3. Apulia. The country ranging along the eastern coast, from the river Frento to the commencement of the eastern tongue of land; an extremely fertile plain, and particularly adapted to grazing cattle. Rivers: the Aufidus (Ofanto) and the Cerbalus. This country is divided into two parts by the Aufidus, the northern called Apulia Daunia, the southern called Apulia Peucetia. Cities: in Apulia Daunia; Sipontum and Luceria: in Apulia Peucetia; Barium, Cannæ, and Venusia.
Calabria.
4. Calabria or Messapia, the smaller eastern tongue of land, which terminates in the promontory of Iapygium. Cities: Brundusium (Brindisi) and Callipolis (Gallipoli). Concerning Tarentum and other Grecian colonies, see above, p. 155.
Three large islands are likewise reckoned as appertaining to Italy: they are Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. According to the political geography of the Romans they were, however, considered as provinces. Although the above islands were, along the coast, occupied by aliens, the aboriginals, under their own kings, maintained a footing in the inland parts; among these the Siculi, said to have migrated from Italy, were the most celebrated; they remained in Sicily, and gave their name to the whole island. Concerning the cities, the more important of which were, some of Phœnician, but the most part of Grecian, origin, see above, p. 30, and p. 155, sqq.
FIRST PERIOD.
From the foundation of Rome to the conquest of Italy and the commencement of the wars with Carthage, B. C. 754—264, or A. U. C. 1—490.
Sources. The most copious author, and, if we except his system of deducing everything connected with Rome from Greece, the most critical of all those who have written on the earlier history of Rome and Italy, is Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in his Archæologia: of this work only the first eleven books, reaching down to the year 443, have been preserved; to these, however, must be added the fragments of the nine following books, xii—xx. discovered in 1816, and published by the Abbate Mai of Milan. Next to Dionysius is Livy, who as far as lib. iv, c. 18, is our main authority, till B. C. 292. Of the Lives of Plutarch the following belong to this period, Romulus, Numa, Coriolanus, Poplicola and Camillus; which for the knowledge and criticism they display, are perhaps more important even than Livy and Dionysius, see A. H. L. Heeren, De fontibus et auctoritate vitarum Plutarchi, inserted in Comment Recentiores Soc. Scient. Gott. Comment. I. II. Græci, III. IV. Romani; reprinted also as an appendix to the editions of Plutarch by Reiske and Hutten, Gottingen, 1821, ap. Dieterich. The sources of the most ancient Roman history were extremely various in kind. The traditions of the Fathers were preserved in historical ballads; (no mention is ever made of any grand epic poem;) and in this sense there existed a bardic history; by no means, however, wholly poetic, for even the traditions of Numa's Institutes are without the characteristics of poetry. The art of writing was in Italy of earlier origin than the city of Rome; how far, consequently, the public annals, such as the Libri Pontificum, extended back in early time remains undetermined. Several of the memorials are, beyond a doubt, mere family records, whether preserved by vocal tradition or in written documents. To the above must be added monuments, not only buildings and works of arts, but also treaties engraved on tables; of which, nevertheless, too little use seems to have been made. The Romans having learnt the art of writing from the Greeks, their history was as frequently written in Greek as in Latin; and that not only by Greeks, such as, in the first place, Diocles of Peparethus, but likewise by Romans, such as Fabius Pictor, at an early period. From these last sources Dionysius and Livy compiled. The more ancient Roman history given by these authorities rests, therefore, in part, but by no means entirely, on tradition and poetry; still further amplified by the rhetoric style, that of the Greeks more especially. At what epoch the Roman history lays aside the poetic character can hardly be determined with certainty; it may be traced even in some parts of the period extending from the expulsion of the kings to the conquest by the Gauls.—For the purposes of chronology, great importance attaches to the fasti Romani, contained partly in inscriptions, (fasti Capitolini,) partly in manuscripts. They have been collected and restored by Pighius, Noris Sigonius, etc. in Grævii, Thes. A. R. vol. xi.; likewise in Almeloveen, Fast. Rom. I. II. Amstel. 1705, etc.
Pighii Annales Romanorum. Antwerp, 1615, fol. 2 vols. An essay towards a chronological arrangement; it reaches down to Vitellius.