Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny was an Austrian-born SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a string of operations, including the removal of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy from power and the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif, in which German soldiers infiltrated enemy lines using their opponents' languages and customs. For this he was charged at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted. Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm for 18 months spent time in Paris and Salzburg before settling in Francoist Spain. In 1953 he became a military advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Naguib and recruited a staff of former SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian Army, staying on to advise President Gamal Abdel Nasser, he spent time in Argentina, where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón and as a bodyguard for Eva Perón.
In 1962, Skorzeny was recruited by the Mossad and conducted operations for the agency. Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67. Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service, his surname is of Polish origin, Skorzeny's distant relatives came from a village called Skorzęcin in Greater Poland region. In addition to his native German, he was proficient in English. In his teens, Skorzeny once complained to his father about the austere lifestyle the family was enduring, it might be good for you not to get used to a soft life."He was a noted fencer as member of a German-national Burschenschaft as a university student in Vienna. He engaged in fifteen personal combats; the tenth resulted in a wound that left a dramatic dueling scar—known in academic fencing as a Schmiss —on his cheek. In 1931 Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi organization and soon became a member of the Nazi SA. A charismatic figure, Skorzeny played a minor role in the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, when he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Austrian Nazis.
After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Skorzeny working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force, but was turned down because he was considered too tall at 1.92 metres and too old for aircrew training. He joined Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler as an officer cadet. Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. In October 1941, he was in charge of a "technical section" of the German forces during the Battle of Moscow, his mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities, before they could be destroyed. He was ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them; the missions were canceled. In December 1942, Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel.
He was awarded the Iron Cross. While recuperating from his injuries he was given a staff role in Berlin, where he developed his ideas on unconventional commando warfare. Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc. In April 1943 Skorzeny's name was put forward by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the RSHA, Skorzeny met with Walter Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, Ausland-SD. Schellenberg charged Skorzeny with command of the schools organized to train operatives in sabotage and paramilitary techniques. Skorzeny was appointed commander of the created Waffen Sonderverband z.b. V. Friedenthal stationed near Berlin; the unit's first mission was in Operation François. Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to make contact with the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied supplies of material being sent to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway.
However, commitment among the rebel tribes was suspect, Operation François was deemed a failure. Operation François – Co-ordination of guerilla operations in Iran. Operation Oak – rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Operation Long Jump – A planned operation to assassinate the "Big Three" during the 1943 Tehran Conference; the plot was uncovered before its inception. Skorzeny denied. Operation Knight's Leap – An attempt to capture Josip Broz Tito alive. Operation Armoured Fist – kidnapping of Miklós Horthy Jr. to force his father, Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to resign as head of state in favor of Ferenc Szálasi, the pro-Nazi leader of the Arrow Cross Party. Operation Griffin – A false flag operation to spread disinformation during the Battle of the Bulge. Werwolf SS – A planned Nazi underground resistance movement in Allied-occupied Europe
Ab Urbe Condita Libri
The book History of Rome, sometimes referred to as Ab Urbe Condita, is a monumental history of ancient Rome, written in Latin between 27 and 9 BC by the historian Titus Livius, or "Livy", as he is known in English. The work covers the period from the legends concerning the arrival of Aeneas and the refugees from the fall of Troy, to the city's founding in 753, the expulsion of the Kings in 509, down to Livy's own time, during the reign of the emperor Augustus; the last event covered by Livy is the death of Drusus in 9 BC. About 25% of the work survives; the History of Rome comprised 142 "books", thirty-five of which—Books 1–10 with the Preface and Books 21–45—still exist in reasonably complete form. Damage to a manuscript of the 5th century resulted in large gaps in Books 41 and 43–45. A fragmentary palimpsest of the 91st book was discovered in the Vatican Library in 1772, containing about a thousand words, several papyrus fragments of unknown material, much smaller, have been found in Egypt since 1900, most about 40 words from Book 11, unearthed in 1986.
