who in 846 pillaged the Vatican, which
led Pope Leo IV., in the following year, to enclose that building within
the walls of Rome. For an hundred years almost all the hills which
border the horizon from Rome were crowned with forts; the ancient walls
of the Etruscans were restored, or rebuilt from their ruins; the old
hill strengths, where the Sabines, the Hernici, the Volscians, the
Coriolani, had formerly defended their independence, again offered
asylums to the inhabitants of the plains. But the great estates, the
bequest of ancient Rome, remained undivided. With the first dawn of
history in the middle ages, we see the great house of the Colonna master
of the towns of Palestrina, Genazzano, Zagorole; that of Orsini, of the
territories of the republics of Veiae and Ceres, and holding the
fortresses of Bracciano, Anguetta, and Ceri. The Monte-Savili, near
Albano, still indicates the possessions of the Savili, which
comprehended the whole ancient kingdom of Turnus; the Frangipani were
masters of Antium, Astura, and the sea-coast; the Gaetani, the
Annibaldeschi of the Castles which overlook the Pontine marshes; while
Latium was in the hands of a smaller number of feudal families than it
had formerly numbered republics within its bounds."[31]

But while divided among these great proprietors, the Roman Campagna was
still visited, as in the days of the emperor, with the curse of cheap
grain, imported from the other states bordering on the Mediterranean,
and was in consequence exclusively devoted to the purposes of pasturage.
An authentic document proves that this was the case so far down as the
fifteenth century. In the year 1471, Pope Sextus IV. issued a bull,
which was again enforced by Clement VII. in 1523, and which bore these
remarkable words:--"Considering the frequent famines to which Rome has
been exposed in late years, _arising chiefly from the small amount of
lands which have been sown or laid down in tillage_, and that their
owners _prefer allowing them to remain uncultivated, and pastured only
by cattle_, than to cultivate for the use of men, on the ground _that
the latter mode of management is more profitable than the former_."[32]
The decree ordered the cultivation of a large portion of the Campagna in
grain under heavy penalties.

And that this superior profit of pasturage to tillage has continued to
the present time, and is the real cause of the long-continued and
otherwise inexplicable desolation of this n