Cottas were living in Rome well before the people we now call Romans arrived.  They were Sabines—as in Giambologna’s famous Renaissance sculpture, The Rape of the Sabine.

In the end, the Cottas adapted well to the newly-imposed Roman order, and produced a number of members of the senate, as well as seven consuls (a pair of men who were elected by the senate to become, in essence, co-presidents of Rome for a year).