122 History. ROME. Origin of Rome.
appreciate the manifold vicissitudes which it has undergone, the
traveller will naturally desire to form some acquaintance with
(he history of the ancient centre of Western civilisation, the city of
the Republic and Empire, on the ruins of which the seat of a vast
ecclesiastical jurisdiction was afterwards founded, and now the
capital of an important and steadily progressing modern state.
Wherever we tread , our thoughts are involuntarily diverted from
the enjoyment of the present to the contemplation of the past; and
the most careless of pleasure-seekers will rind it difficult to with¬
stand the peculiar influence of the place. The following sketch is
merely designed to put the traveller in the way of making farther
researches for himself, and deals exclusively with those leading and
general facts with which he ought to be acquainted before proceed¬
ing to explore the city in detail.
As the more remote history of Italy is involved in much ob¬
scurity, so also the origin of the city of Rome is to a great extent a
matter of mere conjecture. It was not till a comparatively late
period that the well known legend of Romulus and Remus was
framed, and the year B. C. 753 fixed as the date of the foundation.
In all probability, however, Rome may lay claim to far greater an¬
tiquity. We are led to this conclusion, not only by a number of
ancient traditions, but also by the recent discovery in Latium of
relics of the flint-period, an epoch far removed from any written
records. The Palatine was regarded by the ancients as the nucleus
of the city, around which new quarters grouped themselves by slow
degrees; and it was here that Romulus is said to have founded his
city, the Roma Quadrata, of which Tacitus (Ann. 12, 24) states the
supposed extent. Modern excavations have brought to light portions
of the wall, gateways, and streets which belonged to the most an¬
cient settlement (see pp. 240, 241). After the town of Romulus had
sprung up on the Palatine, a second, inhabited by Sabines, was built
on the Quirinal, and the two were subsequently united into one
community. Whilst each retained its peculiar temples and sanctu¬
aries, the Forum , situated between them , and commanded by the
castle and the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, formed the com¬
mon focus and place of assembly of the entire state, and the Forum
and Capitol maintained this importance down to the latest period of
ancient Rome. The rapid growth of the city is mainly to be attri¬
buted to its situation, the most central in the peninsula, alike
adapted for a great commercial town, and for the capital of a vast
empire. The advantages of its position were thoroughly appreciated
by the ancients themselves, and are thus enumerated by Livy
(5, 54): 'flumen opportunum , quo ex mediterraneis locis fruges
—72). which terminates with the year 1535 , the later volumes being the
more valuable part of the work. Another important work is that of
Reumont (3 vols., Berlin, 1867).
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