Volume 2 — ITALY. (continued 5)

In enumerating these towns, we may follow a twofold system: we may either trace them along the coast, beginning with the one next to Tarentum and thus proceeding as far as Posidonia, or we may arrange them according to the Greek tribes to which they belonged, and according to the alleged periods of their foundation. The first system may be traced on any map where they follow one another in this order: Metapontum, Heraclea, Siris (which is found in very few maps), Sybaris (afterwards Thurii), Croton, Scylletion, Caulon, Locri, and Rhegium: on the other side, we have Hipponium, Laos, Pyxus, Elea, and Posidonia. These towns were colonies of different tribes, but the most important among them were of Achaean origin. The original number of the latter was four, which again became the mother towns of the rest; even in regard to the fourth, however, it is not certain whether it was not a colony of Croton. Sybaris was the most ancient among them: next came Croton; Metapontum, the third, was of much more recent origin; and the fourth, was Caulon or Caulonia, concerning which, as I have already said, it is doubtful whether it was an Achaean colony, or whether it received at the same time settlers from Croton, as was the case at Apollonia which was founded by Corinth and Corcyra conjointly.

The colonies of the Locrians are equally ancient, and, according to tradition, they even belong to an earlier date. Both these sets of colonies again founded others: the Achaean Laos founded Scidros, Elea (a mixed colony), and Posidonia; and the Locrians built Hipponium and Medina. There were also Ionian colonies of different kinds; Siris was a very ancient Colophonian settlement; Rhegium, a Chalcidian colony of a more recent date, afterwards founded Pyxus. Elea, too, may be called Ionian, inasmuch as the fugitives from Phocaea were admitted there, as those from Colophon had been at Siris. They accordingly lie, as it were, in chronological strata above one another, not proceeding in their origin from the same points.

In regard to some of these colonies, the same question presents itself which we had to answer in the case of those in Asia Minor, namely, whether they were really ancient Greek colonies in the sense in which they are so called by our historians, or whether they are not partially of earlier origin, so that, being originally founded by people akin to the Greeks, they afterwards assumed an entirely Greek character. This is really probable in the case of some of them, but nothing certain can be said about it. This opinion is most plausible in regard to the Locrians, for the accounts of their origin are too mythical, and they act a part in all the ancient traditions relating to the period of the Siculi and Itali. The only definite tradition about their origin is the one mentioned by Aristotle, of which I shall speak in due time. The fact, that the Achaeans appear as a colonising people, is likewise mysterious, as they are so insignificant in the early history of Greece. However, Zacynthos, too, is an Achaean colony, and one of the results of the historical inquiries of modern times is, that very little is known about Greek history previous to the Persian wars. Many changes, therefore, may have taken place, of which we are completely ignorant: as the Achaeans passed through a revolution in Aegialos, it is at all events possible, that previously they were a more important people, and that after the Doric migration the oppressed perioeci may have assembled and emigrated from Peloponnesus, just as the Minyans are said to have emigrated from Taenaron to other parts. But these things scarcely admit of sober criticism, and I will not dwell upon them. I shall now enumerate the towns according to the common practice beginning with the most important. The Achaean colonies will be mentioned first.

Sybaris, according to tradition, was the most ancient among the Achaean towns. It has a great name, but in the period of historical certainty it had ceased to exist. The greatness of Sybaris is beyond a doubt, but all the details related about the luxuriousness of its inhabitants, their wealth, their works of art, and their final catastrophe, are either doubtful or altogether fabulous. The numbers of its inhabitants and of the men capable of bearing arms are exaggerated in an almost oriental fashion, for at its destruction, the city is said to have had 300,000 men capable of bearing arms; the manner also, in which Croton is said to have gained the battle, is a mere silly story. But we need not wonder at the fabulous character of these accounts, or at the obscurity of the history, for all the early history of Greece is in the same predicament, and Roman history too begins very late. We must be on our guard not to measure the history of the western nations by the standard of eastern annals. Even if we trace the contemporary records among the Hebrews only as far as the time of Solomon, we already reach a very early period compared with that to which history ascends in Greece. There can be no doubt, that the Egyptians had annals from the period of the seventeenth dynasty, that is, from the time of Sesostris and Amenophis, or the expulsion of the Hycsos; but the Greeks had no such ancient contemporary records, and although there existed certain annalistic tables, as for example, the list of the priestesses at Argos, still they did not, like the oriental annals, constitute a history, but were mere lists of years. It is of extreme importance to an historical philologer, to know how late Greek history commences. At the period of my youth, I and those of the same age with me grew up under the most erroneous notions in this respect. I was already a young man, when it first occurred to me to doubt the truth of the stories about the Messenian wars and about Aristomenes; in the common histories of Greece no doubts were expressed, the events were assigned to definite years, and were narrated as confidently as if they were reported on the best historical authority. People are not yet sufficiently free from these thoroughly erroneous notions, although a right view has already gained some ground. All we know about Sybaris with certainty is, that it was destroyed several years before the period which we regard as the time of the expulsion of the Roman kings; Greek writers place the destruction three years before this event; but synchronistic statements of this kind are of no value. Posidonia and Laos on the opposite coast were colonies of Sybaris, whence we may suppose that all Lucania, with the exception of Metapontum, was subject to it. Sybaris and all those towns became great and powerful within an incredibly short period, which probably arose from the fact of their being commercial colonies. The rapidity, with which commercial cities rise, is exemplified by New York, which 120 years ago had no more than 1000 inhabitants, while at present its population amounts to upwards of 140,000. The same increase has taken place at Philadelphia. If, as is generally supposed, Sybaris at the time of its destruction had existed for two centuries, we may easily admit that it had become great and powerful, and hence there is nothing impossible in the statement, that it ruled over four nations and twenty-five towns. We must also bear in mind, that those Greek towns might grow up even with much greater rapidity than the English colonies in North America; for in the latter all the settlers were Europeans, and consequently quite foreign to the original population; in southern Italy, on the other hand, the greater part of the population consisted unquestionably of native Oenotrians, who were by no means foreign to the Greeks. In countries where the natives were foreign to them, as on the Euxine, their colonies never rose so rapidly as on the coasts of Asia Minor and Italy, where they settled among kindred tribes. Cyrene, which was a large city, perhaps forms the only exception in this respect.

