*

mark of brotherhood, their speech. That indispensable bond of union never existed, nor did any amalgamation take place till the fate of the race was sealed, and its "secle" had been completed. The coalesced tribes, who in the infancy of the Etrurian history had been mere barbarians, dispersed over the mountainous and southern parts of Italy, gradually thickened into a nation, and then that happened which always will happen in like circumstances-the Etrurians, as the vanquished minority, became Romans, not the Romans Etrurians. Nothing could be more rash, therefore, than the inference that the Etrurians were an insignificant people, because ancient authors had overlooked or neglected them; and it cannot but excite surprise that Niebuhr, who had to deplore the loss of the early Roman annalists, and who was obliged to trust a Greek writer of the age of Augustus for a knowledge of Roman antiquities, should have spoken so lightly of a nation whose existence it is impossible to doubt, and whose influence upon Italian civilisation we must suppose, from their advancement in the arts of life, to have been considerable. This is the most remarkable when we reflect upon his own declarations at the commencement of his great work, when speaking of the desolation which followed the short-sighted tyranny of the Roman dictator :

"The ancient Etruscan nation perished along with their science and literature. The nobles, who had taken the lead in the national contest, fell by the sword. Military colonies were established in the large towns, and Latin became the only prevalent language. The chief part of the nation was deprived of all landed property, and reduced to pine in poverty under foreign masters, whose oppression deadened every national recollection in the degraded generation that followed, and left them no other wish than that of becoming Roman altogether. The Oscan language, indeed, had not wholly disappeared at Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were destroyed; and Gellius seems to speak of the Tuscan as a tongue

still living in his days; but the writings and monuments in it were as unintelligi. ble as those in Punic or Iberian, and were allowed to perish equally unheeded: the theological books might be read in Latin translations."t

A people so treated could not expect to leave much to posterity to gratify the inquiries of the curious, but it would be an aggravation of their misfortunes to refuse to them that place in history to which they would appear to be entitled. It is probable that some portions of their annals escaped destruction, and were accessible to Roman scholars so late as the first century of our era, for, besides the Etruscan history of Flaccus, and a work by Cacina, mentioned by Niebuhr, and both now lost, we learn from Suetonius that the Emperor Claudius wrote, in the Greek language, a history of Etruria, in twenty volumes, which he entitled Tyrrhenics. This treatise has unfortunately perished, and, notwithstanding the peculiar character of the imperial writer, we may venture to assume that much valuable knowledge has perished with it. His taste impelled him to the prosecution of literature and to the study of Italian antiquities; and his lost work probably contained all that was known to the latter Romans of the Etruscans, and would have supplied modern scholars with the materials of a rational theory of their origin. Tacitus gives the outline of a speech delivered by him on the application of the leading men of Gallia Comata for admission into the senate, in which we not only recognise enlarged sentiments, but an intimate acquaintance with the early history and services of the great Roman families, such as the Claudii, of which he was himself a member; the Caruncani, of whom Cicero makes such honourable mention, and whose ancestor was the first plebeian who filled the office of high-priest; the Portii, of whom Cato was descended; the Julii, from whom sprang the Casars; and the Balbi, who were originally from Spain, and whose name

lib. i. iii. 29.

+ Lib. x.

cessive ingenuity when treating of this people has been irresistible, and both in ancient and modern times their obscure history has become the sport of fable and fancy.

*

The duration of the Etrurian power in Italy must, in the nature of things, be liable to doubt, at least it cannot be fixed with certainty. The confederated states, which constituted the allied nation of the Etruscans, were alleged by their own traditions to have been founded 434 years before the building of Rome by Romulus; hence, if Rome was built 754 years before the commencement of our era, the Etrurian commonwealth must have an antiquity of 1188 years before Christ, a date which would be nearly synchronous with the capture of Troy, and the dispersion of the captains of the Grecian host before that doomed city. The Etrurians, then, had a priority over the Romans of four centuries, and if we suppose, as we legitimately may, that the capture of Veii, by the dictator Camillus (A.U.C. 359, B.C. 359), was the first severe blow which they received, we shall have a period of 759 years for their supremacy, a space of time which may satisfy any ordinary hypothesis. For the 300 years which intervene between that event and the Marsic war (B.c. 91), when Sylla was let loose upon them, we must believe them to have gradually receded before the rising influence of Rome, preserving, it might be, a separate existence and a qualified independence, though no longer disputing the dominion of Italy with the new republic. After that frightful struggle, in which they were crushed to the earth, they disappeared from Italian history, and the subsequent fate, both of the country and the people, must be read in the general volume which treats of Roman affairs.

