ments of civilized life. [75] The Tyber rolled at the foot of the
seven hills of Rome, and the country of the Sabines, the Latins, and the
Volsci, from that river to the frontiers of Naples, was the theatre
of her infant victories. On that celebrated ground the first consuls
deserved triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity
have erected convents. [76] Capua and Campania possessed the immediate
territory of Naples; the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many
warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the
Lucanians; and the sea-coasts had been covered by the flourishing
colonies of the Greeks. We may remark, that when Augustus divided Italy
into eleven regions, the little province of Istria was annexed to that
seat of Roman sovereignty. [77]

[Footnote 74: The Italian Veneti, though often confounded with the
Gauls, were more probably of Illyrian origin. See M. Freret, Memoires de
l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. * Note: Or Liburnian, according
to Niebuhr. Vol. i. p. 172.--M.]

[Footnote 75: See Maffei Verona illustrata, l. i. * Note: Add Niebuhr,
vol. i., and Otfried Muller, die Etrusker, which contains much that is
known, and much that is conjectured, about this remarkable people. Also
Micali, Storia degli antichi popoli Italiani. Florence, 1832--M.]

[Footnote 76: The first contrast was observed by the ancients. See
Florus, i. 11. The second must strike every modern traveller.]

[Footnote 77: Pliny (Hist. Natur. l. iii.) follows the division of Italy
by Augustus.]

The European provinces of Rome were protected by the course of the Rhine
and the Danube. The latter of those mighty streams, which rises at the
distance of only thirty miles from the former, flows above thirteen
hundred miles, for the most part to the south-east, collects the tribute
of sixty navigable rivers, and is, at length, through six mouths,
received into the Euxine, which appears scarcely equal to such an
accession of waters. [78] The provinces of the Danube soon acquired the
general appellation of Illyricum, or the Illyrian frontier, [79] and were
esteemed the most warlike of the empire; but they deserve to be more
particularly considered under the names of Rhaetia, Noricum, Pannonia,
Dalmatia, Dacia, Maesia, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece.

[Footnote 78: Tournefort, Voyages en Grece et Asie Mineure, lettre
xviii.]

[Footnote 79: The name of Illyricum originally belonged to the sea-coast
of the