Outlines of Roman History ... With maps

Front matter

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Preface

IV the evidence on which the statements in the text are based. The references to modern books and dissertations may possibly be found useful, both by students who wish to make a more thorough study of the subject, and by teachers. Of the debt of gratitude which I owe to a long list of scholars, English, French, and German, the footnotes are ample proof. I cannot, however, deny myself the pleasure of paying a special tribute of homage to the great master, in whose footsteps all students of Roman history are glad to tread. Fifty years have passed since Professor Mommsen wrote his monograph ' de collegiis et sodaliciis Romanorum,' and during that time there is no period of Roman history on which he has not set his mark, from the days of the kings to those of Theodoric, and no department of Roman antiquities in the study of which some work of his has not made an epoch.

My friend Mr. Warde-Fowler's admirable sketch of Cæsar did not appear until my own chapter on the dictator was in print. I am glad, however, to find that, on the nature and extent of the .work which Cæsar accomplished, we are in close agreement. Henry Pelham. Oxford, January 1893. CONTENTS PAGE Preface, iii List of Authorities referred to, . . . . ix

Book I

The Beginnings of Rome and the Monarchy. Chapter I. The Traditions, 1 ,, II. The Origin of the City and Commonwealth, 12 ,, III. Rome under the Kings, .... 26

Book II

The Early Republic, 509-275 b.c. Chapter I. The Foundation of the Republic and the Struggle between the Orders, ... 39 „ II. The Conquest of Italy, .... 61

Book III

Rome and the Mediterranean States, 265-146 b.c. Introduction, 99 Chapter I. Rome and Carthage — The Conquest of the West, 102 ,, II. Rome and the East, ..... 126 ,, III. The Roman State and People during the Period of the Great Wars, ... 142 a. VI CONTENTS

Book IV

The Period of the Revolution, 133-49 B.C. PAGE Chapter I. From the Gracchi to Sulla, .... 181 ,, II. From Sulla to Cæsar, 210 ,, III. The Empire during the Period of the Revolution, 236

Book V

The Found.vtion of the Imperial System and the Rule of the Early Cæsars, 49 B.C. to 69 a.d. Chapter I. The Dictatorship of Julius, .... 303 ,, II. The Provisional Government of the Triumvirate 325 ,, III. The Foundation of the Principate and the Rule of Augustus, ..... 364 ,, IV. The Julian Line, 431

Book VI

The Organisation of Cæsar's Government and the First Conflicts with the Barbarians, 69-2S4 a.d. Chapter I. The Flavian and Antonine Cæsars, . . 465 „ II. The Empire in the 3rd century, 193-284 a.d., 495

Book VII

The Barbaric Invasions, 2S4-476 a.d. Chapter I. From the Accession of Diocletian to the death of Theodosius, .... 501 ,, II. From the Death of Theodosius to the Extinction of the Western Empire, . . . CONTENTS VII MAPS. Rome and her Allies (circa, 486 B.C.), . . to face page 64 The Roman Empire in 134 B.C., ... ,, 141 The Roman Empire in 49 B.C., . . . „ 301 The Roman Empire in 69 a.d., . . . ,, LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL MODERN AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES A. GENEBAL. I. Fischer, E. W., Bomische Zeittafeln. Altona, 1846. Herzog, E., Geschichte und System dcr Bbmischen Staafsverfassung. Leipzig, 1884-1891. Kuhn, E., Die stddtische und biirgerliche Verfassung des Bbmischen Eeiches. Leipzig, 1864. Madvig, J. N., Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des Bomischen Staates. Leipzig, 1881. Marquardt, J., Bomische Staatsverivaltung.

Leipzig, 1873. Mommsen, Th., Bomische Geschichte (5th Aufl.). Berlin, 1868-1885. „ „ Bbmisches Staatsrecht. Berlin, 1875. Niebuhr, B. G., Lectures on the History of Borne (Eng. Transl.). London, 1849. Ranke, L. von, Weltgeschichte. Leipzig, 1881. Smith, Dr. W., Dictionary of Greek and Boman Antiquities. (Third Edition). London, 1891. II. Bruns, C. G., Fontes Juris Bomani (Fourtli Edition). Tubingen, 1879. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin. Eckhel, J., Doctrina Numorum Veterurn. Vindobona, 1792. Inscriptions Begni Neapolitans ed. Mommsen. Leipzig, 1852. Orelli-Henzen, Inscriptionum Latinarum selectarum collectio. Turici, 1828-1856. Wilmanns, G., Exempla Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin, 1873. Zumpt, A. W., Commentationes Epigraphicœ. Berlin, 1850. LIST OF THE X III. Cons, H., La province Romaine de Dalmatie.

