a passive traffic, and were obliged even in the earliest times to
procure the copper of which they had need from the Etruscans in
exchange for cattle or slaves--we have already mentioned the very
ancient practice of selling the latter on the right bank of the
Tiber.(23) On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must
have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in Populonia, in Capua
as in Spina. Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these
regions and their powerful commercial position; whereas Latium
remained preeminently an agricultural country. The same contrast
recurs in all their individual relations. The oldest tombs constructed
and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which
the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the
exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar
position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii
and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments
for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury
proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians
a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead. The
most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna
Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during
the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by
weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances
are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g. one of Posidonia)
have been found there. In architecture, plastic art, and embossing,
the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only
in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to
bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with
growing technical skill. The commodities were upon the whole the
same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in
Etruria; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern