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writers, these nations are clearly distinguished. But many of the Greeks have recorded settlements o Pelasgi in different parts of Italy, and also in Etruria. By some of these writers, as might be expected, the Pelasgi and Etruscans are confounded.

In general the accounts of Pelasgian settlements in Northern Italy represent them as made on the coast of the Adriatic, whereas all the accounts relating to the origin of the Etruscan represent them to commence and gradually develope themselves from the shores of the Lower or Tyrrhene sea. This is a distinction which serves to discriminate two series of traditions, and it would have prevented some confusion if it had been kept in view by modern writers.*

Dionysius has given a summary of the stories relating to Pelasgian adventurers. He says that the Pelasgi had been in times past inhabitants of Thessaly; from that country they were driven out by the Curetes and Leleges, tribes afterwards termed Aetoli and Locri; thence they dispersed themselves through various countries: the greater number passed to the neighbourhood of Dodona, and there, in obedience to an oracle, having prepared a great armament of ships, set sail and arrived at one of the mouths of the Po. A part of the colony settled there, and built a city called Spines, which prospered and was for a long time mistress of the Adriatic. The greater part of the Pelasgian colony, however, pursued their way into the mountainous parts of Italy, and gained possession of a country belonging to the Umbrians, and on the borders of the people termed Aborigines. Having been expelled from this territory by the Umbri, the Pelasgi sought the country of the Aborigines, and settled near Cotyle, on the borders of the Holy Lake, in marshy lands granted them by the natives, which they designated according to their custom with the digammatized name of Felia. They afterwards gained.

The colonies of the Pelasgi, expressly so termed by ancient writers, were all in the northern parts. In Italy, southward of the Tiber, we find Siculi, Oenotri, Peucetii, Italietes, which are derived by the genealogical writers from Arcadia. Niebuhr claims them as branches of the Pelasgian colonisation; but the Pelasgi who under that name are recorded to have colonised Italy, were from Thessaly or Pelasgiotis.

possession of the Umbrian city of Croton, which became their fortress and the metropolis of the Pelasgian power in central Italy. They assisted the Aborigines in driving the Siculi out of their towns; but the Pelasgi themselves built several cities, among which were Care termed by them Agylla, Pisa, Saturnia, and Alcine. They likewise drove the Aurunci or the Ausonians, that is the Opic or Oscan people, out of many parts of Campania, and built there Larissa, named after their old metropolis. In some of these towns many of the old Pelasgic customs were long preserved, particularly at Croton in Umbria; but all the other cities belonging to that people were destroyed by the Etruscans.

Hellanicus of Lesbos gave a similar relation of the arrival of a Pelasgian colony at Spines, and of their conquest of Croton in Umbria, whence he says they peopled the country now called Tyrrhenia. It does not appear clear from the words of Hellanicus, which Dionysius professes to give, that the author intended to signify that the Etruscans or Tyrrheni were the descendants of these Pelasgi, or that he confounded the two races. That, however, was the construction which Dionysius put upon his statement.

In general the accounts of Pelasgic colonisations are given so distinctly as to make it quite evident that they were a dif ferent series of events, and occasioned very different consequences from those of the Etruscans.

Paragraph 2.-Native Italian traditions respecting the

Etruscans.

We have seen that the Greeks considered the Etruscans as a people originally foreign to Italy; in this respect all the old Italian writers agree with them. A passage preserved from Cato's Origines, by Servius,* proves that the same opinion was held by that most celebrated of Roman antiquarians: "Qui Pisas tenuerint ante adventum Etruscorum negat sibi compertum." Cato in this alludes plainly to the arrival of the Etruscans as a maritime colony. The same thing is in effect maintained by all those writers who make the original abode of the Etruscan people to have been on the coast of the Tyrrhene sea, or

Serv. ad Eneid. x. v. 202.

in Tuscany; as Diodorus, who terms the cities northward of the Apennine "colonies of the twelve Tuscan states,"* and Servius, who gives the designation of Nova Etruria to that country. Livy has stated this account somewhat more fully. He says that "the dominion of the Tuscans was widely extended before the prevalence of the Roman arms: their power was predominant on the two seas which embrace Italy on both sides. Of this the names given to these branches of the Mediterranean afford a proof; for the nations of Italy have given to one of these seas the name of Tuscan, from the common appellation of the people, and to the other that of Adriatic, derived from Adria, a Tuscan colony. The Greeks term them Tyrrhene and Adriatic. The Etruscans in either territory possessed twelve cities. Their first settlements were on this side of the Apennine on the lower sea: they afterwards sent out as many colonies as the original country contained principal towns, and these colonies occupied all the country beyond the Po, as far as the Alps, except the corner belonging to the Veneti. The same people doubtless gave origin to some of the Alpine nations, particularly to the Rhæti, who, by the nature of the country which they occupy, have been rendered barbarous, and retain nothing of their ancient character except their language, and that in a corrupt state."+

