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whom we have Etruria, Umbria, Latium, where the mouths of the Tiber are situate, and rome, the Capital of the world, sixteen miles distant from the sea. We then come to the coasts of the Volsci and of Campania, and the districts of Picenum, of Lucania, and of Bruttium, where Italy extends the farthest in a southerly direction, and projects into the [two] seas with the chain of the Alps^[1], which there forms pretty nearly the shape of a crescent. Leading Bruttium we come to the coast of [Magna] Graecia, then the Salentini, the Pediculi, the Apuli, the Peligni, the Frentani, the Marrucini, the Vestini, the Sabini, the Picentes, the Galli, the Umbri, the Tusci, the Veneti, the Carni, the lapydes, the Histri, and the Liburni.

I am by no means unaware that I might be justly accused of ingratitude and indolence, were I to describe thus briefly and in so cursory a manner the land which is at once the foster-child^[2] and the parent of all lands; chosen by the providence of the Gods to render even heaven itself more glorious^[3], to unite the scattered empires of the earth, to bestow a polish upon men's manners, to unite the discordant and uncouth dialects of so many different nations by the powerful ties of one common language, to confer the enjoyments of discourse and of civilization upon mankind, to become, in short, the mother-country of all nations of the Earth.

But how shall I commence this undertaking? So vast is the number of celebrated places (what man living could enumerate them all?), and so great the renown attached to each individual nation and subject, that 1 feel myself quite

sideration when we proceed, in c. 7, to a more minute description of Italy.

1. This passage is somewhat confused, and may possibly be in a corrupt state. He here speaks of the Apennine Alps. By the "lunata juga" he means the two promontories or capes, which extend east and west respectively.
2. This seems to be the meaning of "alumna," and not "nurse" or "foster-mother," as Ajaisson's translation lias it. Pliny probably implies by this antithesis that Rome has been "twice blessed," in receiving the bounties of all nations of the world, and in being able to bestow a commensurate return. Compared with this idea, "at once the nurse and mother of the world" would be tame indeed!
3. By adding its deified emperors to the number of its divinities. After what Pliny has said in his Second Book, this looks very much like pure adulation.