In regard to the history of Sybaris, it is certain that Sybaris and Tarentum, being Achaean and Dorian towns respectively, were hostile to each other, and that there was a time when Sybaris and Croton, both of Achaean origin, were on friendly terms. The object of the dispute with Tarentum was the fertile district between the Acalandrus and the Siris, which was called Siritis; and in order to maintain their possession of it, the Sybarites are said to have invited other Achaeans to come over, and these latter are reported to have founded—

Metapontum.⁠[55] Its name shows the same formation which we have already observed on several other occasions, and leads us to a form Μεταποῦς, analogous to Μαλοῦς. This town, which was founded under the protection of Sybaris, may in reality not have been in a state of independence as long as Sybaris was a powerful state; in order to preserve the possession of its territory, Metapontum required the protection of the Sybarites against the neighbouring Oenotrians and Apulians; but after the fall of Sybaris, Metapontum may be regarded as an independent town. In the traditions we have of this place, as in those of several others, statements about its earlier Oenotrian condition are mixed up with those about its later Hellenic character; the Pelasgian traditions about it always refer to the Trojan legend, and hence Metapontum is mentioned as a Pylian colony. During the period down to the time when the Lucanians became powerful, the place, from the extraordinary fertility of its territory, became so wealthy as to equal the richest Greek towns in Italy. The Metapontines are said to have sent a θέρος χρυσοῦν to Delphi, which was probably a golden sheaf, the produce of the tithes. Their great wealth is also attested by the very numerous gold and silver coins of Metapontum, of very beautiful workmanship, and mostly of great antiquity. Afterwards, however, all the towns in those parts were overpowered by the Lucanians, and Metapontum, also, which was deprived of its territory, must have lost its greatness in consequence. Afterwards, it suffered severely from the Greek and Epirot armies, which were called into the country by the Tarentines. Alexander of Epirus and Cleonymus of Sparta for a time occupied Metapontum with garrisons, and Cleonymus in particular acted with disgraceful cruelty: he took hostages, and plundered and pillaged the town. After that time it never recovered. In the war of Pyrrhus, Metapontum was an insignificant place; in the second Punic war, it attached itself to Hannibal, and afterwards it is, as if a wave had passed over it and washed it away, though we do not know how or when; but we hear no more of it. In the age of Strabo, it was a small place, but in point of fact, it had perished.

The destruction of Sybaris by the Crotoniats was the death-blow to the Greek towns in those parts, for the Crotoniats were not able to protect the country against the invading Lucanians and Oenotrians. Some of the surviving Sybarites withdrew to their colonies of Laos and Scidros, and others built a small place of the name of Sybaris in a distant part; all attempts to rebuild the ancient city failed, for Croton and the vengeance of the emancipated serfs prevented it. In this distress they applied to the Athenians, who in the days of their greatness appear everywhere as the defenders of the Hellenic name: on this occasion, too, they were ready to assist the unfortunate Sybarites, and invited colonists from all parts of Greece to settle at Sybaris. The reason why Croton did not oppose this new settlement may have been the fact, that the people of the interior were advancing more and more; the Crotoniats probably felt, that a powerful Greek colony in the neighbourhood might be very useful to them: Posidonia, too, was probably already lost. At a deliberation of the Spartans and their allies, a Greek said, that if Athens were destroyed, “the spring would be taken out of Hellas,”⁠[56]⁠—the destruction of Sybaris had taken the spring out of Magna Graecia. The settlement at Thurii succeeded without any opposition on the part of the Italicans. It was called an Athenian colony; but the Athenians formed only a small portion of the population, which consisted of Dorians and Ionians, islanders as well as emigrants from the mainland, who had been invited by the Athenians, without any distinction, as to a general Greek enterprise; the Athenians did not reserve for themselves any petty advantages, being satisfied with the consciousness that history would call them the restorers of Sybaris. Thurii must have been a strong colony, whence it soon rose to importance. The ancient name was probably ominous, as Sybaris had been destroyed twice, or perhaps even three times. The name Thurii is said to have been derived from a well. This is possible; but the emblem of Sybaris on ancient coins (for there are some very ancient ones) is always a bull, whence it is quite possible, that this emblem may have been the cause of the name, for θούριος signifies ferox, fierce, wild. Thurii soon became involved in constant wars with the Lucanians; but fifty or sixty years after its foundation it was already so powerful that it could lose more than 10,000 men in battle against the Lucanians. This loss, however, was a blow from which it never could thoroughly recover; it was soon after confined to its own territory, and perhaps even obliged to pay tribute to protect itself against the devastations of the Lucanians. In the wars of the Tarentines and the other Greeks against the Lucanians, Thurii is indeed still mentioned, but it sank more and more, until in the end it was taken and plundered by the Lucanians. Afterwards, it placed itself under the protection of the Romans, who, however, were unable to prevent its being plundered a second time by the Tarentines. Subsequently it sank so low, that after the Hannibalian war a Latin colony was established there; but this colony was equally unfortunate, for during the war of Spartacus it was razed to the ground, as we see from the fragments of Cicero’s speech for Tullius, recently discovered by A. Mai.

The next place is Croton, which, according to tradition, was founded shortly after Sybaris. There exist very contradictory accounts about this town, and it is difficult to discover any connection among them. Heyne has written several essays on all the towns of Magna Graecia; he ought not to be undervalued, but nearly all his works were written in too great a hurry; he had overburdened himself with official business and his own undertakings, and it is melancholy to see how a man of such truly beautiful talents does not rise above mediocrity in his writings. On the whole, he has only produced imperfect works; if he had concentrated himself more, if he had been willing to do less, and if he had not been possessed by an unfortunate πολυπραγμοσύνη, he would certainly have acquired a great and lasting reputation. The best intentions in such a case are of no avail; posterity will not heed them; for it does not ask, What is the number of a man’s works? but, What are they? His fate may be described in the words of Scripture: “He is gone hence, and not a trace of him is left behind.” Heyne also founded a school which was bad, though his followers were celebrated in Germany, as if they were great scholars. From it, however, men proceeded, who, though outwardly belonging to it, kept themselves independent of the school, as F. A. Wolf and others, who are the real restorers of the sound philology which is now flourishing. Heyne’s essays are pleasant to read; but he who is familiar with their subjects, sees before him a man who does not take the trouble to examine things, who is satisfied with vague conceptions, and shows the greatest indifference as to what is possible and what is not; it is only now and then that a bright idea reminds us of his original talent. But, notwithstanding all this, Heyne’s essays ought not to be left unread. Very different is the case of Bentley, and I must strongly recommend to you every thing he has written on similar subjects.

