but a naïve attempt of primitive quasi history to explain the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so unfavorable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss; but it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing the special relations of the locality to propose a positive conjecture not regarding the way in which the place originated, but regarding the circumstances which occasioned its rapid and surprising prosperity and led to its occupying its peculiar position in Latium.

Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the Roman territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnæ, Fidenæ, Cænina, Collatia, and Gabii lie in the immediate neighborhood, some of them not five miles distant from the gates of the Servian Rome; and the boundary of the canton must have been in the close vicinity of the city gates. On the south we find at a distance of fourteen miles the powerful communities of Tusculum and Alba; and the Roman territory appears not to have extended in this direction beyond the Fossa Cluilia, five miles from Rome. In like manner, towards the southwest, the boundary betwixt Rome and Lavinium was at the sixth milestone. While in a landward direction the Roman canton was thus everywhere confined within the narrowest possible limits, from the earliest times, on the other hand, it extended without hindrance on both banks of the Tiber towards the sea. Between Rome and the coast there occurs no locality that is mentioned as an ancient canton center, and no trace of any ancient canton boundary. The legend, indeed, which has its definite explanation of the origin of everything, professes to tell us that the Roman possessions on the right bank of the Tiber, the "seven hamlets" (septem pagi), and the important salt works at its mouth, were taken by King Romulus from the Veientes, and that King Ancus fortified on the right bank the tête du pont, the "mount of Janus" (Ianiculum), and founded on the left the Roman Peiræus, the seaport at the river's "mouth" (Ostia). But in fact we have evidence more trustworthy than that of legend, that the possessions of the Etruscan bank of the Tiber must have belonged to the original territory of Rome; for in this very quarter, at the fourth milestone on the later road to the port, lay the

grove of the creative goddess (Dea Dia), the primitive chief seat of the Arval festival and Arval brotherhood of Rome. Indeed, from time immemorial the clan of the Romilii, the chief probably of all the Roman clans, was settled in this very quarter; the Janiculum formed a part of the city itself, and Ostia was a burgess colony or, in other words, a suburb.

This cannot have been the result of mere accident. The Tiber was the natural highway for the traffic of Latium; and its mouth, on a coast scantily provided with harbors, became necessarily the anchorage of seafarers. Moreover, the Tiber formed from very ancient times the frontier defense of the Latin stock against their northern neighbors. There was no place better fitted for an emporium of the Latin river and sea traffic, and for a maritime frontier fortress of Latium, than Rome. It combined the advantages of a strong position and of immediate vicinity to the river; it commanded both banks of the stream down to its mouth; it was so situated as to be equally convenient for the river navigator descending the Tiber or the Anio, and for the seafarer with vessels of so moderate a size as those which were then used; and it afforded greater protection from pirates than places situated immediately on the coast. That Rome was indebted accordingly, if not for its origin, at any rate for its importance, to these commercial and strategical advantages of its position, there are numerous indications to show-indications which are very different weight from the statements of quasi-historical romances. Thence arose its very ancient relations with Care, which was to Etruria what Rome was to Latium, and accordingly became Rome's most intimate neighbor and commercial ally. Thence arose the unusual importance of the bridges over the Tiber, and of bridge building generally in the Roman commonwealth. Thence came the galley in the city arms; thence, too, the very ancient Roman port duties on the exports and imports of Ostia, which were from the first levied only on what was to be exposed for sale (promercale), not on what was for the shipper's own use (usuarium), and which were therefore in reality a tax upon commerce. Thence, to anticipate, the comparatively early occurrences in Rome of coined money, and of commercial treaties with transmarine states. In this sense, then, it is certainly not improbable that Rome may have been, as the legend assumes, a creation rather than a growth, and the youngest rather than the oldest among the Latin cities. Beyond doubt

the country was already in some degree cultivated, and the Alban range as well as various other heights of the Campagna were occupied by strongholds, when the Latin frontier emporium arose on the Tiber. Whether it was a resolution of the Latin confederacy, or the clear-sighted genius of some unknown founder, or the natural development of traffic, that called the city of Rome into being, it is vain even to surmise.

