1854.] 



THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME. 



219 



ourselves, inasmuch as it treats only of national existence not yet 

 extinct : it contains, so to speak, the first acts of a great drama 

 now actually in the process of being represented, and of -which 

 the catastrophe is still future." And to carry on the idea of this 

 great historical writer, if we may speak of the history now 

 enacting, and in progress since the dismemberment of the 

 Western Empire as one great Drama; we may also compare 

 Ancient History to the Prologue of that Drama, or rather, per- 

 haps, to the mass of presupposed action and interest, of which the 

 Drama itself takes no account but in so far as its own colour 

 and incidents are derived from it. It is in this point of view 

 that Ancient History interests us so deeply, as containing not 

 only the type of what follows, but in many cases the actual 

 germ from which our own institutions, our own political forms, 

 are primarily derived. This is true of the Early History of 

 Rome to a greater extent perhaps than of any other History. 

 From the Roman Empire we have derived many of our dis- 

 tinguishing national institutions, as well as a large element of 

 our language. In its early History we find these institutions 

 embedded, as it were, amid a mass of heterogeneous matter: 

 from which it requires much labour and discrimination to detach 

 them. Some of the greatest geniuses of Modern times have 

 been employed in investigating this subject. Glareanus, Peri- 

 zonius, Beaufort, and Vico, are some of the names which every 

 Scholar reveres for their services done to the cause of critical 

 historical enquiry ; and if we give Niebuhr the precedence above 

 them all, it is because he has brought to bear upon a subject 

 •which they had previously touched upon, the full strength of 

 modern criticism, aided by a commanding and practical genius; 

 carrying with him to the investigation of early Roman History 

 the experience of the diplomatist and financier, and above all, 

 the unbending patience of the Teutonic character, he has repro- 

 duced so faithfully before the present generation the genuine 

 form and features of the old Republic, that we are tempted to 

 pay him an almost undivided homage, and to recognize in him 

 the Second Founder of early Rome. 



Within the limits of this paper, it is impossible to give a 

 general account either of modern discoveries, or of the early 

 history which they illustrate. It will be sufficient to endeavour 

 to illustrate one or two subjects: and we may confine our aims 

 to some few notes on the Ethnology and Languages of Ancient 

 Italy. 



I. ETHNOLOGY. 



1. Pelasgiaiis. The greater part of Italy appears in very 

 early times, to have been inhabited by the Pelasgians, whether 

 under the name of Siculians, Aborigines, (Enotrians, or Tyrr- 

 henians. Under one or other of these names, they occupied the 

 southern part at least of Etruria ; the district round Reate in the 

 Sabine territory, and the west and east of Southern Italy. It 

 is generally allowed that these Pelasgi, were part of that ex- 

 tensive and wide spread family, which many centuries before 

 ovu - era occupied all the countries situated on the Mediterranean, 

 from Etruria to the Bosporus. We find their monuments — 

 commonly known as the Cyclopean masonry, in Arcadia, Argolis, 

 and Attica, in Greece; in Etruria, and Latium, in Italy.* These 

 walls formed of enormous blocks, raised as- it were by the hands 

 of Giants, have defied the lapse of time, and still remain to us 

 as unaccountable monuments, whether of the skill or of the 



* The force of this argument for the identity of the Italian and 

 Greek Pelasgi has been questioned ; but although some such works 

 may be found of a much later date, yet we must accept the existence 

 of such monuments as are unquestionably of ancient date, appearing 

 contemporaneously in Greece and Italy, as a strong evidence of some 

 connection between the tribes that at that period occupied those two 

 countries. 



strength of the extinct race. The general family of the Pelasgi 

 is found at Dodona, worshipping the mystic voice of the pro- 

 phetic dove; at Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace, successors of 

 the Cabiri, deriving their rites from the religion of the East. 

 Theirs was Troy.f the great Pelasgic town, whose founder, 

 Dardanus, was fabled in various legends to have come from 

 Arcadia, from Samothrace, or from Cortona ; all historical cen- 

 tres of the early Pelasgic race. 



The Pelasgians are generally reported by writers of antiquity to 

 have formed settlements on the coasts of Italy ; and in the various 

 legends of the foundation of Italian towns by the race, we perceive 

 that they are traced to two centres, the Arcadian and Argive 

 Pelasgi, and the Lydian or Tyrrhenian Pelasgi. It cannot be 

 doubted that the Pelasgians, as an unsettled and seafaring race, 

 may have occupied simultaneously many points on the coast of 

 Italy. As a commercial and industrial race, they would natu- 

 rally establish themselves on the sea coast, and at the mouths or 

 on the banks of the larger rivers. Thus we find them, according 

 to tradition, occupying twelve cities on the banks of the Po, 

 twelve in Etruria, and twelve to the south of the Tiber; cor- 

 responding to the same Pelasgic number of twelve townships in 

 Attica, twelve towns forming the Amphictyonic League in Greece, 

 the iEolian and Ionian Leagues in Asia Minor. If we remember 

 what has just been noticed, viz : — the dispersion and industrial 

 character of the Pelasgic nation, we are at no loss to account for 

 their disappearance from history : they are indeed branded in 

 Grecian story as blood-thirsty marauders ; of their race is told the 

 trao-edy of Lemnos, the inhuman murder of Phocosan prisoners at 

 Agylla. Nor can we doubt that these tales arose from the 

 hatred of the warlike Greeks to an agricultural and industrial 

 population, distinct from the heroic tribes who afterwards peo- 

 pled both Greece and Italy, in their possession of a knowledge 

 of nature which inspired their enemies with fear and with hatred.. 

 The Telchines of Rhodes, the wizards of ancient fable; the 

 Cyclopes of Peloponnesus and Sicily, who penetrated the depths 

 of the earth with lamps fixed on their foreheads, the one-eyed 

 miners of antiquity; the Cabiri -of Lemnos and the Eastern 

 Pelasgic races — workmen as well as Gods, who were worshipped 

 under the image of earthern jars, the emblems of the mystery 

 of the potter's art: all these teach us that the genius of the 

 Pelaso-ic race was one of industry and skill, both undervalued 

 by their ruder contemporaries. So the Pelasgi in Italy were 

 made subject to various conquerors ; those of the North to the 

 Gothic Rasena; those of Centre Italy (the Siculians inhabiting 

 Latium) to the Oscans, who drove them into the island which 

 has ever since retained their name; those of the South (the 

 QEnotrians and Peucetians) when the invading Hellenes subjugated 

 their old seats in Lucania and Apulia, were reduced to serfdom, 

 as their kinsmen were in Etruria; while a portion of them, the 

 Bruttii, retained for ever the name as well as the condition of 

 slaves. 



The consideration of the history of this Pelasgic race, and its 

 settlement in Italy, is so intimately connected with the after 

 condition of their chief territory (that of Etruria), that we may 

 here anticipate a little the course of events, and advert to the 

 conquest of Etruria by the Etruscans. 



f Professor Newman, while rejecting much of Niebuhr's speculations 

 concerning the Pelasgi, thinks that "we may well accept his con- 

 jecture that the migrations of the Pelasgians by sea from the coast of 

 Troas to Sicily and Italy, carrying with them their Penates and religious 

 worship, generated the poetical legends concerning JEneas and others ; 

 indeed it can hardly be doubted, that the worship of the Penates, and 

 Palladium of Lavinium, which ^Eneas was supposed to have conveyed 

 thither, was strikingly similar to ceremonies practiced on the north 

 and north-east coast of iEgean." (Newman's Regal Rome, p. 8.) 



