Chapter 2 — The Early Trade Of Latium And Etruria

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA

A full millennium at least before Rome’s foundation, as the Egyptian records of the Twelfth Dynasty show, men traded and thieved on the high seas of the Mediterranean.[1] Later, the Amarna tablets reveal Lycian pirates preying upon Egyptian and Cypriot merchants; and Phoenician traders resorted to Spain for British tin before the days of Hiram. It was probably in the eighth century that the Tyrrhenian immigrants—who, mingling with the Umbrians of Italy, fathered the great Etruscan race[2]—came overseas from the coast of Asia Minor. North of the Tiber, the adventurers seized several towns from Caere to Vulci. The old cemetery at Tarquinii, with its almost complete change from Villanovan urn burial[3] to a new type of trench grave, is striking proof of how sudden the invasion of southern Etruria was. In the eighth and seventh centuries, the new people, now generously mingled with their Italian subjects, as their personal names and religious cults show, spread quickly: first over the iron- and copper-bearing region of northern Tuscany, then beyond to the Po Valley, and also south through the Trerus Valley into Campania. Latium, indeed, escaped for a long time—too thickly settled, it would seem, for easy conquest—but Praeneste, the Latin fort-town on the Sabine slope, was seized to guard the land route between Etruria and the Campanian outposts of the south.

[1] Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 188; Knudtzon, Die El Amarna Tafeln, no. 38. In a forthcoming dissertation, which has in part been at my disposal, Miss L. E. W. Adams will discuss the early commerce of Latium.

[2] Körte, art. “Etrusker,” Pauly-Wissowa. Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, has called attention to the great number of Etruscan names that consist of Italic roots and Etruscan infixes. The explanation lies, of course, in a thoroughgoing race-mixture.

[3] Karo, Bull. Paletn. Ital. 1898, 145 ff.; Notizie degli Scavi, 1907, 350.

Not long after the arrival of these first Orientals began the westward flow of Greek colonists.[4] From Epirus and the western Peloponnese came numberless shiploads of land-seekers who established the prosperous cities of southern Italy. Sparta followed with a colony at Tarentum. About the middle of the eighth century, Chalcis of Euboea settled far-off Cumae on the Bay of Naples, a city that soon became the schoolmistress of central Italy, and then both sides of the Sicilian Straits, founding cities at Naxos, Zancle, and Rhegium. Chalcis, herself situated on a narrow strait, had naturally acquired an instinctive appreciation of the commercial value of such a position. Farther north, the Greeks discovered that the Latin and Etruscan tribes were already in complete possession, just as the Etruscans, in their turn, encountered the Greeks blocking their progress coastward when they presently arrived in Campania. Then Corinth, already a trading and manufacturing town that had planted trading posts on the Adriatic islands, sent a flourishing colony to Syracuse about 735 B.C.

[4] Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, i, 237 ff.; A. Reinach, L’hellénisation du monde antique.

Although the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, and especially the progressive city of Miletus, had reaped large profits in Thracian and Pontic trade, the Rhodians turned to the southern coast of Sicily—Gela and Acragas—a century later, and about 600 B.C. the Phocaeans founded Marseilles near the Rhône, to which their hardy ships had long resorted. Even though the Latins did not for a long time come into direct contact with these various Greek colonies, their civilization soon felt the influence of the Aegean arts and crafts that these settlers brought westward from their former homes.

The Etruscan neighbors of Latium failed at first to keep in touch with the Asiatic coast from which they had come. Perhaps the whole nation had migrated, leaving no kinsfolk behind with whom to communicate. To be sure, Mesopotamian ideas are plentiful in the religious cults and astrological lore of the Etruscans, but material proofs of Eastern commerce—except in such meager trifles as the Phoenicians had brought to the West even before the Etruscan migration—are rare for the earliest period.[5] It was not long, however, before some of the Etruscan princes grew wealthy on the serf-tilled plantations of a soil still very productive, and then the Eastern seafarers sought them out. The Phoenician merchants in particular, who were losing to the Ionian Greeks the profitable Aegean markets they had held since Homeric days, now sought compensation in the West—in Spain, Tuscany, and Libya. The tombs of Caere and Praeneste—only twenty miles from Rome—that have disclosed the richest products of this Phoenician trade are now generally dated somewhat after 700 B.C. For the story of early commerce, the most significant objects discovered in them are the silver and gilded bowls, apparently wrought by Phoenician craftsmen with designs drawn from Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian patterns; the carved ivory plates, such as Tyrian artisans are said to have made for the intarsia work of Solomon’s Temple; the painted ostrich eggs that appear wherever Phoenician traders resorted; and the ubiquitous Egyptian glass beads and scarab amulets, with plentiful Phoenician imitations of both.

[5] Poulsen, Der Orient und die Frühgriechische Kunst, 116 ff.; Kahrstedt, “Phoenikischer Handel,” Klio, 1912, 461 ff.; Curtis, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. III.

That Greek traders also came up the coast before the end of the eighth century is shown by the presence of Proto-Corinthian vases in these same tombs.[6] The first example of this Greek ware may have come by way of Cumae from Chalcis, but before long the importations were augmented by Corinthian seafarers who carried the wares of their own city to their colony of Syracuse, whence they quickly found their way northward. Corinth, indeed, borrowing ideas and apparently also artisans from Tyre, and taking advantage of the disfavor into which Phoenician traders were falling in Greek lands, now undertook to capture the Greek market in Tyrian fabrics, perfumes, and ointments. As containers for the latter, she made those delicate earthenware bottles that have become the archaeologists’ criteria of seventh-century chronology. Corinth’s position on the gulf gave her a great advantage in the new western trade, and excavations on the sites of Syracuse, Cumae, and the Etruscan cities of Caere and Tarquinii prove that she knew how to profit by it.

[6] Lorimer, “The Fabrics Called Proto-Corinthian,” Jour. Hell. Stud. 1912, 326 ff.; Perrot and Chipiez, IX, 574 ff.; Gabriel, “Cuma,” Monumenti Antichi, XXII, 343 ff.; Helbig, Die Italiker in d. Poebene, 14; Prinz, Klio, Beiheft VII.

During all this time, Rome remained a group of farm villages. The Latian soil was indeed rich and supported a dense population—a tribe so strong that the Etruscans could not make their way across the Tiber southward except by a road that hugged the rocky slopes of the Sabine Mountains. The busy farmers of the plain seem all the while to have cut themselves off from contact with the Phoenician traders who so constantly bartered with the neighboring cities of Etruria. The very name “Poeni” the Romans got from Syracusan traders who succeeded the Phoenicians, and the Latin words for things of commerce and parts of ships they learned from seafarers of Syracuse and Cumae. Even the earliest Cumaean trade, so well attested by the imported ware of Corneto, seems to have found no favor whatever in Latium.[7] On the site of Rome, nothing has yet been discovered corresponding to the rich stores of gold, silver, amber, and ivory so abundant in neighboring sites above the river. A few fragments of early Proto-Corinthian ware have indeed been unearthed, but this pottery was far from costly, and such trifles may well have been bought by the villagers of the seven hills from traders who used the most direct road from Caere to Praeneste and Campania.

[7] Gabriel, op. cit., points out that Cumaean ware went to the Etruscan cities north of the Tiber in great quantities for a long time without entering Latium. It would, therefore, seem that Latian culture did not keep pace with Etruria in the seventh century. Satricum, however, seems to have been touched by Greek traders, probably because Satricum was the port of entry for goods consigned to Praeneste, already in Etruscan hands.

