SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. XIV. G. F. Holmes? APRIL, 1845. ART. I.-1. The History of Etruria. Tarchun and his 2. The History of Rome. By B. G. NIEBUHR. Trans- 3. Histoire Romaine. Premiere Partie Rêpublique. Par M. DE MICHELET, Membre d l'Institut, Professeur d'Histoire au Collége Royal de France, &c. Bruxelles. Meline, Caus et Compagnie. 1840. On the Western coast of that long Peninsula which stretches from Europe towards Africa, and seems to form, with the interjacent Isles, the connecting link between the two continents, lies an extensive plain, reaching from Pisa to Terracina, and including the most illustrious, if not the fairest regions of Italy. Its Northern portion belonged to the especial domain of the ancient Etruscans; and towards the South lay the celebrated Campagna di Roma, constituting a plateau elevated between one and two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and situated nearly in the middle of the great Chersonnese. The vast chain of the Apennines encloses this basin within its arms, and forms the somVOL. VII.-NO. 14. 18 bre back-ground of the picture: while the stagnant Arno, with its marshy borders, limits it on the North, and the dark crater of Vesuvius, on the South, is interposed between it and the adjoining territory of Naples. Within this narrow theatre arose two of the most important and interesting nations of antiquity-the Etruscans and the Romans-the consideration of whose origin and earlier history, will form the principal subject of the present article. The two streams of the Tevere and the Teverone-the Tiber and the Anio-rising amid the spurs of the Appennine, traverse the region of which we have spoken; and, after mingling their waters a little below that Sacred Hill, so celebrated in Roman History, flow with a languid, though united, current; till lost near Ostia in the waves of the Tuscan Sea. At a distance of three miles from their confluence, the Tiber winds its sinuous course through a succession of low and irregular hills, apparently thrown up from the plain by the action of volcanic fire; and on these, some small colonies established themselves in the night of ages, and lived nearly unheard of, and almost undiscoverable to the scrutiny of modern research, until the period when they had swelled by consolidation and successive accretions, into a considerable power, and unfurled to the winds, the blood-stained standard of Rome. The site, on which the City arose, was singularly, and, perhaps, felicitously selected-though it is probable, that we ought to attribute its adoption rather to accident and circumstance, than to judgment or design. Napoleon, in his exile, dreamed that the time-honoured Queen of the Seven Hills might yet become the centre and the capital of a modern kingdom of United Italy-and certainly, notwithstanding its numerous and obvious disadvantages, it was favourably situated for the purposes of gradual, but continued and expanding conquest, though it must soon have been crushed by the hostile states around, had it been occupied in its youth by a people of less persevering energy and indomitable courage than the ancient Romans. Livy speaks in rapturous terms of the salubrious atmosphere of the Roman Hills-the convenience of the River Tiber-the fortunate proximity to the Sea, of the City, sutficiently near for the purposes of profitable commerce, without being so close as to permit the apprehension of sudden danger from maritime invasion-and he winds up his elo quent description by characterizing that focus of Italy as a spot singularly adapted for the growth of a great city. But the glowing praise of Livy might be the mere declamation of a Roman, and a professed rhetorician; certain it is, that neither the scattered testimonies to be gleaned from his own beautiful history, nor the observation of modern travellers will confirm, in its full extent, the commendation thus lavished upon Rome. In ancient times, the city and its vicinity were as unhealthy in the summer months as the most pestilential regions of our Southern States, and the deadly breath of the sirocco was as pernicious then as it is now. True it is, that the desolation of the surrounding Campagna, the filth and rottenness of the modern Rome, may have developed, despite the efforts of Sixtus V., the seeds of disease, to a greater extent than formerly, but they were always existent there, and the atmosphere of Rome was never a healthy one. The shallow waters of the Tiber, with its obstructed harbour, were such as scarcely to permit that commerce, which the laws failed to encourage, and the people regarded as degrading. And the space intervening between themselves and the sea, was not sufficient to protect the citizens from the dread of an unexpected descent upon their coasts, and even upon their city, by the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, or the fleets of Sextus Pompeius. Modern history may show how insecure the Romans were on the side of the sea. A traveller, and a German, whose name is among the most distinguished ornaments of the nineteenth century, and who has formed an era in the literary history of his own country, (Goëthe,) speaks, with the deepest feeling of personal experience, of the dull fogs of the Tiber, the solemn gloom of the Roman hills, and