strongly fortified palaces of a later date. None too soon did Assisi prepare for war. In the year 309 B.C. the shrill sound of the Roman clarion echoed through the Cimminian forest. It roused Etruria to arms, proclaiming the fact that the Romans had dared to penetrate beyond this dangerous barrier which hitherto had been deemed impassable. The Etruscans and Umbrians, forgetting all their former strifes, now joined against the new power which threatened to crush their liberties. The battles which followed beneath the walls of Perugia, and by Bevagna in the plain of the Clitumnus, brought all Umbria, in the space of a single year, under the yoke of Rome. And now, although we leave the fields of legend and enter those of history, we find but little mention of Assisi: this is, however, easily accounted for. Built upon the unfrequented slopes of Mount Subasio, like a flower gradually opening to the sun's rays, she was far more secure than her neighbour Perugia who, commanding and commanded by the road from Rome to Ravenna, along which an army passed, stood in haughty and uncompromising pre-eminence. The comparatively obscure position of Assisi therefore gave her long periods of peace, and these she employed in building innumerable temples, a theatre, and a circus. It is impossible to excavate in any part of Assisi without coming upon relics of that time. Statues and busts of the Cæsars, of gods and of consuls, are lying in dark corners of the communal palace, and broken fragments of delicately-wrought friezes and heads of goddesses, half buried in bushes of oleander, adorn the Assisan gardens. Beneath the foundations of the more modern houses, mosaic floors and frescoed walls have been found, showing that Assisi had her years of early splendour. But full of life and action as this Roman period was, it is as completely hidden from us as are the temples now buried beneath the present town. It passed rapidly away, and yet is of some importance in the history of the world as having witnessed the birth of Sex. Aurelius Propertius, great among the poets even at a time when Virgil, Horace, and a host of others were filling Italy with their song.