They
are the only people of antiquity who did not expect that they were to
persist forever. Etruria, they said, was to endure ten centuries.
These centuries were not of exactly one hundred years each, but
certain signs marked the end of each period. In the year 44, the year
of the death of Caesar, a comet appeared; an Etruscan haruspex stated
to the Romans in an assembly of the people that this comet announced
the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth, the last
of the Etruscan people.
=Influence of the Etruscans.=--The Romans, a semi-barbarous people,
always imitated their more civilized neighbors, the Etruscans. They
drew from them especially the forms of their religion: the costume of
the priests and of the magistrates, the religious rites, and the art
of divining the future from birds (the auspices). When the Romans
found a city, they observe the Etruscan rites: the founder traces a
square enclosure with a plough with share of bronze, drawn by a white
bull and a white heifer. Men follow the founder and carefully cast
the clods of earth from the side of the furrow. The whole ditch left
by the plough is sacred and is not to be crossed.
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