conceives that no people were ever more unfortunate in the location of their metropolis than the conquerors of the world. And yet, notwithstanding the eternal sadness that breathes over the mighty Queen of Nations, she must have presented. a spectacle of most imposing splendour in the days of her greatness and glory. The mind of the greatest of all historians, was kindled into fire, as he sat upon the shattered columns of the capitol: and to the heart, which is sensitive to such influences, there is still much of moral grandeur and impressive awe in the midst of the Roman ruins,-marred, as is their effect, by the juxtaposition of tawdry palaces, wretched hovels, and modern Vandalism. We may yet conceive, from the wreck that remains, the feeling which led the old inhabitants to speak with admiration of the powerful, the mighty, the blessed, the royal, the queenly Rome, princess of all cities.* Standing near the spot now occupied by the equestrian statue of Aurelius, you are in the Asylum of Romulus,-the cradle of the city,-the centre of Rome. On one hand are the relics of the past, on the other the structures of the present. It is the point which separates the city of the living from the city of the dead. In the former you may behold the lofty dome of St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and may still recognize the columns of Trajan and of Antonine, and the rotunda of the Pantheon. In the latter, and beneath your feet, lies a vast wilderness of ruin,-pile upon pile, mass heaped on mass, the wreck of a mighty empire. Here are the Forum, the Triumphal Way, the Arches of Septimus Severus and of Titus, the columns of the Temples of the Thundering Jove and of Concord. Beyond are the shivered fragments of the imperial palace, and still further on is the stupendous mole of the Coliseum,-the melancholy but majestic type of Rome. "Looking thus from the capitol, you may readily discover the progress and the unity of Roman history. The Forum represents the Republic; the Pantheon of Augustus and Agrippa, the amalgamation of all the peoples and all the gods of the old world in one empire and one temple. The monument of the central epoch of Roman history, occupies nearly the central spot of Rome,—whilst, at the two extremities, you see in the Coliseum the early struggles of Christianity, its sovereignty and triumph in the Church of St. Peter.t The contemplation of this fallen grandeur, hurries back instinctively through the long vista of twenty-six centuries, to the early development of that germ whence so much greatness was evolved. The seed, loosely scattered upon the hill-top, took deep root in a congenial soil: it budded, it put forth its leaves, it stretched out its branches, and the whole world was darkened beneath its shadow,-it bore fruit, and good fruit, in abundance; and at this day, the nations, which tasted of it, regard it as their tree of life and of 'Magna Roma.' Hor. Sat. i. v. 1. iii. xxix. 12. 'Regia,' Ep. i. vii. 44. principis urbium.' Od. iv. iii. 13. 'Potens,' Ep. ii., i. 60. 'Beata,' Od. 'Domina,' Öd. iv. xiv. 44. 'Romæ + Michelet. Hist. Rép. Rom. Introd. c. 1. knowledge, and refer thereunto their literature, their law, and their civilization. Thus, the study of the present carries us back with an ever-living interest to the consideration of the early fortunes of the mighty, the wonderful Rome: She who was named eternal, and array'd Her rushing wings,-Oh! she who was almighty hail'd. But who were they that first cast this prolific seed into the ground? It were now a hopeless task to attempt to determine, with critical certainty, the several tribes which met together on the gloomy hills of Rome, the regions whence they came, the nations from which they were descended,the dates of their respective settlements,--the mode in which they became agglomerated into one people,-or the period when this fusion of races began. The story of the original foundation of the city by Romulus and a Latino-Trojan colony from Alba Longa, is evidently a preposterous fable. In all our text-books, and even in the majority of those of much higher pretensions, the years 750-2-3-4 have been variously assigned, without the utterance of a doubt, to the foundation of Rome and the reference to this supposed era is so frequent, and so firmly established, that the question of its accuracy does not present itself to any but professed scholars, and not often to them. Yet, unhesitatingly as this date is accredited, there is no point in the early chronology of nations, which is less satisfactorily settled or built upon a more slender and unsubstantial basis, than this imaginary but universally received commencement of the Roman city. The hallucinations of judicial astrology, it will be seen, have been sufficient to impose upon the credulity and satisfy the curiosity of successive generations. We will here exhibit the data upon which the usual determination of the Era Urbis Conditæ rests, and the mode of its discovery: as these may be points of curious interest to many, and of novel information to some. In the words of the old writer, from whom we principally take our account, "Rome herself had not attained to know her own beginning till Cato's time, who, considering the absurdity, searched the censor's tables, and bringing down the account |