to Calatia'. Now it appears from the coins of this place that its Oscan name was Aderla2; and the Romans always pronounced this as Atella, by a change of the medial into a tenuis, as in Mettus for Meddix, imperator for embratur, fuit for fuid, &c. This shows that the name was in early use at Rome; and we may suppose that, as an essential element in the population of Rome was Oscan, the Romans had their Oscan farces from a very early period, and that these farces received a great improvement from the then celebrated city of Aderla in Campania. It is also more than probable that these Oscan farces were common in the country life of the old Romans, both before they were introduced into the city, and after the expulsion of the histriones by Tiberius1. For the mask was the peculiar characteristic of the Atellana, and these country farces are always spoken of with especial reference to the masks of the actors. We may be sure that the Oscan language was not used in these farces when that language ceased to be intelligible to the Romans. The language of the fragments which have come down to us is pure Latin, and Tacitus describes the Atellana as "Oscum quondam ludicrum." Probably, till a comparatively late period, 1 Livy, XXVI. 16, XXII. 61, XXVII. 3. 2 Lepsius ad Inscriptiones, p. 111. For the meaning of the word, see above, § 5, note. 3 Virgil. Georg. II. 385, sqq. : Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni Comp. Horat. II. Epist. I. 139, sqq. Ipsa dierum Festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro In gremio matris formidat rusticus infans. That the exodium here refers to the Atellana appears from Juv. VI. 71: "Urbicus exodio risum movet Atellana Gestibus Autonoes." 5 Festus, s. v. personata fabula, p. 217: "per Atellanos qui proprie vocantur personati." The modern representatives of the Atellan characters are still called maschere, and our harlequin always appears with a black mask on the upper part of his face. See Diomed. III. pp. 487, 488, Putsch. 7 Ann. IV. 149. ce the the Atellana abounded in provincial and rustic expressions'; but at last it retained no trace of its primitive simplicity, for the us, gross coarseness and obscenity 2, which seem to have superseded fu the old-fashioned elegance of the original farce3, and brought ; and it into a close resemblance to the mimus, from which it was chat originally distinguished, must be attributed to the general corsfrruption of manners under the emperors, and perhaps also to the great fact that from the time of Sulla downwards the Oscan farce was gradually passing from its original form into that of a regular play on the Greek model, so that all the faults of Greek comedy would eventually find a place in the entertainment. The prind: cipal writers of the Latin Atellanæ, after Sulla, who is said to char have used his own, that is, the Campanian dialect1, were Q. Novius, L. Pomponius Bononiensis, L. Afranius, and C. Memmius 8. The political allusions with which they occasionally abounded, and which in the opinion of Tiberius called for the interference of the senate, were a feature borrowed from the licence of the old Greek comedy; and to the same source we must refer the names of the personages 10, which are known to have been adopted by Novius, Afranius, and Pomponius, and which ore t used .. 1 Varro, L. L. VII. § 84, p. 152. 2 Terent. Maur. p. 2436, Putsch; Quintil. Inst. Or. VI. 3; Tertull. De Spectaculis, 18; Schober, über die Atellan. Schauspiele, pp. 28, sqq. 3 Donat. de Trag. et Com. "Atellanæ salibus et jocis compositæ, quæ in se non habent nisi vetustam elegantiam." 4 Athenæus, IV. p. 261, c. : ἐμφανίζουσι δ ̓ αὐτοῦ τὸ περὶ ταῦτα ἱλαρὸν αἱ ὑπ ̓ αὐτοῦ γραφεῖσαι Σατυρικαὶ κωμῳδίαι τῇ πατρίῳ φονῇ. That the satyric comedies here referred to must have been Atellance may be inferred from Diomedes, III. p. 487, Putsch: "tertia species est fabularum Latinarum, quæ . ... ..Atellano dictæ sunt, argumentis dictisque jocularibus similes satyricis fabulis Græcis." The reference to the Simus in the Atellano (Sueton. Galb. 15) points to a contact with the satyrs. Macrobius, Saturn. II. 1. 5 Aulus Gellius, N. A. XVII. 2. 6 Macrob. Saturn. VII. 9; Fronto ad M. Cæs. IV. 3, p. 95, Mai; Velleius, II. 9, 6. 8 Macrobius, Saturn. I. 10. 7 Nonius, s. v. ientare. 9 Tacitus, Annal. IV. 14: “Oscum quondam ludicrum, levissimæ apud vulgus delectationis, eo flagitiorum et virium venisse, ut auctoritate patrum coercendum sit." Cf. Sueton. Nero, c. 39; Galba, c. 13; Calig. c. 27; where we have special instances of the political allusions in the later Atellanæ. 10 See Müller, Hist. Lit. Gr. ch. XXIX. § 5. Vol. II. p. 43, note. are either Greek in themselves or translations of Greek words. The old gentleman or pantaloon was called Pappus or Casnar: the former was the Greek Пáros, the latter, as we have seen, was an Oscan term = vetus. The clown or chatterbox was called Bucco, from bucca, and was thus a representative of the Greek Tválov. The glutton Macco, Greek Máxкw, has left a trace of his name in the Neapolitan Maccaroni; and Punch or Polichinello is derived from the endearing diminutive Pulchellus, which, like the Greek Kaλías, was used to denote apes and puppets'. The Sannio is the σávvas of Cratinus (Fr. Incert. XXXIII. a. p. 187, Meineke); and this buffoon with his patchwork dress is represented by the modern Harlequin, one of whose names is still zanni, Angl. "zany." The modern word harlequin is merely the Italian allecchino, i. e. "gourmand." Menage's dream about the comedian, who was so called in the reign of Henry III. because he frequented the house of M. de Harlai, is only an amusing example of that which was called etymology not many years ago. On the whole we must conclude, that the Atellan farces were ultimately Grecized, like all the literature of ancient Italy, and as the language of the Doric chorus grew more and more identical with that of the Attic dialogue, to which it served as an interlude, so this once Oscan exodium was assimilated in language and character to the histrionic plays, to which it served as an afterpiece, and so gradually lost its national character and social respectability. Thus we find in the destiny of this branch of Oscan literature an example of the absorbing centralization of Rome, which, spreading its metropolitan Latinity over the provinces, eventually annihilated, or incorporated and blended with its civic elements, all the distinctive peculiarities of the allied or subject population. 