With the passing of the seventh century, many important events changed the course of Italian commerce. Phoenician trade diminished rapidly, partly because of Assyrian pressure in Syria, partly because of the growth of Greek trade stimulated and supported by the widely scattered colonies, and partly, it may be, because Syracuse, now engaged in commerce, could use her commanding position below the Sicilian Straits to hinder her rivals—and the enmity between the Syracusans and the Phoenicians had deep roots.[8] At any rate, the Latin language clearly shows the influence of contact with the Syracusans between the periods of Phoenician and Etruscan ascendancy—that is, apparently, near the close of the seventh century—and the excavations of Cumae have revealed the existence of close communications between that city and Syracuse during this same period.

[8] Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, ii, 249.

It was also about the end of the seventh century that the Etruscan armies succeeded at last in overwhelming Latium and thus decisively connecting Campania with Etruria. Here and there, princes took possession of the villages and, it would seem, assumed ownership of the land. At Rome, the separate villages of the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal hills were organized into a city, around which a strong stone wall was built.[9] This city came in time to be the seat of an Etruscan sovereign who ruled over all the lords of Latium. Palaces were built for the kings, and temples for the vague spirits that were now identified with gods whom the Etruscans had shaped out of Italic, Greek, and Oriental syncretisms. Labor was imported to adorn the rapidly growing city, and a harbor[10] was built at the mouth of the Tiber in order to invite Etruscan and Greek seafarers.

[9] “Notes on the Servian Wall,” Am. Jour. Arch. 1918, 175 ff.

[10] “Rome’s First Coinage,” Class. Phil. 1919, 314.

Still, it is doubtful whether even then Rome actually became an important center for maritime trade. The seagoing craft of that day[11] relied largely upon sails and were too poorly manned to pull cargoes against a stiff river current such as the Tiber carried; moreover, the skippers needed to beach their ships, carry their wares to the marketplace, and bargain in person. Far more desirable for that kind of trade was a convenient sandbar such as lay below Caere and Tarquinii, or a small and peaceful river mouth such as Satricum[12] possessed in the Astura River, or Ardea in the Incastro and the Numicus. Rome’s early growth probably owed less to her position with reference to sea trade than to her command of the Tiber barrier at the point where Etruscan land roads from Tarquinii, Caere, and Veii most conveniently crossed for Tibur, Praeneste, the Campanian road of the Trerus Valley, and the Latin cities of Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Norba, Ardea, Satricum, and Tarracina.

[11] Huvelin, “Mercatura,” Daremberg-Saglio.

[12] Strabo, V, 2, somewhat to our surprise, calls the mouth of the Astura a useful roadstead even in his day.

Nevertheless, Rome and the whole of Latium were kept in close touch with Mediterranean commerce throughout the century of Etruscan occupation. Although the Latins succeeded in preserving their language and the essentials of their democratic ideals against the day of liberation, this period was one of profound cultural significance. Everywhere, farm villages were transformed into cities where Punic, Sicilian, and Massiliot traders hawked their wares in the marketplaces, and where Phocaean and Corinthian artists and craftsmen found employment in the adornment of temples, palaces, and tombs.[13]

[13] Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, 1918. Mrs. Arthur Strong, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 160 ff. The immigration of Ionians was doubtless strongest in the middle of the sixth century, when the Persians subdued the Ionian cities; Herod. I, 164.

It was also about 600 B.C. that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor, outclassed in the Pontic trade by Milesians, settled Marseilles in order to profit from trade with the western Celts and Iberians. This was an event of prime importance for Italy, since it assured, in the passing Phocaean commerce, steady communication with the progressive and art-loving Ionians of Asia. It was doubtless the tales these skippers brought home regarding opportunities in the luxurious cities of the West that induced artists and craftsmen in large numbers to try their fortunes in Italy. But this colony brought new resources to Italy. Entering into competition with the Phoenician sea traders, the Massiliots opened a new route through Gaul for the acquisition of British tin, which the bronze industry of the Italian cities had to have. They also brought down iron from German and Spanish mines, and raw products such as wool and hides for the industrial cities. Finally, the increased use of amber ornaments in Etruscan cities at this time is proof of how extensively the new colony quickened the trade of the West, as far away as the Baltic Sea.

There is also noticeable, toward the beginning of the sixth century, a striking increase at Etruscan sites in the amount of Corinthian ware and of native ware made on Corinthian models.[14] It has plausibly been suggested that the reason for this lay in the political upheavals at Corinth, which, about 583, drove many prominent men with their clients into exile. Some of these exiles seem to have found refuge in Tuscany, where they engaged in their former pursuits or taught others the arts they knew. The Roman legend of Demaratus, the Corinthian whose son by an Etruscan mother became the powerful King Tarquin of Rome, is by no means improbable. The emperor Claudius, who later referred to the story, vouched for its existence in very old Etruscan records.[15]

[14] Perrot, IX, 628.

[15] Körte, Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 1897, 57.

Finally, the student of early Italian commerce will find in Naucratis[16] at the Nile mouth an interesting indicator of the trade passing between the East and the West. This “ancient Shanghai,” as it has aptly been called, was an industrial and trading post that the usually exclusive Egyptians permitted the Ionian trading cities to found in their land. Here there grew up vigorous factories that sent out not only wares made in the latest Ionian fashions, but also articles of Egyptian cults and personal adornment. The products of this peculiar art, found in abundance in Italy, are therefore proof of communication with such cities as Rhodes, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, which shared in the industries of Naukratis, especially since they are found in conjunction with artistic objects that closely resemble the works of art discovered near these very cities of Asia.

[16] Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, Klio, Beiheft VII; Herodotus, II, 178.

There is, then, abundant evidence of the extensive foreign influence that reached western Italy. To determine, however, who in each case carried the trade, and what part the Etruscans and Latins took in the industry and commerce of the period, is more difficult.

During the sixth century, when Latium was in their power, the Etruscans were at the height of their success, controlling western Italy from the Alps to Campania and commanding the trade of the Tyrrhenian Sea if they so chose. Their wealth doubtless depended largely upon the exploitation of the natives, who as serfs were made to till the soil for them. Large and rich cities like Caere, Tarquinii, and Vulci did not lie in the metalliferous zone, nor did they hold peculiarly advantageous positions for commerce, though they doubtless profited by bringing goods from the interior to seafarers. As a race, however, the Etruscans seem everywhere to have taken a keen interest in industry. Their peculiarly Oriental fondness for color, ornament, and luxurious dress, and their deep religious sense, which demanded the precise use of articles of cult and of the tomb, gave rise to extensive native industries. Thus even towns like Praeneste,[17] which had no raw materials, became industrial centers from which we have recovered finely wrought jewelry in gold and precious stones, an abundance of engraved bronze mirrors, and many elaborate articles of household use. In all this work, despite an apparent lack of originality of design, the technique was so skillfully developed that it often becomes impossible to say whether a given piece of work was of native or imported craftsmanship. And so many of the products of the period are classified by archaeologists, according to design, as Phoenician-Etruscan, Ionic-Etruscan, or Corinthian-Etruscan. At this time, too, vast quantities of vases were made in the Ionian and Corinthian styles, and presently in the famous Attic black-figure style, which betray, if at all, their western origin only in an Etruscan legend or in some slight aberration in the interpretation of the myths they undertook to represent. In the architecture of their temples, the Etruscans generally adopted Ionic and Sicilian designs. It would seem, in fact, that Greek architects were usually imported to build them. Since, moreover, Etruria lacked good building stone, they adopted from Ionia and Sicily a free use of timber. The beam ends, architraves, and pediments of wood were accordingly adorned with terracotta relief slabs. The molds for the requisite processions of charioteers, hunters, maenads and satyrs, and all the rest may at first have been imported from Ionia, or Ionian artists themselves may have been called in to design them; but native craftsmen continued to design others with such meticulous precision that it is difficult to say where native work begins. The ruins of Veii and Falerii, Satricum and Velitrae, and even of Rome have supplied cult statues and temple figures in terracotta that can hardly be matched in beauty by contemporary work in Greece or Asia Minor.[18]

[17] Matthaei, Praenest. Spiegel, 34.

