XI. ried a little beyond the valley of the Tiber, and the CHAP. plain of the Campagna; we must go as far as the mountains which divide Latium from Campania, which look down upon the level of the Pontine marshes, and even command the island summits of the Alban hills: we must cross the Tiber, and enter upon a people of foreign extraction and language, a mighty people, whose southern cities were almost within sight of Rome, while their most northern settlements were planted beyond the Apennines, and, from the great plain of the Eridanus, looked up to that enormous Alpine barrier which divided them from the unknown wildernesses watered by the Ister and his thousand tributary rivers. cans or and the two tions, the and Vol In the days of Thucydides, the Greek city of The OpiCuma is described as situated in the land of the Ausonians, Opicans. The Opicans, Oscans, or Ausonians, for the Opican nathree names all express the same people, occupied Equians all the country between Enotria and Tyrrhenia, scians. that is to say, between the Silarus and the Tiber; but the sea-coast of this district was full of towns belonging to people of other nations, such as the Greek cities of Cuma and Neapolis, and those belonging to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, such as Tarracina, Circeii, Antium, and Ardea. The Opicans were an inland people, and it was only by conquest that they at last came down to the sea-coast, and established themselves in some of the Tyrrhenian towns. They had various subdivisions; but the two Thucyd. VI. 4. XI. CHAP. nations of them with whom the Romans had most to do, and whose encroachments on Latium we are now to notice, are known to us under the name of the Equians and Volscians. Their geographical position. It is absolutely impossible to offer any thing like a connected history of the Volscian and Æquian wars with Rome during the first half century from the beginning of the Commonwealth. But in order to give some clearness to the following sketch, I must first describe the position of the two nations, and class their contests with Rome, whether carried on singly or jointly, under the names respectively of the Equian and Volscian wars, according to the quarter which was the principal field of action. The Volscians, when they first appear in Roman history, are found partly settled on the line of highlands overlooking the plain of Latium, from near Præneste to Tarracina, and partly at the foot of the hills in the plain itself. It has been already noticed, that just to the south of Præneste a remarkable break occurs in this mountain wall, so that only its mere base has been left standing, a tract of ground barely of sufficient elevation to turn the waters in different directions, and to separate the source of the Trerus, which feeds the Liris, from the streams of the Cam 2 Taking a parallel case from English geography, the gap in the oolitic limestone chain of hills which occurs in Warwickshire, between Farnborough and Edge Hill, may be compared to the gap at Præneste; the line of hills northward and southward from this point, overlooking the lias plain of Warwickshire, may represent respectively the countries of the Equians and Volscians ; whilst Banbury and the valley of the Cherwell answer to the country of the Hernicans. pagna of Rome. This breach or gap in the mountains. forms the head of the country of the Hernicans, who occupied the higher part of the valley of the Trerus, and the hills on its left bank downward as far as its confluence with the Liris. But at Præneste the mountain wall rises again to its full height, and continues stretching to the northward in an unbroken line, till it is again interrupted at Tibur or Tivoli by the deep valley of the Anio. Thus from the Anio to the sea at Tarracina, the line of hills is interrupted only at a single point, immediately to the south of Præneste, and is by this breach divided into two parts of unequal length, the shorter one extending from Tibur to Præneste, the longer one reaching from the point where the hills again rise opposite to Præneste as far as Tarracina and the sea. Of this mountain wall the longer portion was held by the Volscians, the shorter by the Equians. CHAP. XI. the wars Equians; But it is not to be understood that the whole of Seat of this highland country was possessed by these two with the Opican nations. Latin towns were scattered along the edge of it overlooking the plain of Latium, such as Tibur and Præneste in the Equian portion of it, and in the Volscian, Ortona, Cora, Norba, and Setia. The Equians dwelt rather in the interior of the mountain country; their oldest seats were in the heart of the Apennines, on the lake of Fucinus, from whence they had advanced towards the west, till they had reached the edge overhanging the plain. Nor is it possible to state at what time the several Latin cities of the Apennines were first conquered, CHAP. XI. with the Volscians. Volscian conquests in Latium. or how often they recovered their independence. Tibur and Præneste never fell into the hands of the Equians, their natural strength helping probably to secure them from the invaders. The Equians seem rather to have directed their efforts in another direction against the Latin towns of the Alban hills, pouring out readily through the breach in the mountain line already noticed, and gaining thus an advanced position from which to command the plain of Rome itself. The Volscian conquests, on the other hand, were effected either in their own portion of the mountain line, or in the plain nearer the sea, or finally, on the southern and western parts of the cluster of the Alban hills, as the Equians attacked their eastern and northern parts. Tarracina 3 appears to have fallen into their hands very soon after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy; and Antium was also an early conquest. In the year 261, Bovillæ, Circeii, Corioli, Lavinium, Satricum, and Velitræ, were still Latin cities; but all these were conquered at one 5 3 It is mentioned as a Volscian town under the name of Anxur in the year 349. (Livy, IV. 59.) Its capture by the Volscians is no where recorded; but in the earliest Volscian wars, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, the seat of war lies always on the Roman side of it. It seems therefore to have fallen soon after the date of the treaty with Carthage, in which it is spoken of as a Latin city. It belonged to the Volscians in the year 261, the year in which 4 the Roman league with the Latins was concluded, Livy, II. 33. 5 The present text of Dionysius has Βολὰς or Βωλάς, (VI. 20.) Plutarch has Bóλλas, (Coriolanus, 29) but it appears that Bovillæ and not Bola is meant, because the conquest of Bola is mentioned separately by both writers, and because Plutarch gives the distance of Bóλλat from Rome at one hundred stadia, which suits Bovillæ, but is too little for Bola. The conquest of Circeii, XI. time or other by the Volscians, so that at the period CHAP. of their greatest success they must have advanced within twelve miles of the gates of Rome. The legend of Coriolanus represents these towns, with the exception of Velitræ, as having been taken between the years 263 and 266, in the great invasion conducted jointly by Coriolanus and by Attius Tullius. But Niebuhr has given reasons for believing that these conquests were not made till some years later, and that they were effected not all at once, but in the course of several years. Be this as it may, it is certain that some of the towns thus taken, Satricum, for instance, Circeii, and Velitræ, remained for many years in possession of the Volscians. Corioli was destroyed, and is no more heard of in history, while Boville and Lavinium were in all probability soon recovered either by the Romans or by the Latins. Whilst the Volscians were thus tearing Latium to Equian pieces on one side, the Equians were assailing it with equal success on the other. Their conquests also are all assigned by the legend of Coriolanus to Corioli, Lavinium, and Satricum, is noticed by Livy, II. 39. Velitræ was taken by the Romans from the Volscians in the year 260, but it must afterwards have been lost again; for we find it in arms with the Volscians against Rome, and afterwards with the Latins; and though this is spoken of as the revolt of a Roman colony, as if the descendants of the colonists sent there after its first conquest in 260, had always continued in possession of it, yet the well-known inscription found there, known by the name of "La conquests. |