land immediately southwest of the mainland. As a con-
sequence of climatic change, Sicily today is dry and rel-
atively poor, but until the sixteenth century A.D.it
supplied much of Italy with grain.
At the opposite end of the peninsula, between the
westward curve of the Appenines and the great north-
ern barrier of the Alps, is the valley of the Po. Flowing
eastward into the Adriatic, it is now among the world’s
richest agricultural and industrial regions, but its wealth
is largely the fruit of human effort. As recently as the
fourth century B.C. it was a wild marshland, not yet
tamed by two millennia of canalization and levee
building.
Beginning in the eighth century B.C., Greek
colonists had established themselves in the richest of
the southern coastal lands. Eastern Sicily, Apulia, and
Campania, as well as Calabria (the heel of the boot)
and the shores of the Gulf of Taranto (its arch), were
soon dominated by poleisof the Aegean type, rich and
vigorous, but as combative and incapable of unified ac-
tion as their models. At the same time, the Carthagini-
ans colonized western Sicily and contended violently
with their Greek neighbors for land and trade. Of the
original inhabitants of these areas, some became slaves
or tenants of the colonists, while others retreated to the
interior and retained their tribal cultures.
A variety of tribes, Latins, Umbrians, and Sam-
nites—each speaking its own Italic or other Indo-
European language—inhabited Latium, the central part
of the peninsula. The Etruscans dominated the region
between the Tiber and the Arno. Their language can be
only partially deciphered, but their alphabet was similar
to that of the Greeks and their art seems also to have
been derived from Greek models. Most of what is
known about the Etruscans comes from archaeology,
and little has survived from the days when Etruscan
power was at its height (see illustration 4.1). Above all,
the Etruscans were city dwellers. Their economy was
based heavily on trade and manufacturing, and though
they were also accomplished farmers, they preferred
whenever possible to live in town. They constructed
their twelve main cities according to engineering and
religious principles that would profoundly influence
the Romans. Where terrain permitted, the Etruscans
favored a symmetrical and axial city plan that was un-
like anything devised by the Greeks. Elaborate tunnels
of dressed stone drained low-lying areas or brought
fresh water for the consumption of the townspeople,
while the buildings featured arches and vaulted ceilings,
construction techniques that appear to have been in-
vented by Etruscans.
This sophistication did not extend to political
arrangements. Etruscan society was rigidly stratified. A
handful of wealthy families dominated each of the
twelve cities through legally enforceable clientage and
the ownership of many slaves. In war, the rich fought
on horseback under a king who may have been elec-
tive. By the fifth century B.C. the Etruscans had
adopted the hoplite tactics of the Greeks and replaced
their kings with aristocratic magistrates. No movement
toward democracy is evident. But if the political evolu-
tion of the Etruscans differed from that of the Greeks, in
another respect they closely resembled them: The
twelve cities were almost incapable of united action. At62Chapter 4Illustration 4.1
An Etruscan Tomb.Wealthy
Etruscans often buried the dead in repli-
cas of their homes. In this example of a
domestic interior from the third century
B.C., the household goods are portrayed
in stucco relief.