known as Latins and Sabines. And the Etruscans or Rasena were a later and uninfected importation of Low Germans fresh from the North, who conquered and were partly absorbed into the pure Tyrrhenians, or Pelasgo-Sclavonians to the right of the Tiber. § 2. The LATINS-a composite tribe. The investigations of Niebuhr and others have made it sufficiently certain that the Pelasgians formed a very important element in the population of ancient Latium. This appears not merely from the primitive traditions, but also, and more strongly, from the mythology, language, and architecture of the country. It has likewise been proved that this Pelasgian population was at an early period partially conquered by a tribe of mountaineers, who are called Oscans, and who descended on Latium from the basins of the Nar and the Velinus. The influence of these foreign invaders was most sensibly and durably felt in the language of the country; which in its earliest form presents phenomena not unlike those which have marked the idiom spoken in this island since the Norman conquest. The words relating to husbandry and peaceful life are Pelasgian, and the terms of war and the chase are Oscan1. As it is this foreign element which forms the distinction between the Latins and the Pelasgians, let us in the first place inquire into the origin and affinities of these Oscan conquerors, in order that we may more easily disentangle the complexities of the subject. The Oscans were known at different times and in different places under the various names of Opicans, Opscans, Ausonians, 1 Niebuhr, H. R. I. p. 82. Müller, Etrusker, I. p. 17. This observation must not be pressed too far; for it does not in fact amount to more than prima facie evidence. The Opican or Oscan language belongs to the Indo-Germanic family no less than the Pelasgian; the latter, however, was one ingredient in the language of ancient Greece, and it does not appear that any Hellenic tribes were connected with the Oscans; consequently it is fair to say that, as one element in the Latin language resembles the Greek, while the other does not, the Græcising element is Pelasgian. and Auruncans. The primary denomination was Op-icus or Oqu-icus, derived from Ops or Opis = Oqu-is, the Italian name of the goddess Earth; and these people were therefore, in accordance with their name, the Autochthones, or aboriginal inhabitants of the district where they are first found. The other denominations are derived from the same word, Op-8= Oqu-is, by the addition of the endings -si-cus, -sunus, and -sun-icus. The guttural is assimilated in Oscus, the labial is absorbed in Avowv, and the s has become r, according to the regular process, in Auruncus1. 1 See Niebuhr, I. 69, note. Buttmann, Lexilogus, I. p. 68, note 1. (p. 154, Fishlake). The investigation of these names leads to a variety of important and interesting results. It has been shown elsewhere that in the oldest languages of the Indo-Germanic family the names of the cow or ox and the earth are commutable (N. Crat. § 470). Not to refer to the obvious but not so certain analogy between 'Amis, the ox-god, and the aniŋ yaîa, it can be shown to demonstration that the steer or ox, which was to the last the symbol of the old Italians, as appears by their coins, entered into the meaning of their two national designations, Italus and Opicus. With regard to the former it is well known, that italos, or itulus, or with the digamma vitulus, meant an ox or steer (Niebuhr, I. 18 sqq.), and Vitellium appears on coins as a synonym for Italia. This takes us at once to the Gothic vithrus, O. N. vedr, O. S. withar, Anglo-S. vether, O. H. G. vidar, N. H. G. widder (properly the castrated animal), English wether; and as these are referred to sheep rather than oxen, we must conclude that the name is an epithet which is applicable to either animal. With regard to the other root, qu in Equus carries us back to the principle of combined but divergent articulations, to which I first called attention (N. Crat. § 110), and on which the late Mr. Garnett wrote some valuable papers (Philol. Soc. II. p. 233, 257 al.), and we may infer that the roots ap- or op- present a labial only instead of an original combination of labial and guttural, while we find the opposite divergence in the guttural forms vac-ca, veh-o, Sanser. vaha, Gr. oxos, exw, Goth. auh-sa, O. N. ox, Anglo-S. oxa, O. H. G. ohso, N. H. G. ochs, Engl. ox. The labial form is sometimes strengthened by an inserted anusvára, or homogeneous liquid; thus by the side of on-pa and op-s we have ỏ-μ-Þúveiv• ağev. Hesych. Cf. ỏn-ópa, auc-tumnus (where the root avέ-, auc-, aug-eo contains the guttural form of this element) and 6-μ-πη· εὐθηνία ὅθεν καὶ ἡ Δημήτηρ 0-μ-πνία. With these remarks we shall have no difficulty in reducing to one origin and classifying the different Italian names into which the root oqu- enters. The qu- is found only in Equ-us; the p appears in Op-icus, Ap-ulus; the guttural is assimilated in Oscus = Ok-scus (cf. δί-σκος for δίκ-σκος, λέσχη for λέγ-σκη &c. N. Crat. § 219) ; the labial These aboriginal tribes, having been in the first instance, like the Arcadians in the Peloponnese, driven by their invaders, the Pelasgians, into the mountain fastnesses of the Apennines, were at length reinforced by foreign elements, and descending from the interior on both sides, conquered the people of the plains and the coast. One tribe, the Ap-uli, subdued the Daunians and other tribes settled in the south-east, and gave their name to the country; they also extended themselves to the west, and became masters of the country from the bay of Terracina upwards to the Tiber. In this district they bore the well-known names of Volsci and Æqui, names still connected with the primary designation of the aborigines. A more important invasion was that which was occasioned by the pressure of the Sabines on an Oscan people settled in the mountains between Reate and the Fucine lake. These invaders came down the