It stood
alone, like that soul which once haunted its recesses and prophesied
the conquering advent of the northern kings. I saw the fields where
the tribes had lived that were the first enemies of the imperfect
state, before it gave its name to the fortunes of the Latin race.
Dark Etruria lay behind me, forgotten in the backward of my march: a
furnace and a riddle out of which religion came to the Romans - a place
that has left no language. But below me, sunlit and easy (as it seemed
in the cooler air of that summit), was the arena upon which were first
fought out the chief destinies of the world.
And I still looked down upon it, wondering.
Was it in so small a space that all the legends of one's childhood
were acted? Was the defence of the bridge against so neighbouring and
petty an alliance? Were they peasants of a group of huts that handed
down the great inheritance of discipline, and made an iron channel
whereby, even to us, the antique virtues could descend as a living
memory? It must be so; for the villages and ruins in one landscape
comprised all the first generations of the history of Rome. The stones
we admire, the large spirit of the last expression came from that
rough village and sprang from the broils of that one plain; Rome was
most vigorous before it could speak.
