THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 411 



torn and the arrival of the Veneti on the Adriatic shortly after the 

 Trojan war. On the other hand, Hallstadt is not older than the 

 eighth or ninth century B. C. ; so that the crematory cemeteries of 

 the Adriatic preceded by several centuries those of the Vistula, and 

 it was from the shores of the Adriatic that the custom of cremation 

 spread, not from the basin of the Vistula. 



COMMERCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN CREMATIONISTS NORTH OF THE DANUBE AND THE 

 BALTIC AND THOSE OF PANNONIA AND THE ADRIATIC CONTINUED DURING THE 

 ETRUSCAN AND DOWN TO THE ROMAN PERIOD. 



This is proved by the objects of Etruscan and Roman art collected 

 in the cinerary sepulchers of the north. The interesting stele of 

 Kuffarn, in lower Austria, doubtless belongs to Etruscan art. The 

 scenes represented on it closely resemble those of a stele of Cestosa 

 (near Boulogna) of the fifth century, whicli. is Etruscan. At Burg, 

 in the center of Lusatia, cinerary urns were found, containing two 

 Etruscan votive chariots of bronze. In the urns of the Oder and 

 Vistula lachr^'matories and Roman glass vials were found, along with 

 debris of calcinated bones. A bronze vase was found, among other 

 things,, near Kalisch, a city situated midway between Breslau on the 

 Oder, to the southwest, and Plock on the Vistula, to the northeast, 

 in the very center of the region of cinerary sepulchers and on the 

 route b}^ which they were propagated, from Pannonia to the Baltic. 

 The handle of this vase is decorated in repousse with a figure of the 

 infant Bacchus, with a cloak of a panther skin on his shoulder and 

 holding a bunch of grapes. It is a masterpiece and evidently of 

 Gra?co-Roman or early Roman art. It can be approximately dated 

 from the fourth century B. C, when the representation of Bacchus as 

 an infant came into vogue. In a tomb at Czarnkov on the Nortec, in 

 the north of Posen, there was a Roman terra-cotta mask, dating prob- 

 ably from the beginning of the imperial period, when Roman armies 

 campaigned in Illyria and Pannonia. 



CREMATIONISTS BETWEEN VISTULA AND ODER NOT DISTURBED IN POSSESSIONS OR BUT 



PARTIALLY DISPOSSESSED EXCEPT BY GERMANIC INVASIONS PERMANENCE IN 



BOHEMIA. 



There is one proof that the builders of the crematory tombs re- 

 mained independent until the arrival of the Goths on the lower 

 Vistula. In a cemetery of the district of Wejcherovo, northwest of 

 the mouth of the Vistula and Dantzig, on that strip of land which 

 stretches along the Baltic, and which must have been one of the first 

 tracts occupied by the invading Scandinavians, there was found a 

 cinerary urn, the bottom of which was adorned with Runic char- 

 actei's, though these could not be deciphered and their genuineness 



