plains of Lombardy, to use the language of the so-called Scylax,
abandoned their warrior-life and took to permanent settlement, must
in part be ascribed to this influence; the rudiments moreover of
handicrafts and arts and the alphabet came to the Celts in Lombardy,
and in fact to the Alpine peoples as far as the modern Styria,
through the medium of the Etruscans.

Etruria Proper at Peace and on the Decline

Thus the Etruscans, after the loss of their possessions in Campania
and of the whole district to the north of the Apennines and to the
south of the Ciminian Forest, remained restricted to very narrow
bounds; their season of power and of aspiration had for ever passed
away. The closest reciprocal relations subsisted between this
external decline and the internal decay of the nation, the seeds
of which indeed were doubtless already deposited at a far earlier
period. The Greek authors of this age are full of descriptions of
the unbounded luxury of Etruscan life: poets of Lower Italy in the
fifth century of the city celebrate the Tyrrhenian wine, and the
contemporary historians Timaeus and Theopompus delineate pictures of
Etruscan unchastity and of Etruscan banquets, such as fall nothing
short of the worst Byzantine or French demoralization. Unattested as
may be the details in these accounts, the statement at least appears
to be well founded, that the detestable amusement of gladiatorial
combats--the gangrene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of
antiquity generally--first came into vogue among the Etruscans. At
any rate on the whole they leave no doubt as to the deep degeneracy
of the nation. It pervaded even its political condition. As far
as our scanty information reaches, we find aristocratic tendencies
prevailing, in the same way as they did at the same period in Rome,
but more harshly and more perniciously. The abolition of royalty,
which appears to have been carried out in all the cities of Etruria
about the time of the siege of Veii, called into existence in the
several cities a patrician government, which experienced but slight
restraint from the laxity of the federal bond. That bond but seldom
succeeded in combining all the Etruscan cities even for the defence of
the land, and the nominal hegemony of Volsinii does not admit of the
most remote comparison with the energetic vigour which the leadership
of Rome communicated to the Latin nation. The struggle against the
exclusive claim put forward