Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/56

Eutuli and Yolsci; even Ardea and Velitræ were not originally included in the number of Latin towns. Only the central portion of that region between the Tiber, the spurs of the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and the sea, a district of about 700 square miles, not much larger than the present canton of Zurich, was Latium proper, the "broad plain"^[1] as it appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte Cavo. Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously flat. With the exception of the sea-beach, which is sandy and in part formed by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is everywhere broken by hills of tufa of moderate height though often rather steep, and by deep fissures of the ground. These alternating elevations and depressions of the surface lead to the formation of lakes in winter, and the exhalations proceeding in the heat of summer from the putrescent organic substances which these contain, engender that noxious fever-laden atmosphere which in ancient times tainted the district as it taints it at the present day. It is a mistake to suppose that these miasmata were first occasioned by that neglect of cultivation, which was the result of misgovernment in the last century of the Republic and is so still. Their cause lies rather in the want of natural outlets for the water, and it operates now as it operated thousands of years ago. It is true, however, that the malaria may be banished to a certain extent by thoroughness of tillage—a fact which has not yet received its full explanation, but may be partly accounted for by the circumstance that the working of the surface accelerates the drying up of the stagnant waters. It must always remain a remarkable fact that a dense agricultural population should have arisen in regions where no healthy population can at present subsist, and where the traveller is unwilling to tarry even for a single night, such as the plain of Latium and the lowlands of Sybaris and Metapontum. It must be borne in mind that man, in a lower stage of civilization, has generally a quicker perception of what nature demands, and a greater readiness in conforming to her requirements; it may be, also, a more elastic physical constitution, which accommodates itself more readily to the conditions of the soil where he dwells. In Sardinia, agriculture is prosecuted under physical conditions precisely

1. Lătium, probably from the same root as πλατύς, lătus (side); lātus (broad) is also a kindred word.