agriculture and the rearing of cattle. Like Greece, it is a noble
land which calls forth and rewards the energies of man, opening
up alike for restless adventure the way to distant lands and for
quiet exertion modes of peaceful gain at home.

But, while the Grecian peninsula is turned towards the east, the
Italian is turned towards the west. As the coasts of Epirus and
Acarnania had but a subordinate importance in the case of Hellas,
so had the Apulian and Messapian coasts in that of Italy; and, while
the regions on which the historical development of Greece has been
mainly dependent--Attica and Macedonia--look to the east, Etruria,
Latium, and Campania look to the west. In this way the two peninsulas,
so close neighbours and almost sisters, stand as it were averted
from each other. Although the naked eye can discern from Otranto
the Acroceraunian mountains, the Italians and Hellenes came into
earlier and closer contact on every other pathway rather than on the
nearest across the Adriatic Sea, In their instance, as has happened
so often, the historical vocation of the nations was prefigured
in the relations of the ground which they occupied; the two great
stocks, on which the civilization of the ancient world grew, threw
their shadow as well as their seed, the one towards the east, the
other towards the west.


Italian History


We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history
of the city of Rome. Although, in the formal sense of political
law, it was the civic community of Rome which gained the sovereignty