According to their own account of it, they were destined to endure as a distinct people for about nine centuries; which is probably what they did.  Their power was at its height about 600 B.C.  As they began to decline, certain small Italian cities that had been part of their empire broke away and freed themselves; particularly in Latium, where lived the descendants of those old-time colonists from Ruta and Daitya,—­priding themselves still on their ancient descent, and holding themselves Patricians or nobles, with a serf population of conquered Italians to look down upon.  Or, of course, it may have been vice versa: that the Atlanteans were the older stock, nearer the soil, and Plebeians; and that the Patricians were later conquerors lured or driven down from Central Europe.

At any rate, as their empire diminished, Etruria stood like some alien civilized Granada in the midst of surrounding medieval barbarism; for Italy, in 500 B.C., was simply medieval.  Up in the mountains were war-like highlanders:  each tribe with its central stronghold,—­like Beneventum in Samnium, which you could hardly call a city, I suppose:  it was rather a place of refuge for times when refuge was needed, than a group of homes to live in; in general, the mountains gave enough sense of security, and you might live normally in your scattered farms.—­But down in the lowlands you needed something more definitely city-like:  at once a group of homes and a common fortress.  So Latium and Campania were strewn with little towns by river and seashore, or hill-top built with more or less peaceful citadel; each holding the lands it could watch, or that its citizen armies could turn out quickly to defend.  Each was always at war or in league with most of the others; but material civilization had not receded so far as among the mountaineers.  The latter raided them perpetually, so they had to be tough and abstemious and watchful; and then again they raided the mountaineers to get their own back, (with reasonable interest); and lastly, lest like Hotspur they should find such quiet life a plague, and want work, it was always their prerogative, and generally their pleasure, to go to war with each other.—­A hard, poor life, in which to be and do right was to keep in fit condition for the raidings and excursions and alarms; ethics amounted to about that much; art or culture, you may say, there was none.  Their civilization was what we know as Balkanic, with perpetual Balkanic eruptions, so to speak.  Their conception of life did not admit of the absence of at least one good summer campaign.  Mr. Stobart neatly puts it to this effect:  no man is content to live ambitionless on a bare pittance and the necessaries; he must see some prospect, some margin, as well; and for these folk, now that they had freed themselves from the Etruscans, the necessaries were from their petty agriculture, the margin was to be looked for in war.