ancient author describes the Tyrrhenians of Lydia as | gians. The settlement of the Tyrrhenians at Malea, Pelasgians from Attica and the islands. The gene- on their progress from Lydia to Italy, rests on very alogy of Herodotus from the Lydian authors makes slight grounds. A passage, namely, in the commenTyrrhenus a son of Atys, king of Lydia; in that given tator Lactantius or Lutatius on Statius (Theb., 4, 224), in Dionysius without the author's name, Lydus and who calls the inventor of the Tyrrhenian trumpet MaTyrrhenus are brothers; in that of Xanthus the broth- leus; but the resemblance between the Tuscan and ers are called Lydus and Torybus or Torrhubus, i. e., the Lydian or Phrygian music, really adds consideraaccording to Müller, Tyrrhenus. Whichever of these ble weight to the other arguments in favour of the we argue from, it appears very improbable that the Oriental colonization of Etruria. The musical instrulineage of a band of Pelasgian pirates, who had settled ment of the Greeks, in the heroic and Homeric age, on the coasts of Lydia, should have been carried up was the lyre; the flute was unknown, or, at least, not to the ancient kings or gods of the country; and that, in use. It has been long since remarked that Homer too, not by the Greeks, but by the Lydians themselves. mentions the avλoç only in two passages (I., 10,13; We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion, that the 18, 495). In the first of these he is describing the Tyrrhenians were much more intimately connected nightly noise of the Trojan camp, and the Villoison with the Lydian population than Müller's account of scholiast observes, that these instruments were known them supposes. Niebuhr makes the Moonians (the only to the Barbarians. This observation, though Homeric name for the Lydians) to be Pelasgians, ar- limited, is not contradicted by the other passage, in guing from the name of their stronghold, Larissa, which youths are represented as dancing at a wedding which is found in all countries occupied by Pelasgians; to the sound of lyres and flutes. To say nothing of Müller represents them as wholly different, alleging the suspicions which have been entertained, that the that no ancient author calls the Moonians Pelasgians. description of the shield of Achilles, of which this is This is true; but they make the Tyrrhenians Mooni- a part, is not of the same age with the rest of the ans and also Pelasgians, and therefore imply, though Iliad, it is very possible that the Greeks of Ionia may they do not assert, the identity of the people who bore have employed the flute-players of Lydia or Phrygia at these three names. The whole coast of Asia Minor their festivities; or, should it be supposed that in the appears to have been occupied by the Pelasgi, or na- days of Homer the use of the flute was familiar to tions differing from them only in name. Menecrates the Ionians themselves, the entire absence of all men. (ap. Strab., 571) related, that the Pelasgi had occu- tion of it in the Odyssey shows that in Greece itself pied the whole of Ionia, from Mycale northward, and it had not yet been introduced. It came in there the adjacent islands; the Carians, the Leleges, and along with the worship of Bacchus, which, whatever the Caucones, the Trojans, and Mysians, were of the may have been its remoter origin, certainly passed same race, and also allied to the Lydians, as appears from Lydia and Phrygia to Thrace, and thence into from the genealogy given by Herodotus (1, 171). The southern Greece, devouring with its stormy music the Greeks themselves attribute the Pelasgic population feebler notes of the lyre. The double flute, of which of Asia Minor to colonies sent from Greece or from the left hand played a treble to the bass of the right the islands; but their accounts of colonies before the hand, is mentioned by Herodotus (1, 7) under the Homeric age, being founded on no contemporary au- name of αὐτὸς ἀνδρεῖος and γυναικείος, as used by thority, must generally be regarded as historicai hy- the Lydians in war. Now the double flute, as we potheses, chiefly grounded upon similarity of names, know both from ancient authors and from monuments which may often be more rationally explained from (Inghirami, Monumenti Etruschi, pt. 8, pl. 20; pt. 2, other causes. It is, however, by no means probable pl. 96), was in use among the Etrurians; and the Rothat the Lydians were wholly a Pelasgic people. The mans not only borrowed their flute-music from them, phenomena of the history of Asia Minor are most but generally employed at sacrifices and festive dances easily solved by the supposition that a nation of Syr-a Tuscan flute-player. (Compare Virg., Georg., 2, 193. ian origin was mingled in its two principal districts, Ovid, A. A., 1, 111.) It is very improbable that Lydia and Phrygia, with another nearly allied to the such a