There is great difficulty in the tradition about Croton, according to which it was so powerful that it became insolent, and attempted to subdue the Locrians; the Locrians, however, it is said, owing to the favour of the gods, who took pity on the oppressed, gained quite an unexpected and glorious victory over them. Hereupon, tradition says, the Crotoniats renounced war and lived in effeminacy, until Pythagoras appeared among them, and by a new religion which he taught, and by new ordinances, introduced a fresh spirit and improved manners among them. Yet here again the mystery is, how, during that very period of moral debasement, the Crotoniats could stand in the same relation to Sybaris, as that in which Locri stood to Croton. One might be inclined to place the battle on the Sagra, according to Justin and other indications, between Olympiad 70 and 80; and I myself formerly entertained this opinion; but after the discovery of the “Excerpta de Sententiis” from Diodorus and Polybius, it cannot be doubted that the ancients placed it in Olymp. 50. From this, then, it follows, that the stories of their insolence, effeminacy, and moral debasement, must be regarded as mere arbitrary inventions. Although no such exaggerated numbers are mentioned in the case of Croton as in that of Sybaris, yet 100,000 armed men are said to have been arrayed against the Locrians on the Sagra, and the circumference of the city is said to have been twelve Roman miles; Livy, who no doubt took the account from Polybius, states it to have been 100 stadia, and this does not appear fabulous. The greatness of Croton belongs to an early period, but afterwards its power must have sunk in consequence of circumstances which are unknown to us. Traces of internal commotions occur in the well-known account of the persecution of the Pythagoreans. This sect went hand in hand with the aristocracy; its downfall was connected with the development of democracy, and was not so much the consequence of its religious as of its political character. This accounts for the fact, that Croton had already ceased to be a powerful state, when, according to Diodorus, Magna Graecia becomes prominent in history, that is, about the time of the foundation of Thurii. When the Lucanians were spreading far and wide, and Thurii received its fatal blow at Laos, the Crotoniats are not mentioned with any degree of distinction, but are treated like the inhabitants of the other cantons of that country. But if it had been a town of small extent, Dionysius the elder would not have been so anxious to gain possession of it; he besieged and conquered it in a nocturnal surprise, by attacking it on a side where it was believed to be almost inaccessible. This capture of Croton, which Diodorus strangely says nothing about, must have been very destructive in its effects upon the place. Dionysius, it is true, afterwards quitted it, and it recovered its independence, but thenceforth its fate was always very deplorable. Croton was obliged to submit to Alexander of Epirus, though he inflicted no injury upon it; but Agathocles, in his undertaking against Corcyra, besieged it in passing; the town was then governed by the tyrant Menecrates, whom Agathocles deceived by pretending that he was anxious to form connections with him; but he then suddenly changed the course of his fleet which was bound for Corcyra, and having landed at Croton, captured the town. Not quite twenty-five years later, in A.U. 450, the Romans under P. Cornelius Rufinus took it by assault; and this catastrophe, as we see from Livy’s account of the Hannibalian war, completely broke its power. It now shrunk together within its ancient circumference in the same manner as e.g., Pisa, or Leyden, which once had 100,000 inhabitants, while at present it has only 20,000. When a person walks on the ramparts of Pisa, he sees the modern town concentrated in the centre of its ancient circumference. Pisa is at present as desolate as many an eastern city, such as, e.g., Basra or Ispahan; such also was the condition of Rome in the middle ages, especially during the time when the popes resided at Avignon. The arx of Croton was situated in the centre of the town, and around it a few houses were still standing: all the rest had become changed into fields. In the Hannibalian war, the Bruttians took the town and demanded of the inhabitants to share it with them, but the Crotoniats preferred emigrating to living together with them. The Bruttians then established a colony there, but after the conclusion of the war they were expelled by the Romans, who now sent a colony thither; but this was not very successful either. At present Croton is a little country-town.

It is remarkable that, considering the importance of the cities of Magna Graecia, so few monuments of antiquity are found in all of them: there are cameos and coins of Tarentum, but few statues.

In the neighbourhood of Croton there was a temple of Juno Lacinia on the Lacinian promontory. This promontory on the one side, and the Iapygian on the other, inclose the gulf of Tarentum. Lacinia is generally taken as a proper name of Juno, and from it the name of the promontory is derived; but this is incorrect: the adjective is an ethnic name, and Juno Lacinia and Acra Lacinia are nothing else but Juno and the Acra of the Lacinii, that is, the Latini, in the sense in which all the Pelasgian Italiots are so called. According to the most authentic accounts, this temple of Juno Lacinia is more ancient than the Greek settlements on those coasts; in the remotest times it was the common sanctuary of the Oenotrians, and afterwards it passed into the hands of the Crotoniats. During the period of Croton’s greatness it was extremely rich, and traces of its wealth existed as late as the Hannibalian war; but in the course of this war it was profaned and plundered by the Romans. Hannibal had his head-quarters there for a long time, and caused a large tablet, containing a history of his own exploits in the Greek and Punic languages, to be set up in the temple. How valuable would such a document be, if it were preserved! I shall pass over the small places south of the Lacinian promontory, and proceed to—

Caulon or Caulonia, a small Achaean town, which had a common diet with the other places.

Locri, was probably not a real Greek colony, but a Hellenized place. If Locri was a Greek colony, this fact, too, would show, what is everywhere probable from their very situation, that the Ozolian Locrians and those πέραν Εὐβοίας once belonged to each other, and that they were torn asunder only by the immigration of the Dolopians; and that accordingly they were a much larger people. We must, therefore, be on our guard not to blame Virgil, as he has been blamed for calling the Locrians Narycii. People say, it is inconceivable that the Locrians should have been called Narycii, as mount Naryx was situated opposite Euboea, while the Italian Locrians were descended from the Ozolian Locrians (according to Strabo). Virgil did not conceive the Locrians as divided, but as one unbroken race, extending from the Corinthian to the Euboean sea. The Locrians in Italy are called Ἐπιζεφύριοι, that is, ἐπὶ Ζεφυρίῳ, on the promontory of Zephyrium. Hitherto the traditions about these Locrians have been a curious puzzle. The ancient excerpts from the twelfth book of Polybius contain traces of a great controversy of Timaeus, who is raving against Aristotle on account of what he had said about the origin of the Locrians. But what Aristotle actually had said, is not mentioned by the epitomizer, and it could only be guessed that he had derived their origin from slaves. Besides this, there was a passage of Dionysius Periegeta, in which he says of the Locrians σφετέρῃς μιχθέντες ἀνάσσαις, on which the passage of the scholiast is incomplete. But from the new “Excerpta de Sententiis,” the whole matter has become clear. Aristotle relates the following tradition. In the first Messenian war, the Locrians furnished the Spartans with auxiliaries, and all their men capable of bearing arms had taken the field. During their absence, their wives and daughters led a licentious life with their servants; and from fear of their returning masters, the servants with their concubines emigrated. Timaeus in saying that this story sounds fabulous, made easy game of Aristotle, if he supposed that Aristotle believed it to be true; but I would undertake to answer for it that Aristotle did not give the story as a real historical tradition, but that he mentioned it only as a legend of the Locrians. He no doubt asserted that the Italian Locrians were not a colony of the Greek Locrians, and that, if they were Locrians, they were so only through the women. Timaeus might easily have investigated the matter; but his object was only to find fault with Aristotle. But such disgraceful conduct always receives its punishment in due time, and Polybius has prepared it for him. If here, as everywhere else, we put aside the mythical story, we find that the foundation of the Locrian state in Italy belongs to the period of the decay of the constitution of the gentes, when in various places illegitimate marriages between the ancient families and the δῆμος gave rise to a mixed race, which became dangerous to the aristocracy, and was, therefore, obliged to emigrate. The same fact forms the basis of the story about Phalanthus and the Parthenii.

But whatever may have been the origin of the Locrians, they bore in ancient times a very respectable character, for they defeated the Crotoniats in the battle on the Sagra. The Greek proverb ἀληθέστερα τῶν ἐπὶ Σάγρᾳ must probably not be taken quite literally, at least, not in our narrative, in which it is said that the Dioscuri decided the issue of the contest. In like manner, St. James is said to have appeared on a white charger in the army of Ferdinand Cortez: a distinguished officer, who had been present at every point of the battle and seen nothing, got himself out of the difficulty by saying, that he had not been worthy to behold the saint. Such, also, may have been the case with the Dioscuri in the battle on the Sagra. At all events, however, the Locrians, through that battle, secured their independence, and for a period of 150 years thereafter, they lived in happy prosperity, which was disturbed by Dionysius, who endeavoured to gain influence in the Greek towns of Italy by marrying a citizen of one of them. A Rhegine maiden being refused to him, he took a Locrian for his wife. For this reason Locri was greatly favoured; but after Dionysius’ death, his son, on being obliged to withdraw from Sicily, betook himself to Locri, where he raged like a Nero or an Elagabalus. When, afterwards, he was forced to return to Sicily, the Locrians took vengeance on his family, and then had to sustain a siege, during which, there being no hope of pardon, they offered a most vigorous resistance, and risked their all upon it. Their territory fell into the hands of the Bruttians, but in the war of Pyrrhus, Locri was still a considerable state. On that occasion, however, they acted an unworthy part: they first requested the Romans to send them a garrison against the Bruttians, and then betrayed it into the hands of Pyrrhus. After this, Pyrrhus placed a garrison of Italicans and Bruttians there, who again betrayed the town to the Romans. Sixty years later, the Locrians delivered up a Roman garrison into the hands of Hannibal: they then repented of their treachery—a fickleness which, often occurs among the Greeks—and again opened their gates to the Romans. But this last act was not set down to their credit, for Q. Pleminius, who was left behind there by Scipio with a garrison, conducted himself like the commanders of the troops of the League during the thirty years’ war, like Colonel Hatzfeld at Rostock, and as the imperial commanders in general, with their Croats, conducted themselves in Germany. Pleminius treated the town as if it had been taken by the sword; at length, however, the Locrians succeeded in inducing the Roman senate to interfere, and to punish the offender; the account of his conduct gives us some idea of the manner in which war was carried on in those times. The town continued to exist after these events, but was quite insignificant; its greatest importance consisted in a temple of Proserpine with a rich treasury. Pyrrhus had plundered the sanctuary, but being warned by visions in a dream, he restored the treasures; Q. Pleminius afterwards plundered it more effectually.

