Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/311

 Bk. IV.Ch. I. ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. 279 BOOK lY. ETRUSCAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. ETRURIA. CONTENTS. Historical notice — Temples — Rock-cut Tombs — Tombs at Castel d'Asso- Tumuli. CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. Migration from Asia Minor about 12th cent. B. c. Tomb of i'orsenna about B. C. 500 Etruria becomes subject to Rome " 330 THE ethnograplucal history of art in Italy is in all its essential feat- ures similar to that of Greece, though arriving at widely different results from causes the influence of which it is easy to trace. Both are examples of an Aryan development based on a Turanian civilization which it has superseded. In Greece — as already remarked — the traces of the earlier people are indistinct and difficult to seize. In Italy their features are drawn with a coarser hand, and extend down into a more essentially historic age. It thus happens that we have no doubt as to the existence of the Etruscan people — we know very nearly who they were, and cannot be mistaken as to the amount and kind of influence they exercised on the institutions and arts of the Romans. The more striking differences appear to have arisen from the fact, that Greece had some four or five centuries of comparative repose durinc? which to form herself and her institutions after the Pelasgic civilization was struck down at the time of the Dorian occupation of the Peloponnesus. Durins- that period she was undisturbed by foreign invasion, and was not tempted by successful conquests to forsake the gentler social arts for the more vulgar objects of national ambition. Rome's history, on the other hand, from the earliest aggregation of a