These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as
independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political
community (-civitas-, -populus-). This first presents itself as an
aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language,
and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal
redress and to united action in aggression and defence. A fixed
local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton
as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in
other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their
villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint
settlement in the strict sense--a town. It must, on the contrary,
have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of
justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members
of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and
amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves
and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in
the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was
not at all or but scantily inhabited. Ancient places of refuge,
of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present
day on the tops of several of the hills in the highlands of east
Switzerland. Such a place was called in Italy "height" (-capitolium-,
like --akra--, the mountain-top), or "stronghold" (-arx-, from
-arcere-); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of
one, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold and were
afterwards surrounded with the "ring" (-urbs-, connected with
-urvus-, -rurvus-, perhaps also with -orbis-). The stronghold and
town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of
gates, of which the stronghold has as few as possible, and the town
many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three.
Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which