=The Latins.=—­The Latins dwelt in the country of hills and ravines to the south of the Tiber, called today the Roman Campagna.  They were a small people, their territory comprising no more than one hundred square miles.  They were of the same race as the other Italians, similar to them in language, religion, and manners, but slightly more advanced in civilization.  They cultivated the soil and built strong cities.  They separated themselves into little independent peoples.  Each people had its little territory, its city, and its government.  This miniature state was called a city.  Thirty Latin cities had formed among themselves a religious association analogous to the Greek amphictyonies.  Every year they celebrated a common festival, when their delegates, assembled at Alba, sacrificed a bull in honor of their common god, the Latin Jupiter.

=Rome.=—­On the frontier of Latium, on the borders of Etruria, in the marshy plain studded with hills that followed the Tiber, rose the city of Rome, the centre of the Roman people scattered in the plain.  The land was malarial and dreary; but the situation was good.  The Tiber served as a barrier against the enemy from Etruria, the hills were fortresses.  The sea was but six leagues away, far enough to escape fear of pirates, and near enough to permit the transportation of merchandise.  The port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber was a suburb of Rome, as Piraeus was of Athens.  The locality was therefore agreeable to a people of soldiers and merchants.

=Roma Quadrata and the Capitol.=—­Of the first centuries of Rome we know only some legends, and the Romans knew no more than we.  Rome, they said, was a little square town, limited to the Palatine Hill.  The founder whom they called Romulus had according to the Etruscan forms traced the circuit with the plough.  Every year, on the 21st of April, the Romans celebrated the anniversary of these ceremonies:  a procession marched about the primitive enclosure and a priest fixed a nail in a temple in commemoration of it.  It was calculated that the founding had occurred in the year 754[108] B.C.

On the other hills facing the Palatine other small cities rose.  A band of Sabine mountaineers established themselves on the Capitoline, a group of Etruscan adventurers[109] on Mount Coelius; perhaps there were still other peoples.  All these small settlements ended with uniting with Rome on the Palatine.  A new wall was built to include the seven hills.  The Capitol was then for Rome what the Acropolis was for Athens:  here rose the temples of the three protecting deities of the city—­Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and the citadel that contained the treasure and the archives of the people.  In laying the foundations, it was said there was found a human head recently cleft from the body; this head was a presage that Rome should become the head of the world.

FOOTNOTES: 

[108] Rather 753 B.C.—­ED.