PART I
THE FORERUNNERS OF ROME IN ITALY
A HISTORY OF ROME TO 565 A. D.
CHAPTER I
THE GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY
Italy, ribbed by the Apennines, girdled by the Alps and the sea, juts out like a “long pier-head” from Europe towards the northern coast of Africa. It includes two regions of widely differing physical characteristics: the northern, continental; the southern, peninsular. The peninsula is slightly larger than the continental portion: together their area is about 91,200 square miles.
Continental Italy. The continental portion of Italy consists of the southern watershed of the Alps and the northern watershed of the Apennines, with the intervening lowland plain, drained, for the most part, by the river Po and its numerous tributaries. On the north, the Alps extend in an irregular crescent of over 1200 miles from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic. They rise abruptly on the Italian side, but their northern slope is gradual, with easy passes leading over the divide to the southern plain. Thus they invite rather than deter immigration from central Europe. East and west continental Italy measures around 320 miles; its width from north to south does not exceed seventy miles.