Etruscan girl from Vulci - Unknown Date
"Now between Luna and Pisa is the Macras, which many of the historians have used as the boundary between Tyrrhenia and Liguria. As for Pisa, it was founded by those Pisatae who lived in the Peloponnesus, who made the expedition to Ilium with Nestor and on the return voyage went astray, some to Metapontum, and others to the territory of Pisa, although all of them were called Pylians. Pisa is situated between, and at the very confluence of, two rivers, the Arnus and the Ausar, of which the former runs from Arretium, with great quantities of water (not all in one stream, but divided into three streams), and the latter from the Apennine Mountains; and when they unite and form one stream they heave one another up so high by their mutual resistance that two persons standing on the opposite banks cannot even see each other;a and hence, necessarily, voyages inland from the sea are difficult to make; the length of the voyage is about twenty stadia. And the following fable is told: when these rivers first began to flow down from the mountains, and their course was being hindered by the natives for fear that they would unite in one stream and deluge the country, the rivers promised not to deluge it and kept their pledge. Again, Pisa is reputed to have been prosperous on a time, and at the present time it is not without repute, on account of its fertility, its stone-quarries, and its timber for ship-building; in ancient times, indeed, they utilised this latter material to meet the perils that faced them on the sea (for they were, to begin with, more warlike than the Tyrrheni, and their warlike spirit was sharpened by the Ligures, bad neighbours living at their flank), but at the present time most of it is being used up on the buildings at Rome, and also at the villas, now that people are devising palaces of Persian magnificence."
-Strabo, Geography: Book 5, Chapter 2.5
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| Etruscan girl from Vulci - Unknown Date. From the Torlonia Onlus Foundation. |
Quote:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/5B*.html#2.5
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