The origin of the Etrurians is one of the vexed questions of history, and it is in no spirit of presumption that we venture now to make a few brief remarks upon that point.

From the earliest times two theories have divided the world; the one, that they were a people of foreign extraction, which was the nearly universal belief of antiquity; the other, that they were a native Italian tribe, more or less mixed with the Greek Pelasgi, and this was the opinion of Dionysius Halicarnassus. Some distinguished moderns, including Freret, Gibbon, Heyne, Niebuhr, and Otfried Müller, so far adopt this latter view as to derive the stock from the Rhætian Alps; and it has been remarked as a curious coincidence, that as they called themselves RASENA, the names Rhasi and Tusci, and the castles of Raziin, Tusis, Tusana, and Tuscia, are still to be met with among the Grisons.§ The first mention that is made of them in history is by Herodotus, whose statement is substantially this. In the time of Atys, king of Lydia, that country was afflicted with an extreme scarcity of food (cirodany

ugny), which lasted for eighteen years, during which various expedients were resorted to for warding off the calamity; but these all failing, the king divided the population by lot into two parts, of which it was determined that the one, with the king at its head, should remain in Lydia, while the other, under the guidance of his son Tyrrhenus, or Tyrsenos, should depart in search of new settlements. They accordingly proceeded to Smyrna, where they built vessels sufficiently large to hold them and their movable property, and setting sail from Asia, they ultimately came to Umbria, where they settled, after having visited several countries on their voyage. Here they built cities, and, changing their

* Gell, vol. i. p. 369.

Ρασινα.

name, called themselves Tyrrhenians after their leader.*

Some very obvious objections to this story immediately present themselves, of which we are disposed to consider the existence or non-existence of Smyrna at the time as one of the least formidable. A famine of eighteen years' duration would necessarily depopulate any country whatever, and how a people so exhausted as the Lydians are represented to have been could equip and victual a fleet capable of transporting so vast a multitude as Herodotus speaks of is inconceivable. If the legend be accepted at all, therefore, it must not be ad pedem; but without absolutely rejecting it as fabulous,† we may suppose a scarcity from natural or artificial causes, or a domestic revolution, such as was common in Asia, and still is so, in which one of the sons of the sovereign had revolted, and departed by sea with his followers; or, that the population pressing on the means of subsistence, a portion of it, under the direction of one of its native princes, resolved to emigrate, and did emigrate. The principal point is the fact of emigration. If that be allowed, all else will follow easily; for we are not bound to embarrass ourselves with the details of so ancient a legend. The silence of Xanthus, the Lydian historian, so much dwelt upon by Dionysius, is not material to the argument. That such a tradition prevailed in Lydia in the time of Herodotus is manifest, for we cannot suppose him to have invented it; and that it was despised or overlooked by Xanthus, proves nothing one way or the other. historical interest, however, turns wholly upon its connexion with that people whom the Greeks and Romans afterwards called Tyrrhenians and Etruscans; and from the confidence which was reposed in it by the nations of antiquity, we may deduce at least this consequence, that the belief in the foreign descent of that nation

Vol. i. p. 94.

Its

To inquire

was a universal one. into the date of such an event would he idle.§ Of the three dynasties usually attributed to Lydia, the Atyada, the Heraclidæ, and the Memnadæ, the first is mythical, and yet to it we must assign the prince, whose exode from Asia led to the foundation of the Tuscan power. We must also suppose, if we receive the Lydian hypothesis at all, a succession of migrations, in order that we may build up a nation of civilised men in the north of Italy, at a time when the deepest barbarism covered that beautiful land; and, perhaps, we may find some relief from this difficulty in the gradual encroachments of the Persian king, and the final subjugation of Lydia by Cyrus. The chronology of Herodotus is not to be trusted, but he closes the narrative now under review with the significant statement, that thereafter the Lydians were reduced to slavery by the Persians- Λυδοὶ μὲν δὴ ὑπὸ Πέρσησι εδεδουλωντο : and we may imagine, without any great violence to probability, that, under such circumstances, the Lydian colony in Umbria would receive accessions from the mother country. Certain it is, that the Eastern origin of the Etrurians was a belief coeval with the building of Rome, and was preserved in the popular cry of which Plutarch speaks, Sardians to sell!" "For," adds he, "the Tyrrheni are said to be colonists of the Sardians " Τυῤῥηνοι γὰρ ἄποικοι τῶν Σαρδιανῶν λέγονται "There seem to me," says Sir William Drummond," to be strong proofs that a colony of Lydians was established in Etruria," and this after an open expression of distrust in the story of Herodotus; and it has often occurred to us that some of the obscurity which has attached itself to this subject for so many ages would be removed, were we to consider the term Tyrrhenian, as we now consider the term Pelasgian, to be generic, and to signify not neces