[18] Mrs. Arthur Strong, loc. cit.; Mrs. A. W. Van Buren, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 183 ff.

On the sea also, the Etruscans apparently played a part during the sixth century. The Greeks—who doubtless lost some of their profits because of this new competition—were wont to call the Etruscan seafarers pirates. To what extent the name was deserved cannot be established. The methods of a business rival, especially if he is of a different race and successful, are usually impugned, whatever they may be. The objects of art found in sixth-century Etruscan tombs would indicate, in any case, that Ionian, Attic, Corinthian, Chalcidian, Syracusan, Cumaean, and Carthaginian wares all reached Etruria with little hindrance. Nor is it probable that Etruscan traders carried the Aegean wares all the way, since Greek writers show little explicit knowledge of the Etruscans. Accordingly, it would seem that Etruscan piracy or competition did not extend to the point of closing the Tyrrhenian Sea to foreign merchants.

The Etruscan policy on the sea was doubtless influenced by Carthaginian precedents. Early in the sixth century, Carthage had been greatly strengthened by the accession of powerful Phoenician families whom the Assyrian invaders had driven from Tyre.[19] Carthage henceforth began to close African and Spanish waters to Greek traders[20] and accordingly made a treaty of close cooperation with the Etruscans. About 537, the two combined to destroy the Phocaean colony in Corsica and later made an attempt to take Cumae, a raid that failed only because of the interference of Syracuse. We may suppose, therefore, that a line was being drawn between the Greeks on the one hand and Carthage and the Etruscans on the other, and that both sides made difficulties for their opponents whenever possible. Greek skippers probably abstained from going singly into the Tyrrhenian Sea, just as Etruscans and Carthaginians seem not to have ventured frequently into Greek waters. Perhaps that is why Greek trade increased at Adriatic ports, whence the wares of Greece spread through Italy;[21] why in the same century a land route from Apulia to Cumae[22] was well traveled; and again why Cumaean products tended to take the land route from Capua to Falerii. There is even some evidence that sharp rivalry existed among the various Greek trading cities themselves, for Croton’s destruction of Sybaris[23] in 510 seems in part to have been due to the fact that Sybaris commanded the valuable portage over the lower ridge of Italy, whereby she had escaped from whatever restrictions the Syracusans, Zancleans, or Etruscans imposed below or above the Sicilian Straits. It is at least significant that the great trading city of Miletus, which had long been on unfriendly terms with Chalcis and therefore with the colonies of the straits, showed particular distress at the fall of Sybaris. Apparently, the Milesians had needed the portage road for their wares destined for the northwest.

[19] Myers, Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, p. xxxiv.

[20] The Rhodians attempted to plant colonies in western Sicily about 580, but were prevented by the Carthaginians. See also the Romano-Punic treaty of 509 B.C., Polyb. III, 22, and Arist. Pol. III, 5, 10.

[21] Dall’Osso, Guida illustrata del Museo di Ancona.

[22] Gabriel, Cuma, 420.

[23] Herodotus, VI, 21.

However, we have no right to assume that absolute trade restrictions had as yet been imposed anywhere except by Carthage. Lack of friendly relations might result in raids upon unwelcome traders venturing abroad unescorted, but the fact remains that the sixth-century importations into Etruscan territory were so varied and extensive that a relatively free trade must have existed.[24] Obviously, the whole of Etruria could not be made to accept any theory of mare clausum for the benefit of a few coastal towns that participated in the carrying trade, when such a policy would greatly reduce the commerce of cities not on the coast. Furthermore, any attempt to close the seas on a long and open coast like Italy’s, when the towns of the interior held the advantage of numerous land routes, would be quite futile.

[24] Caere later had the reputation of having pursued a liberal trade policy. After Rome became independent, Caere was, of course, compelled to keep an open port if she wished to retain her trade.

Judging from the objects of foreign trade found in Etruria on sixth-century sites, we may tentatively picture the commercial situation as follows. Carthaginian shippers probably had free access to Etruscan ports in accordance with treaties resembling the first Punic-Roman treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 22. This trade, however, connected Italy only with Africa, Spain, Britain—chiefly through Spain—and, to some slight extent, with Syria and Egypt. The Etruscans themselves carried on a vigorous coastwise trade, resorting, it would seem, to Marseilles, Cumae, and the Sicilian Straits. Since they seem not to have passed frequently into Greek waters,[25] they must have procured their cargoes of Greek wares at the western ends of portage routes—for instance, at Laos, Temesa, and Medma—and to some extent from Sicilian ports and Cumae. The Greek traders, in turn, from Corinth and Ionia, could therefore unload cargoes at southern Italian and Sicilian ports for further transshipment, though there can be little doubt that Phocaeans on the way to Marseilles stopped at Etruscan ports, and that Syracuse carried an important part of the coastal trade throughout the century. Her power on the sea and her position near the straits were such that she could not readily be thwarted. It was doubtless Syracuse[26] that spread the rapidly increasing products of Athens northward during the century before Athens became a carrying nation.

[25] The lack of Athenian coins in Etruscan hoards and of intimate references to the Etruscans in Athenian records seem to prove that Etruscan shippers did not often reach the Piraeus during the sixth century. The exchange of such wares doubtless took place near the Sicilian Straits. Cf. De Sanctis, Storia dei Rom. I, 442; Pais, Storia Critica, I, 357; Helbig, Rendiconti Lincei, 1889; Gött. Gel. Anz. 1912. Hackl, Merkantile Inschriften, p. 94, has pointed out that on the early Athenian vases the trademarks are generally in Ionic lettering. From this he infers that the ware was ordered and distributed by Ionic merchants.

[26] Syracuse was one of the earliest cities in the West to adopt the Attic standard in her coinage; Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 214.

Latium was, of course, though not an aggressive participant, a sharer in all this activity during the sixth century. Rome had grown so populous that seafarers must have resorted to her marketplace whenever possible, and the land routes from Etruria, Campania, Latium, and the Sabine interior crossed at Rome’s bridge. Furthermore, ships put in below Ardea, some twenty miles south of Rome, to trade with the Rutuli and the towns of the Alban Hills, and especially at the mouth of the Astura River to trade at Satricum, the terminal of the important roads that led inland between Velitrae and Norba to Praeneste on the north-south road and to the Italic tribes in the Hernican, Volscian, and Aequian hills.

Since bartering required a fair balance of trade, Latium must have paid for foreign wares with products in her possession, but we have some difficulty in ascertaining what these could have been.[27] Rome may have had some share in the metal industry that is so well attested for Praeneste. Plutarch, who may have had access to reliable information on the point, mentions guilds of goldsmiths and coppersmiths as existing in the regal period, and the Vicus Tuscus of Rome may have derived its name from a colony of Etruscan artisans. Indeed, the famous Capitoline wolf,[28] treasured by modern Rome as one of its most precious relics, seems to be a sixth-century masterpiece of Ionian-Etruscan art which, if made at Rome, would be a product of that industry. There could have been little exportation of grain, Latium’s chief product, in the light ships of that day, but the Latins could supply the mountain tribes of the interior with grain in exchange for wool and hides, which might then conveniently be exported. Furthermore, their grain may also have been used in procuring copper from the industrial cities beyond the Tiber, which in turn could serve as payment for imports. At any rate, Latium must have exported copper, since the Latin word nummus came to be current in Sicily for money. Similarly, the Sicilian word for pork, which seems to come from the Latin arvina, indicates that the early Latins raised enough swine for purposes of exchange.

[27] On early Roman industry, see Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 50. The article on “Industrie” in Pauly-Wissowa, by Gummerus, the erudite economist of Helsingfors, though published in 1916, is not yet available here.

