The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome - now mistress of a territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading power in the Latin confederacy - extended still further her direct and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced. There was no lack of feuds with the Etruscans and with the Veientes in particular, chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenae; but it does not appear that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in dislodging the Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations. On the other hand they maintained apparently undisputed possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber. As regards the Sabines and Aequi Rome appears in a more advantageous position; the connection which afterwards became so intimate with the more distant Hernici must have had at least its beginning under the monarchy, and the united Latins and Hernici enclosed on two sides and held in check their eastern neighbours. But on the south frontier the territory of the Rutuli and still more that of the Volsci were scenes of perpetual war. The earliest extension of the Latin land took place in this direction, and it is here that 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 only 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 contradistinguished from, rather than forming part of, the league of Latin states 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 time of the kings. Certainly great deeds, uncommon achievements have in this case passed into oblivion; but the splendour of them lingers over the regal period of Rome, especially over the royal house of the Tarquins, like a distant evening twilight in which outlines disappear.
While the Latin stock was thus tending towards union under the leadership of Rome and was at the same time extending its territory on the east and south, Rome itself, by the favour of fortune and the energy of its citizens, had been converted from a stirring commercial and rural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing country. The remodelling of the Roman military system and the political reform of which it contained the germ, known to us by the name of the Servian constitution, stand in intimate connection with this internal change in the character of the Roman community. But externally also the character of the city cannot but have changed with the influx of ampler resources, with the rising requirements of its position, and with the extension of its political horizon. The amalgamation of the adjoining community on the Quirinal with that on the Palatine must have been already accomplished when the Servian reform, as it is called, took place; and after this reform had united and consolidated the military strength of the community, the burgesses could no longer rest content with entrenching the several hills, as one after another they were filled with buildings, and with possibly also keeping the island in the Tiber and the height on the opposite bank occupied so that they might command the course of the river. The capital of Latium required another and more complete system of defence; they proceeded to construct the Servian wall. The new continuous city-wall began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications--portions of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height - emerging as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence more lasting even than these. The ring-wall further embraced the Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a great scale (1862) - on the outside composed of blocks of peperino and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the present day - supplied the want of natural means of defence. From thence it ran to the Capitoline, the steep declivity of which towards the Campus Martius served as part of the city-wall, and it again abutted on the river above the island in the Tiber. The Tiber island with the bridge of piles and the Janiculum did not belong strictly to the city, but the latter height was probably a fortified outwork. Hitherto the Palatine had been the stronghold, but now this hill was left open to be built upon by the growing city; and on the other hand upon the Tarpeian Hill, standing free on every side, and from its moderate extent easily defensible, there was constructed the new "stronghold" (arx, capitolium[10]), containing the stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (tullianum), the treasury (aerarium), the prison, and the most ancient place of assemblage for the burgesses (area Capitolinawhere still in after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon continued to be made. Private dwellings of a permanent kind, on the other hand, were not tolerated in earlier times on the stronghold-hill[11]; and the space between the two summits of the hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (Ve-diovis), or as it was termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with wood and presumably intended for the reception of the husbandmen and their herds, when inundation or war drove them from the plain. The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city had fallen: its gate lay probably towards what was afterwards the Forum[12]. The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation. With this is connected the fact, that for purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants of the city proper (montani), and those of the districts situated within the general ring-wall, but yet not reckoned as strictly belonging to the city (pagani Aventinensis, Ianiculenses, collegia Capitolinorum et Mercurialium)[13]. The space enclosed by the new city wall thus embraced, in addition to the former Palatine and Quirinal cities, the two federal strongholds of the Capitol and the Aventine, and also the Janiculum[14]; the Palatine, as the oldest and proper city, was enclosed by the other heights along which the wall was carried, as if encircled with a wreath, and the two castles occupied the middle.
10. Both names, although afterwards employed as local names (
11. The enactment
12. For the chief thoroughfare, the
13. Four such guilds are mentioned [1] the
14. The "Seven-hill-city" in the proper and religious sense was and continued to be the narrower Old-Rome of the Palatine (iv. The Palatine City). Certainly the Servian Rome also regarded itself, at least as early as the time of Cicero (comp. e. g. Cic. ad Att. vi. 5, 2; Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69), as "Seven-hill-city," probably because the festival of the Septimontium, which was celebrated with great zeal even under the Empire, began to be regarded as a festival for the city generally; but there was hardly any definite agreement reached as to which of the heights embraced by the Servian ring-wall belonged to the "seven." The enumeration of the Seven Mounts familiar to us, viz. Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is not given by any ancient author. It is put together from the traditional narrative of the gradual rise of the city (Jordan, Topographie, ii. 206 seq.), and the Janiculum is passed over in it, simply because otherwise the number would come out as eight. The earliest authority that enumerates the Seven Mounts (