m bank to bank, marked it as a place of commercial importance. It was
at the same time the gateway between Latium and Etruria and the natural
outlet for the trade of the Tiber valley. Furthermore, its central
position in the Italian peninsula gave it a strategic advantage in its
wars for the conquest of Italy. But the greatness of Rome was not the
result of its geographic advantages: it was the outgrowth of the energy
and political capacity of its people, qualities which became a national
heritage because of the character of the early struggles of the Roman
state.

Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the
result of a fusion of several racial elements--Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and
even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people.
In language, in religion, in political institutions, they were
characteristically Latin, and their history is inseparably connected with
that of the Latins as a whole.

III. THE EARLY MONARCHY

*The tradition.* The traditional story of the founding of Rome is mainly
the work of Greek writers of the third century B. C., who desired to find
a link between the new world-power Rome and the older centers of
civilization: while the account of the reign of the Seven Kings is a
reconstruction on the part of Roman annalists and antiquarians, intended
to explain the origins of Roman political and religious institutions. And,
in fact, owing to the absence of any even relatively contemporaneous
records (a lack from which the Roman historians suffered as well as
ourselves) it is impossible to attempt an historical account of the period
of kingly rule. We can improve but little on the brief statement of
Tacitus (i, 1 _Ann._)--"At first kings ruled the city Rome."

*The kingship.* The existence of the kingship itself is beyond dispute,
owing to the strength of the Roman tradition on this point and the
survival of the title _rex_ or king in the priestly office of _rex
sacrorum_. It seems certain, too, that the last of the Roman kings were
Etruscans and belong to the period of Etruscan domination in Rome and
Latium. As far as can be judged, the Roman monarchy was not purely
hereditary but elective within the royal family, like that of the
primitive Greek states, where the king was the head of one of a group of
noble families, chosen by the nobles and approved by the people as a
whole. About the end of the sixth century th