The Expansion of the Etruscan City States

The joint editorship of History Today by Peter Quennell and Alan Hodge has constituted a memorable epoch. Like so many others I greatly admire their success during these twenty-nine years. They have done an enormous amount to make popularization the respectable word it deserves to be. They have made history enjoyable. It is very sad that Alan Hodge has not lived to read this number of their journal, designed as a tribute to the achievement of himself and his colleague.

The subject I have chosen as a part of this tribute is one which I believe would have appealed to him, and will, I hope, be of interest to Peter Quennell also, not because I can lay claim to any special merits in my treatment of it, but because of the nature of the questions the theme itself raises. For any study of the Etruscans involves a peculiar and piquant combination of various kinds of historical evidence, for the most part hard to assess - and thus presents a problem that none could be better equipped to appreciate than the editors of History Today.