[Illustration:  The Tiber.]

About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from the Apennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low hills, which recede as it approaches the sea.  One, in especial, called the Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides, about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the other six.  This was the place where the great Roman power grew up from beginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered.

[Illustration:  Curious pottery.]

There were several nations living round these hills—­the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins being the chief.  The homes of these nations seem to have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where they had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill which they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge if their enemies attacked them.  The Etruscans built very mighty walls, and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well.  Many of their works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments have been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned with figures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery in red and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to be made out.  They spoke a different language from what has become Latin, and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of the World, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death.  But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs were called Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lost before the time of history.  The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscany still keeps its name.

The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the Greeks.  There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern parts of Italy, and they learnt something from them.  They had a great many gods.  Every house had its own guardian.  These were called Lares, or Penates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lying by the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs’ heads.  This is the reason that the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs.  Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring out wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept figures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all one family had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius, the daughters only changing it by making it end in a instead of us, and the men having separate names standing first, such as Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish them.

[Illustration:  Jupiter]