whereas Latium
remained preeminently an agricultural country. The same contrast
recurs in all their individual relations. The oldest tombs constructed
and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which
the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the
exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar
position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii
and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments
for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury
proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians
a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead. The
most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna
Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during
the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by
weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances
are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g. one of Posidonia)
have been found there. In architecture, plastic art, and embossing,
the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only
in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to
bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with
growing technical skill. The commodities were upon the whole the
same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in
Etruria; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern
neighbours in the energy with which its commerce was plied. The
contrast between them in this respect is shown in the fact that
the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria
found a market in Latium, particularly at Praeneste, and even in
Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the
kind.

Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins
and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or
lines of traffic. As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans
in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture
that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra.
We have already mentioned(24) that the western Etruscans ventured
boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily,
but also with Greece proper. An ancient intercourse with Attica
is indicated by the Attic clay vases, which are so numerous in the
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