Anio, and conquered the Pelasgians of northern Latium. Their chief seat in the conquered country seems to have been Alba, the Alp-ine or mountain-city, where they dwelt under the name of Prisci Latini, "ancient Latins;" being also called Casci, a name which denotes "ancient" or "well-born," and which, like the connected Greek term xaoi, implies that they were a nation of warriors (N. Crat. § 322). § 4. Alba and Lavinium. The district of Latium, when history first speaks of it, was thus occupied by two races; one a mixed people of Oscan con is vocalized in Au-son; the s of the termination is changed into r, according to the old Italian practice, in Au-runcus Au-sunicus; and the root-consonant is represented only by an initial v in Volscus = Apulisicus, which has vanished, as usual, in the Hellenic articulation 'Ediovkos (Herod. VII. 165). It will be seen in the sequel that I seek a very different origin for the name Umbria, which Niebuhr apparently refers to this root and it seems very strange to me that he should have understood the statement of Philistus quoted by Dionysius (I. 22): éĝavaoτῆναι δὲ ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτῶν τοὺς Λίγυας υπό τε Ομβρικῶν καὶ Πελασγών, which refers to the dispossession of the Celtic inhabitants of Umbria and Etruria, as belonging to the same traditions which led Antiochus to write that the Sicilians were driven over into Sicily by the Opicans (H. R. I. p. 82): for Antiochus is speaking exclusively of what took place in the southern extremity of Italy, and the Pelasgians and Ombrici mentioned by Philistus were the Tyrrhenians and Umbrians of the north. : querors living in the midst of the Pelasgians whom they had subdued, the other a Pelasgian nation not yet conquered by the invaders. These two nations formed at first two distinct confederacies of the former Alba was the head, while the place of congress for the latter was Lavinium. At the latter place, the Penates, or old Pelasgian Cabeiri, were worshipped; and even after the Pelasgian league was broken up by the power of Alba, and when Alba became the capital of the united nation of the Latins and sent a colony to Lavinium, the religious sanctity of the place was still maintained, the Penates were still worshipped there, and deputies still met in the temple of Venus. The influence of Alba was, however, so great, that even after its fall, when the Pelasgian Latins partially recovered their independence, there remained a large admixture of foreign elements in the whole population of Latium, and that which was purely Pelasgian in their character and institutions became gradually less and less perceptible, till nothing remained on the south of the Tiber which could claim exemption from the predominating influence of the Oscans. That the name Lavinium is only a dialectical variety of Latinium has long been admitted. The original form of the name Latinus, which afterwards furnished a denomination for the language of the civilised world, was Latvinus; and while the Pelasgian Latins preserved the labial only, the mixed people retained only the dental1. § 5. Trojan Colony in Latium. The tradition speaks of the Pelasgian Latins as a colony of Trojans who settled on the coast under Eneas, the son of Anchises. Without entering at length into an examination of this poetical legend, it may be mentioned here that the names Eneas and Anchises refer, wherever they are found, to the Pelasgian or Cabeiric worship of water in general, and of the flowing stream in particular, and therefore indicate the presence of a Pelasgian population. We have other reasons for inferring the existence of Pelasgians on the coast of Asia Minor, in Thes 1 The same has been the case in the Pelasgian forms, liber, libra, bis, ruber, &c., compared with their Hellenic equivalents, é-λeúdepos, λirpa, δίς, ἐρυθρός, &c. saly, Boeotia, Arcadia, and the west of Italy. It is therefore quite natural that we should find in these localities the name of Æneas as that of a river or river-god. The word itself denotes "the ever-flowing" (aiveías or aivéas, devvaos, deì or aiei véwv, cf. άuvvías, auúvwv, N. Crat. § 262), and in accordance with this we have the rivers Anias, Enios, Enus, and Anio. In the same way, because the stream is the child of its fountain, Anchises the father of Eneas, whose mother is Aphrodite, the goddess of the sea-foam, denotes the outpouring of water (ἀγχίσης, ἀγχύσις, ἄγχεσμος, ἀγχοή, from ἀναχέω), and corresponds to Fontus, the Jupiter Egerius of the Romans1. § 6. The SABINES-how related to the Umbrians and It has been mentioned that the Sabines dispossessed the Oscans, and compelled them to invade Latium. Our next point is, therefore, to consider the relation in which the Sabines stood to the circumjacent tribes. The original abode of these Sabines was, according to Cato2, about Amiternum, in the higher Apennines. Issuing from this lofty region, they drove the Umbrians before them on one side and the Oscans on the other, and so took possession of the district which for so many years was known by their name. It will not be necessary in this place to point out the successive steps by which the Sabine colonies made themselves masters of the whole south and east of Italy, nor to show how they settled on two of the hills of Rome. It is clear, on every account, that they were not Pelasgians; and our principal object is to inquire how they stood related to the Umbrians and Oscans, on whom they more immediately pressed. Niebuhr thinks it not improbable that the Sabines and Oscans were only branches of one stock, and mentions many reasons for supposing so3. It appears, however, that there are still stronger reasons for concluding that the Sabines were an 1 For these and many other ingenious combinations more or less tenable, see Troja's Ursprung, Blüthe, Untergang und Wiedergeburt in Latium, von Emil Rückert, Hamb. u. Gotha, 1846. 2 Quoted by Dionys. I. 14, p. 40; II. 49, p. 338. Reiske. 3 Hist. Rome, I. p. 103. |