Union consisted of twelve cities, one beyond the Apennines, one in Tuscany proper, one in Campania,) in their internal polity, in their usages, the Etrurian nation bore some resemblance to the other races of Italy, those of aboriginal or Oscan descent; in their religion also, some few traces of similitude may be found, though that of Etruria was a far more regular, artificial, and powerful system; in their language they stood entirely alone. They were named by the Greeks and Romans, Tyrrhenians, or Tuscans-their land Tyrrhenia and Etruria: they called themselves, however, by an appellation which never seems to have been familiarized among the other nations of Italy, the Ra-seni or Ra-sena.* What, then, was this nation which the earliest, as far as history or even tradition extends, established in the west an empire resembling those of India, Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Egypt? Was it a pure and unmingled race? To what family of the nations of mankind did it belong? Did it originate or receive from some foreign quarter its remarkable civilization? Language, which, under the guidance of the extensive research and philosophic spirit of modern philology, has become the safest clue to the affiliation of remote races, here altogether fails, The Etruscan language stands alone, a problem and a mystery, not merely allied to none of the older dialects of Italy, but bearing no resemblance to any tongue with which it has yet been compared. The barren result of Otfried Müller's learned excursus leaves us with little more than a certain number of proper names, one or two conjectural grammatical forms, and a probable sign of the patronymic. Niebuhr has said that the whole of our knowledge may be summed up in two words, avil ril, which certainly mean vixit annos; but it is not quite clear which word is the verb, and which the noun. It is most likely that the word turce answers to oie. We are not aware whether the advocates of the Egyptian origin of the Tuscan civilization have instituted any comparison between the Etrurian and the ancient Egyptian, as far as it may be obscurely traced in the modern Coptic. There is certainly some slight similarity between the Etrurian words, which seem to consist * We subjoin the note of Wachsmuth (Altere Geschichte des Römischen Staats, p. 81) as the most ingenious solution of the relationship of these names. 1η Τυρρηνοι there appears to be the Etruscan termination, in general enna (Porseuna, Vibenna, Sisenna); in Etrusci, and in the softened word Tusci, the Latin; the same may be traced in Tyrrhenia and Etruria. The derivations from vw, thus, thuris, however seductive the allusion to the priesthood, and that from Tupes (Dionys. i. 26), explained from the improvement of the Cyclopian style of building by towers (Hirt in Wolf's Analecta, 1-156), or indeed the Tu-Rasena, carry us no farther than the decomposition into Etryes, a people, and Ur, the name of their country. In the Inscriptio bilinguis of Pisaurum, harusper fulguriator is translated Netmfis trutnft phruntac. The reader will judge from this specimen the character of the language, and its remoteness from the Latin. almost almost entirely of consonants, and from which we may fairly sup pose that the shorter vowels were omitted, in writing as in the Semitic languages, and in the Egyptian as made out by the interpreters of hieroglyphics. Many of the latter are, in like manner, composed almost entirely of consonants, to which it would be difficult for the most flexible organs to give any sound, without supplying the intermediate vowels. We shall revert, however, again to this point, and, at present, only further, observe, that the only conclusion at which we can arrive is either that the Tuscan belonged to the Semitic class of languages, and migrated from the East in some unknown line, (it has no connexion, apparently, with the Phoenician or Punic,) or that it is, like the Basque, the soli tary representative of some earlier stream of population, which flowed over Europe from the great Eastern cradle of humankind. It has no alliance, as far as can be traced, with the Basque, still less with the Celtic dialects, whose relationship to the great family of the Indo-Teutonic languages has been of late so curiously developed by Dr. Pritchard, ty # be... ། What, then, was the primitive, or rather the earliest European settlement to which the Ra-sena, at least the dominant race of the great Etrurian empire, can be traced? The hypothesis adopted by Niebuhr and his followers brings them from the Rhotian Alps; and there is really satisfactory evidence that the mountaineers of that district were of the Etruscan race. According to the ancient authorities, the Etruscan confederacy to the north of the Apennines was dissolved by the inroads of the Gauls, and took refuge in the inaccessible Alpine valleys, from the pursuit of the invaders. Niebuhr strongly urges the improbability that a race, enfeebled by luxury, and in an unwarlike state of civilization, without power to resist