BOOK II.

ROME UNDER THE PATRICIANS.

CHAPTER VI.

DECLINE OF ROMAN POWER AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE TARQUINS. GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ROME.

§ 1. Extent of Roman power at Expulsion of Kings. § 2. It fell with Monarchy. § 3. Romans for a time subject to Porsenna. § 4. Rome no longer head of Latium: accession of Attus Clausus and 3000 Clients. Narrow limits of Roman History for next 150 years. § 5. Campagna: pestilential air. § 6. Less unhealthy in ancient times. § 7. Nations bordering on plain of Rome: Tusculum, &c. § 8. Lower Apennines: Prænesté: Volscians: Equians: Hernicans. § 9. Lower Etruria.

§ 1. It is incidentally noticed by Polybius that in the first year of the Republic, a sort of commercial treaty was made between Rome on the one part, and Carthage on the other." The very fact of a great trading city like Carthage thinking it worth while to enter into such a treaty, leads us to look on Rome with very different eyes from those of the early Annalists. It is evident that she must have occupied an important position in the Mediterranean. The general impression raised by the mere existence of such a treaty, is much strengthened by its articles, so far as they have been preserved to us. It appears that the Carthaginians on their part bound themselves to make no settlement for trading purposes on the coast of Latium and Campania, while the Romans on their part covenanted not to sail along the African coast southward of the Hermæan promontory. This jealousy of maritime interference on the side of Carthage shows that Rome, or her Etruscan sovereign at least,

must have been in possession of a considerable naval force. Again, the Latins are in the treaty expressly called the "subjects" of Rome, which confirms the statements of the Roman Annalists that all Latium was reduced under the sovereignty of the later kings.

§ 2. It is probable, then, on the one hand, that the Tarquins and Servius ruled a considerable kingdom, which certainly included all Latium, and probably also great part of Etruria.

It is, on the other hand, certain that this dominion fell with the monarchy.

§ 3. The war with Porsenna and the Etruscans shows that Etruria, whatever was the case before, was now certainly not subject to Rome; nay, there is evidence to prove that the Romans themselves became for a time subject to the Etruscan yoke. We have heard the legend of Porsenna as it is related by Roman bards. But it is certain that the truth has been much distorted. The tales of Horatius, of Mucius, of Cloelia, are noble poetry, and stir the youthful heart with no ungenerous fire. Yet we must confess that Porsenna conquered Rome, and held it for a time at least under an iron rule. Tacitus, the greatest of Roman historians, lets drop the fact that "the city itself was surrendered" to the Etruscan monarch: b another writer tells us, that the war lasted three years: the legend itself obscurely confesses that Rome at this time lost its TransTiberine pagi, and that Porsenna was acknowledged as sovereign by the present of an ivory throne, a sceptre, a crown of gold, and a robe of state,-the very marks of Etruscan monarchy introduced at Rome by the elder Tarquin: and, lastly, Pliny expressly cites the treaty, by which it appears, that Porsenna forbade the Romans to use any iron except for implements of husbandry.d

This dominion of the Etruscans over Rome did not continue long; for, soon after, Porsenna was defeated and slain before the Latin city of Aricia; and then it was, doubtless, that the

b "Deditâ Urbe."-Tacit. Histor. iii. 72.

Orosius, ii. 5.

d "In fœdere quod expulsis regibus Populo Romano dedit Porsenna, nominatim comprehensum invenimus, ne ferro nisi in agri culturam uterentur."Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 39. With this may be compared the treatment of the Israelites by the Philistines, 2 Sam. xiii. 19-22. There could be no more complete proof of absolute submission.

Romans seized and sold all the goods of the king on which they could lay their hands. But it was not till long after that they reconquered the Veientine pagi which they had lost.

§ 4. So, also, notwithstanding the triumph of Lake Regillus, it is certain that Rome no longer was the head of Latium. The Latin cities Tusculum, Lanuvium, Corioli, and others, within ten or twelve miles of the Forum, asserted their independence; not to speak of Tibur, Prænesté, and others, which were more remote. The only accession to her territory, amid all these losses, arose from the voluntary union of some Sabines with their old compatriots at Rome. Most of the Sabine tribes in proximity with Rome supported the Latins in their revolt. But a powerful chief of the name of Attus Clausus, with a following of no less than three thousand clients, joined himself to the Romans, and himself became a Roman. He and his followers. were settled in a Sabine district beyond the Anio, which was constituted as a local Tribe ;-the number of the Tribes being thus raised to Twenty-one. Rome, then, now appears as mistress only of a small territory on the left bank of the Tiber. The next century and a half of her history is occupied in reconquering that which she had lost and though still the narrative is much mixed up with legendary tales, yet the people with whom she deals, and the land which she wins, are real and substantial things, and remain in her possession for ever. Here then it will be convenient and instructive to pause, and take a geographical survey of the Roman territory and its adjacent lands.

