From the nearest neighbours and rivals of Rome, from the slight remains which mark the sites of Veii and Fidenæ, from the almost more instructive lack of remains which marks the site of Antemnæ, we may well pass to a spot which lies at a greater distance from Rome than any of them, but which never was Rome's rival or even neighbour, because it was from the beginning simply an outlying part of Rome itself. This is the forsaken haven of Rome at Ostia. The existence of Ostia at an early stage of the historic being of Rome is no small sign of what Rome already was, and it may well have had no small share in making Rome what she afterwards was to be. For an inland town like Rome to possess a haven of its own, existing solely as its haven, at once marked and strengthened the difference between Rome and other inland towns. For Ostia, it must be borne in mind, was the haven of Rome and nothing else. It was not a separate maritime city made into the haven of Rome by any process of conquest or confederation. Tradition makes Ostia spring into being because it was found that Rome needed a haven. And the tradition has nothing to contradict it and all likelihood to support it; the name of the place by itself might almost be accepted as proving its truth. The foundation of Ostia, too, is placed in a period which is eminently a traditional, as distinguished from a legendary, period. It is safer not to rule either that there was a personal Ancus Marcius or that there was not; but we may be pretty sure that the events assigned to his reign really happened, if we can only keep ourselves from attempting dates where there is no chronology. Tradition then calls Ancus the founder of Ostia. The really important point is that whoever founded Ostia founded it purely in the interest of Rome, and that in an age when Rome was still in the days of her early growth.
This at once marks a wide difference between Rome and other cities of that time. Even the most famous of the early seats of maritime enterprise had the port separate from the city, later than the city. Corinth herself had her two havens, apart alike from her mountain citadel and from the venerable columns at its foot. When Corinth started in life men shrank from the close neighbourhood of the sea. It marks a later stage when Corinthian enterprise planted colonies absolutely in the sea--Syracuse on her island, the elder Korkyra on her peninsula. It was not till long after Ostia had arisen that inland Athens yoked herself to the sea. But, as the site of Rome itself on the broad Tiber showed that men had even then learned to understand the value of sites widely different from Tusculum on her height or Veii with her encircling brooks, so the creation of Ostia proves yet more. Rome, far more distant from the sea than Corinth, Megara, or even Athens, had already learned that a hold on the sea was needful for her power. There could have been nothing like it in Italy. There were inland cities and there were maritime cities; but there was no inland city which had put forth a maritime outpost at such a distance. Indeed, no other city had put forth such an outpost at all, maritime or otherwise. For Ostia was not a colony, not a dependency. It had no separate being of its own. It was a limb of Rome transplanted to a distance of fifteen Italian miles from the main body.