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The inhabitants of Uri, and partly also those of Schwytz and Unterwalden supplied the Italian markets with their cattle, and the mountain-valley of Urseren flourished particularly by means of this trade. But they had dangerous neighbors in the turbulent Lavinians on the south side of Gotthard.
Whereupon Millionius, their prætor, said, "With the Romans this short march will cost us dear." But had the Lavinians resolved at once either to grant aid or to refuse it, taking a latter course they would not have given offence to the Romans, taking the former, and rendering timely help, they and the Latins together might have had a victory.
He could not openly defend such a deed as the murder of the envoys; and so he consented to accompany Romulus to Lavinium, to make the offering, but he secretly arranged a plan for rescuing the murderers from the Lavinians, after they had been given up.
He shows it, likewise, in the case of the Lavinians, of whom he relates, that being urged by the Latins to aid them against Rome, they were so long in making up their minds, that when the army which they at last sent to succour the Latins was issuing from their gates, word came that the Latins were defeated.
Here the Swiss and Italians met each other in hostile attitude at an early period; for the first time, as far as we know, in the year 1331. The Lavinians had plundered some merchants on their way to Switzerland, as well as harrassed the people of Urseren who drove their cattle to Bellinzona. They were supported in this course by their landlords, the Visconti, Dukes of Milan.
The people of Lavinium complained to Romulus against these marauders. It happened, however, that the guilty men were chiefly Sabines, and in the discussions which took place at Rome afterward in relation to the affair, Tatius took their part, and endeavored to shield them, while Romulus seemed disposed to give them up to the Lavinians for punishment.
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