Four main periods may be distinguished in the geological history of Rome and the surrounding district. The hills on the right bank of the Tiber culminating in Monte Mario (455 ft.) belong to the first of these, being of the Pliocene formation; they consist of a lower bluish-grey clay and an upper group of yellow sands Geology. and gravels. This clay since Roman times has supplied the material for brick-making, and the valleys which now separate the different summits (Janiculum, Vatican, Monte Mario) are in considerable measure artificial. On the left bank this clay has been reached at a lower level, at the foot of the Pincian Hill, while in the Campagna it has been found to extend below the later volcanic formations. The latter may be divided into two groups, corresponding to the second and third periods. In the second period volcanic activity occurred at the bottom of the Pliocene sea, and the tufa, which extends over the whole Campagna to a thickness of 300 ft. or more, was formed. At the same time, hot springs, containing abundant carbonate of lime in solution, produced deposits of travertine at various points. In the third, after the Campagna, by a great general uplift, had become a land surface, volcanic energy found an outlet in comparatively few large craters, which emitted streams of hard lava as well as fragmentary materials, the latter forming sperone (lapis Gabinus) and peperino (lapis Albanus), while upon one of the former, which runs from the Alban Hills to within 2 m. of Rome, the Via Appia was carried. The two main areas near Rome are formed by the group of craters on the north (Bracciano, Bolsena, &c.) and the Alban Hills on the south, the latter consisting of one great crater with a base about 12 m. in diameter, in the centre of which a smaller crater was later on built up (the basin is now known as the Campo di Annibale) with several lateral vents (the Lake of Albano, the Lake of Nemi, &c.). The Alban Mount (Monte Cavo) is almost the highest point on the rim of the inner crater, while Mount Algidus and Tusculum are on the outer ring wall of the larger (earlier) crater.
The fourth period is that in which the various subaërial agencies of abrasion, and especially the streams which drain the mountain chain of the Apennines, have produced the present features of the Campagna, a plain furrowed by gullies and ravines. The communities which inhabited the detached hills and projecting ridges which later on formed the city of Rome were in a specially favourable position. These hills (especially the Palatine, the site of the original settlement) with their naturally steep sides, partly surrounded at the base by marshes and situated not far from the confluence of the Anio with the Tiber, possessed natural advantages not shared by the other primitive settlements of the district; and their proximity to one another rendered it easy to bring them into a larger whole. The volcanic materials available in Rome and its neighbourhood were especially useful in building. The tufa, sperone and peperino were easy to quarry, and could be employed by those who possessed comparatively elementary tools, while travertine, which came into use later, was an excellent building stone, and the lava (selce) served for paving stones and as material for concrete. The strength of the renowned Roman concrete is largely due to the use of pozzolana (see Puteoli), which also is found in plenty in the Campagna.
Between the volcanic tract of the Campagna and the sea there is a broad strip of sandy plain, evidently formed merely by the accumulation of sand from the sea, and constituting a barren tract, still covered almost entirely with wood as it was in ancient times, except for the almost uninterrupted line of villas along the ancient coast-line, which is now marked by a line of sand-hills, some 12 m. or more inland (see Lavinium, Tiber). This long belt of sandy shore extends without a break for a distance of above 30 m. from the mouth of the Tiber to the promontory of Antium (Porto d’Anzio); a low rocky headland, projecting out into the sea, and forming the only considerable angle in this line of coast. Thence again a low sandy shore of similar character, but with extensive shore lagoons which served in Roman times and serve still for fish-breeding, extends for about 24 m. to the foot of the Monte Circeo (Circeius Mons, q.v.). The region of the Pomptine Marshes (q.v.) occupies almost the whole tract between the sandy belt on the seashore and the Volscian mountains, extending from the southern foot of the Alban Hills below Velletri to the sea near Terracina.
