Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/60

40 ancient times over all Italy, although constructed in less artistic style. It was natural that at the period when the stocks that had made the transition to urban life were surrounding their towns with stone walls, those districts whose inhabitants continued to dwell in open hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone. When in later ages peace was securely established throughout the land, and such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations.

These cantons, then, having their rendezvous in some stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the primitive political unities with which Italian history begins. At what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium, cannot be determined with precision, nor is it a matter of special historical interest. The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the new comers. Here, accordingly, along the small elevated plain above Palazzuola, between the Alban lake (Lago di Castello) and the Alban Mount (Monte Cavo), extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of Rome, as well as of all the other Old Latin communities. Here, too, on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium, Aricia, and Tusculum. Here also are found some of those primitive works of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization, and seem to stand as a witness to posterity that in reality Pallas Athene, when she does appear, comes into the world full grown. Such is the escarpment of the wall of rock below Alba, in the direction of Palazzuola, whereby the place, which is rendered naturally inaccessible by the steep declivities of Monte Cavo on the south, is rendered equally unapproachable on the north, and only two narrow approaches on the east and west, which are capable of being easily defended, are left open for traffic. Such, above all, is the large subterranean tunnel, cut—of such a size that a man can stand upright within it—through the hard wall of lava, 6000 feet thick, by which the waters of the lake formed in the old crater of the Alban Mount were reduced