The History of Rome, Book I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 382 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book I.

The History of Rome, Book I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 382 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book I.

14.  The “Seven-hill-city” in the proper and religious sense was and continued to be the narrower Old-Rome of the Palatine (iv.  The Palatine City).  Certainly the Servian Rome also regarded itself, at least as early as the time of Cicero (comp. e. g.  Cic. ad Att. vi. 5, 2; Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69), as “Seven-hill-city,” probably because the festival of the Septimontium, which was celebrated with great zeal even under the Empire, began to be regarded as a festival for the city generally; but there was hardly any definite agreement reached as to which of the heights embraced by the Servian ring-wall belonged to the “seven.”  The enumeration of the Seven Mounts familiar to us, viz.  Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is not given by any ancient author.  It is put together from the traditional narrative of the gradual rise of the city (Jordan, Topographie, ii. 206 seq.), and the Janiculum is passed over in it, simply because otherwise the number would come out as eight.  The earliest authority that enumerates the Seven Mounts (-montes-) of Rome is the description of the city from the age of Constantine the Great.  It names as such the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican, and Janiculum,—­where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as -colles-, omitted, and in their stead two “-montes-” are introduced from the right bank of the Tiber, including even the Vatican which lay outside of the Servian wall.  Other still later lists are given by Servius (ad Aen. vi. 783), the Berne Scholia to Virgil’s Georgics (ii. 535), and Lydus (de Mens. p. 118, Bekker).

15.  Both the situation of the two temples, and the express testimony of Dionysius, ii. 65, that the temple of Vesta lay outside of the Roma quadrata, prove that these structures were connected with the foundation not of the Palatine, but of the second (Servian) city.  Posterity reckoned this -regia- with the temple of Vesta as a scheme of Numa; but the cause which gave rise to that hypothesis is too manifest to allow of our attaching any weight to it.

16.  I. VII.  Relation of Rome to Latium

17.  I. VI.  Time and Occasion of the Reform

CHAPTER VIII

The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks—­Beginnings of the Samnites

Umbro-Sabellian Migration

The migration of the Umbrian stocks appears to have begun at a period later than that of the Latins.  Like the Latin, it moved in a southerly direction, but it kept more in the centre of the peninsula and towards the east coast.  It is painful to speak of it; for our information regarding it comes to us like the sound of bells from a town that has been sunk in the sea.  The Umbrian people extended according to Herodotus as far as the Alps, and it is not improbable that in very ancient times they occupied the whole of Northern Italy, to the point where the

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The History of Rome, Book I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.