The position of Caere was especially remarkable.

"The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much repute among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because, powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery." It is not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of Caere must have indulged like every other.

But Caere was a sort of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks.

We have already mentioned the Phoenician station--subsequently called Punicum--and the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.( 5) It was these ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood, early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths of the Tiber and Po.

The cities we have just named are those which appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece.