General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

The countries of Central Italy were Etruria, Latium, and Campania, facing the Western, or Tuscan Sea; Umbria and Picenum, looking out over the Eastern, or Adriatic Sea; and Samnium and the country of the Sabines, occupying the rough mountain districts of the Apennines.

Southern Italy comprised the countries of Apulia, Lucania, Calabria, and Bruttium. Calabria occupied the "heel," and Bruttium formed the "toe," of the peninsula. This part of Italy, as we have already learned, was called Magna Græcia, or "Great Greece," on account of the number and importance of the Greek cities that during the period of Hellenic supremacy were established in these regions.

The large island of Sicily, lying just off the mainland on the south, may be regarded simply as a detached fragment of Italy, so intimately has its history been interwoven with that of the peninsula. In ancient times it was the meeting-place and battleground of the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans.

EARLY INHABITANTS OF ITALY.—There were, in early times, three chief races in Italy—the Italians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks. The Italians, a branch of the Aryan family, embraced many tribes (Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc.), that occupied nearly all Central Italy. The Etruscans, a wealthy, cultured, and maritime people of uncertain race, dwelt in Etruria, now Tuscany. Before the rise of the Romans they were the leading race in the peninsula. Of the establishment of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, we have already learned in connection with Grecian History (p. 111).

Some five hundred years B.C., the Gauls, a Celtic race, came over the Alps, and settling in Northern Italy, became formidable enemies of the infant republic of Rome.

THE LATINS.—Most important of all the Italian peoples were the Latins, who dwelt in Latium, between the Tiber and the Liris. These people, like all the Italians, were near kindred of the Greeks, and brought with them into Italy those same customs, manners, beliefs, and institutions which we have seen to have been the common possession of the various branches of the Aryan household (see p. 5). There are said to have been in all Latium thirty towns, and these formed an alliance known as the Latin League. The city which first assumed importance and leadership among the towns of this confederation was Alba Longa, the "Long White City," so called because its buildings stretched for a great distance along the summit of a whitish ridge.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.—The place of preeminence among the Latin towns was soon lost by Alba Longa, and gained by another city. This was Rome, the stronghold of the Ramnes, or Romans, located upon a low hill on the south bank of the Tiber, about fifteen miles from the sea.

The traditions of the Romans place the founding of their city in the year 753 B.C. The town was established, it would seem, as an outpost to guard the northern frontier of Latium against the Etruscans.

Recent excavations have revealed the foundations of the old walls and two of the ancient gates. We thus learn that the city at first covered only the top of the Palatine Hill, one of a cluster of low eminences close to the Tiber, which, finally embraced within the limits of the growing city, became the famed "Seven Hills of Rome." From the shape of its enclosing walls, the original city was called Roma Quadrata, "Square Rome."

THE EARLY ROMAN STATE: KING, SENATE, AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY.—The early Roman state seems to have been formed by the union of three communities. These constituted three tribes, known as Ramnes (the Romans proper, who gave name to the mixed people), Tities, and Luceres. Each of these tribes was divided into ten wards, or districts (curiæ); each ward was made up of gentes, or clans, and each clan was composed of a number of families. The heads of these families were called patres, or "fathers," and all the members patricians, that is, "children of the fathers."