coincidence between the Etruscan and Asiatic Greeks. The Mosaic genealogy of nations (Gen., 10, customs should be accidental; and no more probable 22) assigns a Semitic origin to the Lydians; while it explanation of it can be given than that the Tyrrherefers most of the tribes of Asia Minor, along with the nians were really a colony of Pelasgi from Lydia. Greeks, to the stock of Japheth. The mythology of They were probably not numerous, compared with Lydia, the basis, as usual, of its dynasties of kings, the Rasena, whom they found in possession of the betrays its Syrian as well as Grecian affinities. Their country; and hence, though some of their arts were deities ATTng or 'Arvç (the same as Пaraç, Hes.), communicated to the nation among whom they settled, and Mu, father and mother, have probably given their they were soon so completely absorbed in it, that the name to the Atyades and the Moonians; and their language of Etruria bore no traces either of a Greek worship is clearly the same with that of the Syrian or a Lydian mixture. The adoption of a story of a goddess, who was variously denominated Atargatis, Lydian origin by no means requires that we should Derceto, Semiramis, Rhea, Juno, and Venus. The reject the accounts of migrations of Pelasgi from Theschief seat of her worship at Hierapolis, was the resort saly, and from the opposite shore of the Adriatic to of the people of Asia Minor; and Ascalon, in Phoe- the mouths of the Po, which we find in other writers nicia, appears to have been considered as a colony of on Etrurian history. Professor Müller thus sums up the Lydians (Steph. Byz., s. v.) for no other reason this part of his researches: "It remains, then, that we than that the traditions of the great goddess were in regard the Tuscan nation as an original and peculiar a peculiar manner connected with this place. In the people of Italy; their language is widely different list of the kings of Troy, whose names are generally from the Greek; the names of their gods are not of Grecian etymology, the Oriental name of Assara- those which we find among the earliest Greeks whom cus points to a mixture of Oriental mythology; and we call Pelasgi, and which passed from them to the this remark is still more applicable to the genealogy Hellenes; there is much, too, in the doctrine of their of the Heraclid kings of Lydia, in which Greek and priests entirely foreign to the Greek theology. But Assyrian personages are so strongly mixed, Hercules, it appears to have been the fate of this nation, which Alcæus, Belus, Ninus, Agron. (Herod., 1, 7.) If, never displayed any independent civilization, but only then, the Lydians were a people partly Asiatic, partly adopted that of the Greeks, to have been indebted for allied to the Greeks, there is really no contradiction its first impulse towards improvement to a Greek, or, between those historians who call the Tyrrhenians at best, half-Greek tribe. The Tuscans themselves, Lydians, and those who speak of Tyrrhenian Pelas- in their native legends, referred their polity and civilis mæ." zation to the maritime town Tarquinii, and the hero | the Ægean. Possessing harbours on both seas, they Tarchon, both probably only variations of the name maintained the command of both, and made themTyrrheni. Here it was that the much-dreaded Pelas- selves formidable not only to merchant ships by their gians of Lydia landed and settled, bringing with them corsairs, but to the naval powers by their armaments. the arts they had acquired at home or on their way. To their predominance in the lower sea, Müller atFor the first time the barbarous land saw men covered tributes the circumstance, that the Greeks, while they with brass array themselves for battle to the sound of had numerous colonies on the eastern and southern the trumpet; here first they heard the loud sound of coasts of Sicily, had only one, Himera, on the north, the Lydo-Phrygian flute accompanying the sacrifice, as late as the age of Thucydides. Indeed, the dread and perhaps witnessed for the first time the rapid of the Etruscans long prevented the Greeks from passcourse of the fifty-oared ship. As the legend, in its ing the straits of Rhegium with their ships; and it propagation from mouth to mouth, swells beyond all was not till the rise of the naval power of the Phobounds, the whole glory of the Tuscan name, even cians that either the Adriatic or Tyrrhene seas were that which did not properly belong to the colonists, well explored by them. Rivalry soon followed; both attached itself to the name of Tarchon, the disciple nations endeavoured to possess themselves of Corsica; of Tages, as the author of a new and better era in the and the Etruscans, being joined by the Carthaginians, history of Etruria. The neighbouring Umbrians and fought a desperate battle with their Phocian antagoLatins named the nation, which