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Updated: June 10, 2025
They were distinguished from these nations by their very bodily structure: instead of the slender and symmetrical proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms. Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian stocks.
It is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain, so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted. Nor is this a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of the national history. Agriculture
We must not forget, however severely we may condemn the way in which the work was done, that it is to these armies, in all human probability, that we owe not only the preservation of Graeco-Italian culture and civilisation, but the opportunity for further progress.
The round style of building in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house; but the architectural and religious development of the simple -tholos- into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin. I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy II. V. Complete Submission of the Campanian and Volscian Provinces
The task of discriminating the results of culture which are common to the European members of this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in linguistic and historical inquiries.
But, while the Etruscans differed thus widely from the Graeco-Italian family of languages, no one has yet succeeded in connecting them with any other known race. All sorts of dialects have been examined with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain.
The exciting causes which gave rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day.
This hypothesis commends itself much to acceptance in a geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civilization may very well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian in fact we know nothing of the earliest stage of Celtic culture.
But it seems reasonable to believe that a Graeco-Italian rectangular fashion of town-planning did supersede an earlier, irregular, Italian style, and had become supreme before the end of the Republic. Perhaps about 180 B.C., Mommsen, Roman Hist. iii. 206. Aquileia was set up in 181 B.C. to guard the north-east gate of Italy, and was reinforced in 169.
It could not be otherwise; for, just as in the peoples themselves the great contrasts, which during the Graeco-Italian period had lain side by side undeveloped, were after their division distinctly evolved, so in their religion also a separation took place between the idea and the image, which had hitherto been but one whole in the soul.
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