2&; Science of the Etrurians. 



%vith whom they were almost always at war; but they gained much 

 knowledge from communication with the Etrurians, who were their 

 nearest neighbours, who had a very remarkable religious and philo- 

 sophical system, and amongst whom the sciences and the arts had 

 arrived at a high degree of perfection. The origin of the Etrurians 

 is very uncertain. Some persons think that they came from Ly- 

 dia ; others, that they descended from the Tyrrhenian mountains, 

 but that they had held communication with the Greeks since their 

 establishment. However this may be, it is of interest to the ques- 

 tion that they established themselves at the epoch of the great 

 Egyptian migrations. The Etrurians at first extended as far as 

 the Alps ; but, being attacked by the Gauls, they were forced to 

 withdraw towards Tuscany ; they fell back to the Tiber, and from 

 that time, being in the immediate vicinity of the Romans, they 

 were almost constantly at war with this people, until they were 

 conquered, about 282 years before Christ, a little after the death 

 of Alexander. 



In examining the monuments of the Etrurians, and what we 

 know of their arts and sciences, we find an extraordinary relation 

 between them, and the Indians and Egyptains. They all formed 

 canals in the alluvia of the great rivers ; they all had monuments of 

 a pyramidal form, like the tomb of Porsenna. We see from the 

 ruins of the wall at Volterra that they were far advanced in the art 

 of building, and it even appears that the famous cloacae of Rome 

 were their work. The Egyptians were unacquainted with the 

 vault, so that this was an undoubted advance which the Etrurians 

 made in architecture. 



The Etrurians had a mythological system which greatly resem- 

 bled that of the Indians and the Egyptians. They were also go- 

 verned by a caste which seems to have been both sacerdotal and 

 martial. It is at least certain that these noble Etrurians were the 

 possessors of superstitious secrets which they transmitted to the Ro- 

 mans. From them the Romans received the auguries. Their let- 

 ters were derived, like our own, from the Phoenician alphabet ; but 

 it seems that they had not received the Greek, from their preserv- 

 ing the oriental manner of writing, that is from right to left, and 

 suppressing the short vowels, since replaced by points. They had, 

 therefore, to a certainty, had communication with the people of 

 India ; but their most beautiful works are posterior to their inter- 

 course with the Greeks : for all their designs represent the mytho- 

 logical emblems of Greece. 



The Etrurians were the first instructors of the Romans, and from 

 them this people adopted the division into patrons and clients, 

 \vhich must not be confounded with the division into patricians and 

 plebeians. They could not, however, communicate much know- 

 ledge in the natural sciences — perhaps a few notions in ornithology; 

 for the practice of divination from the flight of birds must have 

 oWiged the priests to study the manners of these animals. Pliny 



