ring stocks. On the
contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of
the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic
gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the
Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation
of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted
and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius,
Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas
Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except
the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart-withered
and affected(17) court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true
ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry-smitten, youth.

Earliest Italian Architecture

The elements of architecture were, as has been already indicated,
a primitive common possession of the stocks. The dwelling-house
constitutes the first attempt of structural art; and it was the
same among Greeks and Italians. Built of wood, and covered with a
pointed roof of straw or shingles it formed a square dwelling-chamber,
which let out the smoke and let in the light by an opening in the
roof corresponding with a hole for carrying off the rain in the
ground (-cavum aedium-). Under this "black roof" (-atrium-) the
meals were prepared and consumed; there the household gods were
worshipped, and the marriage bed and the bier were set out; there
the husband received his guests, and the wife sat spinning amid the
circle of her maidens. The house had no porch, unless we take as
such the uncovered space between the house door and the street,
which obtained its name -vestibulum-, i. e. dressing-place, from
the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about
within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around
them when they went abroad. There was, moreover, no division of
apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided
around the dwelling-room; and still less were there stairs, or
stories placed one above another.

Earliest Hellenic Influence

Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose
o ut of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this
field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very
powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts
as possibly had preceded it. The very oldest Italian architecture
with which we are acquainted is not much less under