y two considerable rivers flow from the Apennines westward into the
Mediterranean. The Tiber makes Rome; the Arno makes Florence. In
prehistoric and early historic times, the mountainous region which forms
the basin of these two rivers was occupied by a gifted military race,
the Etruscans, who possest a singular assimilative power for Oriental
and Hellenic culture. Intellectually and artistically, they were the
pick of Italy. Their blood still runs in the veins of the people of
Tuscany. Almost every great thing done in the Peninsula, in ancient or
modern times, has been done by Etruscan hands or brains. The poets and
painters, in particular, with few exceptions, have been, in the wide
ethnical sense, Tuscans.

The towns of ancient Etruria were hill-top strongholds. Florence was not
one of these; even its neighbor, Fiesole (Faesulue), did not rank among
the twelve great cities of the Etruscan league. But with the Roman
conquest and the Roman peace, the towns began to descend from their
mountain peaks into the river valleys; roads grew important, through
internal trade; and bridges over rivers assumed a fresh commercial
value. Florence (Florentia), probably founded under Sulla as a Roman
municipium, upon a Roman road, guarded the bridge across the Arno, and
gradually absorbed the population of Fiesole. Under the later empire,
it was the official residence of the "Corrector" of Tuscany and Umbria.
During the Middle Ages, it became, for all practical purposes, the
intellectual and artistic capital of Tuscany, inheriting in full the
remarkable mental and esthetic excellences of the Etruscan race.

The valley of the Arno is rich and fertile, bordered by cultivable
hills, which produce the famous Chianti wine. It was thus predestined by
nature as the seat of the second city on the west slope of Italy.
Florence, however, was not always that city. The seaport of Pisa (now
silted up and superseded by Leghorn) first rose into importance; possest
a powerful fleet; made foreign conquests; and erected the magnificent
group of buildings just outside the town which still form its chief
claim upon the attention of tourists. But Florence with its bridge
commanded the inland trade, and the road to Rome from Germany. After the
destruction of Fiesole in 1125, it grew rapidly in importance; and, Pisa
having sustained severe defeats from Genoa, the inland town soon rose to
supremacy in the Arno basin. Nominally subject to the Emperor, it beca