ABSTRACT
Heroic society in the period of youthful vigour contains within itself, rigorously repressed, and in fact made into a support, the element of opposition; the slaves, clients or vassals, that is to say the plebs. The Spartans said that at Athens they had many laws and wrote them; at Sparta few, but they obeyed them. The Roman plebs, like Athenian, passed new laws every day, and the attempt by Sulla, the leader of the noble party, to reduce them by the institution of 'quaestiones perpetuae' or permanent courts was in vain, for after his time laws were again multiplied. For Giambattista Vico, the Trojan origin of Rome is a legend sprung from the union of two different examples of national arrogance: that of the Greeks, who made such a noise about the Trojan war and forced their Aeneas into the history of Rome, and that of the Romans, who accepted him in order to boast of a distinguished foreign origin.
