midst of fairy palaces and fairy beings, whose origi- CHAP. nals this earth has never witnessed. V. connected three last be treated The reigns of the later Roman kings contain three Three points points which require to be treated historically. 1st, with the The foreign dominion and greatness of the monarchy. reigns must 2nd, The change introduced in the religion of Rome, historically. And 3rd, the changes effected in the constitution, especially the famous system of the classes and centuries, usually ascribed to Servius Tullius. greatness of archy. works. Servius 1st. The dominion and greatness of the monarchy I. The are attested by two sufficient witnesses; the great the monworks completed at this period, and still existing; Its great and the famous treaty with Carthage, concluded The walls of under the first consuls of the Commonwealth, and Tullius. preserved to us by Polybius. Under the last kings the city of Rome reached the limits which it retained through the whole period of the Commonwealth, and the most flourishing times of the empire. What are called the walls of Servius Tullius continued to be the walls of Rome for nearly eight hundred years, down to the emperor Aurelian. They enclosed all those well-known seven hills, whose fame has so utterly eclipsed the seven hills already described of the smaller and more ancient city. They followed2 the outside edge of the Quirinal, Capitoline, Aventine, and Cælian Hills, passing directly across the low grounds between the hills, and thus running parallel to the Tiber between the Capitoline and the Aven 2 See the account of the walls of Servius in Bunsen's Rome, vol. i. p. 622, et seqq. with the accompanying map, plate I, in the V. CHAP. tine, without going down to the very banks. From the outer or southern side of the Calian they passed round by the eastern side of the hill to the southern side of the Esquiline; and here, upon some of the highest ground in Rome, was raised a great rampart or mound of earth with towers on the top of it, stretching across from the southern side of the Esquiline to the northern side of the Quirinal. For the Esquiline and Quirinal Hills, as well as the Viminal, which lies between them, are not isolated like the four others, but are like so many promontories running out parallel to one another from one common base1, and the rampart passing along the highest part 3 It is on this point that the German topographers of Rome differ from Nibby, and from all the common plans of ancient Rome, which make the walls go quite down to the river. Their reasons are, 1st, the description of the departure of the 300 Fabii, who are made to leave the city by the Porta Carmentalis; but if the walls came close down to the river, they must have re-entered the city again to cross by the Pons Sublicius: and 2nd, Varro's statement, that one end of the Circus Maximus abutted upon the city wall; and that the fish-market was just on the outside of the wall. The first argument seems to me valid; the second cannot be insisted on, because the text of Varro in both places is extremely doubtful. See Varro de L. L, V. § 146. 153. Ed. Müller. 4 The back of a man's hand when slightly bent, and held with the fingers open, presents an exact image of this part of Rome. The fingers represent the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, and a line drawn across the hand just upon the knuckles would show the rampart of Servius Tullius. The ground on the outside of the rampart falls for some way like the surface of the hand down to the wrist, and the later wall of Aurelian passed over the wrist instead of over the knuckles, at the bottom of the slope instead of the top of it. This comparison was suggested to me merely by a view of the ground. It is a strong presumption in favour of its exactness, that the same resemblance struck Brocchi also. Speaking of the Pincian, Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills, he adds; "Per darne una sensibile imagine non saprei meglio paragonarle che alle dita di una mano raffigurando la palma il mentovato piano a cui tutte si attaccano." Suolo di Roma, p. 84. of this base formed an artificial boundary, where none was marked out by nature. The circuit of these walls is estimated at about seven Roman miles. CHAP. V. Maxima. The line of the mound or rampart may still be distinctly traced, and the course and extent of the walls can be sufficiently ascertained; but very few remains are left of the actual building. But the masonry with which the bank of the Tiber was built up, a work ascribed to the elder Tarquinius, and resembling the works of the Babylonian kings along the banks of the Euphrates, is still visible. So also are the massy substructions of the Capitoline temple, which were made in order to form a level surface for the building to stand on, upon one of the two summits of the Capitoline Hill. Above all, enough is The Cloaca still to be seen of the great Cloaca or drain, to assure us that the accounts left us of it are not exaggerated. The foundations of this work were laid about forty feet under ground, its branches were carried under a great part of the city, and brought at last into one grand trunk which ran down into the Tiber exactly to the west of the Palatine Hill. It thus drained the waters of the low grounds on both sides of the Palatine; of the Velabrum, between the Palatine and the Aventine; and of the site of the forum between the Palatine and the Capitoline. The stone employed in the Cloaca is in itself a mark of the great antiquity of the work; it is not the It is the "Tufa litoide" of Brocchi; one of the volcanic formations which is found in 5 many places in Rome. Brocchi V. CHAP. peperino of Gabii and the Alban hills, which was the common building stone in the time of the Commonwealth; much less the travertino, or limestone of the neighbourhood of Tibur, the material used in the great works of the early emperors; but it is the stone found in Rome itself, a mass of volcanic materials coarsely cemented together, which afterwards was supplanted by the finer quality of the peperino. Such a work as the Cloaca proves the greatness of the power which effected it, as well as the character of its government. It was wrought by task work, like the great works of Egypt; and stories were long current of the misery and degradation which it brought upon the people during its progress. But this task work for these vast objects shows a strong and despotic government, which had at its command the whole resources of the people; and such a government could hardly have existed, unless it had been based upon some considerable extent of dominion. Treaty with What the Cloaca seems to imply, we find conveyed in express terms in the treaty with Carthage. As this treaty was concluded in the very first year of the Commonwealth, the state of things to which it refers must clearly be that of the latest period of the monarchy. It appears then that the whole coast' masses of it, he adds, taken from 6 Polybius, III. 22. See Nie- V. of Latium was at this time subject to the Roman CHAP. dominion: Ardea, Antium, Circeii, and Terracina 3, are expressly mentioned as the subject allies (vπÝKOOL) of Rome. Of these, Circeii is said in the common story to have been a Roman colony founded by the last Tarquinius; but we read of it no less than of the others as independent, and making peace or war with Rome, during the Commonwealth down to a much later period. Now it is scarcely conceivable that the Romans could thus have been masters of the whole coast of Latium, without some corresponding dominion in the interior; and we may well treaty speaks of a part of Latium which was not subject to Rome, and because the name of Campania was not yet in existence. But if Polybius has translated his original correctly, the expression ἐάν τινες μὴ ὦσιν ὑπήκοοι would rather seem to provide for the case of a Latin city's revolting from Rome and becoming independent, and for an uncertain state of relations between Rome and Latium, such as may well be supposed to have followed the expulsion of Tarquinius; a state in which the Romans could not know what Latin cities would remain faithful to the new government, and what would take part with the exiled king. On the other hand there is no authority for extending the limits of Latium beyond Terracina. The name Campania, it is true, did not exist so early, but Thucydides calls Cuma a city of Opicia, not of Latium; and the Volscians or Auruncans must have already occupied the country on the Liris, and between that river and Terracina, although their conquests of Terracina itself 8 A fourth name is added in the con |