[28] Petersen, Klio, 1909, 34.

From the very end of the period, immediately after the expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants and the establishment of the Republic, we have a commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome—fortunately preserved by Polybius—that throws more light on the commercial methods of that day than do the confused heaps of broken pottery. This document, one of the most valuable records of ancient history, reads as follows:[29]

“There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions:

(a) “Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond—that is, west of[30]—the Fair Promontory, unless driven by stress of weather or fear of enemies. If anyone is driven ashore there, he shall not buy or take for himself save what is needful for the repair of his ship and the service of the gods, and he shall depart within five days.

(b) “Men landing for traffic in Libya or Sardinia shall strike no bargain save in the presence of a herald or town clerk. Whatever is sold in the presence of these, let the price be secured to the seller on the credit of the state.

(c) “If any Roman comes to the Carthaginian province in Sicily, he shall enjoy all rights enjoyed by others.

(a′) “The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the people of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, Circeii, Tarracina, nor any other people of the Latins who are subject to Rome.

(b′) “From those townships of Latium that are not subject to Rome they shall hold their hands; and if they take one, they shall deliver it unharmed to the Romans.

(c′) “They shall build no fort in Latium; and if they enter the district in arms, they shall not stay a night therein.”

[29] Polybius, III, 22. Polybius places this treaty “in the first consulship of the Republic, the year in which the Capitoline temple was dedicated, twenty-eight years before Xerxes’ invasion of Greece,” that is, in 509–8 B.C. Despite this explicit dating of a treaty then still available in the Capitoline temple, Mommsen, Täubler (Imperium Romanum, p. 269), and many others have dated it in 348 B.C. However, a careful study of Rome’s territorial growth leads to the conclusion that the political provisions of this treaty accord with the date given by Polybius and no other. Carthage assumes in the third clause that Rome was sovereign over all the coastal towns as far as Tarracina. Immediately after the revolution, Rome supposed that she would inherit and exercise sovereignty over Latium as the Etruscan king had done. A few years after the revolution, when hard pressed by the Etruscans, she had to win the goodwill and support of the Latins by surrendering this claim and acknowledging the autonomy of the sister cities of Latium in a league. Never again until after 341 could the Latin cities be called “subjects” of Rome, and no one would claim that this treaty is later than 341. We must, therefore, admit that Polybius is approximately correct in his date.

[30] In commenting upon this treaty in III, 23, Polybius apparently thought ἐπέκεινα meant south, that is, the region generally called Libya in his day. However, the next treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 24, which is more explicit, proves that the north coast of Africa west of the promontory is meant.

This, our earliest existing commercial treaty of the West, is so precise and carefully constructed that it permits us to posit a long development of international diplomacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea before the close of the sixth century. It is apparent that the day had long passed when, as in Homer’s day, men generally assumed that all seafarers were on occasion sea-rovers.

It also reveals Carthage as a far more important commercial and political state than Rome,[31] for Carthage obviously composed and imposed this treaty. The numerous restrictions mentioned first are all in favor of Carthage. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any state that had the least interest in commerce and the power to protect it would acquiesce in such terms. Nor must it be inferred that the clause excluding Roman ships from Numidia implies extensive Roman commerce. These prohibitions, which accord with customary Punic policy, were probably inserted in view of a possible future development of Roman trade, or possibly in memory of what Etruscan Rome had done before the revolution. The treaty proves nothing about the trade of Rome after the expulsion of the kings, an event that must have involved a marked emigration of the commercial and industrial classes. It is certain that the liberated Latin people, true to old instincts, presently turned landward, and that in the fifth century Latium was less frequently visited by foreign traders. In fact, we shall find that Carthage did not consider it worthwhile to offer a new commercial treaty until the democracy of the fourth century showed some interest in foreign trade by colonizing Ostia, and even that treaty proves Rome incapable of asking for equitable terms.[32]

[31] Frank, “Mercantilism and Rome’s Foreign Policy,” Am. Hist. Rev. 1913, 234. Täubler, Imperium Romanum (1913), 264, has demonstrated that the clauses concerning the surrender of the site of a captured city and the submission of trade disputes to public settlement follow Punic and not Roman ideas. Kahrstedt, Klio, loc. cit., has quite missed the political significance of this treaty.

[32] Polybius, III, 24. The date is 348 B.C. The political situation implied in it accords with conditions in Latium just before the Latin War.

The document also shows that Carthage had already advanced far in enforcing a policy of mare clausum. She reserved the Numidian and Moorish coast, and probably therefore the Straits of Gibraltar, completely for her own traders. This was, of course, practicable, since the desert protected her from competition from the rear. Sardinia and Libya were not yet wholly closed, as they were by the next treaty, since the Punic fleet was still too small to enforce such restrictions, but their marketplaces were supervised by state officials who protected Punic interests. Only western Sicily, whose back gates could not be closed, was open to all comers. As for Rome, on the other hand, the treaty simply assumes the open door at her port. Obviously, we are to conclude that this was the traditional policy of Italian cities and that it had been so in Etruscan Rome. Indeed, the very fact that Carthage, the long-standing ally of Etruria, could make a commercial treaty with Rome immediately after the revolt from Etruria is good evidence that the Etruscan-Punic alliance did not, and had not, reserved the Tyrrhenian Sea to its two signatories. We have seen above why, given the numerous land routes of Italy, an attempt to close this sea would have been futile.

The treaty, then, on the one hand reveals Carthage as a powerful commercial nation eager to monopolize trade routes and gain as many new ports of entry as possible; on the other, it implies that while Rome may in the past have taken some part in shipping, she was now more concerned about the territorial integrity of Latium than about commerce and was willing to keep her ports open to all law-abiding seafarers.[33]

[33] Since opinions have varied widely regarding the reliability of early Roman historians, it is only fair that every historian of Rome should inform the reader of his attitude on this basic question. In the present volume, Polybius, Diodorus, and even Livy have been freely used in the belief that they provide an account of the Republican period which may, with some caution, be trusted. The Romans, respecters of law and legal forms to an unusual degree, preserved copies of their treaties, laws, and senatorial decrees, and also the high priests’ brief record of events. The pontifical annals purported, to be sure, to record only events of religious significance, but since only men of political dignity became priests, their annals were apt to contain many items of political importance.

The common assumption that most records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C. is far from probable. Archaeologists believe that most of the temples escaped destruction, and with them the records they contained. Apparently the Celts, as is often the case with primitive peoples, respected the holy places. At any rate, the treaties, which were kept on the Capitol, survived. See Roberts’ discussion of early archives in Mem. Amer. Acad. in Rome, II.

The earlier historians of Rome, like Fabius Pictor, were statesmen trained to acquire an accurate knowledge of laws and treaties. It is incorrect to ascribe to such men the loose historical methods followed by the rhetorical romancers who wrote for entertainment in Sulla’s day. The care and knowledge they employed in affairs of state they doubtless also used in their composition of history. See Duckett, Studies in Ennius.

In using later historians who filled in the Fabian skeleton with legendary material, we may in general assume that the main structure of the chronology is reliable—allowing, of course, for a discrepancy of three or four years in the early period—that the consular lists are equally safe, and that, in large part, the laws, treaties, senatus consulta, colonial dates, and dates of important wars are acceptable. It must, however, be remembered that bills proposed but not passed and senatorial debates were not recorded, and that the pontifical records had no space for such things as military movements. Hence, when such things occur in accounts of the period before 300 B.C., they must be considered mere oral tradition, which it is safest to reject wholly. After such purgation, the account afforded by our literary sources seems to be in reasonable accord with the latest conclusions of archaeology.