Some passages are known thanks to quotes from ancient authors, the most famous being on the death of Cicero, quoted by Seneca the Elder. Livy was abridged, in antiquity, to an epitome, which survives for Book 1, but was itself abridged in the fourth century into the so-called Periochae, a list of contents; the Periochae survive for the entire work, except for books 136 and 137. In Oxyrhynchus, a similar summary of books 37–40 and 48–55 was found on a roll of papyrus, now in the British Museum classified as P. Oxy. IV 0668. There is another fragment, named P. Oxy. XI 1379, which represents a passage from the first book and that shows a high level of correctness; however the Oxyrhynchus Epitome is incomplete. The entire work covers the following periods:Books 1–5 – The legendary founding of Rome, the period of the kings, the early republic down to its conquest by the Gauls in 390 BC. Books 6–10 – Wars with the Aequi, Volsci and Samnites, down to 292 BC. Books 11–20 – The period from 292 to 218, including the First Punic War.
Books 21–30 – The Second Punic War, from 218 to 202. Books 31–45 – The Macedonian and other eastern wars from 201 to 167. Books 46 to 142 are all lost: Books 46–70 – The period from 167 to the outbreak of the Social War in 91. Books 71–90 – The civil wars between Marius and Sulla, to the death of Sulla in 78. Books 91–108 – From 78 BC through the end of the Gallic War, in 50. Books 109–116 – From the Civil War to the death of Caesar. Books 117-133 – The wars of the triumvirs down to the death of Antonius. Books 134-142 – The rule of Augustus down to the death of Drusus; the first book has been one of the most significant sources of the various accounts of the traditional legend of Romulus and Remus. His version of the legend is told in chapters 3-7 of the first book. Livy states. Procas, her grandfather had willed the throne to his son Numitor but he was deposed by her uncle, Amulius, she was forced to take the Vestal oath to prevent her from producing a rival to his rule. She became pregnant after taking her vows and claimed that she had been raped by Mars, the Roman god of war.
Livy speculates. She was imprisoned by King Amulius and he ordered the newborn twins to be cast into the River Tiber, they were instead left by the swollen banks of the river, when the waters subsided, a she-wolf found them and suckled them until they were found and adopted by a shepherd named Faustulus and his wife Laurentia. He mentions, without attribution, a claim that Larentia was in fact a prostitute who serviced Faustulus and the other shepherds; the she-wolf tale arose from the slang word for her profession. They grow up strong, braving wild bandits along the way. In his account of the conflict with Amulius, Livy states that Faustulus had always known that the boys had been abandoned by the order of the king and had hoped that they were of Royal blood. On their way to celebrate the Lupercalia, the twins were ambushed by some of the thieves they had driven off. After a struggle, Remus was captured; the thieves accused him of stealing from Numitor's land. He was handed over to the former king, his grandfather—unbeknownst to either at the time—for punishment.
With Remus a captive, Faustulus told Romulus the truth of the twins’ origin. Meanwhile, encountering his grandson for the first time since infancy—a grandson whom he had thought long dead—looked favorably upon his royal demeanor and physicality, he realized the truth of who Remus and his twin brother Romulus were. Romulus and the other shepherds traveled separately to the city and converged with Remus and Numitor's supporters at the palace, where they killed Amulius. Seizing the moment, Numitor called for an assembly to regain his crown, he made public the ordeal of the twins and announced the death of Amulius, claiming he had given the order to kill him. To help boost their grandfather's effort to regain his throne, the twins marched their men into the center of the assembly and proclaimed him king; the people followed Numitor was once again king of the Alban kingdom. Inspired, the twins set out to build their own city; the twins began to argue immediately after starting out on their undertaking.
