On that celebrated ground the first consuls deserved triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity have erected convents.

[76] Capua and Campania possessed the immediate territory of Naples; the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the Lucanians; and the sea-coasts had been covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks.

We may remark, that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions, the little province of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman sovereignty.

[77] [Footnote 74: The Italian Veneti, though often confounded with the Gauls, were more probably of Illyrian origin.

See M.Freret, Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.xviii.