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA

At least a full millennium before Rome’s foundation, as the Egyptian records of the Twelfth Dynasty show, men traded and raided on the high seas of the Mediterranean.¹ Later, the Amarna tablets reveal Lycian pirates preying upon Egyptian and Cypriot merchants; and Phoenician traders traveled to Spain for British tin before the days of Hiram. It was probably during the eighth century that the Tyrsenian immigrants—who, by mingling with the Umbrians of Italy, gave rise to the great Etruscan race²—came across the sea from the coast of Asia Minor. North of the Tiber, the adventurers seized several towns from Caere to Vulci. The old cemetery at Tarquinii, where Villanovan urn burial³ was almost completely replaced by a new type of trench grave, provides striking evidence of how sudden the invasion of southern Etruria was.

¹ Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 188; Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, no. 38. In a forthcoming dissertation, part of which has been available to me, Miss L. E. W. Adams will discuss the early commerce of Latium.

² Körte, art. “Etrusker,” Pauly-Wissowa. Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, has called attention to the large number of Etruscan names that consist of Italic roots and Etruscan infixes. The explanation, of course, lies in a thorough racial mixture.

³ Karo, Bull. Paletn. Ital. 1898, 145 ff.; Notizie degli Scavi, 1907, 350.

During the eighth and seventh centuries, the new people—by then extensively mingled with their Italian subjects, as their personal names and religious cults show—spread quickly. They first occupied the iron- and copper-bearing region of northern Tuscany, then spread beyond it into the Po Valley, and also moved south through the Trerus Valley into Campania. Latium itself escaped for a long time—apparently because it was too densely settled to be conquered easily—but Praeneste, the Latin fortress town on the Sabine slope, was seized to guard the land route between Etruria and the Campanian outposts in the south.

Not long after the arrival of these first Orientals, the westward movement of Greek colonists began.⁴ From Epirus and the western Peloponnese came countless shiploads of people seeking land, who established the prosperous cities of southern Italy. Sparta followed by founding a colony at Tarentum. Around the middle of the eighth century, Chalcis in Euboea settled distant Cumae on the Bay of Naples, a city that soon became central Italy’s schoolmistress. Chalcis then settled both sides of the Sicilian Straits, founding cities at Naxos, Zancle, and Rhegium. Chalcis, itself situated on a narrow strait, had naturally developed an instinctive appreciation of the commercial value of such a location.

Farther north, the Greeks discovered that the Latin and Etruscan tribes were already in complete possession of the country, just as the Etruscans, in turn, encountered Greeks blocking their advance toward the coast when they later reached Campania. Corinth, already a trading and manufacturing town that had established trading posts on the Adriatic islands, sent a prosperous colony to Syracuse around 735 B.C.

⁴ Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, i, 237 ff.; A. Reinach, L’hellénisation du monde antique.

Although the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor—and especially the progressive city of Miletus—had earned large profits from trade in Thrace and the Pontus, the Rhodians turned toward the southern coast of Sicily, at Gela and Acragas, a century later. Around 600 B.C., the Phocaeans founded Marseilles near the Rhône, which their hardy ships had long visited. Even though the Latins did not come into direct contact with these various Greek colonies for a long time, their civilization soon felt the influence of the Aegean arts and crafts that these settlers brought westward from their former homes.

At first, Latium’s Etruscan neighbors failed to remain in contact with the Asiatic coast from which they had come. Perhaps the entire nation had migrated, leaving no relatives behind with whom they could communicate. Mesopotamian ideas are indeed plentiful in the religious cults and astrological lore of the Etruscans, but material evidence of Eastern commerce during the earliest period is rare, apart from such meager trifles as the Phoenicians had brought west even before the Etruscan migration.

Before long, however, some Etruscan princes grew wealthy from serf-cultivated plantations on soil that was still very productive, and Eastern seafarers then sought them out. In particular, the Phoenician merchants,⁵ who were losing to the Ionian Greeks the profitable Aegean markets they had controlled since Homeric times, now sought compensation in the West—in Spain, Tuscany, and Libya. The tombs of Caere and Praeneste, only twenty miles from Rome, have revealed the richest products of this Phoenician trade and are now generally dated somewhat later than 700 B.C.

For the history of early commerce, the most significant objects discovered in these tombs are silver and gilded bowls, apparently made by Phoenician craftsmen using designs drawn from Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian patterns; carved ivory plaques like those Tyrian artisans are said to have made for the inlaid work of Solomon’s Temple; painted ostrich eggs, which appear wherever Phoenician traders traveled; and the ubiquitous Egyptian glass beads and scarab amulets, along with many Phoenician imitations of both.

⁵ Poulsen, Der Orient und die frühgriechische Kunst, 116 ff.; Kahrstedt, “Phoenikischer Handel,” Klio, 1912, 461 ff.; Curtis, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. III.

The presence of Proto-Corinthian vases in these same tombs also shows that Greek traders came up the coast before the end of the eighth century.⁶ The first example of this Greek ware may have reached the region from Chalcis by way of Cumae, but before long the imports were increased by Corinthian seafarers. They carried the products of their own city to Corinth’s colony at Syracuse, from which those products quickly traveled northward.

Corinth borrowed ideas—and apparently artisans as well—from Tyre. Taking advantage of the disfavor into which Phoenician traders were falling in Greek lands, it now attempted to capture the Greek market for Tyrian textiles, perfumes, and ointments. As containers for the latter, Corinth produced the delicate earthenware bottles that have become archaeologists’ criteria for establishing seventh-century chronology. Corinth’s position on the gulf gave it a great advantage in the new western trade, and excavations at Syracuse and Cumae, as well as in the Etruscan cities of Caere and Tarquinii, prove that it knew how to profit from that advantage.

⁶ Lorimer, “The Fabrics Called Proto-Corinthian,” Jour. Hell. Stud. 1912, 326 ff.; Perrot and Chipiez, IX, 574 ff.; Gabrici, Cuma, Monumenti Antichi, XXII, 343 ff.; Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, 14; Prinz, Klio, Beiheft VII.

Throughout this period, Rome remained a collection of farming villages. The soil of Latium was rich and supported a dense population—a tribe so strong that the Etruscans could not advance southward across the Tiber except along a road that closely followed the rocky slopes of the Sabine Mountains. Meanwhile, the busy farmers of the plain seem to have isolated themselves from contact with the Phoenician traders who constantly bartered with the neighboring cities of Etruria.

The Romans received the very name “Poeni” from Syracusan traders who succeeded the Phoenicians, while they learned the Latin words for commercial objects and parts of ships from the seafarers of Syracuse and Cumae. Even the earliest Cumaean trade, so well attested by the imported ware found at Corneto, seems to have found no favor at all in Latium.⁷ At Rome, nothing has yet been discovered that corresponds to the rich stores of gold, silver, amber, and ivory so abundant at neighboring sites north of the river. A few fragments of early Proto-Corinthian ware have indeed been unearthed, but this pottery was far from expensive, and such trifles may easily have been bought by the villagers of the seven hills from traders using the most direct road from Caere to Praeneste and Campania.

⁷ Gabrici, op. cit., points out that Cumaean ware went in large quantities to the Etruscan cities north of the Tiber for a long time without entering Latium. It would therefore appear that Latian culture did not keep pace with Etruria during the seventh century. Satricum, however, seems to have been reached by Greek traders, probably because Satricum was the port of entry for goods sent to Praeneste, which was already in Etruscan hands.

As the seventh century ended, several important events changed the course of Italian commerce. Phoenician trade declined rapidly, partly because of Assyrian pressure in Syria, partly because Greek commerce was growing under the stimulus and support of widely scattered colonies, and partly, perhaps, because Syracuse—now active in commerce—could use its commanding position below the Sicilian Straits to hinder its rivals. The hostility between the Syracusans and the Phoenicians had deep roots.⁸

In any case, the Latin language clearly shows the influence of contact with the Syracusans during the interval between Phoenician and Etruscan ascendancy—that is, apparently near the end of the seventh century. Excavations at Cumae have also revealed close communication between that city and Syracuse during the same period.

