and south, Rome itself, by the favour of fortune and
the energy of its citizens, had been converted from a stirring
commercial and rural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing
country. The remodelling of the Roman military system and the
political reform of which it contained the germ, known to us by
the name of the Servian constitution, stand in intimate connection
with this internal change in the character of the Roman community.
But externally also the character of the city cannot but have changed
with the influx of ampler resources, with the rising requirements
of its position, and with the extension of its political horizon.
The amalgamation of the adjoining community on the Quirinal with
that on the Palatine must have been already accomplished when the
Servian reform, as it is called, took place; and after this reform
had united and consolidated the military strength of the community,
the burgesses could no longer rest content with entrenching the
several hills, as one after another they were filled with buildings,
and with possibly also keeping the island in the Tiber and the
height on the opposite bank occupied so that they might command
the course of the river. The capital of Latium required another
and more complete system of defence; they proceeded to construct
the Servian wall. The new continuous city-wall began at the river
below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been
brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one
on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite
eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications--portions
of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large
square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height--emerging
as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose
buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose
intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence
more lasting even than these. The ring-wall further embraced the
Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal,
where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a
great scale (1862)--on the outside composed of blocks of peperino
and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge
earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the
present day--supplied the want of natural means of defence. From
thence it ran to the Capi