as arriving on the north-eastern coast, where it may be supposed that a people who made their way across the Adriatic from Thessaly would be most likely to land.

What then is the conclusion to which the sum of historical evidence leads us as to the origin of the Etruscans? Undoubtedly the hypothesis which accords best with the facts on evidence is that the Tuscans, like the Punic or Phoenician colonists of Northern Africa, and the Phocæan colonists in the south of Gaul, came from beyond seas and settled on the coast of the Tyrrheni. But this hypothesis has been generally rejected by modern writers. It may be worth while to inquire what are the objections offered to it, and whether they admit of a probable solution.

The principal objection is the difficulty of supposing that so numerous a people as were the Etruscans should arrive in Italy, en masse, by sea. The Rasena or Tuscan nation occupied so great a space in Italy, if we consider the whole extension of the race from the Rhætian Alps to the Tiber, and even to Campania, that on this ground many have thought it more probable that they were one of the great original tribes of the European continent.

The supposition that Etruria was colonised by sea precludes the idea that its foreign inhabitants arrived in great numbers; but there seems to be no great difficulty in imagining that a small band of emigrants may have multiplied after their settlement, and have gradually formed a numerous population. It does not appear indeed that the Greeks became very numerous in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, but they were rather a trading than an agricultural people. The Punic population in Africa was considerable as to numbers. It is true that they mixed with the indigenous inhabitants of the country, whereas the Rasena are said to have expelled the old Umbrians. But this is the account of Greek or Latin historians of a late time which had a reference to their own ideas of conquest; and the expression that the Umbrians were driven out does not forbid our supposing that a great part of them were enslaved, and remained in the country, according to the custom of antiquity, as a servile peasantry; and this supposition derives support from the fact that the Etruscans are said to have been a class of nobles,

holding rigorously in subjection a degraded caste of serfs not much above the condition of Laconian helots. Nothing parallel to this is alleged of any of the other old Italian tribes. This seems to imply that the dominant race was too superior in civilization, and too much opposed in language and habits to the conquered nation, to allow of their becoming blended or amalgamated so as to form one people.

This hypothesis would have obtained more general assent if there were any clear historical evidence of the Eastern origin of the Tuscans and of the event of their migration, as there appears to be in the instance of the Phocæans and the Carthaginians. The evidence of such an event is indeed defective, and too vague to be entitled to implicit confidence, though the statement is supported by the uniform testimony of tradition, and might be found recorded in authentic books if the literature of Etruria had not perished. But there are not wanting indications of the connection of the Etruscan people with Asia. The Eastern origin of their arts and culture is indeed admitted by those who look upon the race as indigenous in Italy. I shall close my observations on this subject by adverting to two or three remarkable indications.

1. The national character of the Etruscans is very different from that which may be supposed to have belonged to a tribe of rude mountaineers from the Rhætian Alps. The Gauls of the Cisalpine retained their barbarous or simple habits in the time of Strabo and Pliny, though they had been settled for centuries in the cultivated plains which had formed part of Northern Etruria. How can we account, admitting their Alpine and Barbaric origin, for the superior civilisation and peculiar character of the Tuscans? They were one of the most cultivated nations of antiquity, famous for their industry, devoted to agriculture, manufactures; excelling in arts both useful and ornamental; in literature and science, such as science then was they had a complex and elaborate system of rites and ordinances in the hands of priests, who were not like the Schamans of the northern barbarians, but revered as the depositories of ancient learning.

If it is suggested that they adopted the arts of the Pelasgi, whom they are said to have conquered, the reply is unsatis

factory. The Pelasgi were themselves a roving semibarbarous people, and in their whole character the very reverse of the Etruscans.

2. The superstition of the Etruscans had many oriental traits. Their cosmology, and their doctrine of future successive revolutions and cycles of time, connected with changes in the destiny of mankind, were almost the exact counterpart of the Indian doctrine of yugs and manwantaras. It resembles the Grecian

fable of the four ages, but is more complete and systematic, and approaches more nearly to the Indian theory, which appears to have spread at an early period through many countries in Upper Asia.* It cannot be doubted that this Etruscan doctrine had an oriental origin, nor is it in the least probable that they derived it from the East through the medium of the Pelasgi.

