s also
said that this village, which by the way was called Rome, intended to
build ships and go after the commerce of Sicily and the southern coast
of France.

Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The young rival
must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers lose their prestige as
the absolute rulers of the western Mediterranean. The rumors were duly
investigated and in a general way these were the facts that came to
light.

The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation. Whereas
in Greece all the good harbours faced eastward and enjoyed a full view
of the busy islands of the AEgean, the west coast of Italy contemplated
nothing more exciting than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The
country was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants
and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession of their
hills and their marshy plains.

The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. At an
unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had managed to find their way
through the passes of the Alps and had pushed southward until they
had filled the heel and the toe of the famous Italian boot with their
villages and their flocks. Of these early conquerors we know nothing.
No Homer sang their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome
(written eight hundred years later when the little city had become the
centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not belong in a history.
Romulus and Remus jumping across each other's walls (I always forget who
jumped across whose wall) make entertaining reading, but the foundation
of the City of Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a
thousand American cities have done, by being a convenient place for
barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains of central
Italy The Tiber provided direct access to the sea. The land-road from
north to south found here a convenient ford which could be used all the
year around. And seven little hills along the banks of the river offered
the inhabitants a safe shelter against their enemies who lived in the
mountains and those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea.

The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a rough crowd with
an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they were very backward. They
used stone axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans
with their steel swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous