ambitious indeed, sometimes unscrupulous, but fortunate and successful.
The benefits derived from the conquests and ascendency of the city of
Romulus were seen in the union of several petty states, and the fusion
of their customs and manners. Before the foundation of the city, Italy
was of no account with the older empires. In less than two hundred and
fifty years a great Italian power grows up on the banks of the Tiber,
imbued to some extent with the civilization of Greece, which it receives
through Etruria and the Tarquins.

[Sidenote: Effect of the expulsion of the Tarquins.]

But the growth of Rome under the kings was too rapid for its moral
health. A series of disasters produced by the expulsion of the Tarquins,
during which the Roman state dwindles into a small territory on the left
bank of the Tiber, develops strength and martial virtue. It takes Rome
one hundred and fifty years to recover what it had lost. Moreover its
great prosperity has provoked envy, and all the small neighboring
nations are leagued against it. These must be subdued, or Italy will
remain divided and subdivided, with no central power.

The heroic period of Roman history begins really with the expulsion of
the kings; also the growth of aristocratical power. It is not under
kings nor democratic influences and institutions that Rome reaches
preeminence, but under an aristocracy. All that is most glorious in
Roman annals took place under the rule of the Patricians.

[Sidenote: Rome struggles for existence for 150 years.]

[Sidenote: Beautiful legends of the heroic period.]