Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/228

208 lians a simple turf seemed sufficient as a covering for any one's remains. The most ancient coins, of not much later origin than those of Magna Græcia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances are very rare in which such coins (e. g., one of Posidonia) have been found there. In architecture, plastic art, and embossing, the same stimulating influences acted on Etruria as on Latium, but it was only in the case of the former that capital was brought to bear on them and led to their being prosecuted extensively and with growing technical skill. The commodities were probably, upon the whole, the same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in Etruria; but the southern province was far inferior to its northern neighbour in the concentrated energy with which its commerce was plied. The contrast between them in point of commercial energy is shown in the fact that the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria found a market in Latium, particularly at Præneste, and even in Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the kind.

A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or lines of traffic. As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture that it was chiefly directed from Spina and Hatria to Corcyra. We have already mentioned (P. 149) that the western Etruscans ventured boldly into the eastern seas: and dealt not merely with Sicily, but also with Greece proper. An ancient intercourse with Attica is indicated by the Attic earthenware vases, which are so numerous in the more recent Etruscan tombs, and had been, as we have observed, already perhaps at this time introduced for other purposes than the decoration of tombs, while conversely Tyrrhenian bronze candlesticks and gold cups were articles early in request in Attica. Still more definitely is such an intercourse indicated by the coins. The silver pieces of Populonia are struck after the pattern of a very old silver piece stamped on one side with a Gorgoneion, on the other merely presenting an incuse square, which has been found at Athens and on the old amber-route in the district of Posen, and which was, in all probability, just