*The historical significance of Italy's configuration and location.* The configuration of the Italian peninsula, long, narrow, and traversed by mountain ridges, hindered rather than helped its political unification. Yet the Apennine chain, running parallel to the length of the peninsula, offered no such serious barriers to that unification as did the network of mountains and the long inlets that intersect the peninsula of Greece. And when once Italy had been welded into a single state by the power of Rome, its central position greatly facilitated the extension of the Roman dominion over the whole Mediterranean basin.
*The name Italia.* The name Italy is the ancient _Italia_, derived from the people known as the _Itali_, whose name had its origin in the word _vitulus_ (calf). It was applied by the Greeks as early as the fifth century B. C. to the southwestern extremity of the peninsula, adjacent to the island of Sicily. It rapidly acquired a much wider significance, until, from the opening of the second century, _Italia_ in a geographical sense denoted the whole country as far north as the Alps. Politically, as we shall see, the name for a long time had a much more restricted significance.
*Accessibility of Italy to external influences.* The long coast-line of the Italian peninsula rendered it peculiarly accessible to influences from overseas, for the sea united rather than divided the peoples of antiquity. Thus Italy was constantly subjected to immigration by sea, and much more so to cultural stimuli from the lands whose shores bordered the same seas as her own. Nor did the Alps and the forests and swamps of the Po valley oppose any effectual barrier to migrations and cultural influences from central Europe. Consequently we have in Italy the meeting ground of peoples coming by sea from east and south and coming over land from the north, each bringing a new racial, linguistic, and cultural element to enrich the life of the peninsula. These movements had been going on since remote antiquity, until, at the beginning of the period of recorded history, Italy was occupied by peoples of different races, speaking different languages, and living under widely different political and cultural conditions.