s".

In Vita Romuli.

sarily Lydians, but Asiatic wanderers, who left their own country in bands, and settled in different and remote regions. The Hesiodic Tyrrheni, for example, and the Tyrrhene Pelasgi, were not certainly Etrurians. Niebuhr recognises this distinction, and even dwells emphatically upon it; but, if they were not Etrurians, who were they? and what connexion, if any, have they with the legend of the father of history? Apparently none; and we are forced, as it were, to the conclusion, that this word had a wider meaning than has been hitherto given to it. All, however, that we dare confidently affirm on so dark a question is, that the story of Herodotus took and kept possession of the public mind of antiquity to nearly the exclusion of every other, and that, with the exception of Dionysius Halicarnassus, no considerable Greek or Roman writer thought it worth his while to dispute its correctness. Whether true or false, therefore, the Lydian origin of the Etrurians was a part of the historical faith of the ancient world; and this fact is of importance to us, in so far as it establishes the universality of the conviction that, whatever their descent or race might be, they were not a native Italian people.

The author of the opposite opinion, or that which denies a foreign origin to the Etrurians, is Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek of Caria in Asia Minor, and consequently a countryman of Herodotus, who went to Italy at the close of the civil wars of Augustus, where he spent twentytwo years in the study of the Latin language and literature. He compiled at Rome a work on early Italian history in twenty books, of which eleven only are now extant; and in these he discusses at considerable length the question of the descent of the different tribes who were, or were supposed to have been, the primary inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. His authorities, he tells us, were chiefly the treatises (πραγματεία) of Portius Cato, Fabius Maximus, Valerius Antias, Licinius Macer, the Ælii, Gallii, and Calpurnii, all native historians; but he likewise reviews the opinions of Xanthus the Lydian,

* Cap. xxviii.

who lived before Herodotus, of Antiochus of Syracuse, and others: and his work, imperfect though it be, is not only remarkable for the curious information which it embodies, and which but for it would have been lost to us, but from its connexion with those peculiar ideas on Roman history which are now indissolubly associated with the name and fame of Niebuhr. In the twenty-sixth and some following chapters of the first book, he treats of the Tyrrhenians, rejecting without hesitation as entirely fabulous the story of Herodotus. Xanthus, says he, who was an ancient and trustworthy witness to the truth, makes no mention in his writings of a Lydian prince called Tyrrhenus, nor of a Mæonian colony led by him into Italy, though he speaks of things of less consequence (TunesTigv); but he does say that Lydus and Torybus were the sons of Atys, and that, having divided between them their father's kingdom, they imposed their names on the nations over which they ruled, the Lydians being so called from Lydus, and the Torybi from Torybus.* Here Torybus supplants Tyrrhenus, and as neither of the sons of Atys leave Asia, the Herodotean mythe, with all its poetical and historical accompaniments, utterly disappears. As to similarity of name, it was, in the judgment of Dionysius, of no consequence. The Trojans were confounded with their neighbours the Phrygians; and there was a time when the Latins, the Umbri, and the Ausones, were all called Tyrrheni by the Greeks, while many writers call Rome itself a Tyrrhenian city:† and whencesoever the appellation may have been derived, he will on no account suffer it to be traced to a Lydian source. Besides, the Tyrrheni (ie. the Etrurians) differed from the Lydians in language, religion, laws, and habits of life; and what is still more remarkable, if of Lydian origin, they preserved no memorials (para) of their mothercountry, and more resembled the Pelasgi than the Lydians in all these particulars: wherefore, considering the extreme antiquity of this people, that in manners and speech it is un