not, as was afterwards the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting posture.  The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood, “the rubber” (—­trypanon—­, -terebra-), and the “under-layer” (—­storeus—­, —­eschara—­, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-, —­tetamai—­).  In like manner the dress of the two peoples is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with the —­chiton—­, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller —­himation—.  Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change, the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,—­a fact which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the earliest names for warriors (-pilumni—­arquites-),(8) and is in keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly adapted to a close struggle.  Thus, in the language and manners of Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations of human existence may be traced back to the same primary elements; the oldest problems which the world proposes to man had been jointly solved by the two peoples at a time when they still formed one nation.

Difference of the Italian and the Greek Character

It was otherwise in the mental domain.  The great problem of man—­how to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and with the whole to which he belongs—­admits of as many solutions as there are provinces in our Father’s kingdom; and it is in this, and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display their divergences of character.  The exciting causes which gave rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day.  The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and in Greece respectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost concealed from our view.  That Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township, and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length produced the internal dissolution of even local authority; which in its view of religion first invested the gods with human attributes, and then denied their existence;