3. Niebuhr has argued, and perhaps conclusively, that the Tuscan characters are not of Pelasgic origin, but derived immediately from the Phoenicians; but the Phoenicians are not known to have had any commercial intercourse with Tuscany. It would appear that the use of these letters must have been brought by the Etruscans from Asia.+

4. The Tyrrhenian or Etruscan music was celebrated at Rome, where the use of wind instruments was considered to be peculiarly a Tuscan art. Virgil has the expression “ Tyrrhenus clangor;" and the use of the "tibia" or "avλos" is termed “Τυρσηνὸν μελετᾶμα.” The use of the σαλπιγξ or trumpet was also introduced into Rome from Etruria.§ Phrygia and Lydia were the countries whence the Greeks derived the use of the same instruments. The musical art of the Etruscans was in fact either identical with that of the Lydians or very similar to it, as it appears from a variety of passages cited on this subject by Professor Müller.||

5. Tyrrha was a city and district on the river Caystrus, in the southern part of Lydia. Southern Lydia was the country

* Suidas von Evλaç.

+ Cilicia contained Phoenician settlements. (See Gesenius, Palæogr. Phœn.) Æneid. viii. 526. Tynanes, t. i. p. 505. Anal. Br.

§ Σαλπιγξ, εύρημα Τυῤῥηνικον. Pollux.

Müller's Etrusker, iii. 1, 4.

of the Torrhebi. This seems to be the region, as Müller has observed, from which we may suppose with the greatest probability that the colony issued, which gave a new character, and we may add a new population, to the north of Italy. Müller supposes that an emigration actually took place, but not of the genuine Lydian or Mæonian race. He conjectures that bands of Pelasgi had settled on the coast of Caria and Lydia adjacent to Tyrrha, and that they here obtained the epithet of Tyrseni Pelasgi; that after acquiring the arts and many of the customs of their Lydian neighbours, they carried them, as well as a name originally derived from Tyrrha, over the sea termed Tyrrhenian; and after occupying the coast of the Rasena, taught the inhabitants of Lower Umbria their arts, and communicated to them their name of Tyrseni.

It

We have seen that historical traditions are unanimous in making the settlement of the Lydian or Tuscan colony subsequent to that of the Pelasgi, and that the Tyrsi or Tyrrhenians are uniformly asserted to have conquered that people. If we must form an hypothesis in accommodation with the ancient historical notices, it would not be precisely that adopted by Müller, who in this instance brings in, without any necessity, a supposition contradicting all the ancient testimonies. is just as probable that the Tuscan people were emigrants of the Lydian race as that they were Pelasgi. If we suppose that a colony from the coast of Lydia arrived in Italy after the conquests of the Pelasgi, and reduced them as well as the Umbrians, and founded the twelve cities of Lower Etruria, we shall find all the statements of ancient historians on this supposition reconciled.

SECTION X.-Concluding Remarks and general Review of the Population of Italy.

At the very earliest dawn of the light of history or rather of tradition on Italy, we discover recent traces of the passage of different tribes of people from the northern parts of that country to its southern extremity. The first of these, and the first only, was an Allophylian race, or one of a lineage foreign to the great Indo-Europeau family of nations. The Sicani of

the Iberian stock, expelled from their original country, of which the situation is unknown,-perhaps in the south of Gaul,*— sought refuge ultimately in the isle of Sicily, to which they gave the name of Sicania. Their way was probably through Italy; but of that country we can only infer that they were some time inhabitants, from the number of epithets descriptive of places which have been pointed out by Baron W. von Humboldt, and proved to be clearly significant in the Euskarian language.

The Siculi, to whom must be joined all the tribes nearly related to them, as the Oenotri, the Morgetes, Italietes, Peucetii, Iapyges, are reported by tradition to have been connected in origin with the primitive inhabitants of Greece; their language affords a more unequivocal evidence of their affinity to the Latins. They are found in the southern parts of Italy; but of their passage through the north we have traces in the tradition that they were expelled from several districts on the borders of Umbria by the more warlike people who gave name to that country. They were expelled from Latium, as it is said, or perhaps they were rather conquered by the Latins or Aborigines, and from the country between Latium and the Siculian straits, by the Opici, a people of the same stock with the Ausones and the Sabines. Both of these nations, the Latins and the Sabines, are deduced from countries near the Apennines and the borders of Umbria, and it is probable that they were originally of the Umbrian race. The old Latin, the Opic or Oscan, and the Umbrian are plainly dialects of one original speech, with which the Siculian is likewise connected by all the remains which are yet extant, and which though scanty appear to be sufficient for a satisfactory conclusion.

These nations, the Umbri in the north, and the Latins, Opici or Ausones, including the Sabine or Sabellian branch, and the Siculi and their kindred in the south, appear to have occupied at one period the whole of Italy. They were in fact one nation, divided into different tribes, speaking dialects of one language, and they may be considered as a particular branch of the great Indo-European race. This branch was more nearly allied to the

* They were expelled by the Ligurians, whose country was the coast of Gaul.