It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when
Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and
country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of the
kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, the
Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed
undertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome,
which they confidently describe as nothing more than a great village of
shingle-roofed cottages thinly scattered over a large area. We ask in
vain what are the materials for this description. It is most probable
that the private buildings of Rome under the kings were roofed with
nothing better than shingle, and it is very likely that they were mean
and dirty, as the private buildings of Athens appear to have been, and
as those of most of the great cities of the Middle Ages unquestionably
were. But the Cloaca Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a large
population, of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree of
civilization. Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing our
vision entirely of Romulus and his asylum, we seem dimly to perceive the
existence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is commonly
supposed in the germs of civilization,--a remark which may in all
likelihood be extended to the background of history in general. Nothing
surely can be more grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like the
Norse pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing in
their den the Cloaca Maxima.

That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. We can hardly
doubt that she was a seat of industry and commerce, and that the theory
which represents her industry and commerce as having been developed
subsequently to her conquests is the reverse of the fact. Whence, but
from industry and commerce, could the population and the wealth have