pro- 

 fessor Andrews, Favre and Silbermann, and others ; and we may here 

 shortly state the method adopted by Andrews. The liquid which is to 

 supply the vapour is placed in a flask, the neck of which has a short 

 bend, and is connected with a glass receiver with a spiral condeusing- 

 tubi: immersed in a large quantity of water, the weight of which has 

 been accurately determined. The liquid being distilled over into the 

 receiver, the quantity that condenses is carefully weighed, and the rise 

 in temperature experienced by the water surrounding the receiver is 

 carefully noted. In this way the amount of heat rendered ktent is 

 determined by converting a given weight of the liquid into vapour, and 

 then condensing such vapour by means of water, the temperature of 

 which in known before and after the experiment. The following table 

 of the ktent heat of vapours is selected from a larger one contained in 

 the new edition of the 1st part of. Professor Miller's ' Elements of 

 Chemistry,' 1860 : 



LATH. In building operations two descriptions of laths are 

 commonly used ; the first of which are cut out of sawn plank, and the 

 second are split in the direction of the grain of the wood out of timber 

 especially converted or selected for this purpose. The aawn laths are 

 used to receive [skies, or tilea, and are usually (as a maximum) 44 

 in width, laid to a gauge, (or at certain distances measuring 

 from edge to edge) dependent upon the sizes of the slates or tiles 

 themselves. The split laths, whether of fir or of oak, are used for 

 plasterer*' work, and they are nailed upon the joists, or quarters of 

 partitions, so as to leave a small interval into which the rendering coat 

 may be forced in a manner to form a key to support the rest of the 

 work. In France and generally upon the continent oak laths are 

 almost exclusively used ; whereas in England none but fir laths are to 

 be obtained ; they are from 3 to 4 feet long. 



The small strips of wood, kid between packages in warehouses, are 

 also known in trade by the name of laths. Plasterers' kths are called 

 rin'/lf when about J of an inch thick ; lath and a half when about ', of 

 an inch thick ; and double, when they are about 4 an inch thick. 



LATHK. [EARTHETIWABE; POTTERY ; TDRHISO.] 



LATI'NUM JUS, JUS LA'TII, LATI'NITAS, sometimes also called 



simply LATIUM, was one of the various civil conditions under which 

 the inhabitants of the Roman world were classed and comprised. The 

 primary distinction of persons was that of freemen and slaves. Free- 

 men were divided, according to the Roman polity, into 1. Cives 

 Romani ; 2. Latini ; 3. Peregrmi, or aliens. The Roman citizen lived 

 under the civil law of Rome, which determined his rights and duties, 

 and he might aspire to the offices and honours of the Roman state. 



The rights and duties of those who came under the second of these 

 heads, the Latini, were defined by the Jus Latiuum. They formed 

 a considerable and important class, and ranked next to the Roman 

 citizens in privilege. This class, however, was differently formed, 

 and enjoyed different rights at various periods of the history of 

 Rome. 



The old inhabitants of Latium, whilst they continued foederati or con- 

 federates of Rome under the Cassian treaty, enjoyed several of the 

 rights of Roman citizens. The rights of a Roman citizen were of 

 two sorts, private, or civil, and public, or political. The principal 

 private rights were the jus libertatis, or personal freedom, by which 

 the Roman citizen was master of his own person, could not be arbitrarily 

 imprisoned nor punished, except after legal trial, and could not be 

 scourged on any account; the jus connubiorum, by which he was 

 enabled to contract a legal marriage with a Roman freewoman, or with 

 those Latimc or Peregrinje who enjoyed the privilege of the connubium, 

 and by which his children were also Roman citizens ; the jus patrium, 

 the consequence of the connubium, which gave him that unbounded 

 authority over his children which was peculiar to the Roman law, and 

 which no other people were possessed of (Gaius, i. 55; Justinian, 

 ' Institutiones,' i. 9) ; the jus legitimi dominii, which included the 

 ability of acquiring property, by testamentary gift, mancipatio or 

 nexum, usucapiou, cessio, &c. ; and the jus testamentorum, by which 

 he was enabled to bequeath property by will. 



