ny national
union." It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours
of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions
of the Roman territory took place.

Territory on the Anio--Alba

The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and between the
Tiber and the Anio-Antemnae, Crustumerium, Ficulnea, Medullia,
Caenina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia,--were those which pressed
most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited
their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans.
The only community that subsequently appears as independent in this
district was Nomentum; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance
with Rome. The possession of Fidenae, the -tete de pont- of the
Etruscans on the left bank of the Tiber, was contested between the
Latins and the Etruscans--in other words, between the Romans and
Veientes--with varying results. The struggle with Gabii, which
held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a
long period equally balanced: down to late times the Gabine dress
was deemed synonymous with that of war, and Gabine ground the
prototype of hostile soil.(2) By these conquests the Roman territory
was probably extended to about 190 square miles. Another very
early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a
legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness
than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis
of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops. How the
collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell:
the battle of the three Roman with the three Alban brothers born at
one birth is nothing but a personification of the struggle between
two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at
least was triune. We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of
the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome.(3)

It is not improbable, although wholly a matter of conjecture, that,
at the same period when Rome was establishing herself on the Anio
and on the Alban hills, Praeneste, which appears at a later date
as mistress of eight neighbouring townships, Tibur, and others of
the Latin communities were similarly occupied in enlarging their
territory and laying the foundations of their subsequent far from
inconsiderable power.

Treatment of the Earliest Acquisitons

We feel the want of accurate information as to the legal character
and legal eff