1 Theatre of the Greeks, Ed. 6, p. [160]. CHAPTER V. THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE. § 1. Transcriptions of proper names the first clue to an interpretation of the Etruscan language. § 2. Names of Etruscan divinities derived and explained. §3. Al phabetical list of Etruscan words interpreted. § 4. Etruscan inscriptionsdifficulties attending their interpretation. § 5. Inscriptions in which the Pelasgian element predominates. § 6. Transition to the inscriptions which contain Scandinavian words-The laurel-crowned Apollo-Explanation of the words clan and phleres. § 7. Inscriptions containing the words suthi and trce. § 8. Inferences derivable from the words sver, cver, and thur or thaur. §9. Striking coincidence between the Etruscan and Old Norse in the use of the auxiliary verb lata. § 10. The great Perugian Inscription critically examined. Its Runic affinities. § 11. Harmony between linguistic research and ethnographic tradition in regard to the ancient Etruscans. § 12. General remarks on the absorption or evanescence of the old Etruscan language. § 1. Transcriptions of proper names the first clue to an interpretation of the Etruscan language. T will not be possible to investigate the remains of the Etrus IT can language with any reasonable prospect of complete success, until some scholar shall have furnished us with a body of inscriptions resting on a critical examination of the originals'; and even then it is doubtful if we should have a sufficiently copious collection of materials. The theory, however, that the Etruscan language, as we have it, is in part a Pelasgian idiom, more or less corrupted and deformed by contact with the Umbrian, and in part a relic of the oldest Low-German or Scandinavian dialects, is amply confirmed by an inspection of those remains which admit of approximate interpretation. The first clue to the understanding of this mysterious language is furnished by the Etruscan transcriptions of well-known Greek proper names, and by the Etruscan forms of those names which were afterwards adopted by the Romans. This comparison may at least supply some prima-facie evidence of the peculiari 1 The first impulse to the study of Etruscan antiquities was given by the posthumous publication of Dempster's work de Etruria Regali, which was finished in 1619, and edited by Coke in 1723-4. Bonarota, who furnished the accurate illustrations of this work, insists upon the importance of a correct transcription of the existing linguistic materials. ties of Tuscan articulation, and of the manner in which the language tended to corrupt itself. It is well known that the Etruscan alphabet possessed no media, as they are called. We are not, therefore, surprised to find, that in their transcriptions of Greek proper names the Etruscans have substituted tenues1. Thus, the Greek names, Adpaστος, Τυδεύς, Οδυσσεύς, Μελέαγρος, and Πολυδεύκης, are written Atresthe, Tute, Utuze, Melakre, and Pultuke. But the change in the transcription goes a step farther than this; for, though they actually possessed the tenues, they often convert them into aspirata. Thus, Αγαμέμνων, Αδραστος, Θέτις, Περσεύς, Πολυνείκης, Τήλεφος, become Achmiem, Atresthe, Thethis, Pherse, Phulnike, Thelaphe. In some cases the Greek tenues remain unaltered in the transcription, as in Пnλeus, Pele; Пaрbevonatos, Parthanapa; Káoтwp, Kastur; 'HpaKλns, Herkle: and the Greek aspiratæ are also transferred, as in 'Aupiápaos, Amphiare. These transcriptions of Greek names supply us also with a very important fact in regard to the Etruscan syllabarium: namely, that their liquids were really semivowels; in other words, that these letters did not require the expression of an articulation-vowel. It has been shown clsewhere that the semi-vocal nature of the liquid is indicated in 1 With regard to the Etruscan alphabet in general, it may be said that it did not come directly from the East, but from the intermediate settlements of the Pelasgian race. When Müller says (Etrusk. II. 290) that it was derived from Greece, he cannot mean that it passed over into Italy subsequently to the commencement of Hellenic civilization. The mere fact that the writing was from right to left, shows that the Etruscans derived their letters from the other peninsula, while its inhabitants were still Pelasgian; for there are very few, even of the earliest Greek inscriptions which retain the original direction of the writing (see New Crat. § 101; Müller, Etrusk. II. p. 309). At the same time, the existence of hexameter verse in Etruria and other circumstances show that there was a continued intercourse between the Pelasgo-Etruscans and the Greeks (Müller, ibid. p. 292). On the Pelasgic origin of the Etruscan alphabet, the reader may consult the authorities quoted by Lepsius, de Tabb. Eug. p. 29. 2 New Crat. § 107. The word el-em-en-tum, according to the etymology which has received the sanction of Heindorf (ad Hor. I. Sat. I. 26), would furnish an additional confirmation of these views. But this etymology cannot be admitted; and the word must be considered as containing the root ol- (in olere, adolescens, indoles, soboles, prôles, &c.), so that |