The Western World and Rome 247 Section 41. Earliest Rome On the south or east banks of the Tiber, which flows into the sea in the middle of the west coast of Italy (see map, p. 245), there was a group of Italic tribes known as the Latins. They occupied a plain (Fig. 108), less than thirty by forty miles,^ that is smaller The tribes of " Latium ' ^^..'J«',f.'?>"H,_, '%. fis,, .:.?^l 1 r f?-. r"^^i-- Fig. 108. The Plain of Latium We look eastward from Rome to the Sabine Mountains. The arches on the left are part of an immense aqueduct built by the Roman Emperor Claudius in the first century a.d. The whole waterway was over forty miles long. Much of it was subterranean, but for the last ten miles it was carried on these tall masonry arches, which conducted the water to the palace of the emperors in Rome than many an American county. They called it " Latium," whence their own name, " Latins." Like all their Italic neighbors they lived scattered in small communities cultivating grain and maintaining flocks on the upland. Their land was not very fertile, and the battle for existence developed hardy and tenacious chil- dren of the soil. They had litde to do with their neighbors. 1 Latium probably contained something over seven hundred square miles.
