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§ 4.

Etruscan Inscriptions-Difficulties attending their
Interpretation.

In passing to our third source of information respecting the Tuscan language-the inscriptions which have been preservedwe are at once thrown upon difficulties, which at present, perhaps, are not within the reach of a complete solution. We may, indeed, derive from them some fixed results with regard to the structure of the language, and here and there we may find it possible to offer an explanation of a few words of more frequent occurrence. In general, however, we want a more complete collection of these documents; one, too, in deciphering which the resources of palæography have been carefully and critically applied. When we shall have obtained this, we shall at least know how far we can hope to penetrate into the hitherto unexplored arcana of the mysterious Etruscan language.

Referring to the theory, that the Etruscan nation consisted of two main ingredients—namely, Tyrrheno-Pelasgians, more or less intermixed with Umbrians, and Rætians or Low Germans', the former prevailing in the South, the latter in the

1 The idea that one ingredient, at least, in the old Etruscan language was allied to the most ancient type of the Low German, as preserved in the Icelandic inscriptions, occurred to me when I was reading the Runic fragments with a different object in 1846. A long series of independent combinations was required before I could bring myself to attach any importance to the prima facie resemblances which struck me on the most superficial comparison of documents, apparently so far removed from the possibility of any mutual relations. But I have quite lately discovered that the same first impressions were produced and recorded just one hundred years before I communicated my views to the British Association. A folio tract has come into my hands with the following title: Alphabetum veterum Etruscorum secundis curis inlustratum et auctum a Joh. Chrst Amadutio [Amaduzzi], Rom. 1775, and I find the following statement in P. XLI.: "nemo melius hujusmodi cerebrosa tentamina ridenda suscepit quam anonymus quidam scriptor (qui Hieronymus Zanettius Venetus a quibusdam habitus est) qui anno 1751 opusculum (Nuova trasfigurazione delle lettere Etrusche) edidit lepidum et festivum satis, in quo .... literas quibus monumenta Etrusca] instructa sunt Geticas ac Runicas potius... statuendas comminiscitur.... Id etiam nonnullis Runicis sive Geticis adductis monumentis et cum iis, quæ Etrusca censentur, facta comparatione evincere nititur." With more etymological knowledge, but with the same inability to appreciate the importance of the evidence which he

north-western part of Etruria,-it is obvious that we cannot expect to find one uniform language in the inscriptions, which belong to different epochs and are scattered over the territory occupied in different proportions by branches of cognate tribes. Accordingly, we must, if possible, discriminate between those fragments which represent the language in its oldest or un-Rasenic form, and those which exhibit scarcely any traces of a Pelasgic character.

§ 5. Inscriptions in which the Pelasgian element pre

dominates.

Of all the Etruscan cities the least Rasenic perhaps is Care1 or Agylla, which stands in so many important connexions with Rome. Its foundation by the Pelasgians is attested by a great number of authorities (Serv. ad Æn. VIII. 478; Strabo, V. p. 220; Dionys. Hal. III. 58; Plin. H. N. III. 8): its port, Пlúpyo, had a purely Pelasgian or even Greek name, and the Pelasgians had founded there a temple in honour of Eiλnovia (Strabo, V. 226; Diod. XV. 14). In the year 534, B. C., the people of Agylla consulted the oracle at Delphi respecting the removal of a curse; and they observed, in the days of Herodotus, the gymnic and equestrian games which the Pythoness prescribed (Herod. I. 167): moreover, they kept up a connexion with Delphi, in the same manner as the cities of Greece, and had a deposit in the bank of the temple (Strabo, V. p. 220).

As the Agyllæans, then, maintained so long a distinct Pe

was adducing, the reviewer of Jäkel's superficial book in the Quarterly Review (Vol. XLVI. p. 347) remarks: "It is strange but true that some of the most striking coincidences are between the Latin and the Teutonic dialects of Scandinavia and Friezeland-regions which Roman foot never touched. Here are a few of the Scandinavian ones: abstergo, affstryka; abstraho, affdraga; carus, kaer; candela, kindel; clivus, kleif (cliiff); &c. In all these cases the word has disappeared, or at least become unusual, in the German. In Friezeland hospes is osb, macula is magl, rete is rhwyd, turtus is turtur, &c."

