querors living in the midst of the Pelasgians whom they had subdued, the other a Pelasgian nation not yet conquered by the invaders. These two nations formed at first two distinct confederacies of the former Alba was the head, while the place of congress for the latter was Lavinium. At the latter place, the Penates, or old Pelasgian Cabeiri, were worshipped; and even after the Pelasgian league was broken up by the power of Alba, and when Alba became the capital of the united nation of the Latins and sent a colony to Lavinium, the religious sanctity of the place was still maintained, the Penates were still worshipped there, and deputies still met in the temple of Venus. The influence of Alba was, however, so great, that even after its fall, when the Pelasgian Latins partially recovered their independence, there remained a large admixture of foreign elements in the whole population of Latium, and that which was purely Pelasgian in their character and institutions became gradually less and less perceptible, till nothing remained on the south of the Tiber which could claim exemption from the predominating influence of the Oscans.

That the name Lavinium is only a dialectical variety of Latinium has long been admitted. The original form of the name Latinus, which afterwards furnished a denomination for the language of the civilised world, was Latvinus; and while the Pelasgian Latins preserved the labial only, the mixed people retained only the dental1.

The tradition speaks of the Pelasgian Latins as a colony of Trojans who settled on the coast under Eneas, the son of Anchises. Without entering at length into an examination of this poetical legend, it may be mentioned here that the names Eneas and Anchises refer, wherever they are found, to the Pelasgian or Cabeiric worship of water in general, and of the flowing stream in particular, and therefore indicate the presence of a Pelasgian population. We have other reasons for inferring the existence of Pelasgians on the coast of Asia Minor, in Thes

1 The same has been the case in the Pelasgian forms, liber, libra, bis, ruber, &c., compared with their Hellenic equivalents, é-λeúdepos, λirpa, dís, é-pvôpós, &c.

saly, Boeotia, Arcadia, and the west of Italy. It is therefore quite natural that we should find in these localities the name of Eneas as that of a river or river-god. The word itself denotes "the ever-flowing" (aiveias or aivéas, devvaos, dei or aiei véwv, cf. ápvvías, apúvwv, N. Crat. § 262), and in accordance with this we have the rivers Anias, Enios, Ænus, and Anio. In the same way, because the stream is the child of its fountain, Anchises the father of Æneas, whose mother is Aphrodite, the goddess of the sea-foam, denotes the outpouring of water (ἀγχίσης, ἀγχύσις, ἄγχεσμος, ἀγχοή, from αναχέω), and corresponds to Fontus, the Jupiter Egerius of the Romans1.

§ 6. The SABINES-how related to the Umbrians and Oscans.

It has been mentioned that the Sabines dispossessed the Oscans, and compelled them to invade Latium. Our next point is, therefore, to consider the relation in which the Sabines stood to the circumjacent tribes.

The original abode of these Sabines was, according to Cato2, about Amiternum, in the higher Apennines. Issuing from this lofty region, they drove the Umbrians before them on one side and the Oscans on the other, and so took possession of the district which for so many years was known by their name.

It will not be necessary in this place to point out the successive steps by which the Sabine colonies made themselves masters of the whole south and east of Italy, nor to show how they settled on two of the hills of Rome. It is clear, on every account, that they were not Pelasgians; and our principal object is to inquire how they stood related to the Umbrians and Oscans, on whom they more immediately pressed.

Niebuhr thinks it not improbable that the Sabines and Oscans were only branches of one stock, and mentions many reasons for supposing so3. It appears, however, that there are still stronger reasons for concluding that the Sabines were an

1 For these and many other ingenious combinations more or less tenable, see Troja's Ursprung, Blüthe, Untergang und Wiedergeburt in Latium, von Emil Rückert, Hamb. u. Gotha, 1846.

2 Quoted by Dionys. I. 14, p. 40; II. 49, p. 338. Reiske.

3 Hist. Rome, I. p. 103.

offshoot of the Umbrian race. This is established not only by the testimony of Zenodotus of Trozen', who wrote upon the Umbrians, but also by the resemblances of the Sabine and Umbrian languages. It is true that this last remark may be made also with regard to the Sabine and Oscan idioms; for many words which are quoted as Sabine are likewise Oscan3. The most plausible theory is, that the Sabines were Umbrians, who were separated from the rest of their nation, and driven into the high Apennines, by the Pelasgians of the north-east; but that, after an interval, they in their turn assumed an offensive position, and descending from their highlands, under the name of Sabini, or "worshippers of Sabus the son of Sancus," attacked their Umbrian brethren on the one side, and the Oscan Latins on the other. At length, however, they sent out so many colonies to the south, among the Oscan nations, that their Umbrian affinities were almost forgotten; and the Sabellian tribes, especially the Samnites, were regarded as members of the Oscan family, from having adopted to a considerable extent the language of the conquered tribes among whom they dwelt.

$ 7. The Umbrians-their ancient greatness.

