page_title: Latins (Italic tribe)
section_title: Relics of Indo-European culture
hierarchical_section_title: Latins (Italic tribe) / Social culture / Relics of Indo-European culture
caption_attribution_description: Roman shield (scutum) 70 a.C. There a really three soldiers behind the shields. Look for the arrow. Photographed by myself during a show of Legio XV from Pram, Austria
context_page_description: The Latins, sometimes known as the Latians, were an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium, that is, the area between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo 100 km southeast of Rome.
  The Latins were an Indo-European-speaking people who probably migrated into the Italian Peninsula during the late Bronze Age. Their language, Latin, belonged to the Italic branch of Indo-European. Their material culture, known as the Latial culture, was a distinctive subset of the proto-Villanovan culture that appeared in parts of the Italian peninsula in the first half of the 12th century BC. The Latins maintained close culturo-religious relations until they were definitively united politically under Rome in 338 BC, and for centuries beyond. These included common festivals and religious sanctuaries.
  The rise of Rome as by far the most populous and powerful Latin state from c. 600 BC led to volatile relations with the other Latin states, which numbered about 14 in 500 BC.
context_section_description: According to the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis, the earliest Indo-Europeans were a nomadic steppe people, originating in the Eurasian steppes (southern Russia, northern Caucasus and central Asia). Their livelihood was based on horses and herding. In the historical era, the same socio-cultural lifestyle was maintained, in the same regions, by peoples descended from the Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIEs) known to the Greco-Romans as Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, whose languages belonged to the Iranian branch of IE. On the basis of common steppe-nomadic features in the cultures of the various Indo-European peoples in the historical era, scholars have reconstructed elements of proto-Indo-European culture. Relics of such elements have been discerned in Roman and Latin customs. Examples include:
  The kinship-system of PIEs is considered by anthropologists to best fit the so-called "Omaha" system, i.e. a patrilineal exogamous society, i.e. a society in which descent is recognised through the father's line and spouses are taken from outside the kinship-group. This is certainly the case with Roman society.
  Supreme sky-god: It has been securely reconstructed that the chief god of PIEs was a male sky-god, known as "Father Sky", from which descends the chief Latin god, Jupiter, deriving from archaic "Dieus - pater" ("sky-father"). PIEs also venerated a god of thunder and lightning. Among the Latins, this deity appears to have been merged with the sky-god, as Jupiter was ascribed the power to hurl thunderbolts. Among others, Jupiter was ascribed the epithets Jupiter Tonitrans ("Jupiter the Thunderer"), Jupiter Pluvius ("Jupiter the Rainmaker"), and Jupiter Fulgurator ("Jupiter the Thunderbolt-Flinger")
  Fire-worship: A central feature of PIE life was the domestic hearth. It is thus considered certain that PIEs worshipped fire. The best-known derivative is the fire-worship of the ancient Iranian religion (see Zoroastrianism). The Romans kept a perpetual sacred fire burning in the Temple of Vesta, who was the goddess of the hearth. To symbolise the hearth, it is the only Roman temple which was round, instead of square.
  Horse-sacrifice: Originally a nomadic steppe-people, the life of PIEs was centred on horses. The sacrifice of horses was probably practised to consecrate kings. The Indic asvamedha ritual involves the sacrifice of a stallion and the ritual copulation with its corpse by the queen, followed by the distribution of the horse's parts. The Romans practised a ritual known as the October Equus, whereby the right-hand horse of a victorious team in a chariot-race was sacrificed to Mars, the god of war. Its head was severed and fought over by two teams of people, and its tail hung from the Regia (the old royal palace in Rome).
  Swastika symbol: This symbol, the hooked cross (crux uncinata in Latin), was widely used by IE-speaking peoples in both Europe and Asia (especially in India: the term swastika is Sanskrit). According to one theory, it was invented, and used as an ethnic emblem, by the Proto-Indo-Europeans, although it is also a documented symbol of the Stone Age Vinča culture of SE Europe (c. 5500 - 4500 BC), which was probably pre-Indo-European (although it may have been used as a hieroglyph, rather than a cultural symbol, by the Vinca people). Whatever its origin, it was widely adopted by the Indo-Europeans, among whom it probably symbolised the Sun (which was seen as a wheel rolling across the sky) and/or the Sky and was thus closely associated with their male supreme Sky-god. Among the Romans, it was not traditionally  associated with the sky god Jupiter. However, it became associated with the sky god in Celtic southwest Gaul, where numerous dedications to Jupiter have been discovered adorned with swastikas. In the later empire (4th century onwards), when pagan symbolism lost favour due to the advance of Christianity, it came to represent the Universe, or eternal life.
caption: Modern replicas of scuta (shields), as used by the legions of the Imperial Roman army. Note the alae et fulgura ("wings-and-thunderbolts") emblem, representing Jupiter, the highest Roman god
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