The chief public or political rights were, the jus census, or having his 

 name registered iu one of the tribes and centurise ; the jus suffragiorum, 

 or right of voting in the comitia ; the right of appeal to the comitia 

 from the sentence of the magistrate; and the jus honorum, by which 

 he was enabled to aspire to any of the dignities iu the state. Now 

 the freemen of the Latin confederate towns h'ved under their own laws 

 and therefore were not under the civil kw of Rome ; they had their 

 own forms of marriage, of testaments, &c., which were valid in their 

 own courts, but not at Rome ; they had not the same paternal authority 

 as the Romans over their offspring; they could not purchase, possess, or 

 inherit property at Rome or in the Roman territory ; their persons 

 were not under the protection of the Roman kw ; they might be sent 

 away from Rome, and they and the other Italian socii were sent away 

 repeatedly, among other instances, under the consulship of Lucius 

 Crassus and Mutius Sesevok, in the year B.C. 96, just before the begin- 

 ning of the Social war, to which that expulsion greatly contributed. It 

 would seem, however, that all the towns of Latium were not on the 

 same footing in these respects, and that some of them had adopted of 

 their own choice certain Roman laws, and by so doing had become, 

 according to the Roman legal term, " populi fundi," that is to say, had 

 entered within the pale of those particular Roman laws, and had the 

 benefit of their provisions even at Rome. (Cicero, ' Pro Balbo,' viii.) 

 Whether the Latin confederates had the connubium, or right of inter- 

 marriage, has been questioned by some; Niebuhr, however (vol. ii., 

 ' On the Franchise of the Latins ') maintains that they had.* As for 

 the public or political rights of Rome which mainly constituted what 

 was called the," civitas," the Latins were not " censi " at Rome, and they 

 could not aspire to the honours and offices of the Roman state, except 

 those who had previously filled certain municipal offices in their own 

 town for a time, after which, by transferring their domicile to Rome 

 and inscribing their names in one of the tribes, they acquired the civitas 

 and all its rights and privileges. It appears also that there were other 

 means by which a Latin or other Italian freeman might obtain 

 the Roman civitas, by rendering some important service to the 

 Roman state. With regard to the right of suffrage, it is not 

 clear under what conditions the municipes of the Lathi cities enjoyed 

 it, but it appears that they came at times to vote at Rome on certain 

 occasions, but then they had no fixed tribe, and voted in a tribe which 

 was drawn by lot, and they might, as it has been said already, be 

 ordered away by the magistrates previous to the day of voting, as was 

 done by the consul Virginius, the colleague of Spurius Cassius. In the 

 year B.C. 123, they came to Rome to vote in favour of the laws 



* Notwithstanding all that has been -written on the subject, it is not so easy 

 to say precisely what the connubium was. The only intelligible definition is 

 that of Gaius (i. 56), who, when speaking of the marriage of a Roman citizen 

 with a Roman woman or with a Latina or Peregrina with whom the connubium 

 existed, observes that the effect of the connubium was that the children followed 

 the condition of the father, were consequently Roman citizens and subject to the 

 patria potestas. That the like consequence followed if a Latin married a 

 Roman woman, as to the rights of such children as Latin citizens, H merely 

 the corresponding and correlative part of the connubium. But that the con- 

 nubium alone enabled a Latin citizen who married a Roman woman to confer on 

 his children the rights of Roman citizens, and himself to acquire the patria 

 potcstas, seems inconsistent with the notions of Roman citizenship. The 

 subject of the Jus Latil, and of the connubium in connection with it, is very 

 difficult to understand, and the obscurity is by no means diminished by the way 

 in which Niebuhr has handled it. 



