races, some no doubt more widely separated, but all marked by strong national characteristics. These were the Pelasgians, the Oscans, the Sabellians, the Umbrians, the Etrurians, and the Greeks. The names § 5. It is certain that in primitive times the coasts and lower valleys of Italy were peopled by tribes that had crossed over from the opposite shores of Greece and Epirus. These tribes belonged to that ancient stock called the Pelasgian, of which so much has been written and so little is known. that remained in Southern Italy were all of a Pelasgian or halfHellenic character. Such were, in the heel of Italy, the Daunians and Peucetians (reputed to be of Arcadian origin), the Messapians and Sallentines; to the south of the Gulf of Tarentum, the Chaonians (who are also found in Epirus); and in the toe the notrians, who once gave name to all Southern Italy. Such also were the Siculians and other tribes along the coast from Etruria to Campania, who were driven out by the invading Oscan and Sabellian nations.d § 6. The Oscan or Opican race was at one time very widely spread over the south. The Auruncans of Lower Latium belonged to this race, as also the Ausonians, who once gave name to Central Italy, and probably also the Volscians and the Equians. In Campania the Oscan language was preserved to a late period in Roman History, and inscriptions still remain which can be interpreted by those familiar with Latin. § 7. The Umbrians at one time possessed dominion over great part of central Italy. Inscriptions in their language also remain, and manifestly show that they spoke a tongue not alien to the Latin. The irruption of the Sabellian and of the Etruscan nations was probably the cause which broke the power of the Umbrians, and drove them back to a scanty territory between the Æsis, the Rubicon, and the Tiber. с "Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glebae; Italiam dixisse ducis de nomine gentem."-VIRG., Æn. i. 532. For a clear and intelligible account of the Pelasgians, see Dr. Smith's Hist. of Greece, p. 14. e Virgil, &c. Aristotle (Politic. vii. 10) says that the Opici were also called Ausones. § 8. The greatest of the Italian nations was the Sabellian. Under this name we include the Sabines, who are said by tradition to have been the progenitors of the whole race, the Samnites, the Picenians, Vestinians, Marsians, Marrucinians, Pelignians, and Frentanians. This race seems to have been naturally given to a pastoral life, and therefore fixed their early settlements in the upland valleys of the Apennines. Pushing gradually along this central range, they penetrated downwards towards the Gulf of Tarentum; and as their population became too dense to find support in their native hills, bands of warrior youths issued forth to settle in the richer plains below. Thus they mingled with the Opican and Pelasgian races of the south, and formed new tribes, known by the names of Apulians, Lucanians, and Campanians. These more recent tribes, in turn, threatened the great Greek colonies on the coast, of which we shall speak presently. § 9. We now come to the Etruscans, the most singular people of the Peninsula. This people called themselves Rasena, or Rasenna,—a name that reminds us of the Etruscan surnames Porsenna, Sisenna, Vibenna. At one time they possessed not only the country known to the Romans as Etruria (that is, the country bounded by the Macra, the central Apennine ridge, and the Tiber), but also occupied a large portion of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul; and perhaps they had settlements in Campania. In early times they possessed a powerful navy, and in the primitive Greek legends they are represented as infesting the Mediterranean with their piratical galleys.1 They seem to have been driven out of their Trans-Apennine possession by early invasions of the Gauls; and their naval power never recovered the blow which it received in the year Allusion is made to this in Virgil (Æn. x. 198-206) where the Etruscan chief Ocnus, the son of Manto, is said to have founded Mantua ("muros matrisque dedit tibi, Mantua, nomen "), and to have brought his troops from the Lago di Garda: "Quos patre Benaco velatus arundine glauca Mincius infesta ducebat in æquora pinu." Capua, according to tradition, was named from Capys, an Etruscan chief. See the pretty hymn to Dionysos, attributed to Homer, in which Etruscan pirates take the god prisoner, and are punished in a strange fashion for their audacity. 480 B.C., when Gelo King of Syracuse defeated their navy, combined with that of Carthage, on the same day on which the battle of Salamis crippled the power of Persia. But who this people were, or whence they came, baffles conjecture. It may be assumed as certain, that the Pelasgic settlers came in by sea from the western coasts of Epirus, which are distant from Italy less than fifty miles; and that the Opican, Umbrian, and Sabellian races came in from the north by land. But with respect to the Etruscans all is doubtful. One well-known legend represents them as Lydians, who fled by sea from Asia Minor to avoid the terrible presence of famine. Another indicates that they came down over the Alps, and the origin of their name Rasena is thought to be traced in Rætia. On the former supposition, Etruria was their earliest settlement, and, pushing northward, they conquered the plain of the Po; on the latter, they first took possession of this fertile plain, and then spread southward over the Apennines. Their language, if it could be interpreted, might help to solve the riddle. But though we have numerous inscriptions in their tombs, though the characters