Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/226

192 PLrS'T's XAiriiAL HISTOET. [Book III. miles from the city, separating the territory of Veil from that of Crustiiminiun, and afterwards that of the Fidenates and of Latium from Yaticanimi. Below its union with the Grianis from Arretinum the Tiber is swollen bv two and forty streams, particularly the Xar^ and the Anio, which last is also naMigable and shuts in Latium at the back ; it is also increased by the numerous aqueducts and springs which are conveyed to the City. Here it becomes navigable by vessels of any burden which may come up from the Italian sea ; a most tranquil dispenser of the produce of all parts of the earth, and peopled and embellished along its banks with more villas than nearly all the other rivers of the world taken together. And yet there is no river more circumscribed than it, so close are its banks shut in on either side ; but still, no resistance does it offer, although its waters frequently rise with great suddenness, and no part is more liable to be swollen than that which runs throu£:h the City itself. In such case, however, the Tiber is rather to be looked upon- as pregnant with prophetic warnings to us, and in its increase to be considered more as a promoter of religion than a source of devastation. Latium^ has preserved its original limits, from the Tiber to Circeii^ a distance of fifty uiiles : so slender at the be- ginning were the roots from which this our Empire sprang. Its inhabitants have been often chans;^ed. and different nations have peopled it at different times, the Aborigines, to the Anio. The Cmstiuniiii and the Fidenates prohahly occupied the southern part of the district about the river Alba. ^ The Nera and the Xevcrone. The exact situation of the district of Yaticanum has not been ascertained with exactness. 2 As not so much causing mischief by its iaundations, as giving "warning thereby of the wrath of the gods and of impending dangers ; which might be arrested bv sacrifices and expiatorv rites. — See Horace, Odes, B. i. 2. 29. 3 The frontier of ancient Latimn was at Circeii, but that of modem Latium extended to Siauessa. ^ A town of Lativmi, situate at the foot of the Mons Circeins, now Monte Circello. It was used as a place of retirement, and Tiberius and Domitian had villas there. The Triumvir Lepidus was banished thither by Octavius after liis deposition. It was also famous for its oysters, which were of the finest quahty. Considerable remains of it are still to be seen on the hill called Monte di CitadeEa, about two miles from the sea.