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Thus there came into the league, alongside of the old Juppiter Latiaris of the Alban Mount, the new Diana Nemorensis of Aricia, and sacrifices to her formed a part of the solemn ritual of the united towns of Latium.
And so the news of the arrival of the strangers with their ships came not as a surprise to the inhabitants of Latium. Meanwhile the Trojans having landed upon the Latian coast, Aeneas and several of his chiefs, accompanied by his son Iulus, sat down under a tall tree to refresh themselves with food and drink.
But among those of a remoter date, L. Papirius of Fregellae in Latium, who was almost cotemporary with Ti. Gracchus, was universally esteemed the most eloquent: we have a speech of his in vindication of the Fregellani, and the Latin Colonies, which was delivered before the Senate." "And what then is the merit," said Brutus, "which you mean to ascribe to these provincial Orators?"
Sprung from one of the oldest noble families of Latium which traced back its lineage to the heroes of the Iliad and the kings of Rome, and in fact to the Venus-Aphrodite common to both nations he spent the years of his boyhood and early manhood as the genteel youth of that epoch were wont to spend them.
Another very early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops.
Indeed it is not improbable that this occurrence contributed materially, though not just at the moment, to diminish the antagonism between Rome and Etruria, and above all to knit more closely the ties of union between Latium and Rome.
Engraving on metal, which in Latium decorated not the hand-mirror, as in Etruria, but the toilet-casket with its elegant outlines, was practised to a far less extent in Latium and almost exclusively in Praeneste.
It is reported on trustworthy authority and is intrinsically credible, that about 416 the Roman burgesses numbered 165,000; which very well agrees with the statement that ten years previously, when the whole militia was called out against Latium and the Gauls, the first levy amounted to ten legions, that is, to 50,000 men.
A cycle of legends might well have gathered around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of Ilion, and every community and every noble clan of Latium might have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own origin. But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained without national poetry or art.
The Apennines branch off from the Alps in a southeasterly direction until they near the Adriatic, when they turn to the south, and descend to the extreme point of the peninsula, thus forming the backbone of Italy. What is now termed Campania, the district about Rome, is a part of ancient Latium. The Etrurians differed widely, both in appearance and in language, from the Romans.
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