Paris, 1882. Desjardins, E., La Gaule Romaine. Paris, 1876. Grotefend, C L., Imperium Romanum tributim descriptum. Hanover, 1863. Herzog, E., Gallia Narbonensis. Leipzig, 1864. Jordan, H., Topographic der Stadt Rom. Berlin, 1878. Jung, J., Die Romanischen Landschaften. Innsbruck, 1881. Kubitschek, J. W., Imperium Romanum tributim descriptum. Vienna, 1889. Middleton, J. H., Ancient Rome. Edinburgh, 1888. Mommsen, Th., Romische Tribus. Altona, 1844. „ „ Romische Chronologic. Berlin, 1859. „ ,, Romische Forschungen. Berlin, 1864, Ramsay, W. M., Geography of Asia Minor. London, 1890. Rein, W., Criminal Recht der Rbmer. Leipzig, 1844. Teuffel, W., Geschichte der Rbmischen Litteratur. Leipzig, 1870. B. SPECL4L. — The Monarchy and the Republic. i. Ihne, W., Romische Geschichte. Leipzig, 1868-1890, ,, „ Early Rome.

London, 1876. Lange, L., Romische Alterthumcr. Berlin, 1863. Long, G., Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic: London, . 1864. Niebuhr, B. G., History of Rome (Eng. Transl.). London, 1855. Schwegler-Clason, Romische Geschichte. Tubingen, 1867. II. Beesly, E., Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius. London, 1878. „ A. H., The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla. London. Beloch, J., Campanien. Berlin, 1879. „ „ Der Italische Bund. Leipzig, 1880. Dureau de la Malle, Economie Politique des Romains. Paris, 1840. Gilbert, 0., Geschichte u. Topographic der Stadt Rom. Leipzig, 1883. PRINCIPAL MODERN AUTHORITIES XI Guiraud, P., Le differend entre Cesar et le Sinat. Paris, 1878. Helbig, W., Die Italiker in der Poebene. Leipzig, 1879. John, C.| Entstehung der Catilinarischen Verschwbrung. Leipzig, 1876. Kiene, A., Romische Bundesgenossenkrieg.

Leipzig, 1845. Klausen, R. H., Æneas und die Penaten. Hamburg, 1839. Mommsen, Th., Die Rechtsfrage zwischen Cæsar und Senat. Breslau, 1858. Mvillei-Deecke, Die Etrusker. Stuttgart, 1877. Nissen, H., Das Templum. Berlin, 1869. „ „ Italische Landeskunde. Berlin, 1882. Nitzsch, K. W., Die Gracchen. Berlin, 1847. Reinach, Th., Mithridates Eupator. Paris, 1891. Saalfeld, G. A., Hellenismus in Latium. Wolfenbiittel, 1883. Soltau, W., Enstehung d. altrbmischen Volksversammlungen. Berlin 1881. Stoffel, Col., Histoire de Jules Cesar— Guerre civile. Paris, 1887. „ „ Guerre de Cisar et d'Arioviste. Paris, 1890. Willems, P., Le Senat de la Ripublique Romaine. Paris, 1878. Zippel, G., Die Romische HerrscJiaft in Illyrien. Leipzig, 1877. Zoller, M., Latium und Rom. Leipzig, 1878. Zumpt, A. W., Studia Romana.

Berlin, 1859, The Empire. i. Bury, T. B , History of the Later Roman Empire. London, 1889. Gibbon, E., Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Milman). London, 1862. Hodgkin, T., Italy and her Invaders. Oxford, 1880-1885. Merivale, C, The Romans -under the Empire. London, 1865. Schiller, H., Geschichte der Rbmischen Kaiserzeit. Gotha, 1883. Tillemont, L. de, Histoire des Empereurs. Venise, 1732. tl. Boissieu, Inscriptions de Lyon. Cohen, H., Medailles Imperial es. Paris, 1880-1890. Henzen, W., Ada Fratrum Arvalium. Berlin, 1874. Mommsen, Th., Res Gestœ divi Augusti. Berlin, 1883. „ Leges Salpensanœ Malacitanœ. Leipzig, 1857. LIST OF PRINCIPAL MODERN AUTHORITIES XII III. Boissier, G., La Religion Romaine. Paris, 1874. „ „ L'Opposition sous les Cesars. Paris, 1875. Cagnat, R., L'Armee Romaine d'Afrique.

