Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/124



brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked occasion for feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country nourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become gradually changed into wars, and raids for pillage into regular conquests, and political powers must have begun to assume shape. No Italian Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations is moulded and expressed, like the mind of the man in the sports and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the outward development of power and comparative resources in the several cantons of Latium. It is only in the case of Rome, at the utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power and of its territory. The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the united Roman community have been already stated (P. 48); in the landward direction they were on an average just about five miles distant from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (Ostia), at a distance of somewhat more than fourteen miles from Rome. "Larger and smaller tribes," says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome, "surrounded the new city, some of whom dwelt in independent villages, and were not subordinate to any national union." It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions of the Roman territory took place.