A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD. 261 



Valley. They are attributed to the Etruscans, of course, 

 on much the same grounds as Stonehenge is attributed 

 to the Druids because in the minds of the people who 

 made the attribution Etruscans and Druids were each 

 in their own place the ne plus ultra of aboriginal antiquity. 

 But at any rate, at some very early time, the people who 

 held the valley of the Arno erected these vast megalithic 

 walls round their city and citadel as a protection, pro- 

 bably, against the people who held the Ligurian sea-board. 

 Throughout the early historical period at least we know 

 that Fsesulse was an Etruscan border-town against the 

 Ligurian freebooters, and we can see that the arx or 

 acropolis of Faesulse must have occupied the hill-top 

 now occupied by the Franciscan monastery on the 

 height above the town, while the houses must have 

 spread, as they still do within shrunken limits, about 

 the spring and over the col at its base. 



Faesulse was not one of the great Etrurian cities, not 

 one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan League. Vol terra 

 occupies the site of the large Tuscan town which lorded 

 it over this part of the Lower Apennines. But Fsesulae 

 must still have been a considerable place, to judge by the 

 magnitude and importance of its fortifications, and it 

 must have gathered into itself the entire population of all 

 the little Arno plain. As long as fortis Etruria crevit, 

 Fsesulae must always have held its own as a frontier post 

 against the Ligurian foe. But when fortis Etruria began 

 to decline, and Eome to become the summit of all things, 

 the glory of Faesulse received a severe shock. Not indeed 

 by conquest that counts for little but the Eoman 

 peace introduced into Italy a new order of things, fatal 



