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Updated: June 7, 2025
It is a significant indication of the position of the Caerites, that they stoned the Phocaean captives in the market at Caere and then sent an embassy to the Delphic Apollo to atone for the crime.
The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are illustrated by a remarkable vase from a sepulchral chamber of Caere built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old Greek model alphabet as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that of Palamedes evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.
It was these ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood, early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths of the Tiber and Po.
Much less, however, did the Latins range themselves on the side of the Hellenes: the neutrality of their position in this respect is attested by the close relations maintained between Caere and Rome, as well as by the traces of ancient intercourse between the Latins and the Carthaginians.
The local worship also presents traces of a Sabellian character; and a similar inference is suggested by the primitive relations subsisting in sacred as well as other matters between Caere and Rome.
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.
At Rome during this winter many prodigies either occurred about the city, or, as usually happens when the minds of men are once inclined to superstition, many were reported and readily believed; among which it was said that an infant of good family, only six months old, had called out "Io triumphe" in the herb market: that in the cattle market an ox had of his own accord ascended to the third story, and that thence, being frightened by the noise of the inhabitants, had flung himself down; that the appearance of ships had been brightly visible in the sky, and that the temple of Hope in the herb market had been struck by lightning; that the spear at Lanuvium had shaken itself; that a crow had flown down into the temple of Juno and alighted on the very couch; that in the territory of Amiternum figures resembling men dressed in white raiment had been seen in several places at a distance, but had not come close to any one; that in Picenum it had rained stones; that at Caere the tablets for divination had been lessened in size; and that in Gaul a wolf had snatched out the sword from the scabbard of a soldier on guard, and carried it off.
It is no wonder, that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence on external policy; that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry Carthage and Corinth as the Etruscans had formerly destroyed Alalia and the Syracusans Caere; that it in spite of the senate upheld the colony of Narbo.
First of all the city was purified, and victims of the greater kind were sacrificed to those gods to whom they were directed to be offered; and a gift of forty pounds' weight of gold was carried to the temple of Juno at Lanuvium; and the matrons dedicated a brazen statue to Juno on the Aventine; and a lectisternium was ordered at Caere, where the tablets for divination had diminished; and a supplication to Fortune at Algidum; at Rome also a lectisternium was ordered to Youth, and a supplication at the temple of Hercules, first by individuals named and afterwards by the whole people at all the shrines; five greater victims were offered to Genius; and Caius Atilius Serranus the praetor was ordered to make certain vows if the republic should remain in the same state for ten years.
This certainly is apparent, in the case of our present epoch, only in architecture. The polygonal wall-masonry, as appropriate to its object as it was beautiful, was frequent in Latium and in the inland country behind it; while in Etruria it was rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal blocks.
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