But there is some reason to believe that the ancient Italians had true painters among them. Indeed I think the evidence for it as good as that we have for any other facts connected with the arts. Pliny[42], after refuting the story that painting was brought into Italy from Corinth, by Cleophantus, a friend of Tarquinius Priscus[43], who had fled from the tyranny of Cypselus, says expressly[44], “Extant there be at this day to be seen at Ardea, within the temples there, antique pictures, and indeed more ancient than the city of Rome. And I assure you no pictures ever came to my sight which I wonder so much at, namely, that they should continue so long fresh and as if they were newly made, considering the places where they be so ruinate and uncovered over head. Semblably at Lanuvium, there remain two pictures of Lady Atalanta and Queen Helena, close one to the other, painted naked, by one and the same hand: both of them are for beauty incomparable, and yet a man may discern one of them to be a maiden by her modest and chaste countenance, which pictures, notwithstanding the ruin of the temple where they stand, are not a whit disfigured or defaced[45];” and farther on he says, that at Cære there were pictures of still greater antiquity. These were of course the works of Etruscan artists, and, as Pliny had opportunities of seeing and judging of the best Greek pictures which successive conquerors had brought to Rome before his time, his praises may be taken as good evidence for the general estimation of the skill of those early painters. Happily, although the barbarous Romans had not taste enough to value and preserve the fame of their Etruscan rivals, they did not disdain to employ their artists. One of the Roman modes of honouring their forefathers was to preserve their effigies in plaster, wax, stone, or metal; and on the death of any member of a family, the figures or heads of the ancestors were taken from the family treasury to accompany the body to the place of burial, or to the funeral pyre. This alone would render the Etruscan sculptors popular. One of the most ancient remaining works, executed by them for Rome, is the bronze wolf, “the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome,” preserved in the Capitol, and of which Micali has given an excellent figure. But this, and also the most ancient statues of the kings and consuls, must have been cast in Etruscan towns, and brought to Rome; for Pliny[46] tells us that the very first bronze statue cast within the city was that of the goddess Ceres, the expense being defrayed by the forfeited goods of Spurius Capius, who was put to death for aspiring to the dignity of king[47].