s which the Celts
and Samnites wrested from the Etruscans in the course of the fourth
century there is scarcely a trace of the practice of Etruscan art.
The plastic art of the Tuscans applied itself first and chiefly to
works in terra-cotta, in copper, and in gold-materials which were
furnished to the artists by the rich strata of clay, the copper mines,
and the commercial intercourse of Etruria. The vigour with which
moulding in clay was prosecuted is attested by the immense number of
bas-reliefs and statuary works in terra-cotta, with which the walls,
gables, and roofs of the Etruscan temples were once decorated, as
their still extant ruins show, and by the trade which can be shown to
have existed in such articles from Etruria to Latium. Casting in
copper occupied no inferior place. Etruscan artists ventured to make
colossal statues of bronze fifty feet in height, and Volsinii, the
Etruscan Delphi, was said to have possessed about the year 489 two
thousand bronze statues. Sculpture in stone, again, began in Etruria,
as probably everywhere, at a far later date, and was prevented from
development not only by internal causes, but also by the want of
suitable material; the marble quarries of Luna (Carrara) were not yet
opened. Any one who has seen the rich and elegant gold decorations
of the south-Etruscan tombs, will have no difficulty in believing the
statement that Tyrrhene gold cups were valued even in Attica.
Gem-engraving also, although more recent, was in various forms
practised in Etruria. Equally dependent on the Greeks, but otherwise
quite on a level with the workers in the plastic arts, were the
Etruscan designers and painters, who manifested extraordinary activity
both in outline-drawing on metal and in monochromatic fresco-painting.

Campanian and Sabellian

On comparing with this the domain of the Italians proper, it appears
at first, contrasted with the Etruscan riches, almost poor in art.
But on a closer view we cannot fail to perceive that both the
Sabellian and the Latin nations must have had far more capacity
and aptitude for art than the Etruscans. It is true that in the proper
Sabellian territory, in Sabina, in the Abruzzi, in Samnium, there are
hardly found any works of art at all, and even coins are wanting.
But those Sabellian stocks, which reached the coasts of the Tyrrhene
or Ionic seas, not only appropriated Hellenic art externally, like
the Etruscans, but more or less completely acclim