The Umbrians are always mentioned as one of the most ancient nations of Italy 5. Though restricted in the historical ages to the left bank of the Tiber, it is clear that in ancient times they occupied the entire northern half of the peninsula, from the Tiber to the Po. Their name, according to the Greek etymology, implied that they had existed before the great rain

1 Apud Dionys. II. 49, p. 337. 3 Niebuhr, ubi supra.

2 Servius ad Virg. Æn. III. 235..

4 That this Sancus was an Umbrian deity is clear from the Eugubine Tables. Indeed, both sabus and sancus, in the old languages of Italy, signified "sacred" or "revered," and were probably epithets regularly applied to the deity. In the Eugubine Tables we have the word sev-um, meaning "reverently" (I. a. 5); and Sansius is an epithet of the god Fisus, or Fisovius (VI. b. 3, 5). Comp. the Latin sev-erus (σéß-w) and sanctus. According to this, the name Sabini is nearly equivalent to Sacrani. The tables also mention the picus Martius of the Sabines, from which the Piceni derived their name (piquier Martier, V. b. 9, 14); comp. Strabo, V. P. 240.

5 Niebuhr, I. note 430.

floods which had destroyed many an earlier race of men'. This is about as valuable as other Greek etymologies. The ethnographical import of the name will be examined in the following chapter, and we certainly do not need a forced etymology to prove that the Umbrians must have been among the earliest inhabitants of Italy. Cato said that their city Ameria was founded 381 years before Rome'. All that we read about them implies that they were a great and an ancient nation3. There are distinct traditions to prove that the country, afterwards called Etruria, was originally in the occupation of the Umbrians. The name of the primitive occupants of that country was preserved by the Tuscan river Umbro, and the tract of land through which it flowed into the sea was to the last called Umbria1. It is expressly stated that Cortona was once Umbrian; and Camers, the ancient name of Clusium, points at once to the Camertes, a great Umbriam tribe". It is certain also that the Umbrians occupied Picenum, till they were expelled from that region by their brethren the Sabines.

§ 8. Reduced to insignificance by successive contacts with the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians and Etruscans.

Since history, then, exhibits this once great nation expelled from the best part of its original possessions, driven beyond the Apennines, deprived of all natural barriers to the north, and reduced to insignificance, we are led at once to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon. Livy speaks of the Umbrians as dependent allies of the Tuscans'; and Strabo tells us that the Etruscans and Umbrians maintained a stubborn contest for the possession of the district between the Apennines and the mouth of the Po 10 The people which thus ruled them or strove with them in the latter period of their history, when they were

1 See Plin. H. N. III. 19: "Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiæ existimatur, ut quos Ombrios a Græcis putent dictos, quod inundatione

terrarum imbribus superfuissent."

2 Pliny, III. 14, 19.

4 Pliny, III. 5. (8).

6 Liv. X. 25.

8 Pliny, III. 13, 14.

10 P. 216.

3 Florus, I. 17, Dionys. I. 19.

5 Dionys. I. 20.

7 Liv. IX. 36.

9 In Books IX. and X.

living within the circumscribed limits of their ultimate possessions, was that which deprived them of a national existence within the fairest portion of their originally wide domains.

It will be shown that the national integrity of the Umbrians was impaired by their successive contacts with the TyrrhenoPelasgians, and the Etruscans properly so called; and it will be convenient to consider, as separate questions, these qualifying elements in the population of ancient Umbria.

$ 9. The PELASGIANS-the differences of their position in Italy and Greece respectively.

Without stopping to inquire at present who the Pelasgians were out of Italy, let us take them up where they first make their appearance at the mouth of the Po. We find that their area commences with this district, and that having crossed the Apennines, they wrested from the Umbrians the great city Camers, from whence they carried on war all around. Continually pressing towards the south, and as they advanced, conquering the indigenous tribes, or driving them up into the highlands, they eventually made themselves masters of all the level plains and of the coasts. Though afterwards, as we have seen, invaded in their turn, and in part conquered by the Oscan aborigines, they were for a long time in possession of Latium; and, under the widely diffused name of notrians, they held all the south of Italy, till they were conquered or dispossessed by the spread of the great Sabellian race.

To these Pelasgians were due the most important elements in the ancient civilisation of Italy. It was not their destiny to be exposed throughout their settlements, like their brethren in Greece, to the overruling influence of ruder and more warlike tribes. This was to a certain extent the case in the south; where they were not only overborne by the power of their Sabellian conquerors, but also Hellenised by the Greek colonies which were at an early period established among them. But in Etruria and Latium the Pelasgian nationality was never extinguished: even among the Latins it survived the severest shocks of Oscan invasion. In Etruria it remained to the end the one prevailing characteristic of the people; and Rome herself, though she owed her military greatness to the Sabellian ingredient in her composition, was, to the days of her decline, Pelasgian in all the essentials of her language, her religion, and her law.