Altogether, the Etruscans were a people eminently gifted with the artistic sense; they had the merit, through their conquests, by which they dominated a great part of Italy; gr through their commerce, of diffusing also this branch of their civilization, the further histori cal civilization of Italypon which was laid R the foundation of the Roman power that con quered the world.
The Etruscans had as competitors for the domination of Southern Italy, the Greeks, and as rivals in commerce the Phoenicians, espe cially, those of Carthage. But these had no standing in other countries but a commercial one; their influence was not that of colonizers. A people that is essentially practical, and with precise ideals, can never have a true and individual art of its own. Hence the Phceni cian influence in art in Italy is quite incon siderable, in spite of some of its special mani festations in the colonies of Sardinia (as in Nora), and of Sicily (for instance, with its walls). Besides this, the Italian spirit and the Etruscan were profoundly diverse, and agree only in anti-semitism.
The Greeks, on the other hand, who colo nized Sicily and the extreme lower part of Italy in the 8th century, and who also had perhaps a commercial influence, if they were not true colonists in the earlier times, entered as the principal factors into the classical civi lization of Italy, investing the Etrusco-Italian civilization with elegance and refinement of form without changing the substance.
We must remember that in one period of Greek history, Magna Grecia found itself in a more flourishing condition than continental Greece, and that artists found in the west a better field for the exercise of their art than in their own country. The principal Greek colonies in Italy were of Doric or partly Doric origin; hence Peloponnesian art was readily diffused in Italy. The Doric temples of geste, of Selinunte and of Posidonia, of the 6th century, recall those of Olympia and Egina.
Sicilian sculpture is similar to the works of Olympia; is seen also perhaps in the less archaic metopes, of Selinunte, resembling the works of Kritios, and the acroterii (Ionian) of Locri.
The numismatic art of the Syracusans was unexcelled, and their coins stamped with the signature of Euainetos are the most beautiful specimens ever executed, even when compared with those made in Greece itself.
Tarentum was not only the commercial but the artistic centre. There are said to have ex isted manufactories for bronze molding, for gold work and for ceramics, the products of which are found all over Italy. One of the most singular manifestations of Greek art on Italian soil is ceramics. This western ceramic art differed from that of Greece, as well in a freer, clearer design, in a greater richness of coloring and greater size, suitable to a bar barous style. The subjects, even the mytho logical ones, deal chiefly with funeral ceremo nies, for which they were exclusively destined.
i Meanwhile the power of Rome increased, and its dominion extended, and in it was grad ually concentrated all the Italian spirit, laying the foundation of its various elements. Rome, originating in small Italian beginnings, had soon received with Etruscan domination the spark of civilization and prepared itself now to absorb Hellenism. The outcome of this was the classic western civilization, the civilization of Rome.
Early art in Rome was Etrus can. That is shown by historical tradition and by the earliest, most archaic, monuments. Let us take, for instance, the tomb of Romulus in the Roman forum, the temple of Jupiter Capl tolinus, etc. The mural paintings of the Esqui lines preserve the Etruscan character, although of more recent date (2d century). They belong to the historical class, and in this class, to be exact, we must place the works recorded by tradition, naming as artists Fabius °the Painter," Pacuvius, M. Plautius, Lycon, etc. , The monuments of the period of the re public partake of this Etruscan character with Greek habiliments; such are the constructions in clay, whether they are fortified walls, in isodoma work, where the vertical joints of one course of stone are immediately over the centre of the blocks in the course below (Rome, Ardea, Tusculum, Satricum, etc.), or whether they are the most archaic temples of peperino ornamented with polychrome stucco work (temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill). The very city of Pompeii, the best preserved of Latin times, has a foundation of Etruscan char acteristics, later Hellenized.