from this time began nists, in which victory ultimately sided with the latter. to increase and diffuse itself, not from the primitive They were equally unfortunate in their naval wars inhabitants, but from these new settlers. For since, with the Dorians of Cnidos and Rhodes, who had in the Eugubine tables, Trusce occurs along with made a settlement on the island of Lipara. In the Tuscom and Tuscer, it is impossible not to conclude, time of Pausanias, a consecrated offering of the Lipathat from the root TUR have been formed Trusicus, reans was seen at Delphi, made from the spoils of the Truscus, Tuscus ; as from the root OP, Opscus and Tyrrhenians. Another trophy of the victory of the Oscus; so that Tuponvoi or Tuponvoí, and Tusci, Greeks over them has been brought to light in our are only the Asiatic and Italic forms of one and the own times. In the year 474 B.C., the people of Cusame name. (Etrusker, vol. 1, p. 100.) The time mæ, in Campania, being engaged in war with the Tyrof such a colonization can, of course, only be fixed by rhenians, called in the aid of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, approximation. Müller supposes it to have coincided by whom they were totally defeated; and Greece, as with the Ionic migration, and to have been occasioned Pindar says (Pyth., 1, 72), was delivered from slavery. by it. The Umbrians were powerful in the land of In 1817, a brazen helmet was discovered among the which the new colonists took possession, and long ruins of Olympia, with an inscription to the following wars must have been carried on with them before effect: "Hiero, son of Dinomeus, and the Syracusans they were dispossessed of the three hundred towns (consecrate) to Jupiter, Tyrrhenian (arms) from Cuwhich Pliny (3, 19) says they once held in the counTwo other helmets without inscriptions, but no try afterward called Etruria. To the south the Etru- doubt part of the same votive offering, were found at rians extended themselves to the banks of the Tiber, the same time. (Boeckh, Corp. Inscript., 1, 34.—Id. and even beyond it into Latium, as the name of Tus- ad Pind., vol. 1, p. 224.)--In opposition to the theory culum proves. According to their own traditions, the of Müller, however, another one has been advocated, same Tarchon who founded the twelve cities of Etru- with his usual ability and learning, by the celebrated ria led a colony across the Apennines and founded Niebuhr. He makes the name Tyrseni or Tyrrheni, twelve other cities. Of such a tradition, the historian in Italy, to have belonged originally and properly to can receive no more than the fact, that Etruria, in the the Pelasgian population, and the Etruscans to have valley of the Po, was colonized from the southern come in from the Rhetian Alps, and to have conquerEtruria. Bologna, anciently Felsina, which stands ed the previous inhabitants. These new-comers he where the Apennines descend into the fertile plains makes to have been the Rasena of Dionysius, wherewhich border the Po, was probably the first of these as Müller, it will be remembered, considers the Racolonies, as it is called by Pliny (3, 20), “princeps senæ to have formed the primitive population of the quondam Etruria:" the names of most of the others land, and to have been conquered by the Tyrrheni. are uncertain. A stone, with an Etruscan inscription, In reply to the question that very naturally presents has been found (Lanzi, vol. 2, p. 649) as far to the itself, why, if the Etruscans were a foreign and distinct westward as Alessandria. Atria and Spina, near the race, the Greek writers, nevertheless, invariably called mouth of the Po, were certainly Tuscan cities, and them Tyrseni, and Etruria Tyrsenia, Niebuhr revery important from their commerce with the Adriatic; marks, that the Etruscans had no more title to the but the foundation of both was claimed for the Pelas- name of Tyrsenians, than the English to that of Britgians of Thessaly or the followers of Diomede. The ons, or the Spanish Creoles to that of Mexicans or same story of twelve colonies is repeated in reference Peruvians: the strange name was acquired in all these to the settlement of the Etruscans in Campania. Mül-cases, according to him, in precisely the same way. ler supposes these to be really colonies from Etruria, in opposition to the opinion of Niebuhr, who thinks they were founded by Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, confounded with the Etruscans from identity of name. At all events, the amount of Etruscan population in Campania cannot have been great, since the Oscan language, not the Etruscan, prevailed there; and not a single Etruscan inscription has been found in this whole district. This land of luxurious indulgence appears to have exerted its usual influence on the Etruscans, and they yielded the possession of it with little resistance to the Samnites, who