According to their own account of it, they were destined to
endure as a distinct people for about nine centuries; which is
probably what they did. Their power was at its height about 600
B.C. As they began to decline, certain small Italian cities that
had been part of their empire broke away and freed themselves;
particularly in Latium, where lived the descendants of those
old-time colonists from Ruta and Daitya,--priding themselves still
on their ancient descent, and holding themselves Patricians or
nobles, with a serf population of conquered Italians to look down
upon. Or, of course, it may have been _vice versa:_ that the
Atlanteans were the older stock, nearer the soil, and Plebeians;
and that the Patricians were later conquerors lured or driven
down from Central Europe.

At any rate, as their empire diminished, Etruria stood like some
alien civilized Granada in the midst of surrounding medieval
barbarism; for Italy, in 500 B.C., was simply medieval. Up in
the mountains were war-like highlanders: each tribe with its
central stronghold,--like Beneventum in Samnium, which you could
hardly call a city, I suppose: it was rather a place of refuge
for times when refuge was needed, than a group of homes to live
in; in general, the mountains gave enough sense of security, and
you might live normally in your scattered farms.--But down in the
lowlands you needed something more definitely city-like: at once
a group of homes and a common fortress. So Latium and Campania
were strewn with little towns by river and seashore, or hill-top
built with more or less peaceful citadel; each holding the lands
it could watch, or that its citizen armies could turn out quickly
to defend. Each was always at war or in league with most of the
others; but material civilization had not receded so far as
among the mountaineers. The latter raided them perpetually, so
they had to be tough and abstemious and watchful; and then again
they raided the mountaineers to get their own back, (with
reasonable interest); and lastly, lest like Hotspur they should
find such quiet life a plague, and want work, it was always
their prerogative, and generally their pleasure, to go to war
with each other.--A hard, poor life, in which to be and do right
was to keep in fit condition for the raidings and excursions and
alarms; ethics amounted to about that much; art or culture, you
may say, there was none. Their civilization was what we know as
Balkanic, wi