310 THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 



to the human associations of the landscape, recalls with 

 eager interest, some of the incidents in the marvellous 

 succession of historical events that have been transacted 

 here. If, besides being keenly alive to all the ordinary 

 sources of attraction, the visitor can look below the 

 surface, he may gain a vast increase to his interest in 

 the ground by finding there intelligible memorials 

 of prehistoric scenes, and learning from them by what 

 slow steps the platform was framed on which Rome 

 rose and flourished and fell. He will thus discover 

 that, as befitted the city which was to rule the world, 

 its birthplace was fashioned by the co-operation of the 

 grandest forces in Nature; that, on the one hand, 

 subterranean upheaval and stupendous volcanic activity 

 combined to build up the plain and hills of the Cam- 

 pagna, and that on the other, the universal and cease- 

 less working of the subaerial agencies has carved it 

 into that varied topography which is typified in the 

 isolation of the Seven Hills of Rome and of the many 

 crags and ridges that served as sites for the towns 

 of Latium and Etruria. 



Seen from the crest of the Vatican ridge, the Roman 

 Campagna stretches as a plain from the base of the 

 steep front of the Apennines to the coast of the 

 Mediterranean — a distance of some thirty English 

 miles. To the north it is bounded by the ridge of 

 Soracte and the nearer heights of Bracciano and Tolfa. 

 To the south it runs up to the base of the Alban 

 Hills and sweeps between them and the sea onwards 

 till it merges into the flat and pestilential Maremma. 

 Even from such a commanding point of view, how- 

 ever, this apparent plain can be seen to be far from 