But in connection with this view of the position of Rome as the emporium of Latium, another observation suggests itself. At the time when history begins to dawn on us, Rome appears, in contradistinction to the league of the Latin communities, as a compact urban unity. The Latin habit of dwelling in open villages, and of using the common stronghold only for festivals and assemblies or in case of special need, was subjected to restriction at a far earlier period, probably, in the canton of Rome than anywhere else in Latium. The Roman did not cease to manage his farm in person, or to regard it as his proper home; but the unwholesome atmosphere of the Campagna could not but induce him to take up his abode as much as possible on the more airy and salubrious city hills; and by the side of the cultivators of the soil there must have been a numerous non-agricultural population, partly foreigners, partly natives, settled there from early times. This to some extent accounts for the dense population of the old Roman territory, which may be estimated at the utmost at 115 square miles, partly of marshy or sandy soil, and which, even under the earliest constitution of the city, furnished a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least 10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar in their public and private life, and that the distinction between them and the other Latins and Italians in general is preeminently the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was not a mercantile city like Corinth or Carthage; for Latium was an essentially agricultural region, and Rome was in the first instance, and continued to be, preeminently a Latin city. But the distinction between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand how, along with and in addition to

Latin husbandry, an urban life should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus have laid the foundation for its distinctive career.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.

BY CHARLES MERIVALE.

(From "History of the Romans under the Empire.")

[CHARLES MERIVALE: An English historian and divine; born at Barton Place, Devonshire, March 8, 1808. He was dean of Ely from 1869. His works are: "History of the Romans under the Empire" (latest ed. 1890), "General History of Rome" (1875), "Lectures on Early Church History" (1879), etc. He died at Ely, December 27, 1893.]

THE circumstances of the empire might indeed well inspire profound anxiety in the breast of one to whom its maintenance was confided. Hitherto we have seen the frontiers assailed in many quarters, and the energies of the bravest princes tasked in their defense. But these attacks have been local and desultory. The Chatti on the Rhine, the Marcomanni on the Upper, the Samaritans on the Lower Danube, the Roxalani on the shores of the Euxine, have often assailed and vexed the provinces, but separately and at different times; Aurelius had to make head against all these enemies at once. The unity of the empire imparted a germ of union to its assailants. Hence no champion of Rome had so hard a task; hence Aurelius, far from making permanent conquests beyond his frontiers, stood everywhere on the defensive, and confronted the foe by his lieutenants in Gaul, Pannonia, Dacia, or Moesia, while he planted himself commonly in the center of his line of stations, at Carnuntum, Vindobona, or Sirmium; hence his wars were protracted through a period of twelve years, and though his partial victories gained him ten times the title of Imperator, none was sufficiently decisive to break the forces banded against him. The momentary submission of one tribe or another led to no general result; notwithstanding his own sanguine hopes and the fond persuasion of his countrymen, his last campaign saw the subjugation of Scythia and the safety of the empire still distant and doubtful. The barbarians were stronger at this crisis than ever,- stronger in unity, stronger in arms and tactics, stronger possibly in numbers. Neither to Marius, we may believe, nor to Germanicus, nor to Trajan,

would they now have yielded as heretofore. But the empire was at least as much weaker. The symptoms of decline, indeed, were as yet hardly manifest to common observation; under ordinary circumstances they might still have eluded the notice even of statesmen; but in the stress of a great calamity they became manifest to all. The chief of the state was deeply impressed with them. Against anxiety and apprehension he struggled as a matter of duty, but the effort was sore and hopeless; and from the anticipation of disasters beyond his control he escaped, when possible, to pensive meditations on his own moral nature, which at least might lie within it.

The brilliancy of the city and the great provincial capitals, the magnificence of their shows and entertainments, still remained, perhaps, undimmed. The dignity of the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome stood, even in their best days, in marked contrast with the discomfort and squalor of their lanes and cabins. The spacious avenues of Nero concealed perhaps more miserable habitations than might be seen in the narrow streets of Augustus; but as yet we hear no distinct murmurs of poverty among the populace. The causes, indeed, were already at work which, in the second or third generation, reduced the people of the towns to pauperism, and made the public service an intolerable burden: the decline, namely, of agriculture and commerce, the isolation of the towns, the disappearance of the precious metals, the return of society to a state of barter, in which every petty community strove to live on its own immediate produce. Such, at a later period, was the condition of the empire, as revealed in the codes of the fourth century. These symptoms were doubtless strongly developed in the third, but we have at least no evidence of them in the second. may reasonably suppose, indeed, that there was a gradual, though slow, diminution in the amount of gold and silver in circulation. The result would be felt first in the provinces, and latest in the cities and Rome itself, but assuredly it was already in progress. Two texts of Pliny assert the constant drain of specie to the East; and the assertion is confirmed by the circumstances of the case; for the Indians, and the nations beyond India, who transmitted to the West their silks and spices, cared little for the wines and oils of Europe, still less for the manufactures in wool and leather which formed the staples of commerce in the Mediterranean. There was still a great, perhaps an increasing, demand for these metals in works

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