frequent in
Latium and in the inland country behind it; while in Etruria it was
rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal
blocks. Even in the religious prominence--remarkable also as
respects the history of art--assigned to the arch(23) and to the
bridge(24) in Latium, we may be allowed to perceive, as it were,
an anticipation of the future aqueducts and consular highways of
Rome. On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same
time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks: for
while they transferred the laws established for building in stone
to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of
adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals
between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language
of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy
appearance." The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek art
but very little that was congenial to their thoroughly realistic
tastes; but what they did adopt they appropriated truly and
heartily as their own, and in the development of the polygonal
wall-architecture perhaps excelled their instructors. Etruscan art
is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired
and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an
evidence even of genial receptivity. As scholars have long since
desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the
Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their
minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place
in the history of Italian art.

Notes for Book I Chapter XV

1. I. XII. Priests

2. I. XIII. Handicrafts

3. Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160) gives as potent against sprains
the formula: -hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodannaustra-,
which was presumably quite as obscure to its inventor as it is to
us. Of course, along with these there were also formulae of words;
e. g. it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some
other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching
the earth at the same time and spitting:--"I think of thee, mend
my feet. Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell"
(-terra pestem teneto, salus hie maneto-. Varro de R. R. i. 2,
27).

4. Each of the first five lines was repeated thrice, and the call
at the close five times. Various points in the interpretation are
uncertain, particularly