Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/57

Rh similar even at the present day; the pestilential atmosphere exists, but the peasant avoids its injurious effects by caution in reference to clothing, food, and the choice of his hours of labour. In fact, nothing is so certain a protection against the "aria cattiva" as wearing the fleece of animals and keeping a blazing fire; which explains why the Roman countryman constantly went clothed in heavy woollen stuffs, and never allowed the fire on his hearth to be extinguished. In other respects such a district must have appeared inviting to an immigrant agricultural people: the soil is easily laboured with mattock and hoe, and is productive even without being manured, although, tried by an Italian standard, it does not yield any extraordinary return: wheat yields on an average about five-fold. Good water is not abundant: the higher and more sacred on that account was the esteem in which every fresh spring was held by the inhabitants.

No accounts have been preserved of the mode in which the settlements of the Latins took place in the district which has since borne their name; and we are almost wholly left to gather what we can from à posteriori inference regarding them. Some knowledge may, however, in this way be gained, or at any rate some conjectures that wear an aspect of probability.

The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation of the earliest "rural wards" (tribus rusticæ). Tradition informs us as to the tribus Claudia,