1 Lepsius (die Tyrrh. Pelasger, p. 28) considers Care an Umbrian and not a Pelasgian word, -re being a common ending of the names of Umbrian towns; thus we have Tute-re on coins for Tuder. The original name was perhaps Kaiere, which contains a root expressive of antiquity and nobility (above, p. 5).

lasgian character, we might expect to find some characteristics in the inscriptions of Care, or Cervetri, by which they might be distinguished from the monuments of northern and eastern Etruria. There is at least one very striking justification of this supposition. On an ancient vase, dug up by General Galassi at Cervetri, the following inscription is traced in very clear and legible characters:

Mi ni keluma, mi mabu maram lisiai oipurenai ; Ele erai sie epana, mi nedu nastav helepu.

It is obvious that there is an heroic rhythm in these lines; the punctuation and division into words are of course conjectural. This inscription differs from those which are found in the UmbroEtruscan or Rasenic districts, and especially from the Perusian cippus, in the much larger proportion of vowels, which are here expressed even before and after liquids, and in the absence of the mutilated terminations in c, l, r, which are so common in the other monuments. The meaning of this couplet seems to be as follows: "I am not dust; I am ruddy wine on burnt ashes: when" (or "if") "there is burning-heat under ground I am water for thirsty lips." Mi is clearly the mutilated é-μí-éo-μí. That the substantive verb may be reduced to é-uí, with the first syllable short, is clear from the inscription on the Burgon vase, which Böckh has so strangely misunderstood, (C. I. n. 33), and which obviously consists of three cretics: τῶν ̓Αθήνηθεν ἄOxwv éuí. . Ni is the original negative, which in Latin always appears in a reduplicated or compounded form. The same form appears in Icelandic. Keluma is the primitive form of xowv, Xoana-λós, xauaí, humus, &c.; and may not x-Oaua- be an offshoot of the Hebrew, in which the aleph, as in many other cases, represents a stronger guttural? (see above, p. 76). The difference of quantity in the second mi will not prevent us from identifying it with the first, which is lengthened by the ictus. Maou is the Greek μéov, Sanscr. madhu. Maram is the epithet agreeing with mathu: it contains the root mar-, found in Mapwv (the grandson of Bacchus), and in "Io-uapos, the site of his vineyards (see Od. IX. 196, sqq.), and probably signifying "ruddy" (uaipw, μaîpa, &c.). The fact that Maro was an agricultural cognomen at Mantua is an argument in favour of the Etruscan use of the root. Lisiai is the locative of lisis, an old word corresponding to lix, "ashes mingled with water."

TT":

Oipurenai is an adjective in concord with lisiai, and probably containing the same root as tepidus, tephral, teforom, &c. (above, pp. 48, 132). Eee is some particle of condition or time. Erai is the locative of epa, "earth." The idea of this second line is conveyed by the sneer of Lucretius, (III. 916, sq. Lachmann): “Tanquam in morte mali cum primis hoc sit eorum, Quod sitis exurat miseros atque arida torres.”

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where Lachmann quotes Cyrill. áróкavμa ustilacio, torres; and it is probable that epana is synonymous with torres, and that it may be connected with δάπτω, &c., as epulæ is with δαπάνη, daps, deiπvov, &c., or ignis with the root dah, "to burn." Sie (pronounced syé) is siet sit (so ar-sie-ad-sis and si-sit in the Eug. Tables). There can be little doubt that neu means "water" in the Tuscan language. There is an Etruscan mirror in which the figure of Neptune has superscribed the word Nethuns=Nethu-n-[u]s. The root is ne-, and appears under a slightly different development in the next word, nastav (comp. νασμός, ναθμός, Ο. Η. G. naz), which is probably a locative in -p, agreeing with heledu, and this may be referred to xeiλos, Eolice xéλλos, Latin heluo, &c.

