Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/141

Rh the Etruscan, and recently inscriptions bearing out that statement have been brought to light there, the alphabet and language of which, while presenting points of contact with ruscan, exhibit a general resemblance to the Latin. The local worship also presents traces of a Sabellian character; and a similar inference is suggested by the primitive relations subsisting in sacred as well as other matters between Cære and Rome. It is probable that the Etruscans seized those southern districts from the Umbrians at a period considerably subsequent to their occupation of the country on the north of the Ciminian forest, and that an Umbrian population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest. In this fact we may probably discover the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman conquest. That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the two arms of the Apennines, which they subsequently held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical position, just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons and that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar fate that has befallen them. Tradition also communicates information that the Tuscans deprived the Umbrians of three hundred towns; and, what is of more importance as evidence, in the national prayers of the Umbrian Iguvini, which we still possess, along with other stocks the Tuscans specially are cursed as public foes.

It was probably in consequence of this pressure exerted upon them from the north, that the Umbrians advanced towards the south, keeping in general upon the heights, because they found the plains already occupied by Latin stocks, but beyond doubt frequently making inroads and encroachments on the territory of the kindred race, and in-