"Not many authors of general books about the Romans feel bound to discuss the alleged Trojan ancestry of their subject. In sharp contrast, hardly anyone outside the inner circle of tecnici seems able to write about the Etruscans without reflecting at length on the supposed mystery of their origins and on the solution that may or (as has long been beyond all doubt) may not lie in the East, specifically in Lydia. The reason for this is the erroneous but still widely held conviction that' the authority of Herodotus is involved."