iny of their own people. They
are the only people of antiquity who did not expect that they were to
persist forever. Etruria, they said, was to endure ten centuries.
These centuries were not of exactly one hundred years each, but
certain signs marked the end of each period. In the year 44, the year
of the death of Caesar, a comet appeared; an Etruscan haruspex stated
to the Romans in an assembly of the people that this comet announced
the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth, the last
of the Etruscan people.

=Influence of the Etruscans.=--The Romans, a semi-barbarous people,
always imitated their more civilized neighbors, the Etruscans. They
drew from them especially the forms of their religion: the costume of
the priests and of the magistrates, the religious rites, and the art
of divining the future from birds (the auspices). When the Romans
found a city, they observe the Etruscan rites: the founder traces a
square enclosure with a plough with share of bronze, drawn by a white
bull and a white heifer. Men follow the founder and carefully cast
the clods of earth from the side of the furrow. The whole ditch left
by the plough is sacred and is not to be crossed. To allow entrance to
the enclosure, it is necessary that the founder break the ditch at
certain points, and he does this by lifting the plough and carrying it
an instant; the interval made in this manner remains profane and it
becomes the gate by which one enters. Rome itself was founded
according to these rites. It was called Roma Quadrata, and it was said
that the founder had killed his brother to punish him for crossing the
sacred furrow. Later the limits of Roman colonies and of camps, and
even the bounds of domains were always traced in conformity with
religious rules and with geometrical lines.

The Roman religion was half Etruscan. The Fathers of the church were
right, therefore, in calling Etruria the "Mother of Superstitions."

THE ITALIAN PEOPLE

=Umbrians and Oscans.=--In the rugged mountains of the Apennines, to
the east and south of the Roman plain, resided numerous tribes. These
peoples did not bear the same name and did not constitute a single
nation. They were Umbrians, Sabines, Volscians, AEquians, Hernicans,
Marsians, and Samnites. But all spoke almost the same language,
worshipped the same gods, and had similar customs. Like the Persians,
Hindoos, and Greeks, they were of Aryan race; secluded in their
mountains, remote