1000 B.C.--that is, earlier
than Homer's writings, and earlier by nearly three centuries than the
wall built by Romulus around Rome. The Etruscan state was a federation
of twelve cities, embracing a large part of central and northern
Italy--from near Naples as far north perhaps as Milan and the great
Lombard plain. Etruscans thus dominated the largest, and certainly the
fairest, parts of Italy. Before Rome was founded, the Etruscan cities
were populous and opulent commonwealths. Together they formed one of the
great naval powers of the Mediterranean. Of their civilization, we have
abundant knowledge from architectural remains, and, from thousands of
inscriptions still extant. Cortona was one of their oldest towns. "Ere
Troy itself arose, Cortona was."

After the Etruscans, came Greeks, who made flourishing settlements in
southern Italy, the chief of which was Paestum, founded not later than
600 B.C. Stupendous ruins survive at Paestum; few more interesting ones
have come down to us from the world of ancient Hellas. The oldest dates
from about 570 B.C. Here was once the most fertile and beautiful part
of Italy, celebrated for its flowers so that Virgil praised them. It is
now a lonely and forsaken land, forbidding and malarious. Once thickly
populated, it has become scarcely more than a haunt of buffalos and
peasants, who wander indifferent among these colossal remains of a
vanished race. These, however, are not the civilizations that do most
attract tourists to Italy, but the remains found there of ancient Rome.
Of that empire all modern men are heirs--heirs of her marvelous
political structure, of her social and industrial laws.

Last of these five civilizations is the Italian, the beginnings of which
date from Theodoric the Goth, who in the fifth century set up a kingdom
independent of Rome; but Gothic rule was of short life, and then came
the Lombards, who for two hundred years were dominant in northern and
central parts, or until Charlemagne grasped their tottering kingdom and
put on their famous Iron Crown. In the south Charlemagne's empire never
flourished. That part of Italy was for centuries the prey of Saracens,
Magyars and Scandinavians. From these events emerged modern Italy--the
rise of her vigorous republics, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Venice; the
dawn, meridian splendor and decline of her great schools of sculpture,
painting and architecture, the power and beauty of which have held the
world in subjection; he