to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the first
place two lines, one from north to south, and another from east to
west, his station being at their point of intersection (-templum-,
--temenos-- from --temno--); then he drew at certain fixed distances
lines parallel to these, and by this process produced a series of
rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by
boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-,
usually --oroi--). This mode of defining boundaries, which is
probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find
among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient
records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have
borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines:
it is an ancient possession common to all. A peculiar characteristic
of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of
the principle of the square; even where the sea or a river formed
a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their
allocation of the land with the last complete square.


Other Features of Their Economy


It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close
relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; it is unmistakably
manifest also in the other provinces of man's earliest activity.
The Greek house, as described by Homer, differs little from the
model which was always adhered to in Italy. The essential portion,
which originally formed the whole interior accommodation of the
Latin house, was the -atrium-, that is, the "blackened" chamber,
with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals,