This is connected with historical facts to which we shall have to call attention hereafter.i in § 21. The natural beauty of Italy is too well known to need many words here. The lovers of the sublime will find no more magnificent mountain-passes than those which descend through the Alps to the plains of Lombardy. In the valley of the Dora Baltea, from its source under Mont Blanc to Aosta and Ivrea, all the grandeur of Switzerland is to be found, enriched by the colours and warmth of a southern sky: the cold green and gray of the central chain here passes into gold and purple. In the same district is found the most charming lake scenery the world, where the sunny hills and warm hues of Italy are backed by the snowy range of the towering Alps. Those who prefer rich culture may gratify their utmost desires in the lower vale of the Po about Lodi and Cremona, or across the Apennines in the valley of the Arno and in Campania. If we follow the southern coast, probably the world presents no lovelier passages than meet the traveller's eye as he skirts the Maritime Alps where they overhang the sea cornice-like, between Nice and Genoa; or below Campania, where the limestone of the Apennines, broken by volcanic eruptions, strikes out into the sea between the bays of Naples and Salerno. The Romans, who became lords of all Italy and of the civilised world, sprang up in one of the least enviable portions of the whole Peninsula. The attractions of Modern Rome are less of nature than of association. The traveller would little care to linger on the banks of the Tiber, if it were stripped of its buildings and its history. SECTION II. EARLY POPULATION OF ITALY. § 1. Constant invasions of Italy, notwithstanding Alpine barrier. § 2. Its subdivision among numerous tribes. § 3. Signification of the name ITALY in Roman times. § 4. Roman Italy occupied by at least six distinct races. § 5. Pelasgians. § 6. Opicans or Oscans. § 7. Umbrians. § 8. Sabellians. § 9. Etruscans. § 10. Greeks. § 11. Romans a compound race. § 12. Evidence of Tradition. § 13. Evidence of Language:-Roman language akin to the Greek in structure, being probably Pelasgian, mixed with Oscan, with Sabine vocabulary added. § 14. Comparison between Romans and English in respect to origin. § 15. Sources of early Roman History. § 1. IT is a common remark, that mountains are the chief boundaries of countries, and that races of men are found in their purest state when they are separated by these barriers from admixture with other tribes. Italy forms an exception to this rule. It was not so much the "fatal gift of beauty," of which the poet speaks," as the richness of its northern plain, that attracted successive tribes of invaders over the Alps. From the earliest dawn of historic knowledge, we hear of one tribe after another sweeping like waves over the Peninsula, each forcing its predecessor onward, till there arose a power strong enough to drive back the current, and bar aggression for many an age. That power was the Roman Empire, which forced the Gauls to remain on the northern side of the Apennines, and preserved Italy untouched by the foot of the foreigner for centuries. No sooner was that power weakened, than the incursions again began; and at the present day the fairest provinces of the Peninsula are subject to foreign rule. § 2. But if the northern barriers of the Peninsula failed to check the lust of invaders, its long straggling shape, intersected by mountains from top to bottom, materially assisted in breaking it up into a number of different nations. Except during "The stanzas of Filicaja are well known from their version in Childe Harold, "Italia, oh Italia! would thou wert less lovely, or more powerful," &c. the time when the Roman Empire was in its strength, Italy has always been parcelled out into a number of small states. In the earliest times it was shared among a number of tribes differing in race and language. Great pains have been taken to investigate the origin and character of these primæval nations. But the success has not been equal to the labour, and it is not our purpose to dwell on intricate questions of this kind. We will here only give results so far as they seem to be established. § 3. It is well known that it was not till the close of the Republic, or rather the beginning of the Empire, that the name of Italy was employed, as we now employ it, to designate the whole Peninsula, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. The term Italia, borrowed from the name of a primæval tribe who occupied the southern portion of the land, was gradually adopted as a generic title in the same obscure manner in which most of the countries of Europe, or (we may say) the Continents of the world, have received their appellations. In the remotest times the name only included Lower Calabria: from these narrow limits it gradually spread upwards, till about the time of the Punic Wars, its northern boundary ascended the little river Rubicon (between Umbria and Cisalpine Gaul), then followed the ridge of the Apennines westward to the source of the Macra, and was carried down the bed of that small stream to the Gulf of Genoa. When we speak of Italy, therefore, in the Roman sense of the word, we must dismiss from our thoughts all that fertile country which was at Rome entitled the provincial district of Gallia Cisalpina and Liguria, and which was nearly equivalent to the territory now subject to the crowns of Sardinia and Austria, with the Duchies of Parma and Modena, and the upper portion of the States of the Church. It will be seen that this political division nearly coincides with the physical division noticed in the foregoing chapter. § 4. But under Roman rule even this narrower Italy wanted that unity of race and language which, in spite of political severance, we are accustomed to attribute to the name. Within the boundaries just indicated there were at least six distinct b Properly only the toe of Italy, from the Bay of Squillace to that of S. Eufemia (see Sect. i. § 13), Arist. Polit. vii. 10. 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. § 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. The names 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 Enotrians, 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. d 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. VOL. I. с § 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.h 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. |