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Updated: May 15, 2025
Whither am I borne? whence came I? what flight is this, or in what guise do I return? Shall I look again on the camp or walls of Laurentum? What of that array of men who followed me to arms? whom oh horrible! What do I? or how may earth ever yawn for me deep enough?
It matters not much whether we know the exact site of Virgil's Laurentum; it is more interesting to remember how Commodus, cruel, cowardly and selfish, fled thither from the great plague, caring not at all that his people perished by tens of thousands in the city, since he himself was safe, with the famous Galen to take care of him.
If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been allowed within the confederacy, and for example the six old Latin communities, Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in common a shrine for the Aricine Diana; it is doubtless not the mere result of accident that we find no further instance in later times of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony of Rome.
Instead of the one treaty between Rome on the one hand and the Latin confederacy on the other, there came at best perpetual alliances between Rome and the several confederate towns. To this footing of treaty there were admitted of the old-Latin places, besides Laurentum, also Tibur and Praeneste, which however were compelled to cede portions of their territory to Rome.
Let thus much suffice concerning these matters. In the fifth year of the reign of Tatius, some of his friends and kinsmen, meeting ambassadors coming from Laurentum to Rome, attempted on the road to take away their money by force, and, upon their resistance, killed them.
Of old Latin townships there were besides some which have now fallen into oblivion, or whose sites are unknown still autonomous and entitled to vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia, Labici, Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum in the plain along the coast.
And from thence his time is taken up in his first treaty with Latinus; the overture of the war; the siege of his camp by Turnus; his going for succours to relieve it; his return; the raising of the siege by the first battle; the twelve days' truce; the second battle; the assault of Laurentum, and the single fight with Turnus all which, they say, cannot take up less than four or five months more, by which account we cannot suppose the entire action to be contained in a much less compass than a year and half.
VINICIUS had barely time to command a few slaves to follow him; then, springing on his horse, he rushed forth in the deep night along the empty streets toward Laurentum. Through the influence of the dreadful news he had fallen as it were into frenzy and mental distraction.
All the way from Laurentum there is a line of villas along the seashore; and Antium itself is an endless succession of palaces and porticos, whose columns in fair weather see themselves in the water.
Of old Latin townships there were besides some which have now fallen into oblivion, or whose sites are unknown still autonomous and entitled to vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia, Labici, Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum in the plain along the coast.
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