As teachers of the Romans the Etruscans were followed by the Greeks. About the middle of the eighth century B.C. Hellenic colonies began to occupy the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy. The earliest Greek settlement was Cumae, near the bay of Naples. [5] It was a city as old as Rome itself, and a center from which Greek culture, including the Greek alphabet, spread to Latium. A glance at the map [6] shows that the chief Greek Colonies were all on or near the Sea, from Campania to the gulf of Tarentum. North of the "heel" of Italy extends an almost harborless coast, where nothing tempted the Greeks to settle. North of Campania, again, they found the good harbors already occupied by the Etruscans. The Greeks, in consequence, were never able to make Italy a completely Hellenic land. Room was left for the native Italian peoples, under the leadership of Rome, to build up their own power in the peninsula. THE ITALIAN HIGHLANDERS The Italians were an Indo-European people who spoke a language closely related, on the one side, to Greek and, on the other side, to the Celtic tongues of western Europe. They entered Italy through the Alpine passes, long before the dawn of history, and gradually pushed southward until they occupied the interior of the peninsula. At the beginning of historic times they had separated into two main branches. The eastern and central parts of Italy formed the home of the highlanders, grouped in various tribes. Among them were the Umbrians in the northeast, the Sabines in the upper valley of the Tiber, and the Samnites in the south. Still other Italian peoples occupied the peninsula as far as Magna Graecia. THE LATINS The western Italians were known as Latins. They dwelt in Latium, the "flat land" extending south of the Tiber between the Apennines and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Residence in the lowlands, where they bordered on the Etruscans, helped to make the Latins a civilized people. Their village communities grew into larger settlements, until the whole of Latium became filled with a number of independent city-states. The ties of kinship and the necessity of defense against Etruscan and Sabine foes bound them together. At a very early period they had united in the Latin League, under the headship of Alba Longa. Another city in this league was Rome. 49. THE ROMANS FOUNDING OF ROME Rome sprang from a settlement of Latin shepherds, farmers, and traders on the Palatine Mount. [7] This was the central eminence in a group of low hills south of the Tiber, about fifteen miles by water from the river's mouth. Opposite the Palatine community there arose on the Quirinal Hill another settlement, which seems to have been an outpost of the Sabines. After much hard fighting the rival hill towns united on equal terms into one state. The low marshy land between the Palatine and Quirinal became the Forum, or common market place, and the steep rock, known as the Capitoline, formed the common citadel. [8]