Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/133

Rh Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations. On the other hand they maintained apparently undisputed possession of the Janicuium and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber. As regards the Sabines and Æqui Rome appears in a more advantageous position; the connection afterwards drawn so close with the more distant Hernici must have had at least its beginnings under the monarchy, and the united Latins and Hernici enclosed on two sides and kept down their eastern neighbours. On the south frontier, however, the territory of the Rutuli (and still more that of the Volsci) was the scene of perpetual wars. In this direction took place the earliest extension of the Latin land, and it is here that at we first encounter those communities founded by Rome and Latium on the enemy's soil, and constituted as autonomous members of the Latin confederacy, the Latin colonies as they were called, the oldest of which appear to reach back to the regal period. How far, however, the territory reduced under the power of the Romans extended at the close of the monarchy can by no means be determined. Of feuds with the neighbouring Latin and Volscian communities the Roman annals of the regal period recount more than enough; but at the utmost a few detached notices, such as that perhaps of the capture of Suessa in the Pomptine plain, can be held to contain a nucleus of historical fact. That the regal period laid not only the political foundations of Rome, but the foundations also of her external power, cannot be doubted; the position of the city of Rome as rather contradistinguished from than forming part of the league of Latin is is already decidedly marked at the beginning of the Republic, and enables us to perceive that an energetic development of external power must have taken place in Rome during the times of the kings. Successes certainly of no ordinary character have thus passed into oblivion; but the splendour of them lingers over the regal period of Rome, especially over the royal house of the Tarquinii, like a distant evening twilight in which outlines disappear.

While the Latin stock was thus becoming united under the leadership of Rome, and was at the same time extending its territory on the east and south, Rome herself, by the favour of fortune and the energy of her citizens, had become converted from a stirring commercial and agricultural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing province, The remodelling of the Roman military system, and the