The affection of the people for their past induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility for the officers and councils of the Commune.

Thus a specious air of classical antiquity, rather literary and sentimental than real, was given to the Commune at the outset.

Moreover, it must be remembered that Rome herself had suffered no substantial interruption of republican existence during the Dark Ages.

Therefore the free burghs, though their vitality was the outcome of wholly new conditions, though they were built up of guilds and associations representing interests of modern origin, flattered themselves with an uninterrupted municipal succession from the Roman era, and pointed for proof to the Eternal City.
[2] The Italian word _contado_ is a survival from this state of things.

It represents a moment in the national development when the sphere of the Count outside the city was defined against the sphere of the municipality.