Paris, 1892. Diirr, J., Die Reisen des Kaisers Hadrian. Wien, 1881. Francke, H., Trajan. Leipzig, 1840. Freytag, L., Tiberius und Tacitus. Berlin, 1870. Friedlander, L., Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms. Leipzig, 1871. Gardner, P., The Parthian Coinage. London, 1877. Gardthausen, V., Augustus und seine Zeit. Leipzig, 1891. Hirschfeld, 0., Untersuchungen aus dem Gebiete der Rbmischen Verwaltungsgeschichte. Berlin, 1877. Hofer, P., Die Varusschlo,chkr~ Leipzig, 1888. Hiibner, E., Romische Herrschaft in West Europa. Berlin, 1890. Knoke, F., Die Kriegsziige des Germanicus. Berlin, 1887. Lanciani, R., I Comentarii di Frontino. Roma, 1880. „ „ Ancient Rome. London, 1888. Lehmann, H., Claudius u. Nero. Gotha, 1858. Liebenam, W., Die Laufbahn der Procuratoren. Jena, 1886. ,, „ Die Legaten in den Rbmischen Provinzen.

Leipzig, 1888. ,, „ Zur Geschichte und Organisation des Rbmischen Vereinwesens. Leipzig, 1890. Mommsen, Th., Die Oertlichkeit der Varusschlacht. Berlin, 1885. Pfitzner, W., Geschichte der Kaiserlegionen. Leipzig, 1881. Preuss, Th., Kaiser Diocletian. Leipzig, 1869. Richter, H., Das West Romische Reich. Berlin, 1865. Schurz, W., De midationibus in imperio Romano ordinando ab imperatore Hadriano factis. Bonn, 1883. Sellar, W. Y., Vergil. Oxford, 1877. Zeller, E., Die Philosophie der Griechen. Leipzig, 1865. ERRATA. On p. 55, note 1, for See Appendix, read See Diet Antiq., s.v. ' Comitia.' On p. 58,/w See Appeudix, read See Diet. Antiq., s.v. 'Senatus.'

Book I The Beginnings Of Rome And The Monarchy Chapter

I THE TRADITIONS The story of the beginnings of Rome and of the rule of the kings is told by Livy in the first book of his Histories, and by his contemporary, the Greek Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the first four books of his Roman Antiquities. Both have essentially the same tale to tell, and we may assume that they give us what was in their time — that is, towards the close of the first century B.C. — the generally accepted tradition as to the early history of Rome. This tradition carried the narrative back far beyond the point at which Romulus built his city on the Palatine Mount. In remote times, so ran the story, the Sikels, from whom the island of Sicily afterwards took its name, dwelt on the hills by the Tiber. The Sikels were driven out by the Aborigines, who de scended from their mountain homes in the Apennines, and made themselves masters of all the lowland from the Tiber to the Liris.

With this highland folk were A united, as time went on, visitors from Greece, Pelasgi from Thessaly, Evander with his followers from Arcadia, and the comrades of the restless hero, Heracles. Later still, in the reign of King Latinus, from whom his people took the name 'Latini,' the fates brought to the shores of Italy and the fields of Lavinium the great Æneas himself, with his Trojan band. The visitors were made welcome, and on the death of Latinus, Æneas ruled in his stead over the united Trojans and Latins. From Æneas the sceptre passed to his son Ascanius, the founder of Alba, and of the long dynasty of the .Alban kings. In the reign of the last of these kings, Numitor, the twins Romulus and Remus were born of an earthly mother, the Vestal Rhea Silvia, daughter of king Numitor, and of a divine father, the god Mars.

Then followed the familiar tale of the exposure of the children, and of their miraculous deliverance, of their life among the herdsmen, of their recognition as the grandsons of Numitor, and of the foundation of Rome on the Palatine. From this point onwards the tradition described how, under Romulus and his successors, the historical city and state of Rome took shape. The gradual expansion of the city bounds, until all the seven hills were included within one great ring-wall, the develop ment of a constitution, and the steady advance of Roman supremacy over the lowlands of Latium were all duly narrated, until, with the expulsion of the second Tarquin, this first chapter of Roman history reached its close. Such, in brief outline, was the accepted tradition of the beginnings of Rome in the time of Augustus.