According to Livy, both wanted to be the king of their new city. H
Troy
Troy was a city in the far northwest of the region known in late Classical antiquity as Asia Minor, now known as Anatolia in modern Turkey, just south of the southwest mouth of the Dardanelles strait and northwest of Mount Ida. The present-day location is known as Hisarlik, it was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle, in particular in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Metrical evidence from the Iliad and the Odyssey suggests that the name Ἴλιον began with a digamma: Ϝίλιον. A new capital called, it flourished until the establishment of Constantinople, became a bishopric and declined in the Byzantine era, but is now a Latin Catholic titular see. In 1865, English archaeologist Frank Calvert excavated trial trenches in a field he had bought from a local farmer at Hisarlik, in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman and archaeologist began excavating in the area after a chance meeting with Calvert in Çanakkale; these excavations revealed several cities built in succession.
Schliemann was at first skeptical about the identification of Hisarlik with Troy, but was persuaded by Calvert and took over Calvert's excavations on the eastern half of the Hisarlik site, on Calvert's property. Troy VII has been identified with the city called Wilusa by the Hittites and is identified with Homeric Troy. Today, the hill at Hisarlik has given its name to a small village near the ruins, which supports the tourist trade visiting the Troia archaeological site, it lies within the province of Çanakkale, some 30 km south-west of the provincial capital called Çanakkale. The nearest village is Tevfikiye; the map here shows the adapted Scamander estuary with Ilium a little way inland across the Homeric plain. Due to Troy's location near the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, it was a central hub for the military and trade. Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. Ancient Greek historians variously placed the Trojan War in the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries BC: Eratosthenes to 1184 BC, Herodotus to 1250 BC, Duris of Samos to 1334 BC.
Modern archaeologists associate Homeric Troy with archaeological Troy VII. In the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near the mouth of the River Scamander, where they beached their ships; the city of Troy itself stood on a hill, across the plain of Scamander, where the battles of the Trojan War took place. The site of the ancient city is some 5 km from the coast today, but 3,000 years ago the mouths of Scamander were much closer to the city, discharging into a large bay that formed a natural harbor, which has since been filled with alluvial material. Recent geological findings have permitted the identification of the ancient Trojan coastline, the results confirm the accuracy of the Homeric geography of Troy. In November 2001, the geologist John C. Kraft from the University of Delaware and the classicist John V. Luce from Trinity College, presented the results of investigations, begun in 1977, into the geology of the region, they compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal features described in the Iliad and other classical sources, notably Strabo's Geographia, concluded that there is a regular consistency between the location of Schliemann's Troy and other locations such as the Greek camp, the geological evidence, descriptions of the topography and accounts of the battle in the Iliad.
Besides the Iliad, there are references to Troy in the other major work attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, as well as in other ancient Greek literature. The Homeric legend of Troy was elaborated by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid; the Greeks and Romans took for a fact the historicity of the Trojan War and the identity of Homeric Troy with the site in Anatolia. Alexander the Great, for example, visited the site in 334 BC and there made sacrifices at tombs associated with the Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus. After the 1995 find of a Luwian biconvex seal at Troy VII, there has been a heated discussion over the language, spoken in Homeric Troy. Frank Starke of the University of Tübingen demonstrated that the name of Priam, king of Troy at the time of the Trojan War, is connected to the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous". "The certainty is growing that Wilusa/Troy belonged to the greater Luwian-speaking community," although it is not clear whether Luwian was the official language or in daily colloquial use.
With the rise of critical history and the Trojan War were, for a long time, consigned to the realms of legend. However, the true location of ancient Troy had from classical times remained the subject of interest and speculation; the Troad peninsula was anticipated to be the location. Early modern travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries, including Pierre Belon and Pietro Della Valle, had identified Troy with Alexandria Troas, a ruined town 20 km south of the accepted location. In the late 18th century, Jean Baptiste LeChevalier had identified a location near the village of Pınarbaşı, Ezine as the site of Troy, a mound 5 km south of the accepted location. LeChavalier's location, published in his Voyage de la Troade, was the most accepted theory for a century. In 1822, the Scottis
Denarius
The denarius was the standard Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War c. 211 BC to the reign of Gordian III, when it was replaced by the Antoninianus. It continued to be minted in small quantities for ceremonial purposes and through the tetrarchy; the word dēnārius is derived from the Latin dēnī "containing ten", as its value was of 10 assēs. The word for "money" descends from it in Italian, Slovene and Spanish, its name survives in the dinar currency. Its symbol is represented in Unicode as, however it can be represented as X̶. A predecessor of the denarius was first struck in 267 BC, five years before the First Punic War, with an average weight of 6.81 grams, or 1⁄48 of a Roman pound. Contact with the Greeks prompted a need for silver coinage in addition to the bronze currency that the Romans were using at that time; the predecessor of the denarius was a Greek-styled silver coin called the didrachm, struck in Neapolis and other Greek cities in southern Italy. These coins were inscribed for Rome but resemble their Greek counterparts.
