, partly perhaps
in consequence of the desperate defence which the Etruscans made
in their more restricted home, and of the serious resistance of the
powerful Romans, partly perhaps also in consequence of changes unknown
to us on the north of the Alps. Between the Alps and the Apennines,
as far south as the Abruzzi, the Celts were now generally the ruling
nation, and they were masters more especially of the plains and rich
pastures; but from the lax and superficial nature of their settlement
their dominion took no deep root in the newly acquired land and by no
means assumed the shape of exclusive possession. How matters stood in
the Alps, and to what extent Celtic settlers became mingled there with
earlier Etruscan or other stocks, our unsatisfactory information as
to the nationality of the later Alpine peoples does not permit us
to ascertain; only the Raeti in the modern Grisons and Tyrol may be
described as a probably Etruscan stock. The Umbrians retained the
valleys of the Apennines, and the Veneti, speaking a different
language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley
of the Po. Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western
mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating
the Celt-land proper from Etruria. The Celts dwelt only in the
intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north
of the Po, the Boii to the south, and--not to mention smaller tribes
--the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona,
in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (-ager Gallicus-). But even
there Etruscan settlements must have continued partially at least to
subsist, somewhat as Ephesus and Miletus remained Greek under the
supremacy of the Persians. Mantua at any rate, which was protected
by its insular position, was a Tuscan city even in the time of the
empire, and Atria on the Po also, where numerous discoveries of vases
have been made, appears to have retained its Etruscan character; the
description of the coasts that goes under the name of Scylax, composed
about 418, calls the district of Atria and Spina Tuscan land. This
alone, moreover, explains how Etruscan corsairs could render the
Adriatic unsafe till far into the fifth century, and why not only
Dionysius of Syracuse covered its coasts with colonies, but even
Athens, as a remarkable document recently discovered informs us,
resolved about 429 to establish a colony in the Adriatic for
the prote