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BOOK III. THE ROMANS CHAPTER IX THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF ITALY I. ITALY AND THE ORIGIN OF ROME 175. The Mediterranean the Center of Ancient History. The Mediterranean Sea is a very large body of water, almost as long as Europe itself. Laid out across the United States it would reach from New York over to California. Italy divides it into two basins, which we may conveniently call the eastern and western Mediterranean worlds. 176. Italy : its Geography and Climate. Italy is about six hundred miles long. It is not only much larger than Greece but possesses wide plains for agriculture and ample upland pasturage for flocks and herds ; it is not, like Greece, cut by mountain ranges into winding valleys and tiny plains. There are fewer good harbors, however, so that the people turned to agriculture and the raising of live stock earlier than to sea trade. In Chapter I we studied the conditions of Europe in the Prehistoric Age. We must now see how Italy was the first region in western Europe to reach a high degree of civilization. 177. Indo-European Peoples enter Italy. Probably not long after the Greeks had pushed southward into the Peloponnesus ( 78-79) the western tribes of Indo-European blood had entered the Italian peninsula. The most important group, which settled in the central and southern parts of the peninsula, was the Italic tribes, the earliest Italians. We remember that the Greeks, in conquering the JEgean, took possession of a highly civilized region. This was not the case 116