THE PREHISTORIC RACES OF ITALY.' 



By Canon Isaac Taylor. 



Nowhere in tlie world is there such a mixture of races — such a collu- 

 vies gentium — as in Italy. 



At the beginning- of the historic period we find Siculi and Sicani in 

 the south, Etruscans in the north, and in the center Umbrians, Latins, 

 Sabines, and Samuites, all speaking Aryan languages. At a very early 

 time the Carthaginians made good their footing in the west of Sicily, 

 and the Greeks established colonies in the east. Southern Italy became 

 Magna Grfecia — so that the greater Greece lay beyond the Adriatic, 

 just as the greater Britain now lies beyond the Atlantic. The Greeks 

 pushed their trading posts as far as Cum* in the Bay of Naples, and 

 the Phoenicians established theirs at Crere, 20 miles from Rome. 



In the fourth century B. c. the Gauls poured over the Alps into the 

 plain of the Po, establishing a Gallia Cisalpina in the north answering 

 to the Magna Grtecia in the south. 



And then, when the Roman legions had conquered Italy and the 

 Eastern World, Rome herself was overrun by the peoples she had sub- 

 dued. Rome became an oriental city. The Orontes, as a Roman writer 

 complained, had emptied itself into the Tiber. A flood of Syrians, Jews, 

 Greeks, Egyptians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, and Dacians — slaves, 

 freedmen, or adventurers — poured into the Eternal City, making it a 

 cloaca maxima — theuniversal sewer of the world. Then came the inroads 

 of the northern hordes — Heruls, Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards 

 — who rushed in to appropriate the treasures which during four centu- 

 ries had been plundered from Africa and Asia. Next came the inroads 

 of Normans, Moors, Spaniards, French, and Germans, and lastly, the 

 peaceable invasion of winter residents. 



These are the races which, in historic times, have been added to the 

 pre-historic peoples of the land. 



At the beginning of the historic period we find the Etruscans estab- 

 lished north of the Tiber, the Latins and other tribes speaking Aryan 

 languages further to the south, and an earlier aboriginal population in 

 the Apennines and Calabria. 



In books written only 30 years ago the oldest civilization of Italy 

 is attributed to a mysterious people, who are called the Pelasgi. We 



From The Contemporary licvkw, August, 1890, vol. LViii, pp. 261-270, 



489 



