holding a crooked staff in his hand, describes a line which cuts the heavens in two sections; the part to the right is favorable, to the left unfavorable.  A second line cutting the first at right angles, and others parallel to these form in the heavens a square which was called the Temple.  The augur regarded the birds that flew in this square:  some like the eagle have a lucky significance; others like the owl presage evil.

The Etruscans predicted the future destiny of their own people.  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.  To allow entrance to the enclosure, it is necessary that the founder break the ditch at certain points, and he does this by lifting the plough and carrying it an instant; the interval made in this manner remains profane and it becomes the gate by which one enters.  Rome itself was founded according to these rites.  It was called Roma Quadrata, and it was said that the founder had killed his brother to punish him for crossing the sacred furrow.  Later the limits of Roman colonies and of camps, and even the bounds of domains were always traced in conformity with religious rules and with geometrical lines.

The Roman religion was half Etruscan.  The Fathers of the church were right, therefore, in calling Etruria the “Mother of Superstitions.”

THE ITALIAN PEOPLE

=Umbrians and Oscans.=—­In the rugged mountains of the Apennines, to the east and south of the Roman plain, resided numerous tribes.  These peoples did not bear the same name and did not constitute a single nation.  They were Umbrians, Sabines, Volscians, AEquians, Hernicans, Marsians, and Samnites.  But all spoke almost the same language, worshipped the same gods, and had similar customs.  Like the Persians, Hindoos, and Greeks, they were of Aryan