The old Romans were much attached to agriculture, as a general pursuit. It was only at a late period that commerce, literature, art, and science, were introduced among them, and then only in a subordinate place. Among the Greeks, most proper names, and almost all the most distinguished, were derived from gods and heroes, and bore a significancy both poetical and glorious. Among the Romans, on the contrary, the names of many of their most distinguished families, such as Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Cicero, and many others, were taken from vegetable productions, and the occupations of agriculture. Others, as Secundus, Quintus, Septimus, and Octavius, are derived from the numbers of the old popular reckoning. But mathematics never flourished with that people, while agriculture was a science in which they first and chiefly excelled. It was one of the very few departments in which Rome produced original writers. The language and science of conquered peoples were generally despised as barbarian, but renderings into the Latin were sometimes made, as when the writings of the Punic Mago upon agriculture were translated at the command of the senate of Rome. The Etruscan race were early subject to the Grecian influence, through a current of Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, and they continued the westward development of science thence received, by penetrating the north of Italy, and across the Alps. The influence which they exerted upon the political character and scientific progress of the ancient Romans, was very great. The impression which the latter left upon universal civilization, vastly extended the scope of thought, but very much of it grew out of a particular element in primitive Etruscan character. This consisted in their close intimacy with natural phenomena. Many of their most sagacious minds were organized into a college, who gave themselves to divination and the observation of meteorological occurrences. The Fulgatores, or interpreters of the lightning, occupied themselves with the direction of the electric fluid, and with turning it aside, or drawing it down. An account is given by Father Angelo Cortenovis, perhaps fabulous, that the tomb of Lars Porsena, described by Varro, was furnished with a brazen helmet, and a brazen chain appended, which formed a collector of atmospheric electricity, or a conductor of lightning. If such was the fact, or, as Michaelis believed, the metallic points upon Solomon's temple were for the like purpose, they must have been formed at a time when mankind possessed the remnants of an ante-historical knowledge of natural philosophy, which was speedily beclouded to be unfolded under fairer auspices. That the connection between lightning and conducting metals was early discovered, is clear from the notice taken of it by Ctesias. He said, "He has two iron swords in his possession, presents from the king (Artaxerxes Mnemon) and his mother (Parysatis); these swords, if planted in the earth, turned aside clouds, hail, and lightning. He