Antiquity
Latins were an ancient Italic people of the Latium region in central Italy, (Latium Vetus - Old Latium), in the first millennium BC, after migrating there from the Danube Region. Though they lived in independent city-states, the Latins spoke a common language (Latin), held common religious beliefs, and shared a close sense of kinship, expressed in the myth that they all descended from Latinus. Latinus was worshiped on Mons Albanus (Monte Albano) during an annual festival attended by all Latins, including those from Rome, one of the Latin states. The Latin cities extended common rights of residence and trade to one another.
Rome's territorial ambitions united the rest of the Latins against it in 341 BC, but the final victory was on Rome's side in 338 BC. Consequently, some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, and their inhabitants were given full Roman citizenship. Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges. Gradually, with the spread of Roman power throughout Italy and Western Europe, Latin ceased to be an ethnic term and became a legal category.
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Famous quotes containing the word antiquity:
“When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)