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The history of Rome. Book VAccording to all analogy the right to keep ambacti, that is, doouloi misthotoi, cannot have belonged to the Celtic nobility from the outset, but must only have developed itself gradually in antagonism to the older monarchy and to the equality of the free commons. If thus the system of ambacti among the Celts was not an ancient and national, but a comparatively recent institution, it is - looking to the relation which had subsisted for centuries between the Celts and Germans, and which is to be explained farther on - not merely possible but even probable that the Celts, in Italy as in Gaul, employed Germans chiefly as those hired servants-at-arms. The "Swiss guard", would therefore in that case be some thousands of years older than people suppose. Should the term by which the Romans, perhaps after the example of the Celts, designate the Germans as a nation-the name Germani - be really of Celtic origin, this obviously accords very well with that hypothesis. - No doubt these assumptions must necessarily give way, should the word ambactus be explained in a satisfactory way from a Celtic root; as in fact Zeuss (Gramm. p. 796), though doubtfully, traces it to ambi = around and aig = agere, viz. one moving round or moved round, and so attendants, servants ...» |
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