tablishment of copper as a general equivalent recognized throughout
the whole peninsula, as well as the simplest numeral signs of
Italian invention to be mentioned more particularly below(17) and
the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as traces of this
earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while
they still had the peninsula to themselves.

Transmarine Traffic of the Italians

We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence
exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued
independent. The Sabellian stocks remained almost wholly unaffected
by it. They were in possession of but a small and inhospitable
belt of coast, and received whatever reached them from foreign
nations--the alphabet for instance--only through the medium of the
Tuscans or Latins; a circumstance which accounts for their want of
urban development. The intercourse of Tarentum with the Apulians
and Messapians appears to have been at this epoch still unimportant.
It was otherwise along the west coast. In Campania the Greeks and
Italians dwelt peacefully side by side, and in Latium, and still
more in Etruria, an extensive and regular exchange of commodities
took place. What were the earliest articles of import, may
be inferred partly from the objects found in the primitive tombs,
particularly those at Caere, partly from indications preserved in
the language and institutions of the Romans, partly and chiefly from
the stimulus given to Italian industry; for of course they bought
foreign manufactures for a considerable time before they began
to imitate them. We cannot determine how far the development of
handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or
what progress it thereafter made while Italy remained left to its
own resources; it is uncertain how far the Italian fullers, dyers,
tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia
or had their own independent development But certainly the trade
of the goldsmiths, which existed in Rome from time immemorial, can
only have arisen after transmarine commerce had begun and ornaments
of gold had to some extent found sale among the inhabitants of the
peninsula. We find, accordingly, in the oldest sepulchral chambers
of Caere and Vulci in Etruria and of Praeneste in Latium, plates
of gold with winged lions stamped upon them, and similar ornaments
of Babylonian manufacture. It may be a question in reference to
the