Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/75

 VIII. — Etruscan Architecture. Of the origin of the Etruscans nothing definite is known, but they are supposed to have been an Asiatic people who took refuge in the north of Italy about thir- teen centuries before the Christian era. The Etruscans never became assimilated with the Italians, and their art was never blended with that of the people in the surround- ing districts. When Etruria was subjugated, it soon be- came extinct as an independent state, and all that remains to testify to the high degree of civilisation which it had attained before the very name of Rome had been heard in the land, are the works of masonry and ceramic art which have come down to us. They are sufficient to prove that the Etruscans were skilful architects. The fortifications of their cities were walls of immense strength, frequently of polygonal stones, but sometimes of squared masonry, and in the gates of some of these we see the first introduction of the arch, which was subsequently so widely adopted by the Romans, built of wedge-shaped blocks of stone fixed without cement. Such a gate is that called L'Arco, at Volterra. The famous Cloaca Maxima at Rome, one of the finest and most solid, as well as one of the oldest structures of the kind has been attributed to Etruscan builders ; it was a subterranean tunnel of vast extent, covered by three large arches one within the other. The tombs are among the most interesting of Etruscan antiquities. They are hewn in rocks, and consist of several chambers, the roofs of which are supported on columns. Paintings run round the walls, representing incidents in the every-day life of the people, the worship of the dead,