emigrant, but one Legend calls him a Latin; the latter is generally regarded as a Latin, but one Legend makes him an Etruscan chief, named Mastarna, the comrade of Cæles Vibenna. Yet, so vague and baffling is the language of these Legends, that after all investigations, nothing more can be said than that the bulk of the third Tribe was manifestly Latin, and that whatever there was in Rome of Etruscan decayed and vanished away.

Yet it is certain that, under these kings, Rome became the centre of a considerable monarchy, extending her sway over Lower Etruria and all Latium. This is proved not only by the concurrent voice of all the Legends, but also most convincingly by the great works which still remain to attest the power and wealth of those who executed them, the Cloace of Tarquin, the walls of Servius and the great extent of ground enclosed by them, and the plan of the Capitoline Temple. To this subject we shall have to recur at the beginning of our next chapter.

Further, it is certain that under these kings the old oligarchical constitution was in great measure superseded. Anciently, the Kings, according to the Sabine rule, had been the chiefs in war; but in peace their power was almost limited to the duty of presiding in the oligarchical assembly of the Curiæ, and in the Council of the Senate. Their power of life and death was limited by the right of appeal to the Curiate Assembly belonging to every burgess, as is shown in the legend of Horatius. But Tarquin admitted great numbers of new Burgesses to leaven the Oligarchy, and Servius remoulded the whole population, in which the independent commonalty now formed the chief part, into a new political frame. It cannot be doubted that with the decrease in the power of the Oligarchy that of the Kings increased. The reigns of Tarquin the Elder and Servius represent a period in which the old Sabino-Roman Oligarchy gave way before the royal power, supported by the Latin Plebs, just as in England the Commons were called into political existence by the Plantagenet kings to counterbalance the overwhelming power of the Feudal Aristocracy.

§ 12. The reign of the last Tarquin represents the consummation of this work. Royalty is now despotic. The Plebeians having served the purpose of lowering the Oligarchy, are cast

aside, and a Despotic Monarchy overrules both alike. As the reigns of Tullus and Ancus, of the elder Tarquin and Servius, though they present much of real political interest, are almost empty of legendary tales, so the accounts of the last Tarquin are nothing but a series of Heroic Legends, beginning with the death of Servius, and closing with the great battle of Lake Regillus. All that we can collect from these Legends is, that Tarquin the Despot was really a great and powerful monarch, a man of ability and energy, who acknowledged no political rights except those of the King, and who fell in consequence of one of those sudden bursts of passionate indignation, to which all orders of a nation are sometimes roused by contumelious oppression. No sooner was his fall achieved, than the disunion of the Patrician and Plebeian Orders disclosed itself, just as in England the enmity of Churchmen and Puritans, who had combined for a moment against the Stuarts, broke out with double fury after their fall.

§ 13. In the History of Rome under the Patricians, which forms the subject of our next Book, we have still to deal with legendary narrative. But it is of a different kind to that which meets us in the chronicle of Regal Rome. There the legends are mostly national; here they will be personal. There they refer to dynasties and the changes which arose from feuds between conquerors and conquered; here they relate chiefly to foreign wars, and the prowess of patrician heroes.

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: 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

b

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.

e Orosius, ii, 5.

"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.