Part 1 (1/2)

A Smaller History of Rome.

by William Smith and Eugene Lawrence.

NOTICE.

The present History has been drawn up chiefly for the lower forms in schools, at the request of several teachers, and is intended to range with the author's Smaller History of Greece. It will be followed by a similar History of England. The author is indebted in this work to several of the more important articles upon Roman history in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

The Table of Contents presents a full a.n.a.lysis of the work, and has been so arranged that the teacher can frame from it questions for the examination of his cla.s.s, the answers to which will be found in the corresponding pages of the volume.

The restoration of the Forum has been designed by Mr. P.W. Justyne.

W.S.

CHAPTER I.

GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY--EARLY INHABITANTS.

Italy is the central one of the three great peninsulas which project from the south of Europe into the Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded on the north by the chain of the Alps, which form a natural barrier, and it is surrounded on other sides by the sea. Its sh.o.r.es are washed on the west by the ”Mare Inferum,” or the Lower Sea, and on the east by the Adriatic, called by the Romans the ”Mare Superum,” or the Upper Sea.

It may be divided into two parts, the northern consisting of the great plain drained by the River Padus, or _Po_, and its tributaries, and the southern being a long tongue of land, with the Apennines as a back-bone running down its whole extent from north to south. The extreme length of the peninsula from the Alps to the Straits of Messina is 700 miles.

The breadth of northern Italy is 350 miles, while that of the southern portion is on an average not more than 100 miles. But, till the time of the Empire, the Romans never included the plain of the Po in Italy. To this country they gave the general name of GALLIA CISALPINA, or Gaul on this (the Roman) side of the Alps, in consequence of its being inhabited by Gauls. The western-most portion of the plain was peopled by Ligurian tribes, and was therefore called LIGURIA, while its eastern extremity formed the Roman province of VENETIA.

The name ITALIA was originally applied to a very small tract of country.

It was at first confined to the southern portion of Calabria, and was gradually extended northward, till about the time of the Punic wars it indicated the whole peninsula south of the Rivers Rubicon and Macra, the former separating Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria, the latter Liguria and Etruria. Italy, properly so called, is a very mountainous country, being filled up more or less by the broad ma.s.s of the Apennines, the offshoots or lateral branches of which, in some parts, descend quite to the sea, but in others leave a considerable s.p.a.ce of level or low country.

Excluding the plain of the Po, it was divided into the following districts:[1]

1. ETRURIA, which extended along the coast of the Lower Sea from the River Macra on the north to the Tiber on the south. Inland, the Tiber also formed its eastern boundary, dividing it first from Umbria, afterward from the Sabines, and, lastly, from Latium. Its inhabitants were called Etrusci, or Tusci, the latter form being still preserved in the name of _Tuscany_. Besides the Tiber it possesses only one other river of any importance, the Arnus, or Arno, upon which the city of _Florence_ now stands. Of its lakes the most considerable is the Lacus Trasimenus, about thirty-six miles in circ.u.mference, celebrated for the great victory which Hannibal there gained over the Romans.

2. UMBRIA, situated to the east of Etruria, and extending from the valley of the Tiber to the sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic. It was separated on the north from Gallia Cisalpina by the Rubicon, and on the south by the aesis from Picenum, and by the Nar from the Sabines.

3. PICENUM extended along the Adriatic from the mouth of the aesis to that of the Matrinus and inland as far as the central ridge of the Apennines. It was bounded on the north by Umbria, on the south by the Vestini, and on the west by Umbria and the Sabini. Its inhabitants, the Picentes, were a Sabine race, as is mentioned below.

4. The SABINI inhabited the rugged mountain-country in the central chain of the Apennines, lying between Etruria, Umbria, Picenum, Latium, and the country of the Marsi and Vestini. They were one of the most ancient races of Italy, and the progenitors of the far more numerous tribes which, under the names of Picentes, Peligni, and Samnites, spread themselves to the east and south. Modern writers have given the general name of _Sabellians_ to all these tribes. The Sabines, like most other mountaineers, were brave, hardy, and frugal; and even the Romans looked up to them with admiration on account of their proverbial honesty and temperance.

5. The MARSI, PELIGNI, VESTINI, and MARRUCINI inhabited the valleys of the central Apennines, and were closely connected, being probably all of Sabine origin. The MARSI dwelt inland around the basin of the Lake Fucinus, which is about thirty miles in circ.u.mference, and the only one of any extent in the central Apennines. The PELIGNI also occupied an inland district east of the MARSI. The VESTINI dwelt east of the Sabines, and possessed on the coast of the Adriatic a narrow s.p.a.ce between the mouth of the Matrinus and that of the Aternus, a distance of about six miles. The MARRUCINI inhabited a narrow strip of country on the Adriatic, east of the Peligni, and were bounded on the north by the Vestini and on the south by the Frentani.

6. The FRENTANI dwelt upon the coast of the Adriatic from the frontiers of the Marrucini to those of Apulia. They were bounded on the west by the Samnites, from whom they were originally descended, but they appear in Roman history as an independent people.

7. LATIUM was used in two senses. It originally signified only the land of the Latini, and was a country of small extent, bounded by the Tiber on the north, by the Apennines on the east, by the sea on the west, and by the Alban Hills on the south. But after the conquest of the Volscians, Hernici, aequians, and other tribes, originally independent, the name of Latium was extended to all the country which the latter had previously occupied. It was thus applied to the whole region from the borders of Etruria to those of Campania, or from the Tiber to the Liris.

The original abode of the Latins is of volcanic origin. The Alban Mountains are a great volcanic ma.s.s, and several of the craters have been filled with water, forming lakes, of which the Alban Lake is one of the most remarkable. The plain in which Rome stands, now called the _Campagna_, is not an unbroken level, but a broad undulating tract, intersected by numerous streams, which have cut themselves deep channels through the soft volcanic tufa of which the soil is composed.

The climate of Latium was not healthy even in ancient times. The malaria of the Campagna renders Rome itself unhealthy in the summer and autumn; and the Pontine Marshes, which extend along the coast in the south of Latium for a distance of thirty miles, are still more pestilential.

8. CAMPANIA extended along the coast from the Liris, which separated it from Latium, to the Silarus, which formed the boundary of Lucania. It is the fairest portion of Italy. The greater part of it is an unbroken plain, celebrated in ancient as well as in modern times for its extraordinary beauty and fertility. The _Bay of Naples_--formerly called Sinus c.u.ma.n.u.s and Puteola.n.u.s, from the neighboring cities of c.u.mae and Puteoli--is one of the most lovely spots in the world; and the softness of its climate, as well as the beauty of its scenery, attracted the Roman n.o.bles, who had numerous villas along its coasts.