Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/262

242 by complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous gifts of the Muses.

Regarding the development of the fine arts among the Etruscans and Sabellians our knowledge is little better than none. We can only notice the fact that in Etruria the dancers (histri, histriones) and the pipe-players (subulones) early made a trade of their art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited themselves in public not only at home, but also in Rome for small remuneration and less honour. It is a circumstance more remarkable that at the Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal priest, games were given like those of the Roman city festival; we are, however, no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests, how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in attaining a national art not confined to the narrow bounds of the individual communities. On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation of learned lumber, particularly of a theological and astrological nature, by virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans divided with the Jews, Chaldeans, and Egyptians the honour of being accounted the primitive sources of divine wisdom. We know still less, if possible, of Sabellian art; but that of course by no means warrants the inference that the Sabellians were inferior to the neighbouring stocks. On the contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted and most original of the Roman poets, such as Nævius, Eunius, Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature, except the Arretine Mæcenas, the most insufferable of all heartless and effeminate court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true ideal of a conceited and languid poetry-smitten boy.