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I must draw attention to the fact that I have found twice on fragments of pottery the curious symbol of the suastika, or crossed angles, which proves that the primitive Trojans belonged to the Aryan race. This is further proved by the symbols on the round terra-cottas.
The silver coins of Populonia, almost the only works that can be with any precision assigned to this period, give no very high idea of Etruscan artistic skill as it then stood; yet the best of the Etruscan works in bronze, to which the later critics of art assigned so high a place, may have belonged to this primitive age; and the Etruscan terra-cottas also cannot have been altogether despicable, for the oldest works in baked clay placed in the Roman temples the statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the four-horse chariot on the roof of his temple were executed in Veii, and the large ornaments of a similar kind placed on the roofs of temples passed generally among the later Romans under the name of "Tuscanic works."
Though Tanagra terra-cottas, and aggery beads, and fine examples of Moorish lustre, or of ancient Nankin, or of gold coins of the Roman Empire, are all rare, yet there is no definite limit to their number.
The girl had been sitting almost with her back to the door, but she had turned so that her profile and hands were visible. How quiet she was! Yet never was there an attitude more eloquent. She held in her hands, which lay upon her knee, one of the little terra-cottas. Eleanor could see it perfectly.
That's something to mend the holes that the soldiers and the politicians are making. When the war's become a nightmare that nobody wants to remember, those little things' he pointed to a group of Greek bronzes and terra-cottas on a table near 'will still be the treasures of the world!
Had these come into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates decorated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt they would have learned to manufacture them at home in considerable quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction wholly failed as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan inscriptions show and they contented themselves with buying instead of making them.
With the people to whom these strata belonged from 13 to 6-1/2 feet below the surface the pre-Hellenic ages end, for henceforth we see many ruined walls of Greek buildings, of beautifully hewn stones laid together without cement, and the painted and unpainted terra-cottas leave no doubt that a Greek colony took possession of Ilium when the surface of this hill was much lower than it is now.
Ruskin placed £1,000 at his disposal. General di Cesnola was able, in April, 1875, to announce that in spite of the confiscation of half the treasure-trove by the local Government, he had shipped a cargo of antiquities, including many vases, terra-cottas, and fragments of sculpture. Whence, precisely, these relics came is now doubtful.
In cases ranged down each side of the long cloister, with its antique carved chairs, armour, and statuary, were rare Etruscan and Roman terra-cottas, one containing relics from the tomb of a warrior, which included a sword-hilt adorned with gold and a portion of a golden crown formed of lilies in relievo of pure gold laid upon a mould of bronze; another case was full of bronze ornaments unearthed near Albano, and still another contained rare Abyssinian curios.
Even in Velitrae, where probably alone in the former land of the Volsci their language and peculiar character were afterwards maintained, painted terra-cottas have been found, displaying vigorous and characteristic treatment.
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