of these facts.  The facts themselves were of slow growth, covering probably centuries, but the actions resulting from them, and the outward changes in society, came thick and fast and may well have taken place, all of them, within the limits of one man’s life.  The foundation fact upon which all these changes were based is the influence of the outside world on the Roman community.  Until this time there had been little to differentiate Rome from any other of the hill-communities of Italy, of which there were scores in her immediate neighbourhood; nor was she the only one to come into contact with the outside world.  It was the effect which that influence had upon her as contrasted with her neighbours which made the difference.  When we ask why this influence affected her differently we find no satisfactory answer, and are in the presence of a mystery—­the world-old insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe or one individual over others apparently of the same class.  Political history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome’s story under the title of the “Rise of the Plebeians,” but the presence of the Plebeians was only the outward symbol of an inward change.  This change was the breaking up of the monotonous one-class society of the primitive community with its one—­agricultural—­interest, and the formation of a variegated many-class society with manifold interests, such as trade, handicraft, and politics.  It was the awakening of Rome into a world-life out of her century-long undisturbed bucolic slumber.

There were at this time two peoples in Italy, who by reason of their older culture were able to be Rome’s teachers.  One lay to the north of her, the mysterious Etruscans, whose culture fortunately for Rome had only a very moderate influence, because the Etruscan culture had already lost much of its virility, possibly also because it was distinctly felt to be foreign, and hence could effect no insidious entry, and probably because Rome was at this time too strong and young and clean to take anything but the best from Etruria.  The other lay to the south, the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, separated from Rome for the present by many miles of forest and by hostile tribes.  Around her in Latium were her own next of kin, the Latins, becoming rapidly inferior to her, but enabled to do her at least this service, that of absorbing the foreign influences which came, and in certain cases latinising them, and thus transmitting them to Rome in a more or less assimilated condition.

The three great facts in the life of Rome during this period are the coming of Greek merchants and Greek trade from the south, the coming of Etruscan artisans and handicraft from the north, and the beginnings of her political rivalry and gradual prominence in the league of Latin cities around her.  Each one of these movements is reflected in the religious changes of the period.  In regard to the first two this is not surprising, for the ancient traveller, like