Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero | Page 4

so-called hills, which come down as
spurs from the plain of the Campagna,--Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian.
Densely populated as those were in his own day, they were not
essential organs of social and politics life; the pulse of Rome was to be
felt beating most strongly in the space between them and the river
where too the oldest and most cherished associations of the Roman
people, mythical and historical, were fixed. I propose to take the reader,
with a single deviation, over the same ground, and to ask him to
imagine it as it was in the period with which we are concerned in this
book. But first, in order to take in with eye and mind the whole city and
its position, let us leave Aeneas, and crossing to the right bank of the
Tiber by the Pons Aemilius,[5] let us climb to the fort of the Janiculum,
an ancient outwork against attack from the north, by way of the via
Aurelia, and here enjoy the view which Martial has made forever
famous:
Hinc septem dominos videre montes Et totam licet aestimare Romam,
Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles Et quodcunque iacet sub urbe
frigus.
No one who has ever stood on the Janiculum, and looked down on the
river and the city, and across the Latin plain to the Alban mountain and
the long line of hills--the last spurs of the Apennines--enclosing the
plain to the north, can fail to realise that Rome was originally an
outpost of the Latins, her kinsmen and confederates, against the
powerful and uncanny Etruscan race who dwelt in the undulating hill
country to the north. The site was an outpost, because the three isolated
hills make it a natural point of defence, and of attack towards the north
if attack were desirable; no such point of similar vantage is to be found
lower down the river, and if the city had been placed higher up, Latium
would have been left open to attack,--the three hills would have been
left open to the enemy to gain a firm footing on Latin soil. It was also,
as it turned out, an admirable base of operations for carrying on war in
the long and narrow peninsula, so awkward, as Hannibal found to his
cost, for working out a definite plan of conquest. From Rome, astride
of the Tiber, armies could operate on "interior lines" against any

combination--could strike north, east, and south at the same moment.
With Latium faithful behind her she could not be taken in the rear; the
unconquerable Hannibal did indeed approach her once on that side, but
fell away again like a wave on a rocky shore. From the sea no enemy
ever attempted to reach her till Genseric landed at Ostia in A.D. 455.
Thus it is not difficult to understand how Rome came to be the leading
city of Latium; how she came to work her conquering way into Etruria
to the north, the land of a strange people who at one time threatened to
dominate the whole of Italy; how she advanced up the Tiber valley and
its affluents into the heart of the Apennines, and southward into the
Oscan country of Samnium and the rich plain of Campania. A glance at
the map of Italy will show us at once how apt is Livy's remark that
Rome was placed in the centre of the peninsula.[6] That peninsula
looks as if it were cleft in twain by the Tiber, or in other words, the
Tiber drains the greater part of central Italy, and carries the water down
a well-marked valley to a central point on the western coast, with a
volume greater than that of any other river south of the Po. A city
therefore that commands the Tiber valley, and especially the lower part
of it, is in a position of strategic advantage with regard to the whole
peninsula. Now Rome, as Strabo remarked, was the only city actually
situated on the bank of the river; and Rome was not only on the river,
but from the earliest times astride of it. She held the land on both banks
from her own site to the Tiber mouth at Ostia, as we know from the fact
that one of her most ancient priesthoods[7] had its sacred grove five
miles down the river on the northern bank. Thus she had easy access to
the sea by the river or by land, and an open way inland up the one great
natural entrance from the sea into central Italy.[8] Her position on the
Tiber is much like that of Hispalis (Seville) on the Baetis, or of Arles
on the Rhone, cities opening the way of commerce or conquest up the
basins of two great rivers. In spite of some disadvantages, to be noticed
directly,