Caesar and Christ

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Maps of Ancient Rome and Ancient Italy and Sicily will be found on the inside covers. A map of the Roman Empire faces page 456.

INTRODUCTION

ORIGINS

CHAPTER I

Etruscan Prelude

800-508 B.C.

I. ITALY

QUIET hamlets in the mountain valleys, spacious pastures on the slopes, lakes upheld in the chalice of the hills, fields green or yellow verging toward blue seas, villages and towns drowsy under the noon sun and then alive with passion, cities in which, amid dust and dirt, everything from cottage to cathedral seems beautiful—this for two thousand years has been Italy. “Throughout the whole earth, and wherever the vault of heaven spreads, there is no country so fair”: thus even the prosaic elder Pliny spoke of his fatherland.1 “Here is eternal spring,” sang Virgil, “and summer even in months not her own. Twice in the year the cattle breed, twice the trees serve us with fruit.”2 Twice a year the roses bloomed at Paestum, and in the north lay many a fertile plain like Mantua’s, “feeding the white swans with grassy stream.”3 Like a spine along the great peninsula ran the Apennines, shielding the west coast from the northeast winds, and blessing the soil with rivers that hurried to lose themselves in captivating bays. On the north the Alps stood guard; on every other side protecting waters lapped difficult and often precipitous shores. It was a land well suited to reward an industrious population, and strategically placed athwart the Mediterranean to rule the classic world.

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