The next town, Rhegium, was a Chalcidian colony, of a much more recent date than the others, being founded about Olymp. 50. During the period when it was the residence of Anaxilaus, it was a powerful city. At the time of the Sicilian expedition, Rhegium, like all the other Chalcidian towns, was allied with Athens. The Rhegines refused to give one of their daughters in marriage to Dionysius, and were injudicious enough to insult him, by saying that they had no other girl suited to him except the daughter of the hangman, which was the most offensive thing they could have done. At the time when Corsica was still independent, no Corsican ever took the office of hangman, but from hatred of Genoa, the Corsicans always appointed a Genoese. Dionysius laid siege to the town, and the Rhegines defended themselves with the courage of lions, but were overpowered; and their fate was terrible. But the situation of the town is so fortunate, that a town will always exist there in spite of earthquakes and other ravages. A hundred years later, Rhegium was, if possible, still more unfortunate. In the war of Pyrrhus, a Campanian legion, at the request of the Rhegines themselves, was sent there by the Romans, for the purpose of cutting off the communication between Pyrrhus and the Mamertines in Sicily. But this garrison, under the command of Decius Jubellius, massacred the male inhabitants, and took possession of their wives and children. At the conclusion of the war, the Romans took the town by force, and the 300 survivors of the 4,000 who had composed the Campanian legion, were beheaded in the Forum at Rome. The surviving Rhegines were then called together, and their territory was restored to them. Henceforth, Rhegium remained a prosperous little commercial town, and experienced no further misfortunes.

Hipponium, a colony of Locri, was taken and destroyed by the Bruttians, and then rebuilt by the Carthaginians, which is the only instance of a Carthaginian town in Italy. During the latter period of Agathocles, and shortly before the war with Pyrrhus, the Bruttians seem again to have been masters of the place. Afterwards the Romans established a colony there, under the name of Vibo Valentia.

Proceeding along the coast in a northern direction, we come to Laos, on the line which subsequently formed the frontier between Lucania and Bruttium. It was a colony of Sybaris, and is celebrated on account of the defeat sustained by the united towns of Magna Graecia, especially Thurii, against the Lucanians, who wanted to relieve the town from a siege. At that time, the Lucanians had already extended themselves along the coast, and Posidonia was their first conquest.

Pyxus or Buxentum, between Laos and Posidonia, was founded by the Rhegines at the time of Anaxilaus and Micythus, who were contemporaries of Darius Hystaspis. There can be no doubt that it was afterwards taken by the Lucanians, but it was snatched from them by the Romans, who surrendered it to the Campanians at the settlement they made with them, whence Buxentum is afterwards mentioned among the Campanian towns. After the Hannibalian war, the Romans established a colony there.

Elea or Velia, a town which preserved its Greek character in a wonderful manner, was situated not far from Buxentum. It was a colony of the Phocaeans, established in the reign of Cyrus, after they had in vain endeavoured to form a settlement in Corsica (Olymp. 60). In the history of literature, Elea is remarkable for the great and profound philosophers who formed the Eleatic school. As Amalfi, though surrounded by Lombard armies, preserved its pure Italian and Roman character, so Elea remained a Greek place down to the latest times. The father of the poet Statius was a Greek of Elea, and Statius’ Graia Selle is nothing else than Elea, as Markland has shown; some persons have strangely referred it to Epirus, and some perhaps do so still. Elea was allied with Rome, and was honoured and distinguished by her. It perished at a time which can no longer be defined, in consequence of the ravages of barbarians.

Posidonia or Paestum was the most powerful among the Greek cities on that coast. The place still has the most beautiful Greek ruins in all Italy, and three ancient temples are preserved there in tolerable completeness; before the first half of the eighteenth century, they were not known at all, for they were not discovered till 1730. The cause of this may have been the circumstance, that they are situated in a very pestilential and deserted district; but at present they are known to everybody. The ruins belong to the ancient Greek period, when Posidonia was still powerful. There have also been found great numbers of coins of a very ancient style, resembling those of Sybaris, which are at least as old as the sixtieth Olympiad, and perhaps even older. Posidonia was conquered by the Lucanians, though it is unknown at what time, and it remained under their dominion until the war of Pyrrhus, when the Romans established a colony there under the name of Paestum. The fact, that previously the Lucanians had a colony there, is clear from the account of Aristoxenus, in Athenaeus, about an annual festival which the inhabitants celebrated quite in the ancient Greek fashion, and at which they, among other things, complained of their losing their Greek character and peculiarities, and of their becoming barbarians in consequence of their being ruled over by barbarians. Athenaeus indeed mentions the Romans as their rulers, but he is either mistaken in the name, or the book which he quotes was not by Aristoxenus, but a pseudepigraphon, which is certainly possible. It is interesting on this occasion to become acquainted with the nature of the colonies, and with the manner in which a new ruling class of men establish themselves among the people, introducing their language and manners to such an extent as to cause the nationality of the ancient inhabitants to disappear. The most striking example of this phenomenon is the diffusion of the language and manners of the Arabs over the East and Africa: all the languages which were previously spoken there, Greek, Latin, Egyptian, and Syriac, having given way to the Arabic. In like manner, the Turkish language has become predominant in Armenia and Hyrcania. This accounts for the fact, that, although the Arab immigration into Spain was not very numerous in comparison with the ancient inhabitants, yet when in the thirteenth century Andalusia was re-conquered by the Christians, the people spoke nothing but Arabic. The Ommayad khalifs had introduced the Arabic language by putting to death any one refusing to adopt it. The term colony, therefore, is very vague: we generally imagine that the colonists constitute the real body of the people; but this is not so, for the colony only furnishes the form. I very well remember, that about thirty-five years ago, when I read that account of Aristoxenus, the matter appeared to me strange; but the mixture of the two nationalities clears up everything.

Etruria.

