cania,
Campania, and Etruria, to serve there for the decoration of tombs--a
traffic, as to the circumstances of which we are accidentally better
informed than as to any other article of transmarine commerce. The
commencement of this import trade probably falls about the period of
the expulsion of the Tarquins; for the vases of the oldest style,
which are of very rare occurrence in Italy, were probably painted in
the second half of the third century of the city, while those of the
chaste style, occurring in greater numbers, belong to the first half,
those of the most finished beauty to the second half, of the fourth
century; and the immense quantities of the other vases, often marked
by showiness and size but seldom by excellence in workmanship, must be
assigned as a whole to the following century. It was from the Hellenes
undoubtedly that the Italians derived this custom of embellishing
tombs; but while the moderate means and fine discernment of the Greeks
confined the practice in their case within narrow limits, it was
stretched in Italy by barbaric opulence and barbaric extravagance
far beyond its original and proper bounds. It is a significant
circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only
in the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture. Any one who can read
such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania
--the mines whence our museums have been replenished--a significant
commentary on the accounts of the ancients as to the Etruscan and
Campanian semi-culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance.(32)
The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained at all times
a stranger to this foolish luxury; the absence of Greek pottery from
the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably as the absence of a Samnite
coinage, the slight development of commercial intercourse and of urban
life in this region. It is still more worthy of remark that Latium
also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania,
and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from
such sepulchral decorations. It is more than probable--especially on
account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the
unique Praeneste--that in this result we have to recognize the
influence of the stern Roman morality or--if the expression be
preferred--of the rigid Roman police. Closely connected with this
subject are the already-mentioned interdicts, which the law of the
Twelve Tables f