ANCIENT ITALY.

BY J.W.DONALDSON,DDER.G.S.

Deighton Bell & Co Cambridge London Jahm W.Parker & Son June 1860.

VARRONIANUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD ITALIAN TRIBES CONSIDERED AS
RELATED TO EACH OTHER.

§ 1. Elements of the population of Rome. § 2. The LATINS-a composite tribe. §3. The Oscans, &c. § 4. Alba and Lavinium. §5. Trojan colony in Latium. § 6. The SABINES-how related to the Umbrians and Oscans. § 7. The Umbrians-their ancient greatness. § 8. Reduced to insignificance by successive contacts with the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians and Etruscans. §9. The PELASGIANS -the differences of their position in Italy and Greece respectively. § 10. They preserve their national integrity in Etruria. § 11. Meaning and ethnical extent of the name "Tyrrhenian." § 12. The ETRUSCANS-the author's theory respecting their origin. § 13. The names Etruscus and Rasena cannot be brought to an agreement with Tyrsenus. § 14. The legend that the Etruscans were Lydians is entirely destitute of historical foundation. § 15. It is explicitly stated by ancient writers that the Etruscans were connected with Rætia. § 16. This view of the case is after all the most reasonable. § 17. It is confirmed by all available evidence, and especially by the contrast between the town and country languages of ancient Etruria. § 18. Further inferences derivable from (a) the traditionary history of the Luceres. § 19. (b) Fragmentary records of the early constitution of Rome. § 20. (c) Etymology of some mythical proper names. § 21. General conclusion as to the mutual relations of the old Italian tribes.

THE

§ 1. Elements of the population of Rome.

'HE sum of all that is known of the earliest history of Rome is comprised in the following enumeration of particulars. A tribe of Latin origin, more or less connected with Alba, settled on the Palatine hill, and in the process of time united itself, by the right of intermarriage and other ties, with a band of Sabine warriors, who had taken up their abode on the Quirinal and Capitoline hills. These two towns admitted into fellowship with themselves a third community, established on the Cælian and Esquiline hills, which seems to have consisted of Pelasgians, either from the Solonian plain lying between Rome and

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Lavinium, or from the opposite side of the river near Cære; and the whole body became one city, governed by a king, or magister populi, and a senate; the latter being the representatives of the three original elements of the state,-the Latin or Oscan Ramnes, the Sabine Titienses or Quirites, and the Pelasgian Luceres. It appears, moreover, that the Etruscans, on the other side of the Tiber, eventually influenced the destinies of Rome in no slight degree, and the last three kings mentioned in the legendary traditions were of Etruscan origin. In other words, Rome was, during the period referred to by their reigns, subjected to a powerful Etruscan dynasty, from the tyranny of which it had, on two occasions, the good fortune to escape. What Servius planned was for the most part carried into effect by the consular constitution, which followed the expulsion of the last Tarquinius.

As these facts are established by satisfactory evidence, and as we have nothing else on which we can depend with certainty, it follows that, in order to investigate the ethnical affinities of the Roman people, and the origin and growth of their language, we must in the first instance inquire who were the Latins, the Sabines, the Pelasgians, and the Etruscans, and what were their relations one with another. After this we shall be able with greater accuracy to examine their respective connexions with the several elements in the original population of Europe.

The general result will be this:-that the Septimontium, or seven Hills of Rome, contained a miniature representation of the ethnography of the whole Peninsula. Leaving out of the question the Celtic substratum, which cannot be ascertained, but which was probably most pure in the mountaineers of the Apennines, the original population of Italy from the Po to the straits of Rhegium yas, like that of ancient Greece, Pelasgo-Sclavonian. This population remained unadulterated up to the dawn of ancient history in the central plains to the west-namely, in Etruria and Latium; but in the rest of Italy it was superseded or absorbed or qualified in different degrees of fusion by a population of Gothic or Low-German origin, which, although undoubtedly of later introduction in the Peninsula, was so mixed up with the Celtic or primary tribes that it claimed to be aboriginal. When this Low-German race remained tolerably pure, or at least only infected with Celtic ingredients, it bore the names of Umbrians

or Ombricans in the north, and of Opicans or Oscans in the south. When it was intermixed with Sclavonic elements to about the same extent as the Lithuanians or Old Prussians in the north of Europe, this Low-German population became known as Latins and Sabines. And the Etruscans or Rasena were a later and uninfected importation of Low Germans fresh from the north, who conquered and were partly absorbed into the pure Tyrrhenians, or Pelasgo-Sclavonians to the right of the Tiber.

In giving this general sketch of the ingredients which composed the population of ancient Italy, I omit all reference to the Greek colonists, who retained their language and a distinct nationality in numerous settlements along the coast, and actually gave the name of Græcia Magna (ý μeɣáλn 'Exλás) to the southeastern part of the Peninsula. Like the colonies in Sicily, these Greeks belong in every sense to their mother country, and Italian ethnography is not more concerned with them than with the inhabitants of Attica and Laconia. The Greeks of Cuma, from whom the Romans derived their alphabet, and perhaps many other features of their early civilisation, only anticipated the influences, which subsequent intercourse with the Greeks of the mother country produced on the whole texture of the language and literature of Rome.

§ 2. The LATINS-a composite tribe.

The investigations of Niebuhr and others have made it sufficiently certain that the Pelasgians formed a very important element in the population of ancient Latium. This appears not merely from the primitive traditions, but also, and more strongly, from the mythology, language, and architecture of the country. It has likewise been proved that this Pelasgian population was at an early period partially conquered by a tribe of mountaineers, who are called Oscans, and who descended on Latium from the basins of the Nar and the Velinus. The influence of these foreign invaders was most sensibly and durably felt in the language of the country; which in its earliest form presents phenomena not unlike those which have marked the idiom spoken in this island since the Norman conquest. The words