very early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second
medium of exchange; and so the Latins, who were poor in copper,
designated valuation itself as "coppering" (-aestimatio-). This
establishment 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