traffic, as to the circumstances of which we are accidentally better informed than as to any other article of transmarine commerce.  The commencement of this import trade probably falls about the period of the expulsion of the Tarquins; for the vases of the oldest style, which are of very rare occurrence in Italy, were probably painted in the second half of the third century of the city, while those of the chaste style, occurring in greater numbers, belong to the first half, those of the most finished beauty to the second half, of the fourth century; and the immense quantities of the other vases, often marked by showiness and size but seldom by excellence in workmanship, must be assigned as a whole to the following century.  It was from the Hellenes undoubtedly that the Italians derived this custom of embellishing tombs; but while the moderate means and fine discernment of the Greeks confined the practice in their case within narrow limits, it was stretched in Italy by barbaric opulence and barbaric extravagance far beyond its original and proper bounds.  It is a significant circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only in the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture.  Any one who can read such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania —­the mines whence our museums have been replenished—­a significant commentary on the accounts of the ancients as to the Etruscan and Campanian semi-culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance.(32) The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained at all times a stranger to this foolish luxury; the absence of Greek pottery from the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably as the absence of a Samnite coinage, the slight development of commercial intercourse and of urban life in this region.  It is still more worthy of remark that Latium also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania, and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from such sepulchral decorations.  It is more than probable—­especially on account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the unique Praeneste—­that in this result we have to recognize the influence of the stern Roman morality or—­if the expression be preferred—­of the rigid Roman police.  Closely connected with this subject are the already-mentioned interdicts, which the law of the Twelve Tables fulminated against purple bier-cloths and gold ornaments placed beside the dead; and the banishment of all silver plate, excepting the salt-cellar and sacrificial ladle, from the Roman household, so far at least as sumptuary laws and the terror of censorial censure could banish it:  even in architecture we shall again encounter the same spirit of hostility to luxury whether noble or ignoble.  Although, however, in consequence of these influences Rome probably preserved a certain outward simplicity longer than Capua and Volsinii, her commerce and trade—­on which, in fact, along with agriculture her prosperity from the beginning rested—­must not be regarded as having been inconsiderable, or as having less sensibly experienced the influence of her new commanding position.