curling-tongs—the Etruscan dead have left no lack of records of their ways of living. But, strong as was their personality, another and a stronger force had struggled through the soil of Italy. Rome had arisen to shine upon the growing world. It remained for Rome to leave the stamp of veritable history upon the city of Perugia.

Throughout the early history of Rome, we catch dim rumours of an occasional connection or warfare with this corner of Etruria. It is not till 309 B.C. that we have any distinct mention of Perugia in connection with Rome. In that year the Roman Consul, Fabius, fought a battle with the Etruscans under the walls of the town. The Etruscans lost the day, Perugia and other cities of the League sued for a truce with Rome which was granted to them. Fabius entered Perugia “and this was the first time,” says Bartoli, “that the banner of foreigners had waved across our city.” Perugia bitterly resented the rule of the foreign power, and, breaking her truce, she made several passionate efforts to regain her freedom. But in vain. Her blood, perhaps, was old, and grown corrupt, the blood of Rome was new and palpitating. She was again and again overcome by Fabius. In 206 B.C. we find her, not exactly submitting to Rome, but playing the part of a strong ally, and cutting down her woods to help in the building of a fleet for Scipio. Her history continues dark—overshadowed by that of Rome. We hear a faint rumble of the Roman battles. We catch dull echoes of Hannibal and Trasimene, for Trasimene is very near Perugia. Did some of her citizens creep down perhaps, and get a vision of the fight? Did any of those much-bewigged Etruscan ladies, who we know were very independent in their ways, tuck up their skirts and follow through the woods to have a look at the elephants and shudder at the swarthy African?

We cannot tell. The next clear point in her history is a terrible one for Perugia. She fell, but she fell by a mighty hand, by that of the emperor Augustus. In the year 40 B.C. the Roman Consul, Lucius Antoninus, who, it may be said, was defending the liberty of Rome whilst Mark Antony lay lost in a love-dream upon the banks of Nile, took refuge within the walls of Perugia from the pursuit of Octavius (Augustus) who then laid siege to the town. For seven months the brave little city held out, but she was reduced to such a terrible distress of famine that Lucius at last gave way, and opened her gates to the conqueror. Octavius entered Perugia covered with laurels. The citizens prayed for mercy. He spared most of the men and women, but he excepted three hundred of the elders and saw them singly killed before his eyes. When they prayed for grace he merely tossed his head back and repeated: “They must die.” This ordeal over, Octavius decided to postpone the sack of the city until the following day. But one of its citizens, Caius Cestius Macedonicus, hot with all the shame of the thing, got up at night and made a funeral pyre of his house. He set fire to its walls, and as it burned he stabbed himself and died there. The flames spread through the city, and before the morning Perugia was burned to the ground. Nothing remained of all its buildings except the temple of Vulcan, and in memory of this fire the town was afterwards dedicated to Vulcan instead of to Juno to whom it had formerly belonged. Octavius returned to Rome bearing before him the image of Juno, which alone had been saved from the flames. Some years later he agreed to rebuild the city, and hence the letters Augusta Perusia over her gates.

*   *  *  *  *  *   *  *  

So laying aside for ever Perusia Etrusca, that city of strange beasts, strange people, and strange myths, we face Perusia Augusta, or the Perugia of Rome.

For some centuries, strange as it may appear, the powerful old Umbrian hill-town seems to have fallen contentedly asleep under the rule of her great protector. It was, as we know, the policy of Rome to adopt the laws and customs of the people whom she conquered rather than to change them, and indeed the alteration seldom went further than in name. The Etruscan rulers therefore took the titles of Roman governors, they did not really alter, and it is probable that the laws of the very earliest settlement have never really become extinct. The Lucumo of the Etruscans was in all probability the descendant of the earliest prehistoric village chief, who developed into the Diumvir or representative of the Roman Consul pretty much as the present Sindaco succeeded to the position of the Podestà of the middle ages.

Rome had always loved and studied the religions of the older people, and Bonazzi infers that Rome “delighted in nursing on the breast of her republic those great masters of Divinity who could be made such powerful political instruments for her service.” The Romans must have intermarried freely with the Etruscans; the mixture of names and lettering upon their tombs points to this fact. But the strong fresh blood of the younger race seems to have overcome that of the more corrupt one. Other tribes and other tongues pressed in upon the first inhabitants and gradually the language, yes, and the memory of the strange and fascinating people, died.

Of the Roman occupation little trace can be found in the architecture of the city, beyond the walls and gates and the inscriptions over some of these, together with a sorry fragment of a Roman bath. It must be remembered that the entire city was burned to the ground after the siege—burned with all her wealth of monuments and temples—and it does not seem as though the Romans did much to beautify her with grand buildings. Having no old buildings to use as raw material, they were probably content at this period to build strong walls and houses suitable for a fortified town, thus fostering the warlike character of her inhabitants which was to prove so great a point in following centuries.[4]

Roman rule was a very real piece of history, but it is not possible to say that the period of myth and darkness had wholly passed away. We possess a certain knowledge of the Roman government, but the shadow of the Gothic and Barbarian night closes in upon it like a heavy pall; and the next clear and startling point about Perugia is her recapture by Belisarius followed by the siege of Totila (or Baduila).

During those terrible centuries when Italy was being ravaged by perpetual invasions, her lands devastated by war and plagues and famine, and her cities, as one historian says, “no longer cities, but rather the corpses of cities,” we find scant mention of actual harm done to Perugia, for it was the north which suffered first. However, as the Goths pressed southward upon Rome, as Rome herself wavered and sank beneath the weight of the northern hordes, and of her own corruption, we gather that the Umbrian cities too became a prey to the barbarians, and that Perugia suffered the fate of all her neighbours. Her historians seek in vain for stated records of this time where all is darkness, but some dim facts shine out, among them the steady growth of Christianity within the city.

The first important date we find follows nearly six hundred years after her capture by Augustus. It was in 536 A.D., that Justinian, who had conceived the mighty plan of recovering Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Goths, sent one of his best generals, Constantine (under Belisarius), into Umbria to occupy the cities there. Constantine made Perugia his headquarters and for a