And Niccolò Machiavelli, leaving all legends aside (as Aretino had done before him), justly declared that the traders of Fiesole had begun from very remote times to form a commercial settlement on the Arno, at the point where the Mugnone runs into the river. So gradually a cluster of cabins arose, grew into houses, and finally became a rival city. But the city was entirely constructed by the Romans, though at what precise period is still unascertained. It is scarcely probable that the event can have occurred earlier than two centuries before Christ. Perhaps the city began to rise when, to protect Tuscany against Ligurian invaders, the Romans made a network of roads through the valley of the Arno; that is, when (according to Livy) C. Flaminius _viam a Bononia perduxit Arretium_, the which road crossed the Ponte Vecchio. Strabo says nothing of Florence; Tacitus and Pliny are the first to mention it. But in the second century of the Vulgar Era Florius already styles it _Municipium splendidissimum_, and records it among the cities which suffered most in the days of Sulla.[61] Recent excavations made in digging new sewers under Florence have furnished proofs that in Sulla's time the city must have already possessed buildings of no small importance, including an amphitheatre.[62] The restoration of Florence, after the serious injuries inflicted on it in Sulla's day, is generally attributed to Augustus, who is supposed to have made it the seat of one of the twenty-eight colonies founded by him, whence the name _Julia, Augusta, Florentia_. The "Liber Coloniarum" (p. 213, 6) numbers Florence among the colonies formed by the _Triumviri_ (45 B.C.), and it certainly must have been a colony in 15 B.C., when the city sent a deputation to Tiberius asking him to forbid the junction of the river Chiana with the Arno, on account of the damage this would cause (Tacitus, "Ann.," i. 79). But the weighty authority of Mommsen supports the view that, in spite of the testimony given by Florius, the colony of Florence was founded instead by Sulla.[63] The same date may be assigned to the construction of the oldest circuit of walls, existing during a great part of the Middle Ages, and some remains of which have been discovered in our own day. [Illustration: PISCINA FRIGIDARIA. _Discovered near the Campidoglio, Florence._ [_To face page 66._]