United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere; Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to an especially close connection between the two ancient centres of commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria.
He adds, according to Pliny, Titus Livius, and several old Latin historians, that Numa, who was initiated into all the wisdom of Etruria, practiced this art with success, but that Tullius Hostilius, having desired to repeat the evocation, guided only by the books of Numa, did not accomplish all the formalities prescribed by the rite and was struck dead by lightning.
Or, of course, it may have been vice versa: that the Atlanteans were the older stock, nearer the soil, and Plebeians; and that the Patricians were later conquerors lured or driven down from Central Europe. At any rate, as their empire diminished, Etruria stood like some alien civilized Granada in the midst of surrounding medieval barbarism; for Italy, in 500 B.C., was simply medieval.
The superstitious element in the Italian character, which amazes us so much to-day when cultured twentieth century men and women in good society persecute their fellows because of the evil eye, is a heritage of many thousand years. Sometimes it seems as if it were the Italian birthright, the blight of Etruria which came into their nature in spite of themselves.
The small tribes within whose bounds these colonies were instituted, the Umbrians who obstinately defended Nequinum, the Aequians who once more assailed Alba, and the Marsians who attacked Carsioli, could not arrest the course of Rome: the two strong curb-fortresses were inserted almost without hindrance between Samnium and Etruria.
If anything more can be deduced from this tradition beyond the bare and at bottom indifferent fact that at last a family of Tuscan descent swayed the regal sceptre in Rome, it can only be held as implying that this dominion of a man of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either as a dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community over Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria.
Supposing such a people came in; they would be, while the West Asian manvantara was in being, much more cultured and powerful than their Italian neighbors; but the waning centuries of their manvantara would coincide with the first and orient portion of the European one; so, as soon as that should begin to touch Italy, things would begin to equalize themselves; till at last, as Europe drew towards noon and West Asia towards evening, these West Asians of Etruria would go the way of the Spanish Moors.
He now had lost all his elephants but one. The remains of the Roman army passed the winter in the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona. But Hannibal, knowing that Rome was only vulnerable at the heart, rapidly changed his base, crossed the Appenines at an undefended pass, and advanced, by the lower Arno, into Etruria, while Flaminius was watching by the upper course of that stream.
I knew a person of that name at the court of the Queen of Etruria, a Noirtier, who had been a Girondin during the Revolution! What was your deputy called?" "De Villefort!" The abbe burst into a fit of laughter, while Dantes gazed on him in utter astonishment. "What ails you?" said he at length. "Do you see that ray of sunlight?" "I do."
He died at last of a terrible pestilence which raged in Rome in the year 365. The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruria to perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the beginning of play-acting in Rome.
Word Of The Day