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 pre-eminently
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, pre-eminently 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.

It is far more important and more practicable to follow out the
course of this mercantile and strategical growth of the city of
Rome, than to attempt the useless task of chemically analysing the
insignificant and but little diversified communities of primitive
times. This urban development may still be so far recognized
in the traditions regarding the successive circumvallations and
fortifications of Rome, the formation of which necessarily kept
pace with the growth of the Roman commonwealth in importance as a
city.


The Palatine City


The town, which in the course of centuries grew up as Rome, in its