Etruria is in every respect a highly important and interesting country, and in ancient history it is at the same time great and powerful; it derives a particular interest from the fact of its being the mother country of the modern Tuscans, a people on whom all the honour of Italy, in regard to intellectual and artistic greatness, rested during the middle ages no less than in modern times, just as the honour of Greece rested on Athens. In the whole range of modern history there is not a people, which is so strongly marked with the antique character as the Florentines; they possess all the great qualities of the Athenians, without their light-headedness. They also have been too severely judged of; I do not, indeed, mean to say that they are faultless, but they are, in spite of any faults, deserving of the highest respect. A man who is familiar with the old Italian literature and history, cannot but feel the greatest affection and attachment to Tuscany, and this affection and attachment are unconsciously transferred to the ancestors of the modern Tuscans. But the great renown enjoyed by the ancient Etruscans is not owing to this, but rather to the irresistible charm with which man is drawn towards that which is mysterious and enigmatical. We can, indeed, see that the Etruscans were a very remarkable people, and that in regard to the fine arts, they occupy, next to the Greeks, the highest rank in antiquity; yet so many monuments and inscriptions of this same people are perfect mysteries to us; inscriptions exist in great numbers, but are altogether inexplicable. All the statements of the ancients about the Etruscans are full of contradiction. The difficulties have been increased by the opinion which has been established for a long time, that the Romans derived the greater part of their institutions and character from the Etruscans, an opinion which formerly I also entertained. But I have given it up, and in the second edition of my Roman History I have honestly stated my reasons. The cause of the great confusion among the ancients about them is the supposition that the Etruscans and Tyrrhenians were the same people. I have shown in my history that the Greeks, who are here our only authorities, as we have no other statements, called the Tyrrhenians Pelasgians, and Tyrrhenians existed not only on the coasts of Etruria, but occupied the whole coast of Italy down to the Oenotrian frontier, before the Ausonians subdued those districts. Being Pelasgians, the Tyrrhenians, according to the views of the Greeks, were of the same race as the ancient Meonians in Lydia, as the inhabitants of Lemnos and the islands near the Hellespont, and as the occupants of the neighbouring coasts. Hence also the tradition about the connection between the two. These original inhabitants of Etruria, from Luna as far as the Tiber, were then overpowered by a nation invading Italy from northern Europe, just as we have seen in the case of the Illyrians; Greek historians afterwards called the conquerors Tyrrhenians, partly because a large proportion of the population of Etruria actually was Tyrrhenian, and partly because the whole country bore the name Tyrrhenia. In like manner the English are called Britons, and the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru Mexicans and Peruvians; and in the same way the Greeks applied the name Oscans to the Sabellians inhabiting Lucania and Samnium, although the Oscans were the subjects and the Sabellians the ruling people. As the conquerors have often entirely changed the language of the conquered people (the coins of Posidonia, when in the end it had become Roman, have Latin inscriptions in Latin characters), so the language of the Tyrrhenians, under the dominion of the Etruscans, gave way to the language of the rulers; and hence we cannot be surprised at finding on Etruscan monuments none but the mysterious Etruscan language. I mentioned before the Mexicans as an illustration: the Spaniards who conquered Mexico amounted only to a few thousands, while the country they subdued contained many millions of inhabitants. The latter, it is true, were extirpated by inhuman cruelty, epidemics, and the like; but still the fact of the Spanish language having become quite universal there remains a remarkable phenomenon. The Spanish colonists had scarcely any women with them, and accordingly took native Mexican women for their wives, whence we might expect to find the Spanish language would have disappeared all the more naturally and easily. It is a foolish opinion to believe that the depopulation of Spain was the consequence of the emigration to the provinces in America; for the number of emigrants to the new world was on the whole but small. Granting that in the course of time a few hundred thousand emigrated, the men who arrived there entirely without families, exercised such an influence upon the language of millions, that at present not a man in the city of Mexico speaks Mexican, and the native language exists only in the remotest districts; the commonest Indian speaks Spanish. There are even large provinces in New Spain where the ancient language has entirely disappeared, without its being possible to show that any considerable immigrations ever took place. In the Baltic provinces of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, where the ruling families have always remained the same, where the nobility consists for the most part of Wendish families, and where the Germans have never appeared as conquerors, the Wendish language is entirely lost, merely because the introduction of Christianity from Germany was in the course of a few centuries followed by the German language. The ancient Tyrrhenian language may, even before the conquest, have become unsettled and shifting, as the Umbrians occupied the interior of the country while the Tyrrhenians inhabited the coasts.

The inquiries into the Etruscan language have hitherto yielded no results at all; all the alleged explanations by Mazzochi, Passeri, and Lanzi are mere delusions. I must direct your particular attention to the incredibly small compass of what is commonly called learning. Common sense has often been most disgracefully trampled under foot, and intuitive truth has been overlooked and disregarded; and this has been the case more particularly in the inquiries about the ancient Italian languages. People have been extremely anxious to discover the Etruscan language, and who should not be so? I would readily give a considerable part of my property as a prize to any one who should discover it; an entirely new light would thereby be thrown upon the character of the nations of Italy. But desirable as this object is, it does not follow that it is attainable; it is deplorable, however, if people assume it to be attainable without examining as to whether the method they adopt be the correct one. Passeri and Lanzi enjoy quite an undeserved reputation; they have treated the ancient Italian languages of the Etruscans and Umbrians in quite a disgraceful manner; and I have many years ago expressed my indignation at the absurdity with which the inquiry is pursued. Lanzi assumes that Etruscans and Tyrrhenians are the same,—a fact which has never been doubted—that Tyrrhenians are Pelasgians, and that Pelasgians are ancient Greeks: he then proceeds, without having any general principle to guide him, to interpret words merely according to some remote resemblance in sound to Greek or Latin words, and by this process he elicits a sense which is no better than if it had been his object to make the whole inquiry ridiculous. Any one who has a taste for Greek must reject such trash with the greatest indignation. There are only a very few words the meaning of which can be guessed: on all the tomb-stones we read avil ril followed by a number (the Etruscan and Roman numbers are the same), whence we may suppose these two words to mean vixit annos; sometimes we find ril alone, which may accordingly mean “year.” It is possible that the word is indeclinable, and it may even be imagined that all nouns in Etruscan, as in many eastern languages, are indeclinable. Now Lanzi, not being able to find a similar word in Greek or Latin, objects to the interpretation of these words which alone are known; and he connects avil, which probably signifies vixit, with the Greek αἰών, though he would prefer a word with a stronger resemblance. On several works of art we find the word turce added to a name, which he interprets ἐποίει, and I will let this pass; but he adds that turce is nothing but the contracted τὸ ἔρξε, that is, τοὖρξε. Such things have found admirers, and even in Germany! I feel no inclination to speculate where I do not stand on firm ground; but it certainly is much more probable, that ce is the termination of the noun, like us in Latin; and accordingly I say “turce may be the same as Tuscus, for r and s are very often interchanged.” In the fifteenth century, a number of bronze tables were found at Gubbio in Umbria, with inscriptions partly in Etruscan and partly in Latin characters, but in an unknown language: who knows what these tables contain! A man with the faculty of divination possessed by Champollion might perhaps be able to explain the language, but it requires a full consciousness of the analogy of languages; this is the only way in which it might be made out, but it is impossible to explain it by itself. The Italians, like Passeri, have proceeded on the supposition that the Etruscans were haruspices, interpreters of lightning, and the like, and that consequently their monuments contain all kinds of fulguratio: on such premises they then attempted to translate the inscriptions with a truly revolting impertinence: you can scarcely form an idea of this kind of nonsense. I say this because I have been described as wanting in modesty by people who no doubt may have been extremely modest all their lives; and the remark has been added, that I had not read the productions of those inquirers. But I have read Lanzi’s work, and deliberately declare that it is thoroughly bad. Lanzi was a man of talent and acuteness, but completely ignorant of Greek literature, and he had but a poor knowledge of Latin. He was an encyclopaedist, who undertook much, but finished only half of what he undertook. I have here expressed my conviction with the fullest confidence, that it is not only my conviction, but the pure truth. It is possible that a resemblance may be discovered between the Etruscan and the Ligurian language.