They were most used for trade purposes and were used in Rome. The first distinctively Roman silver coin appeared around 226 BC. Classic historians sometimes called these coins denarii, but they are classified by modern numismatists as quadrigati, derived from the quadriga, or four-horse chariot, on the reverse, which with a two-horse chariot or biga was the prototype for the most common designs used on Roman silver coins for the next 150 years. Rome overhauled its coinage around 211 BC and introduced the denarius alongside a short-lived denomination called the victoriatus; this denarius contained 1⁄72 of a Roman pound, of silver. It formed the backbone of Roman currency throughout the Roman republic; the denarius began to undergo slow debasement toward the end of the republican period. Under the rule of Augustus its silver content fell to 3.9 grams. It remained at nearly this weight until the time of Nero, when it was reduced to 1⁄96 of a pound, or 3.4 grams. Debasement of the coin's silver content continued after Nero.
Roman emperors reduced its content to 3 grams around the late 3rd century. The value at its introduction was 10 asses, giving the denarius its name, which translates as "containing ten". In about 141 BC, it was re-tariffed at 16 asses; the denarius continued to be the main coin of the Roman Empire until it was replaced by the antoninianus in the middle of the 3rd century. The coin was last issued, in bronze, under Aurelian between AD 270 and 275, in the first years of the reign of Diocletian.. It is difficult to give rough comparative values for money from before the 20th century, as the range of products and services available for purchase was so different. Classical historians say that in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire the daily wage for an unskilled laborer and common soldier was 1 denarius or about US$2.80 in bread. During the republic, legionary pay was 112.5 denarii per year doubled by Julius Caesar to 225 denarii, with soldiers having to pay for their own food and arms.
Centurions received higher pay: under Augustus, the lowest rank of centurion was paid 3,750 denarii per year, the highest rank, 15,000 denarii. The silver content of the denarius under the Roman Empire was about 50 grains, 3.24 grams, or 1⁄10 troy ounce. On June 6, 2011, this was about US$3.62 in value. The fineness of the silver content varied with economic circumstances. From a purity of greater than 90% silver in the 1st century AD, the denarius fell to under 60% purity by the year 200, plummeted to 5% purity by the year 300. By the reign of Gallienus, the antoninianus was a copper coin with a thin silver wash. By comparison, a laborer earning the minimum wage in the United States in January 2014 made US$58 for an 8-hour day, before taxes and an employee earning the minimum wage in the United Kingdom in 2014 made £52 for an 8-hour day, before taxes. In the final years of the 1st century BC Tincomarus, a local ruler in southern Britain, started issuing coins that appear to have been made from melted down denarii.
