Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/125

Rh The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and between the Tiber and the Anio, Antemnæ, Crustumerium, Ficulnea, Medullia, Cænina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia, were those which pressed most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans. The only community that retained independence in this district in after times was Nomentum; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance with Rome. The possession of Fidenæ, the tête du pont of the Etruscans on the left bank of the Tiber, was contested between the Latins and the Etruscans, in other words, between the Romans and Veientes, with varying result. The struggle with Gabii, which held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a long period equally balanced: down to late times the Gabine dress was deemed synonymous with that of war, and Gabine ground the prototype of hostile soil. By these conquests the Roman territory was probably extended to about 190 square miles. Another very early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops. How the collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell: the battle of the three Roman with the three Alban brothers born at one birth, is nothing but a personification of the struggle between two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at least was triune. We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome.