Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/170

150 Rome. These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and had friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became pre-eminently wealthy and powerful, and were in reality marts not only for Hellenic merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.

Matters stood on a different footing with the "wild Tyrrhenians." The same causes which, in the province of Latium, and in the districts on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the Po that were perhaps rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than strictly Etruscan, had led to the emancipation of the natives from the maritime power of the foreigner led, in Etruria proper, to the development of piracy and maritime ascendancy, in consequence perhaps of the difference of national character disposing the people to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which we are not acquainted. The Etruscans were not content with dislodging the Greeks from Æthalia and Populonia; even the individual trader apparently was not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks. It was not without reason that the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans. The rapidity with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their proceedings, in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly shown in their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts. The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and the Greeks near Vesuvius; but between them and by their side the Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum. The Volscians became clients of the Etruscans; their forests contributed keels for the Etruscan galleys; and since the piracy of the Antiates did not terminate till the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners the name of the Læstrygones. The high promontory of Sorrento and the cliff of Capri, which is still more precipitous but destitute of any harbour, both thoroughly adapted as stations for corsairs on the watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays of Naples and Salerno, were early occupied by the Etruscans. They are affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their own in Campania, and communities speaking Etrus-