According to the legend, the Etruscans made a vigorous attempt to recover Rome. This is a picturesque story, and is admirably told in one of Macaulay’s famous _Lays of Ancient Rome_. But we must pass it over here, for we have no means of testing the truth of it. Soon afterwards we come upon what seems to be a real historical fact, a treaty between Rome and the other Latin cities, the text of which was preserved for many centuries. This treaty shows plainly that henceforward we have to reckon Rome and Latium as one power in Italy; and this is the first real forward step in the advance of Rome. It guaranteed in the first place mutual support in war; Rome needed support against the Etruscans, and the Latin cities at the southern end of the plain were liable to be attacked by hill tribes from the east and south. Still more important as showing the advance of civilisation was the sanction of a common system of private law. Any citizen of a Latin city (including, of course, Rome ) was to be able to buy and sell, to hold and inherit property, in any other city, in full confidence that he would be protected by the law of that city in so doing; and if he married a woman of another city his marriage was legitimate and his children could inherit his property according to law.[2] This was going a long way towards making a single state of the whole of Latium. All the communities were on equal terms, and all had certain legal relations with each other; and these are two of the chief features of a true federation. Now all federations were an improvement on the isolation of the single city-state, which was helpless in those days of turbulence and invasion. This one looks like the work of a statesman; and if that statesman was a Roman, Spurius Cassius, as tradition asserted, then Rome had achieved her first victory in the arts of statesmanship and diplomacy with which she was destined to rule the world. Before we go on with our story let us notice how well Latium was geographically fitted to develop a federation, as compared with the more mountainous districts of Italy. Latium was a plain, as its name seems to imply; and like Bœotia in Greece it was naturally suited for federative union, while tribes living in the highlands always found it difficult to unite. Again, the Latins were jammed into a comparatively small space between the hills and the sea, and their strength was concentrated by their position: while the Etruscans, and the various Italian stocks, were continually moving onward to look for better quarters, and losing their strength and their cohesion in doing so.