the inflexion being that of the Icelandic 3 pers. sing., as in brennr, "he burns," from brenna. On an urn in the British Museum, in the same room with the Nineveh sculptures, we find tulati on a mutilated inscription; and ris-ti or rais-ti, “he erected," on the Runic stones, might justify the assumption that it is a verb; but it is impossible to form any plausible conjecture as to its signification.

If we now turn back from the inscription, which has thus been examined, to the great Perugian cippus, we shall see that some definite conclusions result from the comparison. First of all, as they are obviously written in the same language, the strong resemblances between the phraseology of the shorter legend and that of the Icelandic Runes must confirm our previous conviction respecting the Old Norse affinities of the longer inscription. Again, as hinthiu and ipa are manifestly prepositions in the former, we may give a similar value to hintha and ipa in the latter. And as ipa is used with the name of a building in the shorter epitaph, ama which follows it on the cippus, and which seems in the first line to refer to mourning or sorrow, must signify an erection for such a purpose, and therefore the amev achr of the first line must mean a field for the erection of a tomb. The word ama also occurs in a very imperfect inscription quoted by Dennis (I. p. 342). Lastly, as we have both lautn and lautnescle in the shorter inscription by the side of lautn in the larger, we may infer that lautnescle is a diminutive form like munusculum, and therefore we may compare kemul-mleskul in the Perugian inscription with kuml, the regular Runic name for a monumental stone (Dieterich, Runen-Sprach-Schatz, p. 124).

With regard to the general interpretation of the Perugian inscription, it seems idle to follow in the steps of the Italian scholars, Vermiglioli, Orioli, and Campanari, the last of whom has given us a Latin translation of the whole inscription. Nor can I sympathise in the regret of Dr. C. Von Schmitz, when he complains that he cannot find a publisher for the grammar and dictionary of the Etruscan, which are to explain his forced and unnatural version of this document (Zeitschr. f. d. Alterthumsw. 1846, Septemb. Beilage). It would, indeed, be easy to found a number of conjectures on the assonances which may be detected in almost every line; but until a complete collection of all the genuine Etruscan inscriptions shall have furnished us with a sufficiently wide field for our researches,-until every extant Tuscan word has been brought within the reach of a

philological comparison, we must be content to say of this great Perugian inscription, that it appears to be a cippus conveying some land for funereal purposes'. The donor is Larthius, a member of the family of the Reza (Rasii), who were distinguished people in the neighbourhood of Perusia (see Vermiglioli, Iscriz. Perug. p. 273), and Rasne, which occurs thrice in the inscription, seems to be a patronymic of the same family. The relative position of the word, no less than the locality of the inscription, shows that Velthina is the person in whose honour this cippus was erected, and that the word does not refer to Felsina, the old name of Bononia (Plin. H. N. III, 20. XXXIII, 37. XXXVII. 57. Serv. ad Æn. X. 198). The other personal name, which occurs most frequently in the inscription is Afuna, probably Aponia (Vermiglioli, p. 233); and it is worthy of remark, that we have the nom., gen., and accus. of these two proper names in accordance with the regular forms of the first Latin declension, namely,-Afuna, Afunas, Afunam, and Velthina, Velthinas, Velthinam. The name Velthina may be compared with the well-known name Cacina. From the prænomen Aulesi in v. 9. it is probably a man's name 2. not undertake to interpret all that Lartius, the son of Ræsia, has thought fit to inscribe on this cippus, it must not be supposed that this in any way affects the results at which I have arrived respecting the ethnography of the Etruscans. That an inability to interpret Runic monuments may be perfectly consistent with a knowledge of the class of languages to which they belong, is shown, not merely by the known relationship between the language of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the Coptic dialects more recently spoken in that country, but still more strikingly by the fact, that, although we have no doubt as to any of the idioms spoken in ancient Britain, no one has been able as yet to give a certain interpretation of the Runic inscriptions on the

If I do

1 See the conimentators on Hor. I. Serm. VIII. 13; and the bon mot of Augustus on Vettius quum monumentum patris exarasset (Macrob. II. Sat. c. 4. p. 232).

2 We have seen above that the termination -l indicates a matronymic; and I conclude that the Etruscan patronymic ended in -na; compare in this inscription, Rezul with Rasna, and Cæci-lia, which was the Roman equivalent to the mythical Tanaquil, with the undoubtedly Tuscan form Cæci-na. 1 do not agree with Müller (Etr. I. p. 453) that the forms in -si, as Aulesi, Clensi, are datives.

pillar at Bewcastle and on the font at Bridekirk, which are both in Cumberland, and which both belong to the same dialect of the Low-German languages, (see Palgrave, History of the AngloSaxons, Lond. 1850, pp. 146. sq.). The really important point is to determine the origin of the ancient Etruscans; and the Perugian inscription, so far from throwing any difficulties in the way of the conclusion at which I have arrived, has furnished some of the strongest and most satisfactory confirmations of the Old Norse affinity of the Rasena.

§ 11. Harmony between linguistic research and ethnographic tradition in regard to the ancient Etruscans.

