I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world. Going westwardfrom Greece another peninsula stretches down into the Mediterranean. The ApennineMountains run like a limb stretching out of the Alps to the south eastward, and on themseems formed that land, shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertile soil formedthemselves, and a great many different tribes and people took up their abode there, beforethere was any history to explain their coming. Putting together what can be proved aboutthem, it is plain, however, that most of them came of that old stock from which the Greeksdescended, and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a language which had thesame root as ours and as the Greek. From one of these nations the best known form of this,as it was polished in later times, was called Latin, from the tribe who spoke it.