18.  If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the post-Homeric period.

19.  Just as the old Saxon -writan- signifies properly to tear, thence to write.

20.  The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv.  Developments Of Alphabets in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed.  For in a Boeotian inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word -fhekadamoe-(Gustav Meyer, Griech.  Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.) the same combination of sound, and an aspirated v might certainly approximate in sound to the Latin -f.

20. -Ratio Tuscanica,:  cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21.  When Varro (ap.  Augustin.  De Civ.  Dei, iv. 31; comp.  Plutarch Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and, beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before him.  Comp, above, xiv.  Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22.  I. XIII.  Handicrafts

23.  I. XII.  Nature of the Roman Gods

24.  I. XII.  Pontifices

Chapter XV

Art

Artistic Endowment of the Italians

Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody.  While in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations have received a pre-eminent endowment of poetic gifts.  The Italian nation, however, was not and is not one of these.  The Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which form the very essence of poetic art.  His acuteness of perception and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio, in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in the lower comedy and in farce.  Italian soil gave birth in ancient times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock-heroic poetry.  In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other