poured down It is not an easy task to paint the domestic manners from the hills on the fertile plains of Campania. In and national character of a people who have transmit their Italian settlement, the Tyrrhenians appear to ted no living image of themselves to posterity in lite have retained long the practice of piracy, which had rary compositions. The basis of the national prospermade their name notorious in the Grecian seas; in-ity of the Etrurians was agriculture, to which their deed, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the soil and climate were well adapted, and which has alimputation falls on the Etruscans or the Tyrrhenians of | ways flourished in Tuscany, when the beneficence of The whole theory is undoubtedly a very plausible one; but the difficulties with which it is encumbered are so numerous, that we cannot hesitate to yield an assent to the more rational view taken by Müller of this interesting but difficult subject. (Consult Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., vol. 1, p. 82, seqq., and 89, ed. 2, p. 38 and 108, ed. 3.-Hist. of Rome, p. 78, Libr. Us. Knowl.) Domestic Manners, National Character, &c., of the Etrurians. : nature has not been counteracted by misgovernment of a power exerted only at long intervals in the proand absurd legislation. But Etruria was not, like duction of being, and absorbing into itself all that it Campania, a land of spontaneous fertility; the industry had produced, to create again. The symbols of this and ingenuity of man were required to adapt cultivation power were the Dii involuti of Etrurian theology, to the various qualities of the land, and to curb the in- whose names were unknown, and who were not obundations of the Po in the provinces on the Adriatic.jects of popular worship; of them Jupiter himself Their primitive manners were simple; the distaff of asked counsel: the Dii Consantes, twelve in number, Tanaquil was long preserved in the temple of Sancus six of either sex, presided over the existing order of at Rome; and a passage of Juvenal (6, 288) seems to things, and received homage and sacrifice. Their inimply, that in domestic industry and virtue there was tervention in human affairs was chiefly manifested in a close resemblance between the Tuscan and the Ro- omens of impending evil, to be averted by gloomy, and man nations in early times. Their extensive con- often cruel expiations. If morality may have gained quests, and bold and skilful navigation, are a sufficient something by the Etrurian religion's having furnished proof of the energy of their national character. But nothing answering to the sportive, but licentious mywhen commerce and conquests in Southern Italy had thology of the Greeks, poetry and art undoubtedly sufplaced in their reach the means of indulgence, they fered. The same want of lively and cheerful imaginaseized upon them with the avidity of a half-barbarous tion characterized their doctrine of the immortality of people and luxury, instead of being the handmaid of the soul: their subterranean world was a Tartarus refinement and elegance, ministered to vain splendour without an Elysium. Nowhere was superstition reand sensual voluptuousness. Diodorus (5, 40) de- duced so completely to system. The regions of the scribes, from Posidonius, their tables loaded twice a heavens were divided and subdivided according to the day (which, to abstemious Greeks, seemed the excess Etrurian discipline, that every portent might have its of gluttony), their embroidered draperies, their drink-accurate interpretation; the phenomena of the atmoing-vessels of gold and silver, and their hosts of slaves. sphere, especially thunder and lightning, were observed Athenæus gives much darker shades to his picture of and classed with a minuteness which might have furthe corruption of manners produced by wealth expend-nished the rudiments of a science, had the observers ed wholly in the gratification of the senses. That the been philosophers instead of priests; but which, in epithets of pinguis and obesus, which the Romans ap- fact, only augmented the subservience of the multitude plied to the Etruscans, were not wholly suggested by to those who claimed the exclusive knowledge of the national malice, is evident from the recumbent figures methods by which the gods might be propitiated. It on the covers of the sarcophagi. From the Etruscans is unnecessary to say that philosophy, in the Grecian the Romans borrowed their combats of gladiators. It sense of the word, free speculation on man, nature, and should seem, however, that the horrible practice of in- providence, combining its results into a system, was troducing them at banquets belonged chiefly to the unknown in Etruria. Some practical knowledge of Etrurians of Campania, and especially to Capua; the the laws of nature cannot be denied to a people who focus of all the