I have been particularly struck, in reading _The Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, of George Dennis, by the great disparity
there appears between the ancient population of this country and the
present.
The ancient population appears, moreover, to have been located in
circumstances not by any means favourable to the health of the
people. Those cities surrounded by high walls, and entered by
singularly small gateways, must have been very badly ventilated, and
very unfavourable to health; and yet it is not reasonable to suppose
they could have been so unhealthy then as the author describes the
country at present to be. It is hardly possible to imagine so great
a people as the Etruscans, the wretched fever-stricken objects the
present inhabitants of the Maremna are described to be.
To what, then, can this great difference be ascribed? The Etruscans
appear to have taken very great pains with the drainage of their
cities; on many sites the cloaca are the only remains of their
former industry and greatness which remain. They were also careful
to bury their dead outside their city walls; and it is, no doubt, to
these two circumstances, principally, that their increase and
greatness, as a people, are to be ascribed. But why do not the
present inhabitants avail themselves of the same means to health? Is
it that they are idle, or are they too broken spirited and
poverty-stricken to unite in any public work? Or has the climate
changed?
Perhaps it was owing to some defect in their civil polity that the
ancients were comparatively so easily put down by the Roman power,
which might have been the superior civilisation. Possibly the great
majority of the people may have been dissatisfied with their rulers,
and gladly removed to another place and another form of government.
It is even possible, and indeed likely, that these great public
works may have been carried on by the forced labour of the poorest
and, consequently, the most numerous class of the population, and
that, consequently, they had no particular tie to their native city,
as being only a hardship to them; and they may even have had a
dislike to sewers in themselves, as reminding them of their bondage,
and which dislike their descendants have inherited, and for which
they are now suffering. At any rate, it is an instructive example to
our present citizens of the value of drainage and sanitary
arrangements, and shows that the importance of these things was
recognised and appreciated in the earliest times.