Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/78

58 how the Subura and the Palatine annually contended for the horse's head; the several Mounts also, nay, even the several curies (there was as yet no common hearth for the city, but the various hearths of the curies subsisted side by side, although in the same locality) probably felt themselves to be as yet more separated than united, and Rome as a whole was probably rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. It appears, from many indications, that the houses of the old and powerful families were constructed somewhat in the style of fortresses and were rendered capable of defence—a precaution, it may be presumed, not unnecessary. It was the magnificent scheme of fortification ascribed to King Servius Tullius, that first surrounded, not merely those two cities of the Palatine and Quirinal, but also the heights of the Aventine and the Capitoline which were not comprehended within their enclosure, with a single great ring- wall, and thereby created the new Rome—the Rome of history. But ere this mighty work was undertaken, the relations of Rome to the surrounding country had beyond doubt undergone a complete revolution. As the period, during which the husbandman guided his plough on the seven hills of Rome just as on the other hills of Latium, and the usually unoccupied places of refuge on particular summits alone presented the germs of a more permanent settlement, corresponds to the earliest epoch of the Latin stock, an epoch barren of traffic and barren of action; as thereafter the flourishing settlement on the Palatine and in the "Seven Rings" was coincident with the occupation of the mouths of the Tiber by the Roman community, and with the progress of the Latins to a more stirring and freer intercourse, to an urban civilization in Rome especially, and perhaps also to a better consolidated political union in the individual states as well as in the confederacy; so the Servian wall, which was the foundation of a single great city, was connected with the epoch at which the city of Rome was able to contend for, and at length to achieve, the sovereignty of the Latin confederacy.