PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 73 



data to establish whether those bronzes and vases should be of the 

 tenth and ninth, rather than the eighth, seventh, or even sixth 

 century, B. c. Other excavations would seem to prove that the 

 typical forms of the so-called Numa vases lasted till the Empire. The 

 only result altogether certain is the first confirmation of the ancient 

 texts, which said that at the outskirts of the Forum there was a 

 Sepulcretum. And from this, even before the excavations, I had 

 obtained the proof, solemnly confirmed to-day, that the Forum was 

 added to the city long after the age of the seven kings. 



1 do not think it is now the moment to speak of the famous Archaic 

 Latin inscription found under the Niger Lapis. All the attempts 

 which have been made to interpret it have been fruitless. Considered 

 from the palseographical side it may belong either to the sixth or fifth 

 century, or even fourth century, while from the external form and 

 for the disposition of the writing it recalls the Capuan monuments 

 of the end of the second or more probably at the beginning of the 

 first century, B. c. No reasoning of any critic can possibly demon- 

 strate that the rex remembered there is the political rex of the royal 

 age rather than the rex sacrorum of the Republic. As regards his- 

 tory, properly said, the inscription teaches us nothing. The excava- 

 tions of the Forum have, however, demonstrated what I had already 

 affirmed, namely, that the arched cloaca maxima is not a work 

 belonging to the royal age, but rather to the Republic. 



In order to solve the most ancient problems of the history of 

 Italian civilization, some people have turned to the investigation 

 of linguistics and anthropology rather than of archaeology. It has 

 been easy for an able German linguist to criticise the weak point of 

 the theories founded on craniological and somatological elements. 

 However, it has been easy to a great Italian linguist to find traces of 

 ancient ethnology in the phonetic persistences among the dwellers 

 of various Italian regions; and the anatomic examination in the 

 structure of the different races in the Peninsula will certainly lead 

 one day to brilliant results. The persistency of the Celtic reveals 

 the expansion of this people; and among the mountains of the 

 Garfagnana the Ligurian race, which before the Etruscan dominion 

 occupied such large part of the Italian, Gallic, and Iberian regions, 

 still holds compact in its somatological integrity. Thus, on the slopes 

 of the Apennines, surrounding Campania, just where the Sarno takes 

 its start, one finds in the same compact condition an indigenous race 

 unmodified by the successive superimpositions of the Samnites and 

 Romans. And I willingly agree with Professor Julian when he says 

 that a corpus of the toponomastic of the ancient world would lead to 

 most brilliant results. 



Naturally these studies are not yet perfect, and hurried conclusions 

 may lead to bitter delusions. Certainly a great delusion must have 



