Roman cities in Italy and Dalmatia . se basewas marked, on one side, by Caere near the sea-coast and, on the other, by Capena and Faleriiflanked bv the mass of Mt. Soracte. But on the north Rome could expand, after awhile, beyond the Anio, and eastward to theAlban hills, across a belt of minor towns, all ofthe Latin race. She also soon reached the sea-coast, on the south, at Ostia. The two earliercities to which traditions most closely bound her,both of them Latin, were Lanuvium, in this sea-belt, her sacred Mecca, which she always treatedwith reverence; and Alba, her political fountainhead, l
Roman cities in Italy and Dalmatia . se basewas marked, on one side, by Caere near the sea-coast and, on the other, by Capena and Faleriiflanked bv the mass of Mt. Soracte. But on the north Rome could expand, after awhile, beyond the Anio, and eastward to theAlban hills, across a belt of minor towns, all ofthe Latin race. She also soon reached the sea-coast, on the south, at Ostia. The two earliercities to which traditions most closely bound her,both of them Latin, were Lanuvium, in this sea-belt, her sacred Mecca, which she always treatedwith reverence; and Alba, her political fountainhead, leader of the Latin league, whom necessityobliged her to ruthlessly destroy so as to secureher place. This gradual extension of Romeslimits meant, of course, the absorption of thesmaller and weaker adjoining cantons. At firstthis was often done by the destruction of thetown, the annexation of its territory, and thetransfer of part at least of its population to THE NE^^ YOT?K PUBLIC : RAPy ASTOR. LE «n TILDEIN TOV ???^-r^^iOx^^. ROMAN CITIES 5 Home; for example, in the majority of sucKtowns as Politorium, Tellene, Ficana, Antemnae,Caenina, Collatia and Medullia, most of themin the region of the Anio. But when the popu-lation of Rome was sufficiently large not to re-quire this expedient, the towns were allowed toexist with their territory reduced or else theyretained, under a sort of protectorate, their localautonomy. In some cases the struggle for inde-pendence of these early Latin towns w^as long:it was so with Gabii, which held the district be-tween the Alban mount and the Anio. Rome did not merely join one of the confed-eracies of racial origin into which Italy was thenlargely divided. The Etruscans had their looseunion of twelve cities; the Latins theirs of thirty.*The Hernicans had a league; so, possibly, hadthe L^mbrians and the Samnites. But Rome wasof, and yet not in, the Latin league, maintainingher independence of action and exercising aspecial authority. The earliest
Size: 1407px × 1775px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectarchitectureroman
