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 family tomb of the Tarchnas has recently been discovered.  The female name Tanaquil or Tanchvil interwoven with the legend, while it is not Latin, is common in Etruria.  But the traditional story—­according to which Tarquin was the son of a Greek who had migrated from Corinth to Tarquinii, and came to settle in Rome as a —­metoikos—­ is neither history nor legend, and the historical chain of events is manifestly in this instance not confused merely, but completely torn asunder.  If anything more can be deduced from this tradition beyond the bare and at bottom indifferent fact that at last a family of Tuscan descent swayed the regal sceptre in Rome, it can only be held as implying that this dominion of a man of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either as a dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community over Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria.  There is, in fact, no sufficient ground either for the one hypothesis or for the other.  The history of the Tarquins had its arena in Latium, not in Etruria; and Etruria, so far as we can see, during the whole regal period exercised no influence of any essential moment on either the language or customs of Rome, and did not at all interrupt the regular development of the Roman state or of the Latin league.

The cause of this comparatively passive attitude of Etruria towards the neighbouring land of Latium is probably to be sought partly in the struggles of the Etruscans with the Celts on the Po, which presumably the Celts did not cross until after the expulsion of the kings from Rome, and partly in the tendency of the Etruscan people towards seafaring and the acquisition of supremacy on the sea and seaboard—­a tendency decidedly exhibited in their settlements in Campania, and of which we shall speak more fully in the next chapter.

The Etruscan Constitution

The Tuscan constitution, like the Greek and Latin, was based on the gradual transition of the community to an urban life.  The early direction of the national energies towards navigation, trade, and manufactures appears to have called into existence urban commonwealths, in the strict sense of the term, earlier in Etruria than elsewhere in Italy.  Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is mentioned in Greek records.  On the other hand we find that the Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the disposition for war than the Romans and Sabellians:  the un-Italian custom of employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among the Etruscans at a very early period.  The oldest constitution of the communities must in its general outlines have resembled that of Rome.  Kings or Lucumones ruled, possessing similar