their neighbours in
the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that
effect, but by the actual results. In these regions the Italians
succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any
rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile
cities and mercantile ports, but also of their own sea. The same
Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of
the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central
Italy--very much indeed against the will of their instructors--towards
navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this
quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for
the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first
encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern
Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their
Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance
from the sea, were--like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the
south--certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations. It is not
in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical
course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against
foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was
of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development
of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and
in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly
Tuscan and adjoining provinces.

Hellenes and Latins

Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with
the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the
Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci. This cannot mean
that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of
Central Italy, but not permitted in others. Northward of Vesuvius
there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical
times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted,
before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of
the Italians or in other words of the Caerites. But in southern
Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse
with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such
was not the case elsewhere. The position of Caere was especially
remarkable. "The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much r