1827.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



637 



the charge of Patavlnity, was this deficiency, 

 which, in later periods also, frequently breaks out 

 to stagger us in his military descriptions, and the 

 language of his speeches, occasionally glittering, 

 and ill suited to the times and persons of the 

 the speakers, draws rather from literature and the 

 school, than, like those of Thucydides, from the 

 fullness of real life. 



A large part of the first volume is taken 

 up in canvassing the origin and extent of 

 the nations or tribes, which occupied Italy 

 before and about the period usually as- 

 signed for the commencement of Rome. 

 The scattered accounts of these nations are 

 full of contradictions, and when collected 

 present a chaos, the analysis of which re- 

 quires no ordinary courage to attempt. 

 Niebuhr's searching glance lias occasionally 

 detected connections before unobserved, and 

 shewn how dextrously he can thread a 

 labyrinth. If the reader have patience with 

 us we will give him a specimen and one 

 that will, we think, make good our asser- 

 tion, that Niebuhr's book will disappoint 

 him. It is a book to be studied dwelt on 

 for weeks and months, not glanced at in an 

 idle hour. Our specimen concerns the 

 CENOTRIANS. We shall very much com- 

 press it, and strip it besides of a multitude 

 of authorities, and illustrations, and collate- 

 ral matters. 



Pherecydes (in Dionysius) states the 

 CEnotrians to have taken their name from 

 (Enotus, one of the twenty-two sons of 

 Lycaon, and emigrated from Arcadia into 

 Italy seventeen generations before the Tro- 

 jan war according to Pausanius, the ear- 

 liest colony, Greek or barbarian, of which 

 any record has been preserved. Apollodorus 

 gives a dilFerent genealogy making no 

 mention of CEnotus ; and represents the 

 CEnotrians, Thesprotians, Maenalians, and 

 other Arcadian races, as descending from 

 Pelasgus. But who was Pelasgus or rather, 

 who the Pelasgi ? An enigma the solution 

 of which those who study most, despair of 

 most. They were not Greeks, in language 

 at least that is proved ; the earliest in- 

 habitants of Thessaly and Peloponnesus 

 were Pelasgi ; many transformed themselves 

 into Greeks that is, we may suppose, they 

 mingled with the Greeks, and lost all trace 

 of their origin. The Epirotes, probably, 

 in the fullest extent reaching to the 

 western shores of the Adriatic, were Pelasgi 

 the Dodonscans certainly. Dionysius, 

 indeed, calls them Greeks, but that is his 

 ignorance. They spoke a broken Greek. 

 It was the same with other perhaps all 

 Pelasgic tribes. In very remote times the 

 Peloponnesus itself was not Grecian ; but 

 the CEnotrians were probably kindred of a 

 Greek stock for any thing that appears, 

 this is said quite gratuitously. 



The CEnotrians however come imme- 

 diately from what quarter they may from 

 Peloponnesus, or from Epirus, or even from 

 the Siculi those who were so called, we 



mean by the Greeks formerly occupied 

 Bruttium and South-eastern Lucania. The 

 period of emigration is fixed by Philistus 

 eighty years before the Trojan war, and by 

 Thucydides, probably following Antiochus, 

 125 years after. But this emigration refers 

 to the ancient settlements of the CEnotrians 

 in those western districts (Campania) after- 

 wards possessed by the Ausonians, who 

 were themselves expelled by the Sabines. 

 It refers also to some in litruria for ap- 

 parently the whole range of the west coast 

 was occupied by a people at least related 

 to Epirotes thai is Pelasjric. 



But the CEnotrians to the Roman History 

 are wholly unknown. They belong indeed 

 to the brilliant ages of Magna Grajcia, of 

 which scarcely any traces exist. Cato ap- 

 pears not to have mentioned them in his 

 early history of Italy judging from Diony- 

 sius's account. When the Romans carried 

 their victorious arras into Southern Italy, 

 the CEnotrians were extinct, and their place 

 occupied by Lucanians and Bruttii. The 

 Greek settlements, according to Strabo, 

 which began upon that coast previous to 

 the commencement of Roman chronology, 

 met with no nations but Siculi, or Itali, or 

 Chones- neither CEnotrians nor Lucanians. 

 The CEnotrians therefore must come some- 

 where between the Greek settlements and 

 the Lucanian invasion. These Lucanians 

 were Sabines. Antiochus of Syracuse, 

 writing about the year of Rome 329, speaks 

 as a cotemporary of the CEnotrians, and 

 mentions neither Lucanians nor Bruttii. 

 The Lucanians therefore had not appeared 

 then. About the middle of the second cen- 

 tury of Rome, the Metapontines were at 

 war with the CEnotrians, and took from 

 them a part of their territory. The Luca- 

 nians, about 362, invaded Magna Graecia, 

 and ruined its splendour; and the CEno- 

 trians fell at the same time, and were 

 blended or lost among the invaders. 



But Niebuhr is taking up too much of our 

 space. The reader will see there is no 

 want of learning or labour all but the 

 scholar and the critic will cry cut bono. 

 The volumes however contain lessons of 

 the profoundest cast for the statesman and 

 the political reasoner. 



History of the War in the Peninsula under 

 Napoleon. By General Foy. Translated 

 from the French. 2vols. Svo. ; 1827. This 

 history of the war in Spain and Portugal 

 was left in a very imperfect state by the 

 author. The first volume, however, pre- 

 sents us with a sketch and a very ani- 

 mated one it is of the political and mili- 

 tary state of France, England, Portugal, and 

 Spain, which constitutes indeed the real 

 value of the work. It is executed with 

 decided ability and fullness of knowledge. 

 Here it is that he reviews the character of 

 Napoleon, and deals out his praise and his 

 censure his admiration for the depth of 

 his genius, and the fire and vigour of his 