The ancients were far less concerned about the Etruscans than the moderns; they took indeed an interest in them, but did not enter deeply into the inquiry about them; and it may be that they were prevented by their utter ignorance of the Etruscan language. Herodotus relates that the Etruscans were a Lydian colony, a statement which has been correctly refuted even by Dionysius, who says that Xanthus the Lydian did not say anything about it; that the Lydians did not bear the slightest resemblance to the Etruscans in language, customs, manners, or religion; and that there existed no traditions about such a colony either among the Lydians or among the Etruscans. Herodotus had heard, that Tyrrhenians existed in Italy as well as in Lydia (where, however, the Meonians, and not the entirely foreign Lydians, were Tyrrhenians); his idea of a colony was a mere inference from his knowledge that the Tyrrhenians and Meonians were nations of the same race. But Tyrrheni and Tusci are the same words, and so are Tyrrheni, Turini, Turni; Tusculum is nothing but the town of the Tyrrheni; Etrusci and Tusci, however, are different, and the name Tusci was afterwards transferred to the Etrusci. The native name of the Etruscans was Rasena. Previously to the Gallic conquest, the same Etruscan nation was also established in the plains of Lombardy; and, according to Livy, all the tribes about the river Padus, such as the Raeti and others belonged to it. It is, moreover, quite in accordance with all analogy to suppose that the nation had come down from the Alps in consequence of commotions in the north. Here we must also bear in mind the other tradition which states that, before the time of the Etruscans, the Umbrians dwelt in Etruria, and that 300 Umbrian towns were destroyed by the invading Etruscans. No importance can be attached to the number 300, which is only a multiple of 3; 3, 30, 300, and 600, all signify only “very many,” and in other circumstances the same might be expressed by 4, 16, 64, etc. I am persuaded that the time is not far distant (it may have arrived already), when no man will think of quoting the statement of Herodotus about the Lydian origin of the Tyrrhenians as an authority against other opinions. Everything which, after the lapse of hundreds or thousands of years, has to be made out by reason and argument meets with opposition, and this is in accordance with nature; nay, it is good that it is so, as it imposes upon us the duty to give to our doctrines the greatest possible distinctness, and to expound them so clearly as to make them intelligible to all.

It is well-known that Etruria, south of the Apennines, contained twelve ruling towns, to which the others were subject. We must not, however, suppose that there existed no more than twelve places deserving the name of towns, but they were twelve sovereign cities, and all the others were dependent upon them. This fact is certain and beyond all doubt. They were all situated within the district from the Apennines about Luna and the Tiber. But which of the Etruscan towns they were, is quite a different question; some of them are certain, others can be named only with probability, while others, again, can only be guessed. Descending from the north, we find the following towns, which Livy, in his account of the second Punic war, distinctly affirms, were ruling cities: Volaterrae, Populonia, Rusellae, and Tarquinii; and in the interior, Arretium, Perusia, Caere and Clusium. Four accordingly are wanting, either because they had perished, or because they had ceased to belong to the Etruscan nation. Veii and Vulsinii had been destroyed, and Capena had become a Roman municipium. But whether Capena ever was one of the sovereign cities, may seem doubtful. All these relations belong to so remote a period, and the notices we have of them in the ancient authors are so vague, that we must be extremely cautious. The case of Cortona is particularly doubtful. Livy, near the close of the first decad,⁠[57] mentions it as an Etruscan town; but at the time of the second Punic war he does not name it among those which distinguished themselves by the support they gave to Scipio. Herodotus, in speaking of his own time, says that Cortona⁠[58] was inhabited by Pelasgians who were foreign to the Tyrrhenians, that is, to the Etruscans and Ombricans. This is a great mystery, which it is impossible to solve with any degree of certainty. Had Cortona become Etruscan in the middle of the fifth century, while during the first half of the fourth it was still Tyrrhenian? or did Herodotus transfer to his own time that which was correctly applicable only to an earlier period? Different conjectures may be entertained as to why it is not mentioned in the second Punic war: Livy either forgot it, or the town had, perhaps, not been included in the general peace which the Etruscans concluded with the Romans at the time of the war with Pyrrhus; it is possible also that it may have concluded a separate peace, or that it had been conquered. For the books of Livy and Dionysius, containing the account of that period, are lost, and the brief extracts furnish no satisfactory information. We may, therefore, have recourse to several modes of explanation, but we must be cautious and not regard as certain what is merely possible.

One or two places at the least, therefore, are still wanting. On the coast we find Cossa, a large town, the walls of which still exist, and show that the place was strongly fortified. But it is called Cossa Volcientium, whence it is probable that it was no more Etruscan than Falerii, which, geographically speaking, likewise belonged to Etruria. We may, however, take it almost for certain that Faesulae, situated beyond Florence, was one of the twelve towns. It is not indeed mentioned in the history of the wars with the Romans, that is, in the ninth and tenth books of Livy; but we can draw no inference from this, as the eleventh and twelfth books are wanting. From these last we should have learned, whether at that period it was one of the Etruscan towns or not.

In a physical point of view, Etruria may be divided into three parts. The central portion is formed by the main stock of the Apennines, both those in the neighbourhood of Siena and those in the north of the river Arno, for they belong together, having been separated only by the hand of man to make an opening for letting the Arno pass through. This part comprises the whole of the Apennines, which now separate Tuscany from Bologna and Romagna, together with the interior from the neighbourhood of Siena to the Roman towns of Aquapendente and Viterbo. This range of mountains contains indeed many beautiful valleys, but in some parts there are none, and on the frontiers of Tuscany and Bologna the country consists of rough, wild and inhospitable mountains, which at present have scarcely any wood at all; in ancient times it was different, for thick forests appear to have existed at least on the frontiers of Etruria and the country of the Gauls. The second part comprises the whole territory extending below Volterra, the so-called Maremma, or hilly coast land. It embraced the whole of Suburbicaria Tuscia, the modern Patrimonio di. S. Pietro, a district formerly containing the towns of Vulsinii and Saturnia, and at present Tuscanella and others, and extending to the very gates of Rome. The geological character of this part is quite different from that of the Apennines; it is of a volcanic nature, the lakes of Vulsinii, Bacanae, and all the others in that district are decayed craters, and volcanic stones and productions of every kind are found there in all directions as on the opposite side of the Tiber. The country is at present extremely unhealthy, and was in all probability never quite healthy on account of the bad quality of the water; there seem to be really poisonous exhalations. In ancient times, however, important towns existed there notwithstanding, and there was no doubt a corresponding degree of agriculture; at the time when Florence and Siena were flourishing republics, the state of the country was likewise better than it is now. It was ruined by the princes of the house of Medici, who made the towns responsible for the whole amount of taxes, as is the custom in the East; when one place was decayed, the others had to make up the sum among themselves. In some parts this system was carried so far, that during the second half of the seventeenth century, under Cosmo III., whole villages were ruined; and it was the greatest misfortune for the country that this Cosmo reigned for a period of half a century. In this manner the country became desolate by fiscal extortions. Wherever the population has once become extinct, it rarely re-appears; the emperor Leopold II. did every thing in his power to mend matters, but it was of little avail. The third part comprising the marshy country from the Arno as far as the Gonfalina, is a large and low district with many marshes and lakes, extending as far as Luna and Pescia; it has quite the appearance of the countries in the Netherlands. In the time of Hannibal, it was one continuous marsh, but he made his way through it, and deceived the Romans, who thought it impossible for him to advance through that morass, and accordingly considered themselves quite safe. We may say in general that the manner, in which the Romans at that time carried on the war, was beneath all criticism. The upper Arno was formerly a lake, and near Faesulae, too, there was a lake, but they have been drained by making a passage for the waters through the Gonfalina and La’ncisa.