This survey of the Etruscan language, brief and circumscribed as it necessarily is, has enabled us to perceive that there is a perfect harmony and agreement between the results of our linguistic researches, so far as the scanty materials have allowed us to carry them, and the ethnographic and historic traditions respecting the ancient Etruscans. We have seen that in the character of their writing, in most of their mythology, in by far the greatest number of those words which have been transmitted to us with an interpretation, and in the oldest inscriptions, especially in those from Cære, there are decisive evidences of an affinity between the inhabitants of Etruria and those Pelasgians who peopled Greece in the earliest times, and who constituted an important element in the inhabitants of Latium. For the residue of the language, and especially in the case of those inscriptions which are found near Clusium and Perugia, we are enabled to recognise an ingredient unmistakably identical with that Scandinavian dialect, which Norwegian emigrants conveyed in an ancient form to the inaccessible regions of ultima Thule, where it remained for centuries safe from all risk of corruption or improvement by an infusion of foreign words or constructions. Now these phenomena, as we have seen, are necessary to reconcile, and do in fact reconcile, all the traditions about the inhabitants of Etruria. The Pelasgian affinities of the old Tyrrhenians are attested by the concurring voice of all antiquity; and as in Argolis, so in Italy, we shall best understand the statement that a more complete civilization was imported directly from Lydia, if we bear in mind that the Lydians referred to in the tradition were Pelasgians, who had appropriated the arts and social culture

of their Asiatic neighbours. And we shall be able to adopt this universal belief of a connexion between the western coasts of Asia Minor and Italy, without disturbing the well-grounded statement that the Rasena and Ræti were one and the same race, if we infer that these Rasena were a much later ingredient, and one which only established an aristocracy of conquest in the cities of Etruria, without permanently or extensively affecting the great mass of the population. It will be observed that the main obstacle to a general reception of the statement that the Rasena were Rætians has consisted in the apparent inconsistency between this and the Lydian tradition. The ethnographical inversion, by which Livy makes the Rætians the fugitive offshoot of a nation which really descended from their own mountains, has not occasioned any difficulty. It would be admitted at once that, if the Rætians and Rasena were one and the same people, some foreign interference must have disturbed the continuity of their area in the valley of the Po, and if there was once an unbroken stream of population from the Lech to the Tiber, no ethnographer will doubt that its source must have been in the mainland rather than in the peninsula. But it has not been sufficiently considered, that the bulk of the Pelasgian nation, already settled in Umbria and Etruria, would not lose their original type, merely because they were invaded and conquered by a band of warriors from the north, any more than Anglo-Saxon England was entirely deprived of its former characteristics by the Norman inroad. The civilization of the Tyrrhenians, their connexion with the commercial activity of the Mediterranean1, and the advantages which they derived from the arts and social culture of their brethren in Asia Minor, were circumstances long anterior to the invasion from the north; and as the Rasena would adopt the refinements which they found among the Tyrrhenians, we may make ingenious comparisons between the tombs of Porsena2 and Alyattes, without refusing our assent to the well-attested fact that the

1 It is to this that I would attribute the continuance of Hellenic influences, on which Müller insists (Etrusk. II. 292).

2 It is worthy of remark, that a distinguishing feature in the monument of Porsena, as described by Varro (apud Plin. XXXIV. 13), namely, the bells on the cupolas, is expressly compared with a similar contrivance at the Pelasgian Dodona: "tintinnabula, quæ vento agitata longe sonitus referant, ut Dodonae olim factum."

warriors and city-nobles of historical Etruria derived their origin from the Rætian Alps. With regard to the argument from the remains of the Etruscan language, the philologer will at once admit that, as far as it goes, the evidences of affinity, which have been adduced, are neither precarious nor doubtful. Instead of conjectures founded on a casual agreement of syllables, we have seen that the meaning, which we were led to expect, was at once supplied by the language, which collateral circumstances had indicated as the proper source of information; and not only were ethnical names and common words simply and consistently explained in this way, but we found that some peculiarities of etymology and syntax were at once illustrated by a reference to the same standard of comparison. So that, on the whole, every available resource of grammar and philology tends to confirm and reconcile the otherwise divergent and contradictory statements of ancient history; and the Etruscans may now without any inconsistency claim both the Tyrrheno-Lydian and Rætian affinities, which the classical writers have attributed to them.

§ 12.

General remarks on the absorption or evanescence of the old Etruscan Language.

It only remains that I should make a few remarks on the absorption or evanescence of the old Etruscan language. When we see so much that is easily explained; when, in fact, there is no great difficulty in dealing with any Etruscan word which has come down to us with an interpretation or clue to its meaning; and when we are puzzled only by inscriptions, which are in themselves mere fragments, made up in a great measure of proper names, and mutilated by, we know not how many, conventional abbreviations, it is sufficiently evident that the striking differences between the Etruscan and the other ancient dialects of the peninsula were not such as to take the language out of the Indo-Germanic family, and that while these differences affected only an inconsiderable ingredient in the old Etruscan, the main portion of the language must have approximated very closely to the contiguous and surrounding idioms. Otherwise, we should be obliged to ask, where is the bulk of that language which was spoken by the ancestors of Mæcenas? We talk of dead languages; but this variety of human speech should seem to be not only dead, but buried, and not only buried, but sunk