vices which spring from luxury, neither executed such works in architecture and hydraulics softened by humanity nor refined by taste. Of the as the Etruscans; but we are not aware that the disEtrurian music we have spoken in mentioning the covery or demonstration of a single scientific truth can proofs of their Lydian origin. It was almost the only be claimed for them. The form of the Etrurian branch of art in which invention is attributed to them government, in which the same order were both arisby the ancients; and even here the invention related tocracy and priesthood, effectually prevented the mind only to the instrument; we read of no mood ascribed of the nation from expending itself in its natural to them. Their celebrity, both in this and the plastic growth. To the Lucumones, an hereditary nobility, art, was owing, in a great measure, to their being the Tages revealed the religious usages which the people neighbours of a people whose genius was so decidedly were to observe; and they kept to themselves the averse from both as that of the Romans; who, till they knowledge of this system, with the power of applying became acquainted with the Greeks, derived all the it as they thought best for perpetuating their own modecorative part of their system of public and private nopoly. In their civil capacity, the Lucumones formlife from the Etrurians. We have no historical means ed the ruling body in all the cities of Etruria. In earof determining whether the Etrurians borrowed from lier times we read of kings, not of the whole country, the Greeks their successive improvements in sculpture but of separate states, whose power, no doubt, was and statuary, or proceeded in an independent track: greatly narrowed by that of the aristocracy; but they the fact which we shall have to produce respecting disappear after a time altogether, as from the Grecian their alphabet, renders the former supposition more and Roman history; while no body corresponding to probable. If this communication existed, it was only the plebs arose to represent the popular element of to a certain point: the Tuscan style in art always bore the constitution. It is difficult to fix the exact relaa resemblance to that of Egypt, and their most perfect |tion of the great body of the ruling caste. Muller inworks had that rigidity, and want of varied and living clines to the opinion, that the cultivators of the soil expression, which characterized Grecian sculpture be- were chiefly bondsmen to the land-owners, as the Pefore Phidias had fired his imagination with Homer's de-nestæ in Thessaly, and the Helots in Sparta. That scription of Jupiter and Minerva, or Praxiteles had imbodied in marble his vision of the Queen of Beauty. In all that department of art, or the contrary, in which mechanism without mind may attain perfection, the Etrurians were little inferior to the Greeks themselves. An Athenian poet (ap. Athen., 1, 28) celebrated their works in metal as the best of their kind; alluding probably to their drinking-vessels and lamps, candelabra and tripods. The religion of the Greeks lent a powerful aid in perfecting the plastic art; that of the Etrurians, as far as it was peculiar to them, had nothing to impregnate the native fancy of the artist, or to exalt his conceptions to sublimity. They appear to have held an opinion, which we find both in the Northern and Hindu theology, that the gods themselves were like the system over which they presided, the effects such a class existed in Etruria is certain; that it in- The their works in brass. which was the ancient food of the inhabitants of all | judge what their architecture really was; and even here this part of Italy; and agriculture formed the most we find very few traces of it. (Müller, Etrusker, honourable occupation. The iron-mines of Ilva, now vol. 2, p. 24.) It is nearly allied to the Doric, and not Elba, and others on the mainland of Etruria connected properly a distinct order; whether so allied in consewith them, furnished a richer supply, and of a purer quence of the affinity of the Etrurians and Greeks, or quality than any other in the ancient world; the same borrowed by the former, and varied to adapt it to edifices island produced the copper for their coinage, and for of wood, as theirs commonly were, appears doubtful. Within these sepulchral chambers were disposed cinerary urns of stone, sometimes ranged around the sides Works of Art, Antiquities, &c., of the Etrurians. on the ground; sometimes on an amphitheatre of steps; Enough remains of Etruscan art to justify what an- and sometimes in niches, like the Roman columbaria. cient authors have said of the population, wealth, and Instances of bodies interred without burning are very luxury of this people. The walls of their cities rarely rare. The urns themselves are commonly of tufo or exhibit that gigantic species of