Etruscans, Tyrrhenians or Tuscans. 169 
age began measured in the same way, and so on. The Gods 
failed not to announce by prodigics the commencement of 
each new age, 
Now the Etruscan Historiaus living in the eighth age of 
their nation estimated, according to Varro cited by Velleius 
Patercelus at 781 years, the duration of the seven previous 
ages, “They added that the eighth age would be followed by 
a nioth aud bya tenth, when (they said) the Etruscan nation 
would bé extinguished. 
But to what year does this eighth age of the Etruscan Era 
answer? Mr. Freret seems to have solved the problem satis* 
factorily. He remarks that the Etruscan soothsayers, having 
been consulted concerning some prodigies which had occur 
red in the first year of the Consulship of Sylla, answered 
that these prodigies anuounced the termination of one of the 
revolutions of the world, and the beginning of a new age— 
_ that there had been already eight ages differing in manners, 
and in the duration of the life of man—that each of these 
ages formed a great year, and that the Gods gave a signal of 
the termination of each period by some prodigy in the Mea 
venus or upon Earth. 
Suidas says nearly the same thing citing Livy and Diodo- 
rus :—he speaks also of eight ages concluded and gives to 
them the name of Periods or Revolutions of the great year. 
Hence Mr. Freret concludes that the eighth age of the Etruse 
cans ended in the year 88, before our Era~that supposing 
the duration of this age to have been equal to the lungest of 
the preceding ones —it would have been of 123 years and the 
eighth age thus have commenced 211 years before the birth of 
our Saviour, to which if there be added the 781 years of the 
previous seven ages we have the year 992 of the Christian Era 
as the time of the settlement of the Etruscans in Italy, This 
is 240 years before Rome was founded Denina (Istoria d'Italia) 
says that the Etruscan people seem to have been at the height 
of their power in Ltaly about four huodred years before the 
V2 building 
