with
the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and
mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar
in their public and private life, and that the distinction between
them and the other Latins and Italians in general is pre-eminently
the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was
not a mercantile city like Corinth or Carthage; for Latium was an
essentially agricultural region, and Rome was in the first instance,
and continued to be, pre-eminently a Latin city. But the distinction
between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly
be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of
character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was
the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand
how, along with and in addition to Latin husbandry, an urban life
should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus
have laid the foundation for its distinctive career.

It is far more important and more practicable to follow out the
course of this mercantile and strategical growth of the city of
Rome, than to attempt the useless task of chemically analysing the
insignificant and but little diversified communities of primitive
times. This urban development may still be so far recognized
in the traditions regarding the successive circumvallations and
fortifications of Rome, the formation of which necessarily kept
pace with the growth of the Roman commonwealth in importance as a
city.

The Palatine City

The town, which in the course of centuries grew up as Rome, in its
original form embraced according to trustworthy testimony only the
Palatine, or "square Rome" (-Roma quadrata-), as it was called in
later times from the irregularly quadrangular form of the Palatine
hill. The gates and walls that enclosed this original city remained
visible down to the period of the empire: the sites of two of the
former, the Porta Romana near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta
Mugionis at the Arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the
Palatine ring-wall is described by Tacitus from his own observation
at least on the sides looking towards the Aventine and Caelian.
Many traces indicate that this was the centre and original seat of
the urban settlement. On the Palatine was to be found the sacred
symbol of that settlement, the "outfit-vault" (-mundus-) as it
was called, in which the first settlers deposited a sufficiency
of everyt