I shall now proceed to give you an account of the separate towns, mentioning at once the things for which they were remarkable at different periods, for our time is too short accurately to separate the geography of the different periods.

Luca. The northern part about Luca was afterwards in the hands of the Ligurians, and nothing is known about it in regard to the Etruscan period. Soon after the Hannibalian war, the town was taken by the Romans who established a colony there, for the purpose of securing the possession of the country. Throughout the middle ages, Luca was a place of considerable importance.

Luna, situated on the sea-coast, in the neighbourhood of the modern Carrara, was anciently likewise Etruscan, and of importance to Rome on account of its excellent harbour. The whole coast of Etruria has but few harbours, and there is only one other at Populonia; but that of Luna had the advantage of being at once the nearest and very good. Before the Romans had formed a communication with Spain by land, the military communication with that country was kept up by means of the port of Luna; and the Romans had long been masters of the greater part of Spain, before the communication through Gaul was opened. Luna was also important on account of its quarries of white marble, called marmor Lunense. The Romans did not commence to work in marble till a very late period: before the time of Augustus it was not very extensively used, and he first erected buildings of native marble. During Cicero’s youth the Romans began to employ Carystian and Numidian (yellow) marble in private houses, no doubt, for small pillars; and in the time of Pompey, the use of foreign marble became a little more common. But in the reign of Augustus it became very general, whence marbles of every kind are found in the ruins; Carrara marble was employed in vast quantities, the white Pentelian was less common. After the time of Augustus, it was customary to use bricks for the internal parts of walls, and to cover or incrustate, as the Italians say, the outside with slabs of marble. At a later period of the empire this custom extended so far, that it became an indispensable luxury to cover the walls even of private houses with most costly kinds of marble. The temple of Apollo on the Palatine seems to have been constructed of solid Carrara marble. When the Romans advanced as far as Luna, the Etruscans were, probably, no longer masters of the place, but it seems to have belonged to the Ligurians. In the middle ages it was destroyed by the Saracens.

Pisa also appears to have been Etruscan, but it never was a sovereign city. It is regarded as a colony of Pisa in Elis (whence Pisae Alpheae in Virgil); but this is a groundless fancy, and it is an undoubted fact that Pisa was an ancient Tyrrhenian place. In the Hannibalian war, it was an important military station to the Romans, who succeeded in remaining masters of it. Afterwards it became a military colony. The great importance of the place is manifest from the number of ruins and remains of every description, although the town is not often spoken of. In the middle ages it rose rapidly and became great at once, just as the gods in the Aeneid step forth from the clouds, without any one having anticipated them. In the eleventh century, when the Pisans constructed their cathedral with its baptistery and tower, Pisa must have been a city of gigantic power and greatness. Its inhabitants possessed a wonderful taste for the arts even during the darkest periods of the middle ages, when at Venice (I will not mention Rome which was quite barbarous) not the slightest trace of such a taste was perceptible. The Venetians, as late as the thirteenth century, melted down all the Greek works of art in bronze which they could carry away; the preservation of the colossal horses from Chios, in the Piazza S. Marco, is almost a mere accident: the strange deliberation as to whether they should be melted down or not, is well known. For half a century afterwards the horses stood neglected in some shed, until civilisation advanced, and they were set up in their present place. At Pisa, on the other hand, the taste for the arts was so far developed that, as early as the eleventh century, the city employed an architect, probably from the south of France (his name is Bruschetti, as is stated in the excellent inscriptions), to build a church, which is as magnificent as any structure belonging to the period of the emperors of declining Rome, or of the Byzantine rulers. The Pisans, moreover, carefully collected during their expeditions, especially at Rome, columns and other antiquities, and obtained similar treasures as presents from the emperors. During the twelfth century they collected fragments of ancient architecture, sculptures, and especially sarcophagi which they put together in their cemetery (Campo Santo); they then surrounded the cemetery with a wall and a portico, and thus affectionately preserved the remains of antiquity. The bodies of men of rank were buried in these sarcophagi. Such was the spirit in which Nicolo Pisano, a gigantic genius of the middle of the thirteenth century, made bas-reliefs more beautiful than any that were produced at Rome during the third century of our era; not only does he show great genius in invention, but also in the beauty of his sculptures. The civic laws of the Pisans were based upon remnants of the Roman law, nay, edicts of praetors, which had not been introduced into the Justinianean Code, were preserved there; so that Pisa, at a later period, remained an essentially Roman city, though it was governed by a Lombard nobility. The vicissitudes of Pisa were terrible and deplorable. The Genoese overpowered and cruelly destroyed it: the more bravely and valiantly the city resisted, the more fearful was its destruction. Afterwards it was subdued by the Florentines. No republic ever carried the persecution of its subjects so far as Florence carried that of the Pisans. The Florentines distrusted them so much, that the Pisans were not only excluded from all honourable offices, but were not allowed even within their own city to practise certain professions or engage in certain trades; they were not allowed, e.g., to embrace the professions of physicians and lawyers, or to carry on a wholesale mercantile business, but they were limited to the small and common trades. The consequence of this was an insurrection, but the Pisans were subdued, and of the 100,000 inhabitants which Pisa had had during the middle ages, not more than 8,000 remained at the time when Cosmo de Medici entered upon the government. Athens was in a similar state of decay during the period from Alexander to the last Philip of Macedonia.

Volaterrae, no doubt one of the ancient sovereign cities, was situated at some distance from the coast. In the history of the Roman wars, it acted a very prominent part; and from the vigorous manner in which it supported Scipio, we see what a powerful place it must have been; but it distinguished itself more especially by the resistance it offered to Sulla. When the fate of the whole Marian party was already decided, Volaterrae still sustained a war for two years, and did not surrender until it was compelled by want of provisions. We do not know what was the fate of the town, but we do know the character of the conqueror, and may therefore presume that it was a most fearful one. Sulla established a military colony there, and deprived the inhabitants of the franchise. The ancient circumference of the city can still be distinctly traced: it occupied all the surface of a very considerable hill, which rises above the lower hills of an almost level and beautiful country. The wall clearly shows the difference between the Pelasgo-Cyclopean and the more artistic Etruscan mode of fortification. The Etruscan fortifications were constructed along the upper edge of a hill as real walls, and the sides of the hill below the walls were not cut precipitous; the Pelasgian places, on the other hand, have no walls on the edge of the hills, but the sides of the rock are cut down so as to be precipitous, and are provided with substructions. Another difference consists in the fact, that the Etruscan walls are built of regular square blocks, forming parallelograms one perpendicularly above the other. The blocks are very large, and generally put together without cement, their edges being cut very sharp. The fortifications of Volaterrae are among the most perfect. After the time of Sulla, or at least after that of Augustus, Volaterrae was a military colony. It was the birth-place of the poet Persius, who for this reason more than once alludes to the circumstances of his native place, and can be understood only by those who are acquainted with them. The hill on which Volaterrae stood, consists of alabaster, in consequence of which many works in that material were executed there; hence the sarcophagi of Volaterrae with Etruscan inscriptions, are made of alabaster. During the middle ages the town was still very considerable; but it has decayed, especially through the greatness of Florence.