the invading barbarians of Gaul, should be able to dispossess the hardy mountain-clan of the Alps, There is, he observes, the decisive authority of Polybius that the Alpine clans, at the time of the Gallic invasion, were numerous and powerful. The defeated Etruscans would, therefore, more probably have thrown themselves upon the main body of their countrymen on the other side of the Po, and found refuge among the flourishing cities of Etruria proper, The natural movement' (says an able follower of Niebuhr) of the population expelled by the Gauls would have been to fall back upon the main body of their nation in their oldest seats south of the Apennines, (which with the swamps between them and the Po actually formed an available line of defence,) not to insulate themselves in the northern mountains. But if Rhotia was the mother country, whence the Etruscans had originally descended into the plain of Italy, it may easily, be believed that a part of the nation staid behind, and to them the dwellers about the Po may have returned, when they sought shelter from the terrible Gauls. It may be esteemed a con ་ firmation fremation of this hypothesis of the origin of the Etruscans, that they believed the north to be the seat of their gods." Many objections might easily be started against this theory,* which, like many of thiose espoused by its acute advocate, commands admiration by its ingenuity, rather than enforces conviction. The Etruscan nation in its flourishing state may, as Niebuhr admits, have taken military possession of the mountains. If so, their troops, stationed there for the defence of the passes, but turned by the invading Gatils, may liave been cut off from the rest of their countrymen, and in their unconquered recesses afforded a refuge and protection to those who were unable to fly to the south. The clans in many of the Alpine valleys may have been hardy and numerous, in others comparatively few and feeble; in particular parts they may have been driven out by the Gauls, who may have left the conquered and dispeopled valleys when the more fertile plains below opened upon their view, and offered more tempting scenes for enterprise and plunder. How Niebuhr can make out that his hypothesis is not contrary to Livy's view of the subject, we are at a loss to comprehend. The historian states that the Etruscans first inhabited the country southi (cis) of the Apennines, afterwards (posted) that on the north (trans), as far as the Alps-adding, Alpinis quoque ea gentibus haud dubie origo est, maxime Rhatis. According to this statement, the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys were in general of Etruscan descent-i. e. descended from the Etruscans of the south, and Livy has, as it were, anticipated Niebuhr's further argument, from the harshness of the language, as att evidence of its belonging to a tribe of rude mountaineers, the influence of which he traces in the modern Florentine pronunciation. The Roman writer states that they became savage from the nature of the country they inhabited, and retained nothing but the language, and that in a corrupted form-quos loca ipsa efferarunt, ne quid ex antiquo, præter sonum linguæ, nec eum incorruptum, retinerent. →→ In rejecting this particular hypothesis of the northern origin of the Rasena, or dominant part of the Etruscan nation, the whole weight of ancient authority is in favour of Micali. Nor are the other vestiges of the progress of the Etrurians from north to south the tradition, for instance, that they expelled the Umbrians, whose name remained attached to the river Umbro sufficient, in our opinion, to outweigh the uniform testimony of the classical writers. But if the northern origin of the Rasena be abandoned, whence by It is by no means an original hypothesis of Niebuhr's-it had previously in its favour the great names of Freret and of Heyne. It has been adopted also by Professor Jäkel, whose curious, but one-sided, work on the Teutonic origin of Latin was reviewed in a recent Number of this Journal. did the great nation of the Etruscans come ?-Were they an unmingled race, who brought with them from the East the Orienta! character of their polity and their religion, their sacerdotal order, their ritual, their astronomical cycle-and, lastly, their fine arts, at least in their earlier and ruder state? If a mingled people, of what different races were they formed, in what proportions, in what relation to each other? According to the theory which naturally connects itself with the northern origin of the Rasena, though it is not necessarily implicated with it, the Rasena were a conquering tribe, who established themselves in the country of a civilized people-viz., the Tyrrhenians, a Pelasgian race-and reducing them to a state of bondage, employed their arts in the service of the ruling caste. The great works were executed by the skill and the enforced industry of the enslaved inhabitants of the land. This German view awakens all the patriotic indignation of Micali. He cannot endure the imputation, that the great Tuscan nation was formed of tyrannous masters and oppressed and overworked slaves. It is amusing to observe with what peremptory decision these two able writers give out their opposite views on the constitution of the civil society of the ancient Etruria-in fact, with little evidence before them, except the vast ruins of their public works. Niebuhr had said: It was because the Etruscan state was founded on conquest that the nobles had such a multitude of clients, like the Thessalian penestæ, whom they employed in task-work, and without whom their colossal works could hardly have been achieved........ The works of the Etruscans, the very ruins of which astonish us, cannot, it is perfectly evident, have been executed in small states without task-masters and bondmen. But we must not overlook the great superiority of the Etruscan rulers in this point to the Egyptian. All their works that we are acquainted with have a great public object; they are not pyramids, obelisks, and temples, multiplied without number; if the people suffered in this hard service it was not for idle purposes. So too, and by means of task-work, did Rome build when governed by Etruscan kings; after she became free, all great works were at a stand until the republic had grown rich by its victories and conquests; and when compared with her oldest works, and with those of the Etruscan cities, the buildings of imperial Rome make but an inconsiderable figure.'-Hare and Thirlwall's Translation, vol. i., p. 117-127. To this Micali replies, speaking of the surprising and indestructible remains of the Etruscan cities, which have survived the fall of so many empires, those of Volterra, Fiesole, Cortona, Roselle, and Populonia: These are not monuments which from their magnitude bear the impress of servile labour-as little do they of the entire subjection and enslavement of the people; they are rather works of well-ordered citizens, which, to him who actually inspects them, have nothing to surpass surpass in manual labour the powers of free and by no means large communities; more particularly since the materials were found on the very spot, or on the neighbouring mountains, which are extremely abundant in stone for masonry. That the builders principally looked to the strength of their works is evident from the situation of these and other larger cities, all placed in mountainous districts, and which, as it were from design, have within their circuit two eminences, above the loftiest of which stood the rock (or citadel) as the last place of defence-an uniformity of situation and position which certainly can only be ascribed to an obedience to rites commanded in the sacred books, and without which the building of legitimate cities was never attempted.'-Micali, vol. i., p. 135. The great problem in the formation of the Etruscan nation is the relation of the Pelasgian settlers in Italy to the Rasena. We cannot, it is clear, identify the two races; for, however the Pelasgian language might differ from the Hellenian or later Greek, we cannot for an instant suppose that it was a dialect so totally foreign to it, so distinct from all the languages of that stock, as the Tuscan appears to have been. The point of interest, in fact, is not so much the origin of the people as of their civilization. It is their power by sea and land, their polity, their religion, their public works, their fine arts, which excite our curiosity; and it is the source of this, their real greatness, which alone is worthy of our inquiry. Of this, however, the gigantic ruins are the most remarkable remains; will the style of building lead us to any conclusions, if not certain, for certainty must not be expected, yet highly probable? Is there anything in its peculiar character to indicate the workmanship of any particular race? In the first place, then, can this be the old Pelasgian civilization of Italy matured and developed by some prosperous and active-minded tribe, if not from the north, according to Niebuhr, from some other quarter? Micali, we think, greatly understates the evidence in favour of these Pelasgians, as the primitive civilizers of the West, the first agricultural race of which we have any distinct tradition, a people of whose ancient Oriental theocracy and nature-worship manifest vestiges appear to remain in their establishments at Dodona and Samothrace, in the appellation of dio given to them by Homer, and in the close connexion of their religion itself with the pursuits of husbandry. On this old yet unexhausted question we cannot enter at present: we content ourselves with referring to an admirable note in Wachsmuth's Hellenische Alterthumskunde,' in which the various traditions relating to the Pelasgians are brought together in smaller compass, yet in greater fulness, than in any other modern work with which we are acquainted.* Still, however We may observe, by the way, that we see with great satisfaction a translation of this excellent book advertised by the enterprising Mr. Talboys of Oxford. advanced |