⁸ Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, ii, 249.

It was also around the end of the seventh century that the Etruscan armies finally succeeded in overwhelming Latium, thereby decisively connecting Campania with Etruria. Here and there, princes took possession of the villages and apparently assumed ownership of the land. At Rome, the separate villages on the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal hills were politically organized, and a strong stone wall was built around them.⁹ The city eventually became the seat of an Etruscan sovereign who ruled over all the lords of Latium.

Palaces were built for the kings, and temples were built for vague spirits that were now identified with gods whom the Etruscans had fashioned through a blending of Italic, Greek, and Oriental elements. Laborers were brought in to adorn the rapidly growing city, and a harbor¹⁰ was built at the mouth of the Tiber to attract Etruscan and Greek seafarers.

⁹ “Notes on the Servian Wall,” Am. Jour. Arch. 1918, 175 ff.

¹⁰ “Rome’s First Coinage,” Class. Phil. 1919, 314.

Even then, however, it is doubtful whether Rome actually became an important center of maritime trade. The seagoing vessels of that period¹¹ depended largely on sails and were too poorly crewed to pull cargoes against a strong river current such as that of the Tiber. Moreover, ship captains needed to beach their ships, carry their goods to the marketplace, and bargain in person.

A convenient sandbar, such as those below Caere and Tarquinii, was much better suited to that kind of trade. So was the mouth of a small, calm river, such as Satricum¹² possessed in the Astura, or Ardea in the Incastro and the Numicus. Rome’s early growth probably owed less to its position in relation to maritime trade than to its control of the Tiber crossing at the point where Etruscan land routes from Tarquinii, Caere, and Veii most conveniently crossed toward Tibur, Praeneste, the Campanian road through the Trerus Valley, and the Latin cities of Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Norba, Ardea, Satricum, and Tarracina.

¹¹ Huvelin, “Mercatura,” Daremberg-Saglio.

¹² Strabo, V, 2, somewhat to our surprise, calls the mouth of the Astura a useful roadstead even in his own day.

Nevertheless, Rome and all of Latium remained closely connected with Mediterranean commerce throughout the century of Etruscan occupation. Although the Latins succeeded in preserving their language and the essentials of their democratic ideals until the day of liberation, this period had profound cultural importance. Everywhere, farming villages were transformed into cities where Punic, Sicilian, and Massiliot traders sold their goods in the marketplaces, and where Phocaean and Corinthian artists and craftsmen found employment decorating temples, palaces, and tombs.¹³

¹³ Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, 1918. Mrs. Arthur Strong, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 160 ff. The immigration of Ionians was probably greatest in the middle of the sixth century, when the Persians subdued the Ionian cities; Herodotus, I, 164.

It was also around 600 B.C. that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor, outmatched by the Milesians in trade with the Pontus, settled Marseilles so that they could profit from commerce with the western Celts and Iberians. This was an event of primary importance for Italy because passing Phocaean commerce ensured regular communication with the progressive and art-loving Ionians of Asia. The reports these captains brought home about opportunities in the luxurious cities of the West undoubtedly persuaded large numbers of artists and craftsmen to seek their fortunes in Italy.

This colony also brought new resources to Italy. By competing with Phoenician maritime traders, the Massiliots opened a new route through Gaul for obtaining the British tin required by the bronze industries of the Italian cities. They also brought iron from German and Spanish mines, as well as raw products such as wool and hides for the industrial cities. Finally, the increasing use of amber ornaments in Etruscan cities at this time shows how extensively the new colony stimulated western trade, even as far away as the Baltic Sea.

Toward the beginning of the sixth century, there was also a striking increase at Etruscan sites in the quantity of Corinthian ware and of native ware made from Corinthian models.¹⁴ It has plausibly been suggested that this resulted from the political upheavals in Corinth that, around 583 B.C., drove many prominent men and their clients into exile. Some of these exiles seem to have found refuge in Tuscany, where they either resumed their former occupations or taught others the arts they knew.

The Roman legend of Demaratus—the Corinthian whose son by an Etruscan mother became Rome’s powerful King Tarquin—is by no means improbable. The emperor Claudius, who later referred to the story, vouched for its presence in very old Etruscan records.¹⁵

¹⁴ Perrot, IX, 628.

¹⁵ Körte, Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 1897, 57.

Finally, anyone studying early Italian commerce will find in Naucratis,¹⁶ at the mouth of the Nile, an interesting indicator of the trade passing between East and West. This “ancient Shanghai,” as it has aptly been called, was an industrial and trading post that the normally exclusive Egyptians permitted the Ionian trading cities to establish in their country.

Vigorous factories developed there, sending out not only goods made in the latest Ionian styles, but also objects used in Egyptian religious practices and personal adornment. The products of this distinctive art, which have been found abundantly in Italy, therefore provide evidence of communication with cities such as Rhodes, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, which participated in the industries of Naucratis. This is especially true because the objects are found together with artistic works that closely resemble art discovered near those same cities in Asia.

¹⁶ Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, Klio, Beiheft VII; Herodotus, II, 178.

There is therefore abundant evidence of the extensive foreign influence that reached western Italy. It is more difficult, however, to determine who carried the trade in each case, and what part the Etruscans and Latins played in the industry and commerce of the period.

During the sixth century, when Latium was under their control, the Etruscans were at the height of their success. They controlled western Italy from the Alps to Campania and could, if they chose, command trade in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their wealth undoubtedly depended largely on exploiting the native population, who were forced to cultivate the soil as serfs. Large and wealthy cities such as Caere, Tarquinii, and Vulci were not situated in the metal-bearing zone, nor did they occupy especially advantageous positions for commerce, although they undoubtedly profited by bringing products from the interior to seafarers.

As a people, however, the Etruscans seem everywhere to have taken a keen interest in industry. Their characteristically Oriental love of color, ornament, and luxurious clothing, together with their deep religious feeling—which demanded the exact use of objects associated with worship and the tomb—gave rise to extensive native industries. Thus, even towns such as Praeneste,¹⁷ which had no raw materials, became industrial centers. From them, we have recovered finely crafted jewelry made of gold and precious stones, many engraved bronze mirrors, and numerous elaborate household objects.

Despite an apparent lack of originality in design, the technique used in all this work became so highly developed that it is often impossible to determine whether a given piece was made locally or imported. Archaeologists therefore classify many products of the period by their designs as Phoenician-Etruscan, Ionian-Etruscan, or Corinthian-Etruscan.

At this time, large numbers of vases were also made in the Ionian and Corinthian styles, and later in the famous Attic black-figure style. If these works reveal their western origin at all, they do so only through an Etruscan inscription or some slight deviation in the interpretation of the myths they represent.

In the architecture of their temples, the Etruscans generally adopted Ionian and Sicilian designs. It appears, in fact, that Greek architects were usually brought in to construct them. Moreover, because Etruria lacked good building stone, they adopted the extensive use of timber from Ionia and Sicily. The wooden beam ends, architraves, and pediments were accordingly decorated with terracotta relief plaques.

The molds required for the processions of charioteers, hunters, maenads, satyrs, and all the other figures may initially have been imported from Ionia, or Ionian artists themselves may have been invited to design them. Native craftsmen, however, continued to create other designs with such meticulous precision that it is difficult to determine where native work begins. The ruins of Veii and Falerii, Satricum and Velitrae, and even Rome have yielded cult statues and temple figures in terracotta whose beauty can hardly be matched by contemporary work from Greece or Asia Minor.¹⁸

¹⁷ Mantegazza, Praeneste, Spiegel, 34.