dike-building which has alabaster, and of an oblong form, about two feet in been called the Cyclopean architecture, and which is length, and of the same height, including the cover, on found in Asia Minor, in the Peloponnesus, and the re- which the recumbent figure of the deceased is often mains of the ancient towns of Latium and Samnium. carved. In the sepulchres of Volterra, urns of baked Micali considers the walls of Cosa as the only specimen earth are very rare, stone being there abundant; in in Etruria of the Cyclopean manner; but if the cri- those of Chusium and Montepulciano they are comterion be the use of polygonal masses of stone without mon. The urns of baked clay were meant to contain cement, instead of parallelopipedal, the plate (pl. 12) ashes, and must not be confounded with the fictile which he has given of the gate and wall of Signium vases which are very commonly found in the Etrurian (Segni) shows that it partakes of the character of this sepulchres. As they were first discovered in Etruria, class. But, in general, they built their walls, as may the name of Etruscan was given to them, and continbe seen at Volterra, Populonia, and Rusellæ, of vast ued to be used after it was known that they were found blocks of parallelopipedal form, which their own weight more abundantly in the sepulchres of Magna Græcia, retained in their places, without the use of mortar. and even in Attica and the islands of the Ægean. The gate of Segni, before mentioned, shows something That the custom of depositing them in sepulchres, for of the earliest attempt at constructing an arch, by whatever purpose, was common to Etruria and to the the gradual approximation of the stones which form south of Italy, is certain; but there is no reason to the sides. Etruria does not exhibit any specimens suppose that it originated in Etruria, or that those of the mode of building practised in the treasuries of which are found in Campanian or Sicilian sepulchres Atreus and Minyas, in which the walls of a circular are of Etrurian manufacture. On the contrary, it is building converge so as to meet at the top in the form probable that those found in Etruria are the production of a beehive. A recent traveller, Della Marmora, has of Greek artists; their subject, their style of painting discovered several of this kind in the island of Sar- and design, are completely Greek; and though the dinia. We are indebted for by far the most numerous Etruscans have inscribed every other work of art with of our Etruscan antiquities to the care with which this their own characters, no painted vase has yet been people provided themselves with durable places of found with any other than a Greek inscription. The sepulture, and their custom of interring with the body single exception found probably at Volterra, and menvarious articles of metal and of clay. To the opening tioned by Inghirami (Ser. 5, Tab. 55, N. 8), is Greek of the hypogea of Volterra, we owe the revival of this both in its style and its words. The ancients frebranch of antiquarian lore. Some of these repositories quently celebrate the pottery of the Etrurians, but do belonged to ancient towns, whose existence might have not attribute to them any particular skill in painting been unknown but for the necropolis which marks them. The vases of Arretium, so frequently, mentheir vicinity. Inghirami has given an interesting ac- tioned in the classics, are of quite a different kind count (Ser. 4) of two of these; one at Castellaccio, from those found in sepulchres; fragments of them not far from Viterbo, the other at Orchia, about four- abound in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, and Inghirateen miles to the southwest of that city. Castellaccio mi has engraved some of them. They are of very was the Castellum Axium mentioned by Cicero in his fine clay, of a bright red colour, and with figures in oration for Cæcina (c. 7), the site of which Cluverius relief, modelled after Greek patterns probably, but declared to be unknown. The traces of the walls with Latin inscriptions. Statues of the gods in clay, themselves are very visible in the large oblong blocks of Tuscan fabric, were the chief ornaments of the Roof peperino joined without cement, and convex out man temples in the earliest times. (Juv., 11, 115.) ward, in the usual style of the old Etruscan fortifica- Every collection of antiquities contains specimens of tions. The steep banks of the stream, being composed what are called Etruscan pateræ, very generally found of a tufo easily wrought, have been hewn out for with the urns and vases in the sepulchral chambers. nearly a mile into grotto-sepulchres, the face of the They are shallow disks of brass, frequently without rock being cut into the representation of a doorway, any concavity, but bordered by a rim slightly raised, while the real entrance to the hypogeum is below, and and having a handle of the same metal. On the disk closed with large stones. Examples of this kind of are generally engraved scenes of mythological and hesepulchre are found in Persia, in Palestine, and in roic history, with legends in the heroic character; a Asia Minor (Walpole's Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 231; circumstance which has rendered them peculiarly imvol. 