Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/229

Rh the coin struck by order of Solon in Athens. We have also tioned already that in addition to their intercourse with ks the Etruscans had dealings, and perhaps after development of the Etrusco-Carthaginian maritime alliance their principal dealings, with the Carthaginians. It remarkable circumstance that in the oldest tombs of Cære, besides native vessels of bronze and silver, there have been chiefly found oriental articles, which may certainly have come from Greek merchants, but more probably were introduced by Phœnician traders. We must not, however, attribute too great importance to this Phœnician trade, and we must in particular not overlook the fact that the alphabet, as well as the other influences that stimulated and matured native culture, were brought to Etruria by the Greeks, and not by the Phœnicians.

Latin commerce assumed a different direction. Rarely we have opportunity of instituting comparisons between the Romans and the Etruscans as regards their reception of Hellenic elements, the cases in which such comparisons can he instituted exhibit the two nations as completely independent of each other; and even yet we may discern the influence of one Greek stock over the Etruscans, and of another over the Latins. This is most clearly apparent in the case of the alphabet. The Greek alphabet which reached Etruria is essentially different from that communicated to the Latins. While the former is so primitive, that for that very reason special origin can no longer be ascertained, the latter exhibits exactly the signs and forms which were used by the Chalcidic and Doric colonies of Italy and Sicily. The same phenomenon appears in particular words: the Roman Pollux and the Tuscan Pultuke are independent corruptions of the Greek Polydeukes; the Tuscan Utuze or Uthuze is formed from Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes is an exact reproduction of the form of the name usual in Sicily; in like manner the Tuscan Aivas corresponds to the old Greek form of that name, the Roman Aiax to a secondary form that was probably also Sicilian; the Roman Aperta or Apello and the Samnite Appellun have sprung from the Doric Apellon, the Apulu from Apollon. Thus the language and writing of Latium indicate that the direction of Latin commerce lay towards the Cumæans and Sicilians. Every other trace which has survived from so remote an age leads to the same conclusion; such as the coin of Posidonia found in Latium