The coins of Eppillus, issued around Calleva Atrebatum around the same time, appear to have derived design elements from various denarii such as those of Augustus and M. Volteius. After the denarius was no longer issued, it continued to be used as a unit of account, the name was applied to Roman coins in a way, not understood; the Arabs who conquered large parts of the land that once belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire issued their own gold dinar. The lasting legacy of the denarius can be seen in the use of "d" as the abbreviation for the British penny until 1971, it survived in France as the name of a coin, the denier. The denarius survives in the common Arabic name for a currency unit, the dinar used from pre-Islamic times, still used in several modern Arab nations; the major currency unit in former Principality of Serbia, Kingdom of Serbia and former Yugoslavia was dinar, it is still used in present-day Serbia. The Macedonian currency denar is derived from the Roman denarius; the Italian word
Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication; some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopedia, containing 40,000 entries, is now in the public domain, many of its articles have been used as a basis for articles in Wikipedia. However, the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source for modern scholarship problematic; some articles have special value and interest to modern scholars as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1911 eleventh edition was assembled with the management of American publisher Horace Everett Hooper. Hugh Chisholm, who had edited the previous edition, was appointed editor in chief, with Walter Alison Phillips as his principal assistant editor. Hooper bought the rights to the 25-volume 9th edition and persuaded the British newspaper The Times to issue its reprint, with eleven additional volumes as the tenth edition, published in 1902.
Hooper's association with The Times ceased in 1909, he negotiated with the Cambridge University Press to publish the 29-volume eleventh edition. Though it is perceived as a quintessentially British work, the eleventh edition had substantial American influences, not only in the increased amount of American and Canadian content, but in the efforts made to make it more popular. American marketing methods assisted sales; some 14% of the contributors were from North America, a New York office was established to coordinate their work. The initials of the encyclopedia's contributors appear at the end of selected articles or at the end of a section in the case of longer articles, such as that on China, a key is given in each volume to these initials; some articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time, such as Edmund Gosse, J. B. Bury, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Muir, Peter Kropotkin, T. H. Huxley, James Hopwood Jeans and William Michael Rossetti. Among the lesser-known contributors were some who would become distinguished, such as Ernest Rutherford and Bertrand Russell.
Many articles were carried over from some with minimal updating. Some of the book-length articles were divided into smaller parts for easier reference, yet others much abridged; the best-known authors contributed only a single article or part of an article. Most of the work was done by British Museum scholars and other scholars; the 1911 edition was the first edition of the encyclopædia to include more than just a handful of female contributors, with 34 women contributing articles to the edition. The eleventh edition introduced a number of changes of the format of the Britannica, it was the first to be published complete, instead of the previous method of volumes being released as they were ready. The print type was subject to continual updating until publication, it was the first edition of Britannica to be issued with a comprehensive index volume in, added a categorical index, where like topics were listed. It was the first not to include long treatise-length articles. Though the overall length of the work was about the same as that of its predecessor, the number of articles had increased from 17,000 to 40,000.
It was the first edition of Britannica to include biographies of living people. Sixteen maps of the famous 9th edition of Stielers Handatlas were translated to English, converted to Imperial units, printed in Gotha, Germany by Justus Perthes and became part this edition. Editions only included Perthes' great maps as low quality reproductions. According to Coleman and Simmons, the content of the encyclopedia was distributed as follows: Hooper sold the rights to Sears Roebuck of Chicago in 1920, completing the Britannica's transition to becoming a American publication. In 1922, an additional three volumes, were published, covering the events of the intervening years, including World War I. These, together with a reprint of the eleventh edition, formed the twelfth edition of the work. A similar thirteenth edition, consisting of three volumes plus a reprint of the twelfth edition, was published in 1926, so the twelfth and thirteenth editions were related to the eleventh edition and shared much of the same content.
However, it became apparent that a more thorough update of the work was required. The fourteenth edition, published in 1929, was revised, with much text eliminated or abridged to make room for new topics; the eleventh edition was the basis of every version of the Encyclopædia Britannica until the new fifteenth edition was published in 1974, using modern information presentation. The eleventh edition's articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars as a cultural artifact: the British Empire was at its maximum, imperialism was unchallenged, much of the world was still ruled by monarchs, the tragedy of the modern world wars was still in the future, they are an invaluable resource for topics omitted from modern encyclopedias for biography and the history of science and technology. As a literary text, the encyclopedia has value as an example of early 20th-century prose. For example, it employs literary devices, such as pathetic fallacy, which are not as common in modern reference texts.
