The period of the greatness of the Etruscans coincides with the middle of the third century of the city, according to a statement bearing the authority of Cato, that the Etruscan colony of Capua or Vulturnum was founded about the year 260, which falls within the time of that war in which the Romans were so hard pressed by the Veientines. At that time, the Etruscans, who by the Greeks are called Tyrrhenians, were the most formidable conquerors; yet a reverse came upon them when the people of Cumæ with the help of Hiero, towards the close of the third century (280), destroyed their naval power. The general fact only of that change can be asserted with certainty; the details of it are, alas! entirely lost to us; a considerable event in the world’s history here lies buried in darkness. About the same period also, their power on the banks of the Tiber is broken. On the other hand, the Sabines in the last half of the third century are often seen as enemies of the Romans; the earlier accounts of victories gained over them by Valerius are utterly apocryphal. Whether they were dangerous to the Romans, we will not decide here: yet undoubtedly wars took place with the Sabines, as well as with all the other people of the neighbourhood, though all the details about them are either fiction or poetry. Towards the end of the third century, however, the history becomes clearer and clearer, and we may discern the traces of the old annals. The last Sabine war is that which Valerius and Horatius victoriously carried on in the first year of the restoration of the consulship; it is told too circumstantially to be credited in all its parts; but certain it is, that from that time, for nearly a hundred and fifty years until Curius, the Sabines waged no war with the Romans. There must have been some very particular reason for this, and I find one in a treaty of which no other trace whatever is left, and in which isopolity was established between the two peoples: that isopolity existed between them, is attested by Servius on Virgil. About the year 310, we find a notice that the people of the Campanians was formed; that is to say, that at Vulturnum or Capua, the Etruscans received Samnites as ἔποικοι among them, and shared with them their territory. This is to us a proof of the advance of the Sabines in those parts, as the Samnites are a Sabine people. The Æquians and Volscians relax in their attacks on Rome; the Sabine wars are at an end; consequently we behold the period when the emigration of the Sabines towards the South leaves off, and the Ausonian mountaineers no more push forward. The Etruscans now at once stand still, which is natural in an oligarchically governed nation: when such a people has once settled down to rest, there is no example of its ever having been aroused again and gained fresh life. Thus we may link together all the facts which are confusedly told by the Romans.