However that may be, the Etruscans, the _acerrimi Tusci_ of Virgil, were a people of high culture, to whose inventive and progressive genius Rome owed her early steps in arts and arms.[636] A flood of light has been thrown upon this page of proto-historic lore by the extensive excavations of late years in the Emilian country about Bologna, the Felsina or Velsina of Tyrrhenia. My late friend, the learned and lamented Prof. G. G. Bianconi, forwarded to me the accompanying sketch (fig. 202) of an exceptional iron blade found in the ruins of Marzabotto.[637] It is described as follows (p. 3) in a work, printed but not published, by the learned archæologist Count Gozzadini of Bologna, ‘Di ulteriori scoperte nell’ antica necropoli di Marzabotto nel Bolognese’[638]:— ‘Within a cell only thirty centimètres deep, and disposed two mètres distant from one another, lay three skeletons whose heads fronted eastwards. On each was an iron Sword-blade, sixty-two centimètres long by four and a half broad near the tang (_spina_), and fining off to an olive-leaf point; all have the mid-rib or longitudinal spine. Partly attached by oxidation to one blade is a remnant of the iron scabbard, slightly convex posteriorly and showing in the upper part a rectangular projection, perhaps to carry the hook attached to the balteus. The sheath-front has a mid-rib like the blade, and the wavy mouth is adapted to the Sword-shoulders. On this face only are two buttons (_borchie_) in high relief, connected by a band (_listello_). The tang, twelve centimètres long, shows the length of the hilt, which, being made of more perishable material, has altogether disappeared.’ The long narrow rapier-blade with the mid-rib is first seen in the Egyptian bronzes;[639] the step was easy to the harder metal. That the iron form was common in Etruria as its bronze congener at Mycenæ, is proved by the discovery of three in a single tomb; moreover, as has been said, a fourth has been preserved for years in the Marzabotto collection. All are similar in form, which is highly civilised. The number of the blades also suggests that they are of native make, not left by the Boians and the Ligaunians, who, according to the late Prof. Conestabile, may have buried in the Marzabotto cemetery. The date of the latter is somewhat uncertain; but it cannot be much more recent than the burial-ground of Villanova, where Count Gozzadini found an _æs rude_, and which he dates from the days of Numa, B.C. 700. He is followed by Dr. Schliemann (‘Troy,’ p. 40), and opposed by that learned and practical anthropologist M. Gabrielle de Mortillet (‘Le Signe de la Croix,’ &c. pp. 88–89), who would assign a far earlier epoch.