Still some may be more inclined to go to Segni and back again from Velletri, where there is no doubt as to living quite happily at the sign of the Cock. Anagni, Anagnia of the Hernicans, is the beginning of something new. It is the first point distinctly beyond the neighbourhood of Rome. It is not unlikely then that such a traveller as we have supposed may make Anagni his first halting-place. And at Anagni he may certainly rest for the night, though his quarters may be a comedown not only from Rome but from Velletri. But if, by any chance, he takes the earlier points in some other course; above all, if he visits Segni by any course, he will be all the more open to visit Anagni. The city of Boniface VIII., almost beckons to him to cross the valley and the stream. For it is as the city of Boniface VIII., the place where he so strangely met his end, the prisoner--not the last Pope who was fated so to be--of a French ruler, that Anagni will most likely present itself to the mind. In mediæval history Anagni is a thoroughly Papal city, and to this day it keeps a Papal impress on its buildings, a Papal impress meaning something different at Anagni from what it means at Rome. Anagni did not remain a favourite Papal dwelling-place; it therefore did not suffer at the hands of _Renaissance_ Popes as Rome lived to suffer. But, even in the first glimpse of the hill-city, we may well go back to much earlier times. We may remember that first Pyrrhos, then Hannibal, halted thither, each on his vain march towards the Rome which neither was to conquer. And when we have reached Hannibal and Pyrrhos, we may go back to earlier ages. There is a point of view in which Anagnia is, before all things, the head of the confederation of the Hernicans. There is no people of ancient Italy of whom it is harder to get any distinct idea than this stout hill folk. In treading Old-Latin or Volscian ground we can, even without book, call up a few personal names, a few personal figures, of particular Volscians or Old-Latins; we cannot call up the name of a single Hernican, historical or legendary. All that we know of them is their geographical position, and the one great event in their political history; and those tell us a great deal. They must have been a people of no small account whom Spurius Cassius thought worthy to fill the third place in the great Triple League along with Rome and Latium. And this, though, as having neither one great city like Rome, nor a crowd of cities like Latium, they hardly seem to form a power on the level with their two comrades. But their geographical position gave them a special importance. Thrust in as they were between Æquians and Volscians, no alliance could be more precious than theirs to Rome and Latium. They were the most exposed member of the League, the outpost of Latium, as Latium itself was the outpost of Rome. Of all the three, the brunt of the struggle must have fallen most fiercely upon them; the hills of Anagni must