§ 21. Reasons for comparing the old Etruscan with the Old Norse. These combinations would be sufficient, if we had nothing else, to establish primâ facie the Gothic affinities of the old Etruscans. But they are only the first step in a cumulative argument, which, when complete, raises our conclusion to the rank of a philological demonstration. Some of the details must be reserved for the chapter on the Etruscan language; but the general effect of the reasoning shall be given here. If the ancient Etruscans were Low-Germans, they must present the most striking marks of resemblance when they are compared with the oldest and least alloyed branches of that family. In the center of Europe the Low-German element was absorbed by the High-German, and the latter became a qualifying ingredient in all the Teutonic tribes of the mainland, who were not similarly affected by Sclavonism. As I have elsewhere suggested (New Crat. § 78), the Lithuanians were Low-Germans thoroughly Sclavonized; the Saxons or Ingavones were LowGermans untainted by Sclavonism, and but slightly influenced by High-Germanism; the Franks or Iscavones were Low-Germans over whom the High-Germans had exercised considerable control; and the Thuringians or Herminones were pure High-Germans, in the full vigour. of their active opposition to the tribes among which they had settled. For Low-German unaffected by any qualifying element we must go to the Scandinavian or Norse branch of the race, which contains the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroic, and Icelandic tribes. The oldest or standard form of the languages spoken by these tribes is the Old Norse or Icelandic, which not only exists as a spoken tongue, but is also found in a very flourishing and ancient literature. The present inhabitants of Iceland trace their descent from emigrants who settled there in the ninth century; and from circumstances connected with their isolated position the language has remained the unaltered representative of the oldest known form of Scandinavian or pure Gothic. It is therefore with this Old Norse or Icelandic, the language of the Sagas and Runes, that we must compare the old Etruscan, if we wish to approximate to the common mother of both, on the hypothesis that they are both traceable to the same stock. But the reader must from the first be guarded against the ridiculous idea that I identify the Etruscan with the Icelandic. The proposition which I maintain is this: that the Icelandic in the uncultivated north represents in the ninth century of our æra the language of a race of men, who might have claimed a common pedigree with those Rato-Etruscans of the south, who became partakers in the Pelasgian civilization about 1600 years before that epoch. Moreover the Icelandic or Old Norse remains pure to the last, whereas the Etruscan is from the first alloyed by an interpenetration of Umbrian and Pelasgian ingredients. Consequently, it will justify all our reasonable expectations, if we find clear traces of the Old Norse in the distinctive designations of the Etruscans, that is, in those names which they imported into Italy, and if we can make the Scandinavian languages directly available for the explanation of such of their words and phrases as are clearly alien from the other old idioms of Italy. This, and more than this, I shall be able to do. Old Norse explanations of Etruscan proper names. § 22. It has been shown in the preceding chapter that the conquerors of the Umbrians and Tyrrheno-Pelasgians in Northern Italy called themselves Ras-ena. Niebuhr has suggested that this word contains the root ras- with the termination -ena found in Pors-ena, &c., and I have hinted that the same root is found in the distinctive designation of this race, Et-rus-ci or Het-rus-ci, which presumes an original Het-rusi, whence Hetrur-ia for Het-rusia. The old Norse will tell us the meaning both of the root and of the prefix: for in Icelandic hetia is "a warrior, hero, or soldier," and in the same language ras implies rapidity of motion, as at rasa, "to run." So that Ras-ena and Het-rusi imply a warrior-tribe, distinguished by their sudden onset and rapid career. Thus a warrior is πódas kús, predaceous animals are Owes, and the old Scandinavian pirates have left the eagle or the war-galley on the armorial bearings of those families which claim a descent from them, as an indication of the same characteristic. This would be admitted as a reasonable conjecture even if it had nothing else to recommend it. However, it does so happen that we have a distinct record of a migratory conquest by the Scandinavians in the heart of Europe rather before the colonization of Iceland, in which they called themselves by the same name as these Rasena or Het-rus-i. It has been shown by Zeuss (die Deutschen, pp. 547, sqq.) that the language of these conquerors, who descended the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Don, was old Norse, and that their leader Chacan bears the Norse name Hakon; and Symeon Magister, who wrote A. D. 1140, has given the same Scandinavian explanation of their name Ros, which I have suggested for Ras-ena; for he says (Scriptor. post Theophan. ed Paris, p. 490): oi Pws of Kai Apoμîтaι λεγόμενοι, "the Ros who are called the racers or runners;" and (p. 465): Ρῶς δὲ οἱ Δρομῖται φερώνυμοι-δρομῖται δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀξέως τρέχειν αὐτοῖς προσεγένετο, “the Ros are called the runners, and they are so called from the rapidity of their motion'." Here the conjecture, which I proposed to the British Association, is confirmed by an authority subsequently observed: and no one will deny the obvious value of this corroboration. It may therefore be laid down as a matter of fact that the distinctive ethnical designation of the old Etruscans is Scandinavian; and we shall see that their mythological or heroic names are explicable in the same way. Niebuhr remarked, without attaching any importance to the observation, that there was a singular resemblance between the Scandinavian mythology and that of the Etruscans: "according to their religion, as in that of the Scandinavians, a