When some modern scholars
call the men of the Terremare by the name 'Italici', they express a
hope rather than a proven fact. It may be safer, for the moment, to
avoid that name and to refrain from theories as to the exact relation
between prehistoric and historic. But we shall see below that the
existence of a relation between the two is highly probable.

_Marzabotto_ (fig. 12).

[Illlustration: FIG. 12. MARZABOTTO.
(AB, FG, CD, main streets. The shading represents excavated houses.)]

(ii) A greater puzzle, dating probably from the fifth century B.C.,
meets us in the ruins of a nameless little Etruscan town which stood
outside of Etruria proper, on the north slopes of the Apennines. Its
site is fifteen miles south of Bologna, close to the modern
Marzabotto, on the left bank of the little river Reno. Only a tiny
part has been uncovered. But the excavators have not hesitated to
complete their results conjecturally into a rectangular town-plan,
with streets crossing at right angles and oblong blocks of houses
measuring from 158 to 176 yds. in length and 37 or 44 or 71 yds. in
width (fig. 12). The whole must have been laid out at once, and the
smaller remains seem to show that this was done by Etruscans. In the
fourth century the place was sacked by the Gauls, and though there was
later occupation,[44] its extent is doubtful.[45]

Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally
accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere
in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any
rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the
Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans
destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at
right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated
fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular
streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan
teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or
that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought
any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West.
We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which
we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps
call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it
with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks
should measure just un