§ 5. The City of Rome stands at the verge of a small island of tertiary formation in the midst of a long tract of volcanic country, which stretches from the Pontine Marshes on the south to Acquapendente, a town of modern Tuscany, about 10 miles north of the Volsinian Lake. The land along the coast-line of this tract, from Civita Vecchia, the port of modern Rome, to Cape Circello, is flat and low. But the land rises gradually

Hence "to sell the goods of King Porsenna" became a proverb at Rome for despoiling an enemy. Livy attempts to explain the phrase in accordance with the legend, which represents Rome as never having yielded to the king.

It probably was the Crustumine or Crustumerian, the first that did not bear the name of a Patrician Gens. See Chapt. iii. § 20, Note, whence it will be seen that a Claudian Tribe already existed.

inland, till at Rome the general level is considerably above the sea. To one standing upon the Capitol, the view towards Tuscany is immediately bounded by a ridge of hills, which skirt the Tiber on the west. The height directly west of the Capitol is Mont Janiculum; northward and facing the Campus Martius, is the Vatican hill; while still further north appears the more considerable eminence of Mont Marius. Due north, the view up the valley of the Tiber is closed by the noble mass of Soracté. From this point round to the sea, that is on the northeast, east and south, the eye ranges over a wide extent of plain, popularly called the Campagna di Roma.

Viewed from the heights of Rome, this plain appears level and unbroken. But the traveller who passes over it finds it rising and falling in constant undulations, while in the hollows, here and there, small streams creep sluggishly towards the Tiber or Anio through broken banks fringed with broom and other lowgrowing plants. He sees but few portions of this plain under cultivation, though it produces a luxuriant herbage. Houses there are scarcely any, trees almost none, to break the dreary monotony; and the peasants whom he meets, few and far between, give sufficient reason for this desolation in their unhealthy looks and listless bearing.

A portion of this plain, bounded on the west by the course of the Tiber, from beyond the Anio to the sea, was the famous Ager Romanus, and formed the narrow district to which we find its limits reduced after the wars which followed the expulsion of the Tarquins. Its eastern boundary cannot be distinctly ascertained; but it was formed by a waving line which ran from below Tivoli to Ardea, at a mean breadth of ten or twelve miles; its whole arca being not larger than the county of Middlesex. On enquiry into its present condition, we learn that this district is distributed into four or five and twenty farms; that the land in each farm is divided into seven portions, each of which is ploughed up in rotation for a grain crop, and then is left to resume the natural herbage which soon clothes it again without the help of man; so that not above one-seventh part of the whole is under tillage at once. We are further informed that the country is thus left desolate because of the malaria or pestilential atmosphere which pervades it; that few

or none of the tenant-farmers who occupy the land are hardy enough to reside upon their farms; that the peasants who reap the crops come down for the express purpose from the upland valleys on the north, and suffer much from low fever and disease during the time that they are thus occupied; that when the crop is housed, all flee the pestilential soil, except some few who haunt spectre-like the ruinous remains of its ancient

towns.g

§ 6. It is a natural and inevitable thought, that, in the Roman times, the physical condition of this country must have been different; for every eminence was then crowned with a town or village, and many of the broken, cliff-like banks formed citadels, like the Hills of Rome. It is certain, indeed, that in ancient times the country was unhealthy and uninviting; but it is not to be doubted that it is more unhealthy now, and that Rome itself was in those days less exposed to the influence of malaria than at present. What is not less striking is, that hitherto the causes of this malaria have baffled the researches of science. It does not arise from marshy exhalations; for the soil of the Campagna is as dry in the present day as it was when Livy described it. It can hardly be due to the impregnation of the volcanic soil with mephitic vapour; for, though it appears that the volcanic district of Etruria, now called the Maremma, is equally unhealthy, and presents a similar aspect of forlorn desolation, yet no such evil attacks other volcanic soils, as Campania or Sicily; nor will this hypothesis account for the increase of the plague in modern times. The causes suggested for this increase are: first, the neglected culture of the land; secondly, the destruction of trees and natural shelter from the sun and wind; thirdly, the want of all protection to those who brave the climate from the sudden cold that at sunset follows the intense heat of the day. Instances are alleged to show that if

The foregoing facts are mainly collected from an article in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxviii. p. 48 and following.

h Cicero (De Republicâ, ii. 6) says that Romulus "locum delegit in regione pestilente salubrem." And Livy (vii. 38) represents discontented Romans as declaring that they were wearied of struggling "in pestilente atque arido circum urbem solo." Compare the reasons given against removing to Veii, v. 54. Strabo, a Greek, speaks still more disparagingly of the situation of Rome. It was, he says, matter of necessity, rather than of choice.