¹⁸ Mrs. Arthur Strong, loc. cit.; Mrs. A. W. Van Buren, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 183 ff.

The Etruscans also apparently played a role at sea during the sixth century. The Greeks—who undoubtedly lost some of their profits because of this new competition—usually called the Etruscan seafarers pirates. It is impossible to establish how far this name was deserved. The methods of a commercial rival, especially one of a different race who is successful, are usually criticized, whatever those methods may actually be.

In any case, the works of art found in sixth-century Etruscan tombs indicate that Ionian, Attic, Corinthian, Chalcidian, Syracusan, Cumaean, and Carthaginian goods all reached Etruria with little difficulty. Nor is it likely that Etruscan traders carried Aegean goods over the entire distance, since Greek writers show little detailed knowledge of the Etruscans. It would therefore appear that Etruscan piracy or competition did not go so far as to close the Tyrrhenian Sea to foreign merchants.

Etruscan maritime policy was undoubtedly influenced by Carthaginian precedents. Early in the sixth century, Carthage had been greatly strengthened by the addition of powerful Phoenician families whom the Assyrian invaders had driven from Tyre.¹⁹ From then on, Carthage began to close African and Spanish waters to Greek traders²⁰ and accordingly formed a treaty of close cooperation with the Etruscans.

Around 537 B.C., the two powers combined to destroy the Phocaean colony in Corsica. Later, they attempted to capture Cumae, a raid that failed only because Syracuse intervened. We may therefore suppose that a dividing line was being drawn between the Greeks on one side and Carthage and the Etruscans on the other, and that each side created difficulties for its opponents whenever possible.

Greek captains probably avoided entering the Tyrrhenian Sea alone, just as Etruscans and Carthaginians seem not to have ventured frequently into Greek waters. Perhaps this explains why Greek commerce increased at Adriatic ports, from which Greek products spread throughout Italy;²¹ why, during the same century, a land route from Apulia to Cumae²² was heavily traveled; and why Cumaean goods tended to follow the land route from Capua to Falerii.

¹⁹ Myers, Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, p. xxxiv.

²⁰ The Rhodians attempted to establish colonies in western Sicily around 580 B.C., but the Carthaginians prevented them. See also the Roman-Punic treaty of 509 B.C., Polybius, III, 22, and Aristotle, Politics, III, 5, 10.

²¹ Dall’Osso, Guida illustrata del Museo di Ancona.

²² Gabrici, Cuma, 430.

There is even some evidence of intense rivalry among the Greek trading cities themselves. Croton’s destruction of Sybaris²³ in 510 B.C. seems to have resulted partly from the fact that Sybaris controlled the valuable portage across the lower ridge of Italy. This route had allowed Sybaris to escape whatever restrictions the Syracusans, Zancleans, or Etruscans imposed below or above the Sicilian Straits.

It is at least significant that the great trading city of Miletus, which had long been on unfriendly terms with Chalcis and therefore with the colonies along the straits, showed particular distress at the fall of Sybaris. Apparently, the Milesians had needed the portage route for goods destined for the northwest.

²³ Herodotus, VI, 21.

We have no right, however, to assume that complete trade restrictions had yet been imposed anywhere except by Carthage. A lack of friendly relations might lead to raids against unwelcome traders who ventured abroad without escort, but the fact remains that sixth-century imports into Etruscan territory were so varied and extensive that trade must have been relatively free.²⁴

Obviously, all of Etruria could not be made to accept any theory of mare clausum for the benefit of a few coastal towns engaged in the carrying trade, when such a policy would greatly reduce the commerce of inland cities. Furthermore, any attempt to close the sea along a long, open coast such as Italy’s would have been futile when the inland towns had the advantage of numerous land routes.

²⁴ Caere later had a reputation for pursuing a liberal trade policy. After Rome became independent, Caere was, of course, compelled to maintain an open port if it wished to preserve its trade.

Judging from the foreign commercial objects found at sixth-century Etruscan sites, we may tentatively reconstruct the situation as follows. Carthaginian shippers probably had free access to Etruscan ports under treaties resembling the first Punic-Roman treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 22. This trade, however, connected Italy only with Africa, Spain, Britain—chiefly through Spain—and, to a limited extent, Syria and Egypt.

The Etruscans themselves conducted a vigorous coastal trade, apparently traveling to Marseilles, Cumae, and the Sicilian Straits. Since they do not seem to have entered Greek waters frequently,²⁵ they must have obtained cargoes of Greek goods at the western ends of portage routes—for example, at Laos, Temesa, and Medma—and to some extent from Sicilian ports and Cumae.

Greek traders from Corinth and Ionia could therefore unload cargoes at southern Italian and Sicilian ports for further shipment. There can be little doubt, however, that Phocaeans traveling to Marseilles stopped at Etruscan ports, and that Syracuse carried an important share of the coastal trade throughout the century. Syracuse’s maritime power and its position near the straits made it difficult to obstruct. It was undoubtedly Syracuse²⁶ that spread the rapidly increasing products of Athens northward during the century before Athens itself became a carrying nation.

²⁵ The absence of Athenian coins from Etruscan hoards, and the lack of detailed references to the Etruscans in Athenian records, seem to prove that Etruscan shippers did not often reach the Piraeus during the sixth century. The exchange of such goods probably took place near the Sicilian Straits. Cf. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, I, 442; Pais, Storia Critica, I, 357; Helbig, Rendiconti Lincei, 1889; Gött. Gel. Anz. 1912. Hackl, Merkantile Inschriften, p. 94, has pointed out that the trade marks on early Athenian vases generally use Ionian lettering. From this he infers that the ware was ordered and distributed by Ionian merchants.

²⁶ Syracuse was one of the earliest cities in the West to adopt the Attic standard for its coinage; Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 214.

Although Latium was not an aggressive participant, it naturally shared in all this activity during the sixth century. Rome had grown so populous that seafarers must have visited its marketplace whenever possible, and land routes from Etruria, Campania, Latium, and the Sabine interior crossed at Rome’s bridge.

Ships also put in below Ardea, about twenty miles south of Rome, to trade with the Rutuli and the towns of the Alban Hills. They especially used the mouth of the Astura River to trade at Satricum, the terminus of important roads that led inland between Velitrae and Norba to Praeneste on the north-south road, and to the Italic tribes in the Hernican, Volscian, and Aequian hills.

Because barter required a fair balance of trade, Latium must have paid for foreign goods with products it possessed, but it is difficult to determine what those products were.²⁷ Rome may have had some involvement in the metalworking industry so well documented at Praeneste. Plutarch, who may have had access to reliable information on this point, mentions guilds of goldsmiths and coppersmiths as existing during the regal period. Rome’s Vicus Tuscus may also have received its name from a colony of Etruscan artisans.

Indeed, the famous Capitoline wolf,²⁸ treasured by modern Rome as one of its most precious relics, appears to be a sixth-century masterpiece of Ionian-Etruscan art. If it was made in Rome, it would have been a product of that industry.

Given the light vessels of the period, there could have been little exportation of grain, Latium’s chief product. The Latins could, however, supply the mountain tribes of the interior with grain in exchange for wool and hides, which could then be conveniently exported. Their grain may also have been used to obtain copper from the industrial cities beyond the Tiber, which could in turn serve as payment for imported goods.

In any case, Latium must have exported copper, since the Latin word nummus became current in Sicily as a word for money. Similarly, the Sicilian word for pork, which seems to derive from the Latin arvina, indicates that the early Latins raised enough swine for trade.

²⁷ On early Roman industry, see Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 50. The article on “Industrie” in Pauly-Wissowa by Gummerus, the learned economist of Helsingfors, although published in 1916, is not yet available here.

