lation to the silver coins which
were current from an early period in southern Italy, and the standard
of which was adopted by the Italian immigrants, such as the Bruttians,
Lucanians, and Nolans, by the Latin colonies in that quarter, such as
Cales and Suessa, and even by the Romans themselves for their
possessions in Lower Italy. Accordingly the inland traffic of Italy
must have been divided into corresponding provinces, which dealt with
one another like foreign nations.
In transmarine commerce the relations we have previously described(29)
between Sicily and Latium, Etruria and Attica, the Adriatic and
Tarentum, continued to subsist during the epoch before us or rather,
strictly speaking, belonged to it; for although facts of this class,
which as a rule are mentioned without a date, have been placed
together for the purpose of presenting a general view under the first
period, the statements made apply equally to the present. The clearest
evidence in this respect is, of course, that of the coins. As the
striking of Etruscan silver money after an Attic standard(30) and the
penetrating of Italian and especially of Latin copper into Sicily(31)
testify to the two former routes of traffic, so the equivalence, which
we have just mentioned, between the silver money of Magna Graecia and
the copper coinage of Picenum and Apulia, forms, with numerous other
indications, an evidence of the active traffic which the Greeks of
Lower Italy, the Tarentines in particular, held with the east Italian
seaboard. The commerce again, which was at an earlier period perhaps
still more active, between the Latins and the Campanian Greeks seems
to have been disturbed by the Sabellian immigration, and to have been
of no great moment during the first hundred and fifty years of the
republic. The refusal of the Samnites in Capua and Cumae to supply
the Romans with grain in the famine of 343 may be regarded as an
indication of the altered relations which subsisted between Latium and
Campania, till at the commencement of the fifth century the Roman arms
restored and gave increased impetus to the old intercourse.
Touching on details, we may be allowed to mention, as one of the few
dated facts in the history of Roman commerce, the notice drawn from
the annals of Ardea, that in 454 the first barber came from Sicily to
Ardea; and to dwell for a moment on the painted pottery which was sent
chiefly from Attica, but also from Corcyra and Sicily, to Lu
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