limit and end was fixed to the life even of the highest gods" (H. R. I. note 421). Now in the Scandinavian mythology there is no name more prominent than that of Thor or Tor, and this prefix is a certain indication of the presence of the Northmen in any country in which it is found. Hickes says: "Præp. Thor vel Tor in compositis denotat difficultatem, arduitatem, et quid efficiendi molestiam, pessumdans significationem vocis cui præponitur, ut in Tor-ære annonæ difficultas et caritas,' Tor-færa, 'iter difficile et impeditum,' Torfeiginn, 'acquisitu difficilis,' Tor-gætu, rarus nactu,' &c. Ex quibus constat, ut nomen deastri Tyr veterum septentrionalium 6 1 Zeuss suggests that the original old Norse form was Ræsar from the sing. Ræsir = dpoμírns = cursor. He asks: "gehört hieher auch Ræsir in den Liedern haufiges Synonymum für Konúngr, etwa der Schnelle, Edle?" and quotes Skaldskaparm. p. 191, for Ræsir as a man's name. The name Ros or Rus, as applied to the Scandinavians, is presumed in the designation P-rusi = po-Rus-i “adjoining the Ros :" cf. Po-morani, “the dwellers on the sea" (po-more). Mercurii in compositione gloriam, laudem, et excellentiam denotet: sic nomen idoli Thor euphonice Tor eorum Jovis et Herculis, qui cum malleo suo omnia domuit et superavit, in compositione significat et insinuat difficultatem quasi Herculeam vel rem adeo arduam et difficilem, ut Thori opem posceret, qua superari quiret." The lexicographer has here confused between the name of the god Thor (Grimm, D. M. p. 146, et passim) and a prefix equivalent to the Sanscrit dur- Greek Suo- (N. Crat. § 180). But whatever may be the true explanation of this initial syllable, there can be no doubt that it belongs to the oldest and most genuine forms of the Low-German languages; and when we find the name Tar-chon or Tar-quin among the mythical and local terms of the ancient Etruscans, we cannot but be struck by the old Norse character impressed upon them. We at once recognise the Scandinavian origin of the town of Thor-igny in the north-west of Normandy, where the termination is the same as that of many towns in the same district, as Formigny, Juvigny, &c., and corresponds to the Danish termination -inge, as Bellinge, Helsinge, &c. (Etienne Borring, sur la limite méridionale de la Monarchie Danoise. Paris, 1849, p. 9). It is worthy of remark that the word ing-, which is appropriated by the Ing-avones, Ang-li, Engl-lish, and other Low-German tribes, seems to signify "a man" or "a warrior" (Grimm, D. M. I. p. 320), and as quinna is the Icelandic for mulier, Tor-ing and Tar-quin might be antithetical terms; and the latter would find a Low-German representative in Tor-quil. The other mythical name of the old Etruscans, which comes in close connexion with Tar-quin, is Tana-quil; and Tar-quin or Tor-quil and Tana-quil might represent a pair of deities worshipped at Tarquinii, the plural name of which indicates, like Athena and Theba, the union of two communities and two worships, the Pelasgian Tina or Tana, i. e. Janus, being placed on an equal footing with the Scandinavian Thor. This is inverted in the tradition which weds the Greek Demaratus to the indigenous Tana-quil. At any rate, we cannot but be struck with the Scandinavian sound of Tana-quil, which reminds us of Tana-quisl, the old Norse name of the Tanais, which, although the name of a river, is feminine (Grimm, D. Gr. III. p. 385). These coincidences become the more striking, when we remember that we are comparing the old Norse, of which we know nothing before the eighth century of our æra, with the old Etruscan, which flourished nearly as many centuries before the birth of Christ. And when we add to all these evidences of direct history, ethnography, and mythology, the fact, which will be exhibited in a subsequent Chapter, that the Scandinavian languages supply an immediate and consistent interpretation of those parts of the Etruscan inscriptions which are otherwise inexplicable, no reasonable man will refuse to admit that the linguistic and ethnological problem suggested by the old inhabitants of Etruria has at length received the only solution, which is in accordance with all the data, and in harmony with the nature and extent of the materials and with the other conditions of the case. $ 23. Contacts and contrasts of the Semitic and the It appears that the original settlements of the Sclavonian race were in that part of Northern Media which immediately abuts on Assyria, and therefore on the cradle of the Semitic family. From this we should expect that the Sclavonian dia 1 It can scarcely be necessary to point out the difference between the ethnological argument by which I have traced the Pelasgo-Sclavonians to an original settlement in the immediate vicinity of upper Mesopotamia, and Mrs. Hamilton Gray's conjectural derivation of the Rasena from Resen on the Tigris (History of Etruria, I. pp. 21, sqq.). To say nothing of the fact that I do not regard the Rasena as Pelasgian, I must observe that it is one thing to indicate a chain of ethnical affinities which extended itself link by link through many centuries, and another thing to assume a direct emigration from Resen to Egypt, and from Egypt to Etruria. The hypothesis of an Egyptian origin of the Etruscans is as old as the time of Bonarota, but we know enough of the Semitic languages to be perfectly aware that the Rasena did not come immediately from Assyria or Egypt. Besides, if this had been the case, they would have retained the name of their native Resen until they reached Italy. In tracking the High-Germans and Hellenes from Caramania to Greece and central Europe, we find in the dry-bed of history continuous indications of their starting-point and route (New Cratylus, § 92). And the Sauro-mata preserve in all their settlements a name referring to their "Median home." But Mrs. Gray's Rasena forget their native Resen in the alluvial plains of Egypt, and miraculously recover this ethnographical recollection in Umbria and among the Apennines. This is not in accordance with observed facts. Wandering tribes call themselves by the name of their tutelary hero, or by |