DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0092
XCll EFFECTS OF ETRUSCAN CIVILIZATION [introduction.
the former acknowledged their power at sea, their commercial
importance, and their artistic skill; and the latter were forced to
confess that to Etruria they owed most of their institutions and
arts : still neither have paid that tribute to her civilization
which we have now learned to be due, and the Romans have
not acknowledged their full amount of "indebtedness" to it—a
fact which is seen in the silence or merely incidental acknow-
ledgment of their historians and poets, who would willingly
have referred all the refinement of Rome to a Hellenic source.
Though the ancients were reluctant to admit the full worth
of Etruria, I can scarcely think with Niebuhr, that she has
received from the moderns more than her due share of atten-
tion and praise. How far we Transalpines of the nineteenth
century are indebted to her civilization is a problem hardly to
be solved; but indelible traces of her influence are apparent in
Italy. That portion of the Peninsula where civilization earliest
flourished, whence infant Rome received her first lessons, has
in subsequent ages maintained its pre-eminence. It was on
the Etruscan soil that the seeds of culture, dormant through
the long winter of barbarism, broke forth anew when a genial
spring smiled on the human intellect: it was in Etruria that
immortality was first bestowed on the lyre, the canvass, the
marble, the science of modern Europe. Here arose
" the all Etruscan three—
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love."
It was Etruria which produced Giotto, Brunelleschi, Fra Ange-
lico, Luca Signorelli,Era Baxtolemeo, Michel Angelo/ Hildebrand,
Macchiavelli, " the starry Galileo," and such a noble band of
painters, sculptors, and architects, as no other country of
2 Raffaelle also, if he does not belong of those lands beyond the Apennines
strictly to Etruria Proper, was born and the Tiber which once belonged to
not far from the frontiers, and in a her, there would be very few illustrious
region that was possessed by the Etrus- Italian names, either of ancient or
cans. Besides he was educated in the modern times, which would be excluded
Perugian sehool. Yet if we were to from the category,
claim as the sons of Etruria the natives
the former acknowledged their power at sea, their commercial
importance, and their artistic skill; and the latter were forced to
confess that to Etruria they owed most of their institutions and
arts : still neither have paid that tribute to her civilization
which we have now learned to be due, and the Romans have
not acknowledged their full amount of "indebtedness" to it—a
fact which is seen in the silence or merely incidental acknow-
ledgment of their historians and poets, who would willingly
have referred all the refinement of Rome to a Hellenic source.
Though the ancients were reluctant to admit the full worth
of Etruria, I can scarcely think with Niebuhr, that she has
received from the moderns more than her due share of atten-
tion and praise. How far we Transalpines of the nineteenth
century are indebted to her civilization is a problem hardly to
be solved; but indelible traces of her influence are apparent in
Italy. That portion of the Peninsula where civilization earliest
flourished, whence infant Rome received her first lessons, has
in subsequent ages maintained its pre-eminence. It was on
the Etruscan soil that the seeds of culture, dormant through
the long winter of barbarism, broke forth anew when a genial
spring smiled on the human intellect: it was in Etruria that
immortality was first bestowed on the lyre, the canvass, the
marble, the science of modern Europe. Here arose
" the all Etruscan three—
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love."
It was Etruria which produced Giotto, Brunelleschi, Fra Ange-
lico, Luca Signorelli,Era Baxtolemeo, Michel Angelo/ Hildebrand,
Macchiavelli, " the starry Galileo," and such a noble band of
painters, sculptors, and architects, as no other country of
2 Raffaelle also, if he does not belong of those lands beyond the Apennines
strictly to Etruria Proper, was born and the Tiber which once belonged to
not far from the frontiers, and in a her, there would be very few illustrious
region that was possessed by the Etrus- Italian names, either of ancient or
cans. Besides he was educated in the modern times, which would be excluded
Perugian sehool. Yet if we were to from the category,
claim as the sons of Etruria the natives