2, p. 206, 524); but in these the entrance is by portant to the antiquary for comparing the Etruscan the sculptured portal, which in the Etrurian sepul- mythology with the Greek. It seems singular that chres served only as an ornament. The architecture the name of patera should ever have been applied to of these tombs is evidently of an age when the Greek them; far from being suitable for drinking-vessels, embellishments had become known in Etruria; but they could not even hold the small quantity of wine the shortness of the pillars, the length of the inter- necessary for a libation; and, wherever a libation is columniation, and the heaviness of the upper parts, represented on ancient monuments, it is performed agree very well with the character which Vitruvius with a vessel, comparatively shallow, indeed, as its (3, 3) gives to the Tuscan buildings, " Varica, bari-name implies, but very different from an Etruscan pacephala et humiles et latæ." As time has not spared a single public edifice of the Etrurians, it is only by means of their sepulchres, or the representations of their buildings in paintings and bas-reliefs, that we can tera, and always without a handle, except in some unskilful restorations. Inghirami, who has published two series of these antiquities, contends at great length against the common name, and calls them specchi mis Etrurian Language and Literature. tici. That they were really mirrors we have little | scriptions. It is remarkable that the Etruscan F, in doubt; Inghirami easily finds a mystical meaning for proper names, always answers to the Latin V, as Fipi everything belonging to them. The metal of which to Vibius, Felethri to Volaterra, Menarfe to Minerva ; they are invariably composed, brass, alludes to the fir- whence Müller (vol. 2, p. 300) takes occasion to dismament, conceived by the ancients to be a xaλkoбaтèç pute the opinion of Bishop Marsh, that the Latin F repda, "spread out like a molten mirror" (Job, xxvii., 18); resented the digamma, observing that it is only before their circular form to the perfection of which this fig- R that the digamma becomes F. The same characure is an emblem. If they had happened to be oval, ter was also used for H and Th. So that there seems he would still have been at no loss, for he explains the in fact to have been one letter for the labial, dental, usually elliptical forms of the fictile vases as alluding and guttural aspirate. The vowel O appears to have to that deterioration of its nature which the soul un- been unknown to the Tuscan language; for Q they dergoes when it enters into union with the body. As used chf and cf. Of the Greek forms V and Y, which many articles of female ornament have been found in both occur on early monuments, they have chiefly used sepulchres-fibulæ, hair-bodkins, collars, bracelets- the former, but not exclusively. For X they have the it is an obvious conjecture, that the mirrors were a form which is frequent in Baotian inscriptions, resemreal part of the toilet of the deceased, consigned to the bling an inverted anchor; for E a double cross; Y, same grave with her; on the principle that what was Z, and the long vowels H and 2, are unknown to their most used and valued in life should be the companion alphabet. With very few exceptions, their writing is in death. Yet to this supposition it is an objection, from right to left; and as this mode had been departthat the slight convexity which some of them have is ed from by the Greeks in their earliest extant inscripon the polished side, a circumstance which, as it would tions, which may, perhaps, ascend to the fortieth Olyminterfere with their use as real mirrors, suggests that piad (620 B.C.), it seems reasonable to admit that the they may have been emblematical of the sacerdotal of-introduction of writing into Etruria was something earfice borne by the female with whom they were interred. lier. Demaratus, who is said to have brought both painting and letters from Corinth, if really expelled by Cypselus, must have lived about the thirtieth Olympiad. The literature of the Etrurians presents the singu- A more recent character, which is commonly found in lar phenomenon of an alphabet perfectly deciphered, sepulchral inscriptions, seems to have been introduced along with a language completely unintelligible. Such about the end of the third century after the building of a combination is so strange, that we find more than Rome; at which time, according to Müller (vol. 2, p. one writer alleging that the language is Greek, and ap-301), the Latin alphabet was also formed; but from pealing in proof to the alphabet, without suspecting the Greek, not from the Etruscan. The Umbrians apthe want of connexion between premises and conclu- pear to have adopted the Etruscan alphabet, though sions. When the Eugubine tables were discovered in their language was essentially different, and more re1444, they were supposed to be in the Egyptian char-sembling the Oscan than the Latin. The Oscan alacter; Reinesius suspected them to be Punic; and, phabet also appears to have been borrowed from the though they gradually acquired the name of Etruscan, Etruscan, not immediately from the Greek. It is difthe real force of the letters was not discovered till ficult to say when the Etruscan character fell into en1732, when Bourguet ascertained it by comparing the tire disuse; the style of ornament on some of the urns two tables which are in the Latin character with one on which it is found refers them to the times of the in the Etruscan, which he had happily divined to be Roman empire. The language of Etruria never havnearly equivalent in sense. Gori, a few years later, ing been polished by the influence of literature (for its published his alphabet, which, in all important points, histories were probably mere chronicles, and its theohas been confirmed by subsequent inquiries: the great logical writings, liturgies and manuals of a gloomy suimprovement made in it by Lanzi was, that he detect-perstition), remained harsh to the ear and uncouth to ed a Σ in the letter M, which till then had been taken the eye. Such combinations of letters as aplc, srancxl, for an m. The principles of Greek paleography have thunchulthl (Müller, vol. 2, p. 288), can scarcely have been lately established, on a more solid basis than be- been pronounced at all without the intervention of a fore, by Böckh; and by the help of these and the la- short vowel, after the manner of the Oriental languabours of his predecessors, Müller has arrived at the ges. In regard to the interpretation of the language, conclusion, that the Etruscan alphabet has not been it must be acknowledged, that all the labour which has derived immediately from the Phoenicians, but from hitherto been bestowed upon it, though valuable for its the Greeks. Very few forms occur in it which are collateral results, has been nearly fruitless in respect not found in the early Greek inscriptions: while, on to its direct object. When Lanzi, abandoning the forthe other hand, it does not contain some of those which mer method of Oriental and Northern etymology, enthe Greeks retained a considerable time after they re- deavoured to explain the Etruscan from the Pelasgic, ceived them from the Phoenicians; and, again, the it was natural to expect a more favourable issue: a Etruscans have some letters which the Greeks added close affinity, if not identity, of the two nations, was to their Phoenician alphabet. Other Etruscan letters maintained by many of the ancients, and the alphabets have never yet been found in any Greek inscription, were visibly the same. For many years after the apso that it is impossible to point out any specific age or pearance of his Saggio di Lingua Etrusca (3 vols. form of the Greek alphabet which the Etruscans may 8vo, 1789), his explanations were generally acquiesced be supposed to have adopted once for all. The Phry- in, and made the basis of other etymological speculagian inscription from the tomb of Midas (Walpole, vol. tions. But, when time had been given for examina2, p. 207) bears no closer resemblance to the Etruscan tion, it could not but be perceived that his modes of than other very old Greek inscriptions: in the Carian proceeding were too arbitrary to warrant confidence; inscription (Ib, p. 530) there are many letters which that he could produce no evidence of the actual existdiffer from the Etruscan. The letters B, T, A do not ence of many of the words and forms which he supappear to have had any corresponding sounds in the posed to be Greek, in order to identify them with the Etruscan language, and the first and last never occur. Etruscan; and that other monuments, discovered since I is found in the form C, in which it appears on the his time, could not be in any way explained by his syscoins of Magna Græcia. The digamma F occurs both tem. Niebuhr, in his Roman history, avers that, among in this form and in that of, which is found in Greek all the Etruscan words of which explanations have been inscriptions and on coins; they had also for the same pretended, only two, avil ril (“ vixit annos"), seem to sound the character 8, for which a circular square with have been really explained; and of these Müller ascrossing lines is also used, as in the oldest Greek in-sures us (vol. 1, p. 64), and apparently with goad rea |