What is its value as an historical narrative ? In the first place it clearly cannot claim the authority of a contemporary written account, for the earliest references in literature to the history of Rome are found in Greek writers of the fifth century B.C.,1 and no higher antiquity can be assigned even to the few native Roman records, which may have been older than the burning of Rome bythe Gauls.2 Moreover, if the beginnings of this written tradition cannot be carried back further than the fifth century B.C., it is equally certain that it was not until long after the fifth century that it assumed the shape in which we now have it. It was only gradually that out of a number of conflicting versions one finally fought its way to general acceptance, that the undated fragments of tradition were fitted together, the gaps filled up, and the chronology settled.

It seems probable, indeed, that something like an authorised version was already established by the time of the Punic wars, and that the main incidents and the order of events were given in much the same way by the oldest Roman chronicler, Q. Fabius Pictor,3 in the 1 According to Dionysius, i. 72, the landing of Æneas in Italy aud the foundation of Rome were mentioned by the compiler of the chronicle of the priestesses of Hera at Argos. The compiler is generally assumed to have been Hellanicus. See Midler, Fragm. Hist Gr., i. 27 ; Schwegler, R. Gesch., i. 3. 2 Dionysius mentious two inscriptions, extant in his day, which were believed to date from the latter part of the regal period, that, namely, which recorded the foundation in the reign of Servius Tullius, of the temple of Diana on the Aventine, and that which preserved the terms of the treaty made with Gabii by the second Tarquin. 3 The version given by Fabius was apparently given in much the same form by the chronicler L. Cincius Alimentus, and by the poets Nævius and Ennius, all of whom were contemporary with the second third century B.C., and by Livy in the first.

What changes and additions were made in the interval cannot be accurately determined, though we know that it was by the elder Cato and by Varro that the chronology was finally settled,1 and though we may suspect that it is to the labours of the lawyers and antiquarians of the first century B.C. that we owe much of what Livy and Dionysius tell us of the constitutional and religious institutions of primitive Rome. It must be remembered, then, in reading Livy or Dionysius that we are dealing not with a simple tradi tion handed down whole and intact from the period of which it tells, but with a highly composite production gradually wrought into shape by a long series of writers, Greek and Roman, no part of which existed in a written form at all until the middle of the fifth century B.C., or some three centuries after the supposed date of the foundation of the city.

And when to this is added the consideration that these writers were not assisted in the arrangement of their matter by any scientific system of chronology, or any exact canons of historical criticism, it becomes sufficiently clear that the narrative which their combined efforts have pro duced is many degrees removed from authentic history. It is, indeed, a patchwork in which materials of the most diverse kinds have been ingeniously stitched together. In very many parts the handiwork of Greek writers is plainly traceable. From the time when Punic war. Peter, Hist. Rom. Reliquiæ; Schwegler, R. <?., i. 78, 399. 1 Mommsen, Rom. Chronologic, 134, 599. Rome came into direct contact first with the Greeks of South Italy and then with those of Sicily, the history of the rising Italian republic increasingly attracted the attention of Greek scholars,1 who made it their business to provide the new community, which had become a power in the civilised world of the Mediterranean, with a suitable pedigree.

In thus endeavouring to find ancestors for the Romans among their own people, they seized eagerly on anything in the nature, traditions, usages, and monuments which could serve to show, as Dionysius puts it, that the Romans were ' an ancient people and a Greek one.' 2 In the Aborigines they recognised their own Pelasgi, and pointed in proof of the theory to the rude stone walls long known in Greece as Pelasgic.3 The name of the Palatine Mount was derived from Pallantium in Arcadia, and the god Faunus became the Greek Evander, who brought to the banks of the Tiber the arts of civilised life. The altar and worship of the Italian Hercules in the low ground near the river were made to prove that Rome had not been unvisited by the Greek Heracles. Odysseus and Circe had already been brought as far on their travels as the bold headland which marks the southern limit of the Latin plain,4 and from thence to the Tiber was a short and easy stage.

