of Rome with the somewhat more
distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than
those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early
times. There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times
of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere;
Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have
obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon
them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which
attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to
an especially close connection between the two ancient centres of
commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria. Sure
traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land,
are altogether wanting. It is true that Etruscans are named
in the first ranks of the great barbarian host, which Aristodemus
annihilated in 230 under the walls of Cumae;(7) but, even if
we regard this account as deserving credit in all its details, it
only shows that the Etruscans had taken part in a great plundering
expedition. It is far more important to observe that south of the
Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its
origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication whatever
is discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the
Latin nation. The possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of
the mouth of the Tiber remained, so far as we can see, undisputed
in the hands of the Romans. As to the migrations of bodies of
Etruscans to Rome, we find an isolated statement drawn from Tuscan
annals, that a Tuscan band, led by Caelius Vivenna of Volsinii and
after his death by his faithful companion Mastarna, was conducted
by the latter to Rome. This may be trustworthy, although the
derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is
evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this
Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is
certainly nothing but an improbable conjecture of the archaeologists
who busied themselves with legendary parallels. The name of the
"Tuscan quarter" at the foot of the Palatine(8) points further to
Etruscan settlements in Rome.

The Tarquins

It can hardly, moreover, be doubted that the last regal family which
ruled over Rome, that of the Tarquins, was of Etruscan origin,
whether it belonged to Tarquinii, as the legend asserts, or
to Caere, where the