PART I. THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS.

CHAPTER I.

ITALY AND THE ITALIAN PEOPLES.

THE GREEKS AND ROMANS WERE ethnographically closely related, and from the second century b.c. Roman life was increasingly affected and penetrated by Grecian influences. Up to that time, however, the observer is far more impressed with the difference between the sturdy Latin people and the Hellenic type, and by the rise of the Romans from small beginnings to an imposing power. As was the case with the Hellenes, the natural configuration of the country in which the Roman people arose affected the historic character of the Roman state. As little as the Greeks, did the Romans keep within the limits of their native land; and at last their history became almost coextensive with that of the ancient world. But while the Greeks from the time of the Doric migration tended outward, and by the side of their ancient land built a new colonial world, the history of the Romans for centuries was restricted to the Italian peninsula and the adjoining islands. Its extension over the shores of the Mediterranean began when the proud structure of Hellenic power and freedom was already in decay. So up to the period of the war with Hannibal it was essentially the land of Italy that affected the development of the Romans.

The two chief peoples of the ancient world both arose upon extensive peninsulas; but the physical characteristics of Italy rendered possible a political life different from that which we have learned to know in Greece. The Alps, which in a half circle, from the coast at Nice to the Dalmatian Archipelago, enclose northern Italy, and at the same time separate it from the lands of Central Europe, sink toward the south and east to an extensive plain, the basin of the Po, which opens on the Adriatic Sea, and is commonly called Upper Italy. This northern part of Italy has from the beginning stood in far closer relation to the peninsula proper than did the north of the Balkan peninsula to the world of the Hellenes. The actual peninsula of Italy, the land of the Italici, is separated from the north as the land of the Hellenes is from Macedonia. The low country along the Po is cut off from the south by the wall of the Apennines, which, leaving the maritime Alps at Col di Tenda, extends east-south-east to the neighborhood of Rimini. Here, only a few miles from the Adriatic, the direction of the mountains changes, and the chain extends unbroken from north to south, through the entire length of the peninsula to the strait of Messina. In the northern and central parts it is accompanied on either side by short parallel ranges. The configuration of the Italian coast is very simple, on the east side even monotonous. The only gulf worthy of attention is that of Taranto in the southeast; on the west the shore of Campania, and in the extreme north that of Genoa, are deeply indented by the sea. There are no groups of islands as in Greece; yet one of the three large islands, which to the south and west of Italy enclose the Tyrrhenian Sea, Sicily, the counterpart of the Peloponnesus, gained great historic importance. Its history from the time of the Molossian Pyrrhus is closely bound with that of Italy. Of the western islands, Corsica and Sardinia, the former had no part in ancient history, the latter only a subordinate one.

While the historic life of the Greeks found its fullest expression in those countries which lie toward the Aegean Sea, the dominant districts of Italy, down to the time when the history of the Romans absorbs that of Greece, are to be found between the western slope of the Apennines and the Tyrrhenian Sea. In Greece the western, in Italy the eastern coast is least favored by nature. The lagoons at the mouths of the Po, the vicinity of the mountains to the sea farther south, and the lack of good harbors, stood in the way of expansion toward the east. On the west side of the peninsula, however, the space between the crest of the Apennines and the Tuscan coast is so wide that extensive river-valleys could form. These usually in their upper course extend between the main mountain-chain and the western parallel chains, and in their lower course pass through the coast-land. In antiquity these rivers were for the most part navigable. On this side of Italy extensive plains, whose fertile soil permitted cultivation, reach to the sea; and the shore, from the Genoese Riviera to the straits, is much more richly provided with harbors than the Adriatic coast. Thus, as soon as the Italian peoples overstepped the boundaries set them by the sea, their advance was directed more naturally toward the south and west than toward the east. Yet at no time did the Tyrrhenian Sea have for the Romans that paramount importance which the Aegean had for the Hellenes; and until the wars with Carthage, the development of the Italians was essentially determined by the land and not by the sea, although much of the Italian coasts was for centuries in the possession of the Hellenes; yet the opposition between the seapeoples and the dwellers in the interior never had that importance for the Italians which it had for the Greeks. With the exception of the maritime Etruscans, the history of the peninsula, down to its union under Roman leadership, is that of a group of vigorous peoples,—shepherds, mountaineers, and peasants,—distinctly influenced by the nature of the mainland.

The plain of the Po, important though it be in the earlier time, as the base from which four of the chief peoples of Italy crowded forward into the peninsula, first became effective in the political life of Rome, when her power extended to the foot of the Alps. Till the first struggle with Carthage, the peninsula alone was important in the development of Rome. The nature of the land opposed no serious obstacles to the formation of a great and closely united state, as was the case in Greece; yet for a considerable time, even in Italy (without considering the temporary supremacy of the Etruscans), the development into two states, the Latin and the Sabellian, was not improbable.

The tendency to separate, which finds its full expression in the city republics of the Middle Ages, was discernible even in antiquity. But the configuration of the peninsula did not allow the growth of such tenacious and varied individualities as in Greece; it was more favorable to the development of several large race-districts than to the rise of a multitude of petty states. The key of the peninsula, whose conquest determined the political supremacy, was the mighty mountain-land which covers the greater portion of its central part. From the time of the Caesars to that of Odoacer the fate of Italy was repeatedly decided in the plains of the Po; but in the times of the Roman republic, as late as Sulla, the mastery of the peninsula fell to him who was master of the so-called Acropolis of Italy, the country of the old Sabellian stocks. Its possession rendered it possible for the upholders of a systematic policy of conquest to prevent, by force of arms, all association of hostile races in the north and south. The mastery of the Romans over the peninsula was substantially decided when they could march without resistance from Gran Sasso and Monte Velino to the heights of Venusia, and from Lago di Celano to the Caudine Passes. The opportunities which nature offered to a people striving for the control of a united land could only gain their full importance when this people was able to develop such political and military qualities as were actually exhibited by the Romans, and as at a later time enabled them to make this middle peninsula of Southern Europe the basis of a world supremacy,—a supremacy which belonged to Italy as long as it was able to produce an inexhaustible supply of vigorous men.

The appearance of Italy as regards vegetation was essentially different in antiquity from what it is to-day. In the earliest period the peninsula had a distinctly northern aspect, very different from that of the lands of the Orient, of Sicily, and even of Greece, and was covered with vast forests of evergreens, of beeches, and of oaks. The Hellenes knew Italy for centuries as a land especially fruitful in cattle, in the products of flocks and forest, and in grain. At a later time the Italian output of grain, except in the plains of the Po, greatly diminished, while cattle-raising and pasturage correspondingly increased. Grecian civilization introduced into Italy, through the colonies in Sicily and Lower Italy, many plants and methods of cultivation, such as it had received from the East. The relations of the Romans to Carthaginian Africa and the Orient likewise had influence on vegetation and agriculture. Before the close of the period of the Roman kings, there were acclimated and widely spread in Italy the fig tree, the vine, and the olive. In the middle of the fifth century b.c., wheat was added to the indigenous grains. Under the Republic a large part of the forests, through extensive clearing and excessive use of wood for building, for export, and for the construction of fleets, had already disappeared; and in the time of the Empire, when Italy was still wooded, the wasting was uninterruptedly continued. The loss of the forests was attended with many evils—increasing violence of the rivers, increase of drought, advance of malaria, and depopulation of many districts. On the other hand, through a more general cultivation of gardens, Italy was changed into a vast orchard. It was not till the late Empire that the orange and lemon were acclimatized, trees whose attractive appearance in Southern Italy to-day so delights the dweller of the North.

The historic life of the Apennine peninsula begins with the founding of the...