The district sloping down from Velletri to the dead level of the Pontine (Pomptine) Marshes has not, like the western and northern slopes of the Alban Hills, drainage towards the Tiber. The subsoil too is differently formed: the surface consists of very absorbent materials, then comes a stratum of less permeable Drainage. tufa or peperino (sometimes clay is present), and below that again more permeable materials. In ancient, and probably pre-Roman, times this district was drained by an elaborate system of cuniculi, small drainage tunnels, about 5 ft. high and 2 ft. wide, which ran, not at the bottom of the valleys, where there were sometimes streams already, and where, in any case, erosion would have broken through their roofs, but along their slopes, through the less permeable tufa, their object being to drain the hills on each side of the valleys. They had probably much to do with the relative healthiness of this district in early times. Some of them have been observed to be earlier in date than the Via Appia (312 B.C.). They were studied in detail by R. de la Blanchère. When they fell into desuetude, malaria gained the upper hand, the lack of drainage providing breeding-places for the malarial mosquito. Remains of similar drainage channels exist in many parts of the Campagna Romana and of southern Etruria at points where the natural drainage was not sufficient, and especially in cultivated or inhabited hills (though it was not necessary here, as in the neighbourhood of Velletri, to create a drainage system, as streams and rivers were already present as natural collectors) and streams very frequently pass through them at the present day. The drainage channels which were dug for the various crater lakes in the neighbourhood of Rome are also interesting in this regard. That of the Alban Lake is the most famous; but all the other crater lakes are similarly provided. As the drainage by cuniculi removed the moisture in the subsoil, so the drainage of the lakes by emissaria, outlet channels at a low level, prevented the permeable strata below the tufa from becoming impregnated with moisture which they would otherwise have derived from the lakes of the Alban Hills. The slopes below Velletri, on the other hand, derive much of their moisture from the space between the inner and outer ring of the Alban volcano, which it was impossible to drain: and this in turn receives much moisture from the basin of the extinct inner crater.[1]
Numerous isolated palaeolithic objects of the Mousterian type have been found in the neighbourhood of Rome in the quaternary gravels of the Tiber and Anio; but no certain traces of the neolithic period have come to light, as the many flint implements found sporadically round Rome probably Pre-historic remains. belong to the period which succeeded neolithic (called by Italian archaeologists the eneolithic period) inasmuch as both stone and metal (not, however, bronze, but copper) were in use.[2] At Sgurgola, in the valley of the Sacco, a skeleton was found in a rock-cut tomb of this period which still bears traces of painting with cinnabar. A similar rock-cut tomb was found at Mandela, in the Anio valley. Both are outside the limits of the Campagna in the narrower sense; but similar tombs were found (though less accurately observed) in travertine quarries between Rome and Tivoli. Objects of the Bronze age too have only been found sporadically. The earliest cemeteries and hut foundations of the Alban Hills belong to the Iron age, and cemeteries and objects of a similar character have been found in Rome itself and in southern Etruria, especially the characteristic hut-urns. The objects found in these cemeteries show close affinity with those found in the terremare of Emilia, these last being of earlier date, and hence Pigorini and Helbig consider that the Latini were close descendants of the inhabitants of the terremare. On the other hand, the ossuaries of the Villanova type, while they occur as far south as Veii and Caere, have never so far been found on the left bank of the Tiber, in Latium proper (see L. Pigorini in Rendiconti dei Lincei, ser. v. vol. xvi., 1907, p. 676, and xviii., 1909). We thus have at the beginning of the Iron age two distinct currents of civilization in central Italy, the Latin and that of Villanova. As to the dates to which these are to be attributed, there is not as yet complete accord, e.g. some archaeologists assign to the 11th, others (and with far better reasons) to the 8th century B.C., the earliest tombs of the Alban necropolis and the coeval tombs of the necropolis recently discovered in the Forum at Rome. In this last necropolis cremation seems slightly to precede inhumation in date.
For the prehistoric period see Bullettino di paleontologia Italiana, passim, B. Modestov, Introduction à l’histoire romaine (Paris, 1907), and T. E. Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy (Oxford, 1909).
It is uncertain to what extent reliance can be placed upon the traditional accounts of the gradual spread of the supremacy of Rome in Latium, and the question cannot be discussed here.[3] The list of the thirty communities belonging
to the Latin league, given by Dionysius Latin League.of Halicarnassus
- ↑ See R. de la Blanchère in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités, s.vv. Cuniculus, Emissarium, and the same author’s Chapitre d’histoire pontine (Paris, 1889).
- ↑ See G. A. Colini in Bullettino di paletnologia Italiana, xxxi. (1905).
- ↑ The most important results will be found stated at the outset of the articles Rome: History (the chief being that the Plebeians of Rome probably consisted of Latins and the Patricians of Sabines), Liguria, Siculi and Aricia. For the Etruscan dominion in the Latin plain see Etruria. Special mention may here be made of one or two points of importance. The legends represent the Latins of the historical period as a fusion of different races, Ligures, Veneti and Siculi among them; the story of the alliance of the Trojan settler Aeneas with the daughter of Latinus, king of the aborigines, and the consequent enmity of the Rutulian prince Turnus, well known to readers of Virgil, is thoroughly typical of the reflection of these distant ethnical phenomena in the surviving traditions. In view of the historical significance of the NO- ethnicon (see Sabini) it is important to observe that the original form of the ethnic adjective no doubt appears in the title of Juppiter Latiaris (not Latinus); and that Virgil’s description of the descent of the noble Drances at Latinus’s court (Aen. xi. 340)—genus huic materna superbum Nobilitas dabat, incertum de patre ferebat—indicates a very different system of family ties from the famous patria potestas and agnation of the Patrician and Sabine clans. (R. S. C.)
