Hellenes and Latins

Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with the “wild Tyrrhenian,” and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci.  This cannot mean that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of Central Italy, but not permitted in others.  Northward of Vesuvius there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted, before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of the Italians or in other words of the Caerites.  But in southern Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such was not the case elsewhere.  The position of Caere was especially remarkable.  “The Caerites,” says Strabo, “were held in much repute among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because, powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery.”  It is not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of Caere must have indulged like every other.  But Caere was a sort of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks.  We have already mentioned the Phoenician station—­subsequently called Punicum—­and the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.(5) It was these ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood, early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths of the Tiber and Po.  The cities we have just named are those which appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece.  The first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum.  Spina and Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle, is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome.  These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became preeminently wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.

Hellenes and Etruscans—­Etruscan Maritime Power