90 THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF ROME 



between the Arno and the Tiber ; but there is reason 

 to believe that at an earlier date it had covered the 

 greater part of Italy. Its remains have now been 

 investigated, and it bears all the marks of what we 

 call civilization — royal political organization, written 

 language, cities, law, fine work in gold and bronze 

 and pottery. 



Who these Etruscans were is still something of a 

 mystery. Scholars are inclined to think that they 

 came from Asia Minor — some connect them with the 

 Hittites — about 1,100 B.C., and welded the existing 

 peoples into a kingdom. But, although we have 

 thousands of inscriptions in their tongue, no one has 

 yet deciphered it, and so the affinities of the people 

 are not known. This does not matter much for our 

 purpose if, as some experts think, they found civiliza- 

 tion already existing among the older inhabitants of 

 Italy and adopted it. In that case the early Italian 

 civilization falls into line as the western fringe of the 

 general Mediterranean civilization of which we have 

 seen so much. 



By the eighth century B.C., when the Romans just 

 begin to be dimly discernible as a small pastoral 

 people with their chief village, or small town, at 

 Rome, the Etruscans were a powerful and wealthy 

 kingdom. The southerners seem to have been filled 

 with wonder at the size and gaiety of the Etruscan 

 cities, the splendour of their games (which Rome 

 adopted from them), their rich jewellery and 

 ornaments, their fine fleet of commercial vessels on 

 the Adriatic. In other words, they initiated the 

 Romans to civilization ; and in the course of time 

 they were, of course, absorbed and ruined by the 

 Romans. 



