The terms of this treaty reveal how powerful Rome had be come under the Tarquins and explain to us the resources that could pay for the building of a wall of 6m. and the power that could muster and employ an army of 20,000 men. They also help us to picture the resources that were expended in a very ag gressive building programme. The temple to Jupiter which Tarquin nearly completed on the Capitoline hill stood on a lofty stylobate more than loft. high and measured about 2ooft. x 185ft. None of the flourishing Etruscan cities with all their commercial prosperity had any temple comparable to this. Tar quin also moved the Diana cult from Aricia to Rome so as to make Rome the religious centre of the Latin communities of the Alban hills, and to Diana he built a famous temple on the Aventine. To the Etruscan period are also attributed several Fortuna temples—since soothsaying was particularly in favour with the Etruscans. Then in the first years of the republic there were built several temples begun by the Tarquins or vowed in the vigorous spirit of enterprise that the Tarquins had instilled; the large temple of Saturn below the Capitoline, the temple of Mer cury—the god of commerce—behind the Palatine, the temple of Ceres nearby, and the splendid temple of Castor in the Forum. Not till two centuries later did the republic spend so much energy and money in public buildings, for with the expulsion of the Etruscans Rome became again a rural market place.
The effects of the Etruscan regime were widespread, though it apparently did not last more than about a century—if we are right in dating the last of the Forum burials about 600 B.C. In the Etruscan Government the senate had been retained, though virtually stripped of power, and the assembly was probably never summoned by the last Tarquin. A large industrial class must have come into existence in the city in the regal period, for even though the walls were raised by forced citizen-labour as tradition held, the increase in trade at the Roman market, the manufac ture of the elaborate decorations for the new buildings, the serv ice of a luxurious court, the provisioning and equipping of a large army would require much skilled labour. In some of the regions of Latium taken by force it is probable that the natives were reduced to serfdom as had been the custom in various parts of Etruria. The long and expensive drainage canals that are found between the Alban hills and the sea are not explicable in a system of small free farmers. In that region at least there must have been one or more strong lords who commanded much labour and capital. Whether the prince retained the land as a royal domain or assigned it as fiefs to favourites we have no means of knowing, and we must also admit that no conclusive evidence survived in Roman custom of the servile system which is frequently posited for this period.
This foreign regime also accounts for certain changes in rites, customs and institutions that were more or less lasting. The Etruscans had usually accepted the Italic deities from their subjects, but having come from the East and imbued with anthro pomorphic conceptions they made representations of these deities in bronze or terra-cotta and built temples for them. Since such representations were usually derived from figures of Greek gods this process not only localized and gave human form to the Italic deities, but syncretized them with definite Greek gods regarding whom there existed a mythology. In this respect therefore the intervention of the Etruscans completely revolutionized the ideas of the younger generation of Romans. The Etruscans also lent their influence to the growing custom of inhuming the dead, and, for a while at least, to the interment of costly adornments with the body. Since the Etruscan burial rites—brought from Asia— were definitely connected with beliefs of the survival of the genius in a state of happiness or suffering, the Italic ideas of future existence were thus permanently altered, even though the Re publican Government when restored tried to abolish funeral adornments and encourage a return to the Italic burial customs. That the Latin language was not displaced at Rome even in official regal inscriptions is proved by the survival of the famous "stele" of the forum, which is written in Latin though on an Etruscan stone and containing a reference to the king.