²⁸ Petersen, Klio, 1909, 34.

From the very end of the period—immediately after the expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants and the establishment of the Republic—we possess a commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome, fortunately preserved by Polybius. It reveals more about the commercial methods of the time than do the confused heaps of broken objects. This document, one of the most valuable records of ancient history, reads as follows:²⁹

“There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions:

(a) “Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond—that is, west of³⁰—the Fair Promontory, unless driven there by bad weather or fear of enemies. If anyone is driven ashore there, he shall neither buy nor take for himself anything except what is necessary to repair his ship and serve the gods, and he shall leave within five days.

(b) “Men landing to trade in Libya or Sardinia shall make no bargain except in the presence of a herald or town clerk. Whatever is sold in their presence, the price shall be secured to the seller on the credit of the state.

(c) “If any Roman comes to the Carthaginian province in Sicily, he shall enjoy all rights enjoyed by others.

(a′) “The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the people of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, Circeii, Tarracina, or any other people of the Latins who are subject to Rome.

(b′) “They shall keep their hands off those towns of Latium that are not subject to Rome; and if they capture one, they shall return it unharmed to the Romans.

(c′) “They shall build no fort in Latium; and if they enter the district under arms, they shall not remain there overnight.”

²⁹ Polybius, III, 22. Polybius dates this treaty to “the first consulship of the Republic, the year in which the Capitoline temple was dedicated, twenty-eight years before Xerxes’ invasion of Greece”; that is, to 509–508 B.C. Despite this explicit dating of a treaty that was still available in the Capitoline temple, Mommsen, Täubler, Imperium Romanum, p. 269, and many others have dated it to 348 B.C. A careful study of Rome’s territorial growth, however, leads to the conclusion that the treaty’s political provisions agree with the date given by Polybius and with no other.

In the third clause, Carthage assumes that Rome was sovereign over all the coastal towns as far as Tarracina. Immediately after the revolution, Rome expected to inherit and exercise the sovereignty over Latium that the Etruscan king had possessed. A few years after the revolution, when Rome was under severe pressure from the Etruscans, it had to gain the goodwill and support of the Latins by surrendering this claim and acknowledging the autonomy of Latium’s sister cities within a league. Not again until after 341 B.C. could the Latin cities be called “subjects” of Rome, and no one would claim that this treaty dates from after 341. We must therefore admit that Polybius is approximately correct in his date.

³⁰ In commenting on this treaty in III, 23, Polybius apparently thought ἐπέκεινα meant south—that is, the region generally called Libya in his time. The next treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 24, however, is more explicit and proves that the northern coast of Africa west of the promontory is meant.

This, our earliest surviving commercial treaty from the West, is so precise and carefully constructed that it allows us to assume a long development of international diplomacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea before the end of the sixth century. It is clear that the time had long passed when, as in Homer’s day, people generally assumed that all seafarers were also, on occasion, sea raiders.

The treaty also reveals Carthage as a much more important commercial and political state than Rome,³¹ for Carthage plainly composed and imposed the agreement. The numerous restrictions stated first are all in Carthage’s favor. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any state with even a slight interest in commerce, and the power to protect it, would have accepted such terms.

Nor should the clause excluding Roman ships from Numidia be taken to imply that Roman commerce was extensive. These prohibitions, which agree with customary Punic policy, were probably inserted with a possible future development of Roman trade in mind, or perhaps in memory of what Etruscan Rome had done before the revolution.

The treaty proves nothing about Roman trade after the expulsion of the kings, an event that must have caused a substantial emigration of the commercial and industrial classes. It is certain that the liberated Latin people, true to their old instincts, soon turned inland, and that foreign traders visited Latium less frequently during the fifth century. Indeed, Carthage did not consider it worthwhile to offer another commercial treaty until the democracy of the fourth century showed some interest in foreign trade by colonizing Ostia. Even then, Rome seems to have been incapable of requesting equal terms for its merchants.³²

³¹ Frank, “Mercantilism and Rome’s Foreign Policy,” Am. Hist. Rev. 1913, 234. Täubler, Imperium Romanum, 1913, 264, has demonstrated that the clauses concerning the surrender of the site of a captured city and the submission of trade disputes to public settlement follow Punic rather than Roman ideas. Kahrstedt, Klio, loc. cit., has completely missed the political significance of this treaty.

³² Polybius, III, 24. The date is 348 B.C. The political situation implied by the treaty agrees with conditions in Latium immediately before the Latin War.

The document also shows that Carthage had already advanced far in enforcing a policy of mare clausum. It reserved the Numidian and Moorish coast—and probably therefore the Strait of Gibraltar—entirely for its own traders. This was practical, of course, because the desert protected Carthage from competition from the interior.

Sardinia and Libya were not yet completely closed, as they would be under the next treaty, because the Punic fleet was still too small to enforce such restrictions. Their marketplaces, however, were supervised by state officials who protected Punic interests. Only western Sicily, whose inland approaches could not be closed, was open to everyone.

For Rome, on the other hand, the treaty simply assumes an open port. We must clearly conclude that this was the traditional policy of Italian cities and that it had also been the policy of Etruscan Rome. Indeed, the very fact that Carthage, Etruria’s long-standing ally, could make a commercial treaty with Rome immediately after Rome’s revolt from Etruria is good evidence that the Etruscan-Punic alliance did not—and had not—reserved the Tyrrhenian Sea exclusively for the two signatories. We have already seen why, given Italy’s numerous land routes, an attempt to close this sea would have been futile.

Thus, on the one hand, the treaty reveals Carthage as a powerful commercial nation eager to monopolize trade routes and gain as many new ports of entry as possible. On the other hand, it implies that although Rome may formerly have participated to some extent in shipping, it was now more concerned with the territorial integrity of Latium than with commerce and was willing to keep its ports open to all law-abiding seafarers.³³

³³ Since opinions have varied widely about the reliability of the early Roman historians, every historian of Rome should fairly inform the reader of his attitude toward this fundamental question. In the present volume, Polybius, Diodorus, and even Livy have been freely used in the belief that, with some caution, they provide a trustworthy account of the Republican period.

The Romans respected law and legal forms to an unusual degree. They preserved copies of their treaties, laws, and senatorial decrees, as well as the high priests’ brief records of events. The pontifical annals claimed, to be sure, to record only events of religious significance. But because only men of political standing became priests, their annals were likely to contain many items of political importance.

The common assumption that most records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C. is far from probable. Archaeologists believe that most of the temples escaped destruction and, with them, the records they contained. Apparently the Celts respected sacred places, as primitive peoples often do. In any case, the treaties, which were kept on the Capitol, survived. See Roberts’s discussion of early archives in Mem. Amer. Acad. in Rome, II.

The earlier historians of Rome, such as Fabius Pictor, were statesmen trained to acquire accurate knowledge of laws and treaties. It is incorrect to attribute to such men the loose historical methods followed by the rhetorical romancers who wrote for entertainment in Sulla’s time. They undoubtedly applied to writing history the same care and knowledge they used in affairs of state. See Duckett, Studies in Ennius.

When using later historians who filled in the Fabian framework with legendary material, we may generally assume that the basic chronological structure is reliable, allowing, of course, for a discrepancy of three or four years during the early period; that the consular lists are equally dependable; and that, for the most part, the laws, treaties, senatus consulta, dates of colonies, and dates of important wars are acceptable.

It must be remembered, however, that bills proposed but not passed and senatorial debates were not recorded, and that the pontifical records had no space for such matters as military movements. Therefore, when such things appear in accounts of the period before 300 B.C., they must be regarded as mere oral tradition, which it is safest to reject entirely. After such material has been removed, the account provided by our literary sources seems reasonably consistent with the latest conclusions of archaeology.