But, while the Grecian peninsula is turned towards the east, the Italian is turned towards the west.  As the coasts of Epirus and Acarnania had but a subordinate importance in the case of Hellas, so had the Apulian and Messapian coasts in that of Italy; and, while the regions on which the historical development of Greece has been mainly dependent—­Attica and Macedonia—­look to the east, Etruria, Latium, and Campania look to the west.  In this way the two peninsulas, so close neighbours and almost sisters, stand as it were averted from each other.  Although the naked eye can discern from Otranto the Acroceraunian mountains, the Italians and Hellenes came into earlier and closer contact on every other pathway rather than on the nearest across the Adriatic Sea, In their instance, as has happened so often, the historical vocation of the nations was prefigured in the relations of the ground which they occupied; the two great stocks, on which the civilization of the ancient world grew, threw their shadow as well as their seed, the one towards the east, the other towards the west.

Italian History

We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history of the city of Rome.  Although, in the formal sense of political law, it was the civic community of Rome which gained the sovereignty first of Italy and then of the world, such a view cannot be held to express the higher and real meaning of history.  What has been called the subjugation of Italy by the Romans appears rather, when viewed in its true light, as the consolidation into an united state of the whole Italian stock—­a stock of which the Romans were doubtless the most powerful branch, but still were only a branch.

The history of Italy falls into two main sections:  (1) its internal history down to its union under the leadership of the Latin stock, and (2) the history of its sovereignty over the world.  Under the first section, which will occupy the first two books, we shall have to set forth the settlement of the Italian stock in the peninsula; the imperilling of its national and political existence, and its partial subjugation, by nations of other descent and older civilization, Greeks and Etruscans; the revolt of the Italians against the strangers, and the annihilation or subjection of the latter; finally, the struggles between the two chief Italian stocks, the Latins and the Samnites, for the hegemony of the peninsula, and the victory of the Latins at the end of the fourth century before the birth of Christ—­or of the fifth century of the city.  The second section opens with the Punic wars; it embraces the rapid extension of the dominion of Rome up to and beyond the natural boundaries of Italy, the long status quo of the imperial period, and the collapse of the mighty empire.  These events will be narrated in the third and following books.

Notes for Book I Chapter I