The volume of water annually supplied from this source to the Tiber would fill a basin having an area of 100 square miles to a depth of 80 feet ! [91] Primitive Rome is to a large extent indebted for her power to the Tiber, not {275} because that river is navigable, but because it traverses the centre of a vast basin, of which Rome is the natural capital. Rome, moreover, occupied a central position with regard to the whole of Italy and the world of the ancients; but, as has already been pointed out, Rome no longer lies upon any of the great high-roads of nations. That city certainly occupies not only the centre of Italy, but of all the countries surrounding the Tyrrhenian Sea; and its climate would leave little to be desired, if it were not for the insalubrity of the Campagna. Still Rome, though the residence of two sovereigns, the King of Italy and the Pope, is not even the principal city of the peninsula, and still less the capital of the Latin race. It is said that during the Middle Ages, when the popes resided at Avignon, the population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls. Gregorovius, than whom no one is better acquainted with that epoch in the history of Rome, doubts this; but there can be no doubt that after the sack ordered by the Constable of Bourbon its population was reduced to 30,000 souls. More recently Rome has increased rapidly, but it is still very inferior to Naples, and even to Milan. From the very first the Romans were a mixed race. The myth of Romulus and Remus, the rape of the Sabine women, and incessant internal conflicts bear evidence to this fact. The remains of ancient cities, cyclopean walls, burial-grounds, urns, vases, and ornaments prove that on the right bank of the Tiber the Etrurians were at least as strong as the Italians. Elsewhere the Gauls predominated, and from an intermixture of all these various peoples sprang the primitive Roman. When Rome had reached the zenith of her power things wore a different aspect, and thousands of foreigners became amalgamated with the Latins, Gauls, Iberians, Mauritanians, Greeks, Syrians, and Orientals of every race and climate; slaves, freemen, and citizens flocked towards the capital of the world, and modified the character of its inhabitants. Towards the close of the Empire there were more strangers within the walls of Rome than Romans, and when the empire of the West broke to pieces, and the empress-city was pillaged repeatedly by barbarian hordes, the Italians had already become mixed with the most diverse elements. This endless mixture between different races, victors and vanquished, masters and slaves, accounts, perhaps, more satisfactorily for the great changes which have taken place in the course of two thousand years in the character and spirit of the Romans. Still the Romans on the right bank of the Tiber, the so called Trasteverini, have preserved the old Roman type, as transmitted to us in statues and on medals. [Illustration: Fig. 100.—ROME.]