Brinton. 1 oOo [Oct. 18, 



hundred years before the Christian era, they appear to have had 

 three federations of twelve cities each, within the limits I have 

 named. This statement might easily lead to an excessive idea of 

 their numbers ; but it is well ascertained that the Etruscans con- 

 stituted by no means the bulk of the population. They were only 

 the ruling class, a slave holding aristocracy, while the large 

 majority of the inhabitants belonged to native Italian tribes, as 

 the Umbri, the Osci, the Ligures, and others. 



All the ancient writers recognize the Etruscans as intruders on 

 Italian soil, and they themselves are said fully to have acknowl- 

 edged this, and indeed to have had certain legends as to the time 

 and place of their first permanent settlement on the peninsula. It 

 is only in utter defiance of these semi-historic reports that Yirchow 

 and others* bring them down from the Alps, across tlie plains of 

 Lombai-dy, through the defiles of the Appenines, and at length 

 to the shores of the Tyrrhenian sea. Neither the classical his- 

 torians nor the Etruscans themselves knew a vestige of such a 

 tradition. The erudite Otfried Muller, who has collected every- 

 thing to be found in Greek and Latin literature concerning them, 

 states that it is the vmanimous testimony of antiquity that the 

 eariiest Etruscans reached the western shore of Ital}^ crossing 

 the sea from the south ; and he adds that it is undeniable (u??- 

 leugbar) that such was the belief of the Etruscans themselves.f 

 We know that by tradition and religious customs they assigned 

 as their first permanent settlement the city of Tarquinii, the 

 modern Corneto, on-the shore of the Mediterranean, twelve miles 

 north of Civita Yecchia. To this venerable site the priests and 

 soothsayers resorted from all parts of Etruria to perfect them- 

 selves in the pure and ancient " Etruscan discipline." Here their 

 hero-god Tages, a wondrous gray -haired boy, sprang into life 

 from a ploughed furrow, and taught their ancestors the mysteries 

 of the diviner's craft and the nobler arts of life. This localit}-, I 

 say^ according to uniform tradition, was where their progenitors 

 first established themselves, crossing the sea from somewhere to 

 the south. Such a tradition, so definitely preserved, cannot be 

 cast aside without sound reasons. 



The date of this landing has been given by Miiller at about 



* Prof. Virchow has expressed this opinion in tlie Verhandluiigeii dcr Berliner Geecll- 

 schaftfiir Anthropologic, 1881, p. 208, and elsewhen;. 

 t DieEtrusker Bd. i, ss. 66, 67, sqq. 



