lot of race-fragments driven into that extremity of
Europe by the alarms and excursions of empires in dissolution
whose history time has hidden. The end of a manvantara, the
break-up of a great civilization and the confusion that followed,
made the Balkans what they are now, and Italy what she was in the
Middle Ages. The end of an earlier manvantara, the break-up of
older and forgotten civilizations, made Italy what she was in the
sixth century B.C. Both peninsulas, by their mere physical
geography, seem specially designed for the purpose.

Italy is divided into four by the Apennines, and is mostly
Apennines. Everyone goes there: conquerors, lured by the _dono
fatale,_ and for the sake of the prizes to be gathered; the
conquered, because it is the natural path of escape out of
Central Europe. The way in is easy enough; it is only the way
out that is difficult. The Alps slope up gently on the northern
side; but sharply fall away in grand precipices on the southern.
There, too, they overlook a region that would always tempt
invaders: the great rich plain the Po waters; a land no
refugees could well hope to hold. It has been in turn Cisalpine
Gaul, the Plain of the Lombards, and the main part of Austrian
Italy; this thrice a possession of conquerors from the north.
It is the first of the four divisions.

There never would be safety in it for refugees; you would not
find in it a great diversity of races living apart; conquerors
and conquered would quickly homogenize,--unless the conquerors
had their main seat in, and remained in political union with,
transalpine realms. Refugees would still and always have to move
on, if they desired to keep their freedom. Three ways would be
open to them, and three destinies, according to which way they
chose. They might go down into the long strip of Adriatic
coastland, where there are no natural harbors--and remain
isolated and unimportant between the mountain barrier and the
sea. Those who occupied this _cul de sac_ have played no great
part in history: the isolated never do.--Or they might cross the
Apennines and pour down into the lowlands of Etruria and
Latium, where are rich lands, some harbors, and generally, fine
opportunities for building up a civilization. Draw-backs also,
for a defeated remnant: Etruria is not too far from Lombardy to
tempt adventurers from the north, the vanguard of the conquering
people;--although again, the Apennine barrier might make the