But among all the roving heroes of Greek tradition none were more famous as founders of cities than those whom the fall of Troy scattered over the face of the 1 For some account of these see Schwegler, R. G., i. 359. The most important of them was the Sicilian Timasus of Tauromenium (350-256 B.C.). 5 Dionysius, ii. 30. 3 Dionysius, i. 14. 4 The headland called ' Circeii. Mediterranean, and of these the most famous was the Trojan Æneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite. At the time when Greeks began to interest themselves in Rome, his name and his reputation were widely spread. The course of his wanderings was traced by the cities he had founded, or by the temples raised in his honour, and in that of his goddess mother, while in more than one place a grave of Æneas was pointed out to the traveller.1 When or by whom Rome was added to the list of the cities which honoured him as their founder we cannot say ; we only know that the tradition existed at least as early as 400 B.C., and that by the time of the first Punic war it had been officially accepted by the Roman state.2 It is noticeable, how ever, that between the earliest form in which it appears and that in which it finally obtained currency there is a considerable difference.

In the story as originally told the connection between Rome and Æneas was close and direct, the foundation of the city being ascribed either to Æneas himself or to one of his sons.3 But in the version given by Q. Fabius Pictor, and probably in that of the Sicilian Greek, Timæus (circa 300 B.C.), this direct connection has disappeared. Æneas founds Lavinium, his son Ascanius founds Alba, and between the foundation of Alba and that of Rome by Romulus and Remus, an interval of some 400 years 1 Dionysius i. 48-54 for a detailed criticism of the story of Æneas. See Schwegler, R. G., i. 279, 399 ; Klausen, Æneas u. die Penaten. 2 The ancestral connection of Rome with Troy was given by the senate as a reason for assisting the Acarnanians, who alone of all Greeks had taken no part in the Trojan war.

Justinus, 28, 1 (241 B.C.). 3 Dionysius, i. 72, 73. is interposed. The cause of the difference is clear. It lay in the twofold necessity of reconciling the Greek story with native tradition, and the accepted date of the fall of Troy, as fixed by Greek chronologers, with the date assigned by Roman reckoning to the foundation of the city. It was impossible to set aside the established belief in the ancient ties which connected Rome both with Lavinium and with Alba, and between the year of the burning of Troy and the year of the building of Rome there was an interval of more than four centuries, a gap which was rudely bridged over in the uncritical fashion of the time by the interpolation of a fictitious dynasty of Alban kings. In the rest of the story, from the foundation of Rome to the expulsion of the Tarquins, the influence of Greek imagination is less strongly marked, since from this point onwards the comparative richness and precision of the native traditions left less scope for Greek in genuity of combination and fertility of invention.

Yet even in the account of the rule of the kings the hand of the Greek improver can be occasionally traced. To Greek influence we may ascribe the shape given to the stories of the 'asylum' and of the deification of Romulus, and it must have been Greeks who suggested that King Numa had been a pupil of Pythagoras, or that the Tarquins came originally from Corinth. But though, as the tale proceeds, the amount of native tradition which it contains increases, this native tradition is in itself a curious medley, in which fragments of genuine tradition are found side by side with the stories by which the people explained to themselves the origin of their ancient monuments, or their ancient institutions and usages, and with the crude, uncritical guesses of early chroniclers and antiquarians. To dis entangle these various elements is a difficult matter, nor can the attempt be made here.

But a few instances may be given to illustrate the method of doing it, and the kind of results which can be obtained. When we have set aside all that is clearly of foreign importation or of late date, the inventions and additions of Greek writers, or the chronological apparatus of Cato and Varro, we are face to face with a collection of tales, handed down from mouth to mouth among the people them selves. In such tales experience has taught us that it is not so much the contents of the tale, the names and personality of the actors, or the incidents related, as the motives which suggested it, the peg on which it was hung, that are historically valuable. Thus - the story which connects Rome with Lavinium and with Alba implies an ancient belief among the Romans in their kinship with their Latin neighbours, and that they, with all Latins, recognised a common centre in the sacred mount which dominated the Latin plain.

Similarly, behind the tales told of the growth of Rome lies the belief that Rome had not been 'built in a day,' but had been slowly formed by the fusion of separate settlements into a single city and state; and though the names of the kings, the years of their reigns, and the acts that they did give us little that is of value, existence of an underlying belief that, as Tacitus puts it, 'in the beginning kings ruled in Rome,' 1 is a fact of 1 Tac, Ann. i. 1. importance. These ancient beliefs raise a presumption which we have, then, to confirm or reject by the test of positive evidence : the evidence of language, of monuments, or of fossil institutions and usages which are found surviving in later and better-known times. In other instances the motif of the story is of a different kind, and historically less valuable.

