220 



THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME. 



[1854. 



The early inhabitants of Etruria were Tyrrhenians, a branch 

 of the Pelasgic race. That they were at any rate closely con- 

 nected with the early inhabitants of Greece, if not belonging to 

 the same great family, is clear from several considerations. 

 These Tyrrhenians appear by the preponderating evidence of 

 antiquity to have migrated from Greece and Asia Minor. Suc- 

 ceeding and conquering them we find a race which is referred to 

 Lydia as its mother country on the testimony of Herodotus, as 

 well as of many other ancient authors. This theory of their origin 

 has been supported by Mr. Dennis, and quite lately by Professor 

 Newman. On the contrary we have the absence of any corrobo- 

 rating testimony in Xanthus, the annalist of Lydia, as noticed by 

 Dionysius; and the fact that the language, religion, and institu- 

 tions of these Etruscans did not correspond with those of Lydia. 

 This negative objection isoverruled by Newman on these grounds : 



1. That the positive testimony of Herodotus is worth far more 

 than the omission of Xanthus. 



2. That the tendency of fiction in nations is to remodel the 

 past, not the future. "They feign forefathers,'' he says, "not 

 children : so that this belief of the Lydians is a weighty circum- 

 stance," 



3. That the native population of Etrusia was then TJmhro-Pe- 

 lasgian; and that the language and institutions of the Etrurians 

 would naturally undergo a sensible change from their proximity 

 to the old population, just as the language of the Lydians them- 

 selves had undergone a sensible change during the vicissitudes 

 which befel them in the growth of the Persian Empire. 



Niebuhr, as is well known, combats this view ; and would de- 

 rive the Etruscans from the country north of Italy, supposing 

 them to have conquered the Tyrrhenians and Umbrians, and 

 occupied Etruria proper and the country about the Po. This 

 view is that which, after all that Professor Newman urges 

 against it, seems nevertheless to rest on the surest ground. I 

 will, before proceeding to state the accepted theory of the 

 Etruscan History and their invasion of Central Italy, offer one or 

 two remarks on the arguments by which Mr. Newman has 

 endeavoured to set aside that theory. 



1st. As to the positive testimony of Herodotus. His account 

 of the story may be freely translated as follows : — 



" The Lydians say of themselves, that the common games 

 which are now in use in Greece are their invention ; and that, 

 besides inventing these games, they moreover sent a colony to 

 Tyreenia. The following is their story : — In the days of Atys, 

 the son of Manes, their king, there was a sore famine through- 

 out all Lydia, And for a time the Lydians lived in distress, 

 but afterwards, when the famine stayed not, they sought for 

 remedies against it. It was then they say that they invented 

 dice, and knuckle-bones, and ball, and all other kinds of games 

 except draughts. * * * * For one whole day then they 

 played games that they might not want food: and the next 

 day they took their turn to eat, and rested from their games. 

 Thus they lived for eighteen years. But when the evil abated 

 not, but rather grew worse and pressed them sore, then at last 

 their king divided all the Lydians into two parts, and drew lots 

 for the one to remain at home, and the other to leave the 

 country. And with the lot that drew to remain at home the 

 king joined himself ; but with that which was to depart from 

 the country, he joined his own son, whose name was Tyrsenus. 

 Now the party who were appointed by lot to depart out of the 

 land went down to Smyrna, and built ships for themselves, and 

 put in them all their moveable property, and sailed away to 

 look for a livelihood and a home : and they passed by many 



nations, until they came to the Ombrici. And there they 

 built cities in the land, where they live even unto this day. 

 But they changed their name from Lydians after the name of 

 their king's son, who had led them out, and were called 

 Tyrsenians." (Hdt. I. 94). 



I think that no one who reads this paragraph can fail to observe 

 that Herodotus tells this tale merely as a tale, and does not 

 attach to it any great importance. We have no words of criticism, 

 or of assent, such as he so often appends to stories in themselves 

 far more probable. He seems to class it with the invention of 

 games, and to give the Lydians credit for one as lightly as for the 

 others. At any rate, the amount of credit which Herodotus 

 gives to this story can hardly be characterized as positive testi- 

 mony, or be set against the omission of any such account in 

 Xanthus, who, more perhaps than any one, would have endea- 

 voured to raise the historical importance of his country by 

 recording this legend, if he had regarded it as entitled to credit. 

 I confess that it seems to me to belong too clearly to the a pos- 

 teriori class of fictions, where the name of the hero is represented 

 as descending to the people and the country, where the national 

 life is traced fondly back to some semi-heroic eponymus — to 

 some god, or child of a god, who had left Olympus and walked 

 among men, and founded for himself a city and a people in the 

 golden age. This tendency is illustrated by many familiar 

 instances, which we need not recall to our readers' minds ; but 

 it may be interesting to observe how such a fiction may arise, 

 not only in an early and credulous age, but at a cultivated and 

 critical period — -nay, how even the critic may show undue 

 credulity, misled by this name-parentage of early fiction. Let 

 us take as our instance Tacitus, the historian, the sceptic ; a man 

 of all others the most likely, we should think, to have entertained 

 that " wise disbelief' which " is our first grand requisite in deal- 

 ing with materials of mixed worth." And yet, when treating of 

 the history and institutions of the Jews, he shows not only igno- 

 rance and prejudice, both of 'which we can easily account for, 

 but he gives us a remarkable instance of the tendency of epony- 

 mizing (if we may coin an expressive word) which we have 

 noticed above. Among various theories which he mentions, 

 these two are to the point : " Quidam (memorant) regnante Iside, 

 exundantem per ^Egyptum multitudinem, ducihus Hierosolymo 

 ac Juda, proximas in terras exoneratam;" and again: "Alii, 

 Judseorum initia, Solymos, carminibus Homeri celebratam gen- 

 tern, conditam urbern Hierosolyma nomine suo fecisse." — i^Tac. 

 Hist., V. 2, cf. also, 3-8.) 



2. Professor Newman's second argument does not appear 

 conclusive. Although the fabulous tendency in nations looks to 

 the future rather than to the past ; although " they feign fore- 

 fathers," as he says, "not children," yet we cannot allow that 

 this belief of the Lydians is in itself a circumstance of any great 

 weight; for we must distinguish between the art of inventing a 

 posterity gratuitously, so to speak, and the art of claiming the 

 parentage of a nation already existing, and presenting sufficient 

 marks of a family likeness to render the claim feasible. This we 

 conceive to have been the case with the Lydians. They found a 

 nation existing in Italy in whom they recognized some marks of 

 a common stock. This nation they claimed as their offspring. 

 Their claim must be modified or rejected according to one of two 

 alternatives. We may suppose that the nation whom they wished 

 to claim was merely one branch of that Pelasgic family which 

 has its seats in Lydia as well as in Italy. In that case, they may 

 have had a real connection with that western outpost of their 

 family, but with the Tyrrheno-Pelasgic inhabitants of Etruria, 

 not the Etrurians proper. Or, secondly, if we consider this 

 legend as referring to the strict Etrurian race, we feel bound to 



