*The peoples of Sicily.* The Greeks had likewise colonized the eastern and southern part of the island of Sicily. The central portion of the island was still occupied by the Sicans and the Sicels, peoples who were in possession of Sicily prior to the coming of the Greeks, and whom some regard as an Italian, others as a Ligurian, or Iberian, element. In the extreme west of Sicily were wedged in the small people of the Elymians, another ethnographic puzzle. Here too the Phoenicians from Carthage had firmly established themselves. *Iberians in Sardinia and Corsica.* The inhabitants of Sardinia and Corsica, islands which were unaffected by the migrations subsequent to the Neolithic Age, are believed to have been of the same stock as the Iberians of the Spanish peninsula. The Etruscans had their colonies in eastern Corsica and the Carthaginians had obtained a footing on the southern and western coasts of Sardinia. From this survey of the peoples of Italy at the close of the sixth century B. C., we can see that to the topographical obstacles placed by nature in the path of the political unification of Italy there was added a still more serious difficulty—that of racial and cultural antagonism. II. THE ETRUSCANS *Etruria.* About the opening of the eighth century, the region to the north of the Tiber, west and south of the Apennines, was occupied by the people whom the Greeks called Tyrseni or Tyrreni, the Romans Etrusci or Tusci, but who styled themselves Rasenna. Their name still clings to this section of Italy (_la Toscana_), which to the Romans was known as Etruria. *The origin of the Etruscans.* Racially and linguistically the Etruscans differed from both Italians and Hellenes, and their presence in Italy was long a problem to historians. Now, however, it is generally agreed that their own ancient tradition, according to which they were immigrants from the shores of the Aegean Sea, is correct. They were probably one of the pre-Hellenic races of the Aegean basin, where a people called Tyrreni were found as late as the fifth century B. C., and it has been suggested that they are to be identified with the _Tursha_, who appear among the Aegean invaders of Egypt in the thirteenth century. Leaving their former abode during the disturbances caused by the Hellenic occupation of the Aegean islands and the west coast of Asia Minor, they eventually found a new home on the western shore of Italy. Here they imposed their rule and their civilization upon the previous inhabitants. The subsequent presence of the two elements in the population of Etruria is well attested by archaeological evidence. *Walled towns.* The Etruscans regularly built their towns on hill-tops which admitted of easy defence, but, in addition, they fortified these towns with strong walls of stone, sometimes constructed of rude polygonal blocks and at other times of dressed stone laid in regular courses.