In some cases the starting-point can be discovered in an ancient usage or ceremony, the origin of which the story ex plains; in others the tale is attached to an ancient monument or a remarkable natural object; in others again it has no better basis than an apparent similarity in names, or a rude etymological guess at their mean ing. Explanatory myths of this kind are of frequent occurrence in the early tradition of Rome. As in stances we may quote the rape of the Sabine women, the building of the temple of Jupiter Stator, the story of Tarpeia, and of the priestly families of the Potitii and Pinarii. In these cases the myth is chiefly valuable in so far as its own antiquity as a tale proves the antiquity of the usage, institution, or monument to which it owes its existence. And here the modern critic has to avoid an error into which his ancient predecessors not unfrequently fell.

Dionysius, for in stance, points, in corroboration of the story that Æneas founded Lavinium, or that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf, to monuments still extant in his day at Lavinium and in Rome. But these monu ments, like the hut of Romulus on the Palatine, are the offspring and not the parents of the myth, and were erected to commemorate traditions already well established. They do not corroborate the story, but indicate that at the date of their erection the story was generally believed. Lastly, the colouring and setting of these tales is often instructive. It is significant, for instance, that it is the Etruscan who figures as the dreaded enemy alike of Rome and of her Latin kinsmen, and that it is the Sabine highlanders, whose forays are repelled, and whose women are carried off.

Such, then, in brief, is the nature of the narrative which lies before us in the pages of Livy and Dionysius as the version of the earliest history of Rome current in the Augustan age, and current also, in much the same shape, when Fabius Pictor wrote his chronicles, in the third century B.C. As a written tradition no part of it can be traced further back than the middle of the fifth century, and it has, therefore, no claim to the authority of a contemporary record. In it materials of very various sorts and kinds, and brought from very different quarters, are found side by side. Intermingled with fragments of genuinely old and native tradition we find pieces of world-wide folk-lore, such as the tale of the children cruelly exposed and miraculously saved, stories, some drawn from the inexhaustible stores of Greek legend, or invented by the scarcely less inexhaustible imagination of Greek chroniclers, others representing the naive attempts of the soberer Roman mind to find an origin for the most ancient of their usages, institutions, and monuments.

All these various materials were gradually combined and arranged by the efforts of successive generations ; but the orderly and consecutive narrative, with its apparatus of names and dates, which was thus produced, had even less claim to be considered history than the mass of disconnected tales of which it was composed. It follows, then, that neither the narrative as a whole nor the separate incidents can be regarded as historical. On the other hand, both the ancient and genuinely Roman beliefs which underlie the story, and the colouring and setting of the tale, frequently afford a clue to the truth, which a study of the independent evidence supplied by the undoubted relics of antiquity to be found in the language, the institutions, the monu ments of later Rome enables us to follow out with success.

Chapter II. The Origin Of The City And Commonwealth

There is fortunately no room for doubt as to the site of Rome, or as to the district which was the scene of her early history. Along the western coast of Italy from Civita Vecchia (Centum Cellæ) in the north to Tarracina in the south stretches the famous lowland known for centuries as the Campagna. It is bounded to the north by the more hilly country of Northern Etruria, on the east by the mountain range of the Apennines, on the south by the Yolscian highlands. This strij) of lowland, nearly one hundred miles long, and nowhere much more than thirty miles wide, is in not an un broken level. Its undulating surface is furrowed by watercourses, rent by volcanic fissures, and dotted over with abruptly rising hillocks. Viewed from the top of Soracte at its north-eastern extremity, or from the more famous Alban Mount, which rises out of the plain to the southward, its appearance has been compared to that of a stormy sea suddenly petrified.

Of the streams which flow through it, two only, the Tiber, and its tributary the ' headlong Aius,' have ever been important enough to deserve the name of rivers. It is with the river Tiber, the waterway which con nects the Umbrian and Sabine highlands with the sea, and with this lowland country that the beginnings of Rome Ch. 2.] ORIGIN OF CITY AND COMMONWEALTH 1.3 are inseparably associated. It was on the low hills which rise from the left bank of the Tiber, some fifteen miles above its mouth, that Rome was built, and it was possibly from the river that it took its name.1 It was among the communities of the lowland that Rome found her natural allies against the Etruscan to the north, or against the highland tribes to the east and south. The establishment of her ascendency over the lowland marks the first stage in the growth of her empire, and centuries later, when barbarians ruled to the north and east and south, this lowland remained Roman, and was ruled from Rome by Roman bishops.