Tarquinii was regarded as the ancient metropolis of Etruria, as the point whence all the colonies of this people issued, and it was the centre of all the old traditions respecting their origin. The Greeks termed Tarquinii-Ταρκονια and Ταρκυνία-Tarkonia and Tarkynia. The name is connected with that of Tarkon, the founder of the Etruscan cities, according to their own tradition, whom the Greeks endeavour to identify or connect with Tyrrhenus. Thus Strabo informs us that Tyrrhenus on his arrival named the country after himself, and appointed Tarkon to be the founder of the cities, from whom the city of Tarkynia was named.

It has been well observed by Otfried Müller, that the fable

Diodor. Bibl. xiv. c. 113.

+ Stephanus Byzant. derives the name of Tarkynia from Tarkon.

See Steph. de Urbib. ver. Tapкvvia.

respecting Tarkon might be suspected of having been a mythical story invented by the Greeks, and adopted from them into the historical traditions of Etruria, were it not connected, at least locally, with a legend so manifestly indigenous, and so unlike any fiction of the Greeks as to prove its genuine Tuscan origin. He alludes to the well-known story of Tages, the founder of Etruscan discipline. It was in a field near Tarquinii that the soil, ploughed by the hand of a rustic, or, as some accounts state, of Tarkon himself, gave up to the light of day the genius or dæmon, who recited in song, to the twelve lucumones of the Tuscan cities, mystical verses containing the whole system of priestcraft and divination for which the haruspices of the Etruscans were so celebrated. A god or lawgiver dug out of the earth, is quite foreign to the style of Grecian poetry, and the story is in fact mentioned with contempt by classical writers.* It is a genuine Etruscan fable, and when taken in connection with other remains of tradition, serves to prove the indigenous origin of the various accounts which deduce the Etruscans from the coast of the Tyrrhene sea and the neighbourhood of Tarquinii.

The collective evidence of all these traditions is very strong, and is sufficient to prove that an universal conviction prevailed among the Etruscans themselves, which referred the origin of their confederacy and of their national existence to the coast of the Tyrrhene sea, which is the region where the Greek accounts represent them as arriving by ships.

We cannot satisfactorily explain these facts by referring all the accounts in question to various colonies of Pelasgi which may have been formed by that adventurous people on the coast of Italy-this is the resource of all those writers, including of late years Niebuhr and Otfried Müller, who represent the Etruscans as indigenous in Italy or on the Alpine border of that country-for these Italian traditions evidently and professedly relate to the Tuscan race, and not to Pelasgic adventurers. The story of Tages, for example, had no connection with the Pelasgi. Besides, as I have before observed, all the Pelasgian colonies in the northern half of Italy are represented

Festus, lib. v. Tages. Cicero de Harusp. resp cap. x. Ovid, Met. 15, 550, &c.

as arriving on the north-eastern coast, where it may be supposed that a people who made their way across the Adriatic from Thessaly would be most likely to land.

What then is the conclusion to which the sum of historical evidence leads us as to the origin of the Etruscans? Undoubtedly the hypothesis which accords best with the facts on evidence is that the Tuscans, like the Punic or Phoenician colonists of Northern Africa, and the Phocæan colonists in the south of Gaul, came from beyond seas and settled on the coast of the Tyrrheni. But this hypothesis has been generally rejected by modern writers. It may be worth while to inquire what are the objections offered to it, and whether they admit of a probable solution.

The principal objection is the difficulty of supposing that so numerous a people as were the Etruscans should arrive in Italy, en masse, by sea. The Rasena or Tuscan nation occupied so great a space in Italy, if we consider the whole extension of the race from the Rhætian Alps to the Tiber, and even to Campania, that on this ground many have thought it more probable that they were one of the great original tribes of the European continent.

The supposition that Etruria was colonised by sea precludes the idea that its foreign inhabitants arrived in great numbers; but there seems to be no great difficulty in imagining that a small band of emigrants may have multiplied after their settlement, and have gradually formed a numerous population. It does not appear indeed that the Greeks became very numerous in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, but they were rather a trading than an agricultural people. The Punic population in Africa was considerable as to numbers. It is true that they mixed with the indigenous inhabitants of the country, whereas the Rasena are said to have expelled the old Umbrians. But this is the account of Greek or Latin historians of a late time which had a reference to their own ideas of conquest; and the expression that the Umbrians were driven out does not forbid our supposing that a great part of them were enslaved, and remained in the country, according to the custom of antiquity, as a servile peasantry; and this supposition derives support from the fact that the Etruscans are said to have been a class of nobles,

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