in which these inscriptions are written bear close affinity to the letters of the Greek and Roman alphabets, the tongue of this remarkable people has as yet baffled the deftest efforts of philology. § 10. Of the Greek settlements that studded the coast of Lower Italy, and gave to that district the name of Magna Græcia, little need here be said. They were not planted till after the foundation of Rome. Many of them, indeed, attained to great power and splendour; and the native OscoPelasgian population of the south became their subjects or their serfs. Sybaris alone, in the course of two centuries, is said to have become mistress of four nations and twenty-five towns, and to have been able to raise a civic force of 300,000 men. Croton, her rival, was even larger. Greek cities appear as far north as Campania, where Naples still preserves in a corrupt form her Hellenic name, Neapolis. The Greek remains discovered at Canusium (Canosi) in the heart of Apulia, attest the extent of Hellenic dominion. But the Greeks seem to have held aloof from mixture with the native Italians, whom See more in Dr. Smith's History of Greece, pp. 120-123. they considered as barbarians. Rome is not mentioned by any Greek writer before the time of Aristotle (about 340 B.C.). § 11. From the foregoing sketch it will appear that Latium was a kind of focus, in which converged all the different races that in past centuries had been thronging into Italy. The Etruscans bordered on Latium to the west; the Sabines, with the Umbrians behind them, to the north; the Equians and Volscians, Oscan tribes, to the north-east and east; while Pelasgian communities are to be traced upon the coast-lands. We should then expect beforehand to meet with a people formed by a commixture of divers tribes; and this expectation is confirmed both by ancient Tradition and by the investigations of modern scholars into the structure of the Latin Language. § 12. TRADITION tells us that the Aborigines of Latium mingled in early times with a people calling themselves Siculians; that these Siculians, being conquered and partly expelled from Italy, took refuge in the island, which was afterwards called Sicily from them, but was at that time peopled by a tribe named Sicanians; that the conquering people were named Sacranians, and had themselves been forced down from the Sabine valleys in the neighbourhood of Reaté by Sabellian invaders; and that from this mixture of Aborigines, Siculians, and Sacranians arose the people known afterwards by the name of Latins. Where all is uncertain, conjecture is easy. It may be alleged that the Aborigines and Siculians, both of them, or at least the latter, were Pelasgians, and that the Sacranians were Oscan. All such conjectures must remain unproved. But they all bear witness to the compound nature of the Latin nation. § 13. An examination of LANGUAGE leads us a little further. (1.) The Latin language contains a very large number of words closely resembling the Greek; and, what is particularly to be observed, the grammatical inflexion of the nouns and verbs, with all that may be called the framework of the language, closely resembles that ancient dialect of the Hellenic called Eolic. But it is not to be supposed that these roots and forms were borrowed from the Greek; for these same roots and forms are found in Sanscrit, the ancient language of India. In many of its forms, indeed, Latin more nearly resembles Sanscrit than Greek. It must be inferred, then, that these languages all branched off from one primitive stock. And it may be affirmed that the form under which this original language first appeared in Latium was Pelasgian or half-Hellenic. (2.) Though the framework and a large portion of the vocabulary resembles the Greek, there is also a large portion which is totally foreign to the Greek. This foreign element was certainly not Etruscan; for if so, we should find many words in the Etruscan inscriptions agreeing with words in Latin; whereas, in fact, we find hardly any. But in the Oscan inscriptions we find words much resembling the Greek, which words were no doubt Pelasgian; and it may be inferred that the Oscan races had so largely blended with the Pelasgian, that the original Latin tongue was a mixture of the two. (3.) It is certain that the nation we call Roman was more than half Sabellian. Traditional history, as we shall see, attributes the conquest of Rome to a Sabine tribe. Some of her kings were Sabine; the name borne by her citizens was Sabine; her religion was Sabine; most of her institutions in war and peace were Sabine; and therefore it may be concluded that the language of the Roman people differed from that of Latium Proper by its Sabine elements, though this difference died out again as the Latin communities were gradually absorbed into the territory of Rome. § 14. This, then, is the summary of what we know. Tradition represents Italy as peopled by a number of different races, and Rome as partaking more or less of the peculiarities of each race. Philology confirms this representation, and attempts to establish some definite relations between these races. The result is meagre, because the materials for a judgment are meagre. But it is at least certain, that the Roman people and its language were formed by a composition almost as manifold and heterogeneous as the people and language of England. The original Celtic population of our island gave way before the mixed Saxon, Anglian, and Danish tribes, which poured into it from the north. Anglo-Saxon, not without a dash of Celtic, became the common language of the people. Norman conquerors, Danes by origin and Frenchmen |