Varronianus

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. 240. p.

5 Niebuhr, I. note 430.

floods which had destroyed many an earlier race of men1. 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 Enotrians, 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.

§ 10.

Preserve their national integrity in Etruria.

It is easy to see why the Pelasgians retained their national integrity on the north-western coast so much more perfectly than in the south and east. It was because they entered Etruria in a body, and established there the bulk of their nation. All their other settlements were of the nature of colonies; and the density of the population, and its proportion to the number of the conquered mingled with it, varied, of course inversely, with the distance from the main body of the people. In Etruria the Pelasgians were most thickly settled, and next to Etruria in Latium. Consequently, while the Etruscans retained their conquest, and compelled the Sabines, the most vigorous of the dispossessed Umbrians, to direct their energies southwards, and while the Latins were only partially reconquered by the aboriginal tribes, the Pelasgians of the south resigned their national existence, and were merged in the concourse of Sabellian conquerors and Greek colonists.

§ 11. Meaning and extent of the name "TYRRHENIAN.”

From the time of Herodotus1 there has been no doubt that the Pelasgians in Greece and Italy were the same race, and that

1 I. 57. The following is the substance of what Herodotus has told us respecting the Tyrrhenians and Pelasgians; and his information, though much compressed, is still very valuable. He seems tacitly to draw a distinction between the Pelasgians and the Tyrrhenians, whom he really identifies with one another. With regard to the latter he relates the Lydian story (I. 94: paoì dè avroì Avdoí), that Atys, son of Manes king of the Mæonians, had two sons, Lydus and Tyrrhenus. Lydus remained at home, and gave to the Mæonians the name of Lydians; whereas Tyrrhenus sailed to Umbria with a part of the population, and there founded the Tyrrhenian people. In general, Herodotus, when he speaks of the Tyrrhenians, is to be understood as referring to the Pelasgo-Etruscans. Of the Pelasgians he says (I. 56, sqq.), that they formed one of the original elements of the population of Greece, the division into Dorians and Ionians corresponding to the opposition of Hellenes to Pelasgians. In the course of his travels he had met with pure Pelasgians in Placie and Scylace on the Hellespont, and also in Creston; and their language differed so far from the Greek that he did not scruple to call it barbarian (c. 57). At the same time he seems to have been convinced that the Hellenes owed their greatness to their coalition with these barbarous Pelasgians (c. 58). The text of Herodotus

the so-called Tyrrheni or Tyrseni were the most civilised branch of that family. Herodotus, the great traveller of his time, was more entitled than any of his contemporaries to form a judgment on the subject, and he obviously identifies the Pelasgians with the Tyrrhenians on the coast of Asia Minor, in Greece, and in Italy. It is perhaps one of the many indications of the literary intercourse between Herodotus and Sophocles, which I have elsewhere established', that the latter, in a fragment of his Inachus, mentions the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians among the old inhabitants of Argos. Lepsius3 has fully shown that the name Tuppnvòs or

is undoubtedly corrupt in this passage; but the meaning is clear from the context. He says, that "the Hellenes having been separated from the Pelasgians, being weak and starting from small beginnings, have increased in population, principally in consequence of the accession of the Pelasgians and many other barbarous tribes.” The reading αὔξηται ἐς πλῆθος τῶν ¿ovéwv Todλŵv is manifestly wrong; not only because the position of the article is inadmissible, but also because ἄλλων ἐθνέων βαρβάρων συχνών immediately follows. I cannot doubt that we ought to read avέNTAI ÉS πλῆθος, τῶν Πελασγῶν μάλιστα προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐθνέων βαρβάρων συχνών. The epithet πολλῶν has crept into the text from a marginal explanation of συχνῶν, and τῶν ἐθνέων πολλῶν has consequently taken the place of the abbreviation τῶν ΠΑΓῶν [ΠΑΛῶν] for τῶν Πελασγῶν. 1 Proceed. of the Phil. Soc. I. p. 161, sqq.

2 Apud Dion. Hal. I. 25:

Ιναχε γεννᾶτορ παῖ κρηνῶν

πατρὸς Ωκεανοῦ, μέγα πρεσβεύων Ἄργους τε γύαις, Ηρας τε πάγοις καὶ Τυρσηνοῖσι Πελασγοῖς.