There is another inscription in the Museum at Naples which also begins with mi ni, and presents in a shorter compass the same features with that which has just been quoted.

thus in one Hexameter line:

Mi ni mulve neke velou ir pupliana,

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It runs

and seems to mean: "I am not of Mulva nor Volsinii, but Populonia." For neka=neque see N. Crat. § 147. Ir is the conjunction aά=" but" (compare the O. N. an-nar with our other, or); and as Velsa or Velthu signifies the city Volsinii (Müller, Etr. I. p. 334), and as pupliana obviously refers to Puplana =Populonia (Müller, I. p. 331), I would suppose a place Mulva, whence the pons Mulv-ius, two miles from Rome, (Tacitus, Annal. XIII. 47. Hist. I. 87. II. 89. III. 82), and the proper name Mulvius (Horace, I. Serm. VII. 36)1.

1 Dr. Karl Meyer (in the Gelehrter Anzeigen of the Royal Academy at Munich, for 1843, pp. 698-735) has endeavoured to explain the two Pelasgian inscriptions on the supposition that the Pelasgians, though Caucasian, belonged to the Egypto-(Chaldeo)-Celtic group of people, who inhabited the Caucasian regions in the most primitive times, and

Besides these, we have a great number of inscriptions beginning with the syllable mi, mostly from Orvieto (i. e. urbs vetus, Volsinii?); and an inspection of those among them which are most easily interpreted leaves us little reason to doubt that this syllable represents the verb ciui, which has suffered decapitation in the same manner as the modern Greek vá for iva. A collection of these inscriptions has been made by Lanzi (Saggio, II. p. 319, Epitafi scelti fra' piu antichi, no. 188-200)1; and Müller thinks (Etrusk. I. p. 451) that they are all pure Pelasgian. Some of them, indeed, seem to be almost Greek—at least, they are more nearly akin to Greek than to Latin. Take, for instance, no. 191, which has been adduced both by Müller and by Lepsius, and which runs thus:

Mi kalairu fuius.

Surely this is little else than archaic Greek: εἰμὶ Καλαιροῦ Fulós. In regard to the last word at any rate, even modern Latin approaches more nearly to the Etruscan type. It is well known that the termination -al, -ul in Etruscan indicates a patronymic. Thus a figure of Apollo, found in Picenum, is in

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were therefore pre-Sanscritic in the formation of their languages (p. 728). He thus borrows his suggestions from the fragmentary and half-understood remains of ancient Egyptian on the one hand, and from modern Irish and Welsh on the other—a mode of proceeding which to myself appears not likely to lead to any safe results. His interpretation of the Cervetri Inscription is as follows: "ich (mini, as in 2 p. pl. pass.!!) sage (Eg. ct- Champ. p. 378; Gaelic, cet-aim; Goth. quithan, &c.), dass ich rühme (Irish, muidhim) die Huld (mári O. H. D. fama) des Lisias Purenas (Thipurenas) und die seiner Frau Gemahlin (herae, and Irish, bean woman!) singe (Irish, nasaim), preise (same with t inserted, as in gusto, from yeuw!) und verkündige ich (Cymr. hlavara)." The following is Meyer's explanation of the Naples inscription: "Ich salbe mich mit. populonischem Oele. d. i. Oel der stadt Populonia," i. e. mulvene is from the Irish morfas, " train oil," comp. podúvew, (!); cevelthu, Irish, bealadh, to anoint," from Malov with the digamma, cf. Báλavos, &c., ir from the Egypto-Celticr, ir, to make, as an affix to the passive voice in Latin, &c.(!) But even supposing these comparisons were as safe, as they seem to me far-fetched and improbable, why is such an inscription, applicable only to a man, found on a vessel?

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1 There is also an old inscription in the Vatican Library which belongs to the same class: mi Venerus finucenas, which Mommsen would render (Unterital. Dialekte, p. 18): sum Veneris Erycinæ. He has mentioned some others of the same kind.

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