In 1917, using the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine, the US art critic and author Willard Huntington Wright published Misinforming a Nation, a 200+
Latium
Latium is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Latium was a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil on which resided the tribe of the Latins or Latians, it was located on the left bank of the River Tiber, extending northward to the River Anio and southeastward to the Pomptina Palus as far south as the Circeian promontory. The right bank of the Tiber was occupied by the Etruscan city of Veii, the other borders were occupied by Italic tribes. Subsequently, Rome defeated Veii and its Italic neighbours, expanding Latium to the Apennine Mountains in the northeast and to the opposite end of the marsh in the southeast; the modern descendant, the Italian Regione of Lazio called Latium in Latin, in modern English, is somewhat larger still, but not as much as double the original Latium. The ancient language of the Latins, the tribespeople who occupied Latium, was to become the immediate predecessor of the Old Latin language, ancestor of Latin and the Romance languages.
Latium has played an important role in history owing to its status as the host of the capital city of Rome, at one time the cultural and political centre of the Roman Empire. Latium is home to celebrated works of art and architecture. Earliest known Latium was the country of the Latini, a tribe whose recognised centre was a large, extinct volcano, Mons Albanus, 20 kilometres to the southeast of Rome, 64 kilometres in circumference. In its center is a crater lake, Lacus Albanus, oval in shape, a few km long and wide. At the top of the second-highest peak was a temple to Jupiter Latiaris, where the Latini held state functions before their subjection to Rome, the Romans subsequently held religious and state ceremonies; the last pagan temple to be built stood until the Middle Ages when its stone and location were reused for various monasteries and a hotel. During World War II, the Wehrmacht turned it into a radio station, captured after an infantry battle by American troops in 1944, it is a controversial telecommunications station surrounded by antennae considered unsightly by the population within view.
The selection of Jupiter as a state god and the descent of the name Latini to the name of the Latin language are sufficient to identify the Latins as a tribe of Indo-European descent. Virgil, a major poet of the early Roman Empire, under Augustus, derived Latium from the word for "hidden" because in a myth Saturn, ruler of the golden age in Latium, hid from Jupiter there. A major modern etymology is that Lazio comes from the Latin word "latus", meaning "wide", expressing the idea of "flat land" meaning the Roman Campagna; the region that would become Latium had been home to settled agricultural populations since the early Bronze Age and was known to the Ancient Greeks and earlier to the Mycenaean Greeks. The name is most derived from the Latin word "latus", meaning "wide", expressing the idea of "flat land" but the name may originate from an earlier, non-Indo-European one; the Etruscans, from their home region of Etruria exerted a strong cultural and political influence on Latium from about the 8th century BC onward.
However, they were unable to assert political hegemony over the region, controlled by small, autonomous city-states in a manner analogous to the state of affairs that prevailed in Ancient Greece. Indeed, the region's cultural and geographic proximity to the cities of Magna Graecia had a strong impact upon its early history. By the 10th century BC, archaeology records a slow development in agriculture from the entire area of Latium with the establishment of numerous villages; the Latins cultivated grains, olives and fig trees. The various Latini populi lived in a society led by influential clans; these clans were a sign of their tribal origin, which continued in Rome as the thirty curiae which organized Roman society. However, as a social unit the gens was replaced by the family, headed by the paterfamilias - the oldest male who held supreme authority over the family. A fixed local center seemed necessary as the center of the region cannot have been one of the villages, but must have been a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the district, where members of the clans met for purposes of administration and amusement, where they obtained a safer shelter for themselves in case of war: in ordinary circumstances such a place was not at all or but scantily inhabited.
Such a place was called in Italy "height", or "stronghold". The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers a secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the newcomers. Here, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola between the Alban lake and the Alban mount, extended the town of Alba Longa, regarded as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, the mother city of Rome as well as of all the other Old Latin communities. Here too are found some primitive works of masonry, which mark the be