The next place after Volaterrae in the south is Populonia, Populonii or Populonium, for all these forms occur. On Etruscan coins it is called Puplana, for the Etruscan alphabet has no o nor any short vowels. There is a statement which seems quite credible that Populonia was a colony of Volaterrae. In later times it was one of the more important Etruscan towns, and acted a prominent part in the wars against Rome, of which an account is given in the tenth book of Livy. It had the sovereignty of the neighbouring island of Ilva or Aethalia, a Greek name suggestive of its Pelasgian origin. The mountain of this island consists of large masses of iron, which by the Catalanian method can easily be transformed into the most excellent steel. The west of Europe was, to a great extent, provided with iron from Elba, as it was imported into the eastern parts from the Black Sea. The working of the mines of Elba, however, seems to be of a more recent date than the composition of the Odyssey, for in this poem the south of Italy is provided with iron from Temese. The ancients notice it as a singular phenomenon, that the iron could not be smelted in Elba, and that it was necessary to do this on the continent; but this is a Greek absurdity, and an inability to comprehend things connected with ordinary life, which we not unfrequently meet with in the ancients. It was reported in Greece, that it was necessary to transport the iron to Populonia, and the imagination of the Greeks immediately invented a reason. The truth is simply this: in later times there was a want of wood in Elba, and it was found cheaper to convey the iron to Populonia, than to import wood into Elba, for Populonia possessed smelting establishments. In like manner, the copper ore found in Cornwall is conveyed to Wales and smelted there. Populonia was a wealthy maritime town until it was destroyed by Sulla; and from that time it has been a heap of ruins, which were seen by Strabo. The town was never restored.

The moderns who have written on ancient geography are tolerably unanimous in their opinions, that Vetulonium was situated in the neighbourhood of Populonia. Dionysius mentions it as a large city, which carried on war against Rome, while Livy does not notice it either in the first decad, where he describes the great Etruscan war, or in his account of the Hannibalian war, or in any other place. It must accordingly have disappeared at a time of which we know nothing. There exist coins with Etruscan inscriptions, which unquestionably belong to Vetulonium. In a forest near Populonia large ruins are found, which have been assigned to Vetulonium, but this is a mere conjecture, and nothing can be said with any degree of certainty about the situation of the place. I have often thought, that it might possibly be Orviedo which was called Urbs vetus as early as the eighth century. However, the place has entirely disappeared, and all that is said about it rests on mere conjecture.

There now follow Rusellae and Cossa, the latter of which, as I have already observed, was probably not an Etruscan town; at a later time it received a Latin colony.

Tarquinii appears in our histories as an Etruscan town, but that in the most ancient times it was a real Tyrrhenian place, is attested by the tradition of its having been founded by Thessalians; the name Tarchon, which is mentioned as archegetes and is connected with Telephus, points in the same direction. At the time when Tarquinii is drawn into the traditions about Rome, and connected with Tarquinius Priscus, it probably is still a Tyrrhenian town. In the war with Pyrrhus, Tarquinii, like nearly all the Etruscan towns, formed an alliance with Rome in a general peace, of which I shall speak in the third volume of my History of Rome. By this peace the Etruscan towns were placed in a relation to Rome quite different from that of the other towns of Italy, because the Romans were anxious to gratify their wishes in order to prevent their forming connections with Pyrrhus. This is one of the occurrences where Providence directly interferes in the affairs of the world for the purpose of saving a state from destruction. Such also was the peace between Russia and Turkey in 1812, whereby the French army was prevented from retreating to Turkey, and was thus left to its fate. In like manner, Soltikoff, after the battle of Kunersdorf, ordered his troops to stand still. The determination of the Etruscan towns to accept the peace of the Romans forms a similar turning point in ancient history. After this, Tarquinii remained faithful to Rome, until it disappeared in the time of the Roman emperors. In the age of Cicero it still existed; in the war of Sulla it was probably not destroyed, though severe sufferings may have been inflicted upon it. The site which it once occupied, the modern Corneto, is remarkable for the monuments which are discovered there, and are more numerous than in any other place of Etruria. They are made of clay, and are of a very peculiar character, approaching the Grecian style, while those found in the interior of Etruria are altogether different in workmanship from Greek monuments. The decay of Tarquinii must perhaps be ascribed to the choking up of its good harbour, and to the rise of Centumcellae, one of the few places in Italy the origin of which belongs to a late period. Until the time of Trajan no town existed there; it was only a summer palace of the emperor with a mineral spring, for that volcanic region contains many hot springs. Trajan, who in general did much to promote the navigation of the Italians, built a harbour there, and constructed the molo which still forms the harbour of Civita Vecchia; and near it arose the town which received its name of Centumcellae from the imperial palace. The town continued to increase in importance, especially during the period of the decay of the empire, when the Portus of Rome became more and more filled up, while that of Centumcellae was capable of receiving larger ships. The Saracens took the place, but the inhabitants withdrew, and built in the interior of the country the town of Leopolis, named after pope Leo IV. When, in consequence of the victory of Ostia, the danger of the Saracens was removed, the inhabitants of Centumcellae returned, and from that time the town has been called Civita Vecchia. It is, therefore, not an Etruscan, but a Roman town.

Caere with the port towns of Fregenae, Alsium, and Pyrgi, was situated nearer the mouth of the Tiber. Caere was anciently called Agylla, and as such it is said to have been Pelasgian or Thessalian: it is, moreover, expressly mentioned that the town was taken by the Etruscans. As later writers believed in the Lydian origin of the Etruscans, this misunderstanding gave rise to the account that Agylla was taken by the Lydians. Agylla existed as a Tyrrhenian town until a very late period. In the account of Herodotus, where the Phocaeans settle in Corsica, and are attacked and expelled by the Carthaginians and Agyllaeans, Agylla does not yet appear as an Etruscan town. When the Agyllaeans, after treating their captives treacherously, had experienced the wrath of heaven, they consulted the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, which no Etruscan town ever did; they, moreover had a thesaurus at Delphi, and the mention of thesauri there does not go farther back than the fortieth Olympiad. It must therefore have been after this time that the Etruscans advanced into those districts. The names of Pyrgi and Alsium also attest their Tyrrhenian origin. It is probable, lastly, that Caere, because of its Tyrrhenian origin, was on such friendly terms with Rome, that during the Gallic calamity the Romans carried their sacred treasures in safety to Caere. Afterwards they were involved in a protracted war with each other; a truce was concluded and renewed from time to time, until Caere gradually entered the general relation in which the Etruscan towns stood to Rome. In this condition, we find Caere in the time of the Hannibalian war. Afterwards it is no longer mentioned, except that we find it entered as a Marian colony in the lists of colonies drawn up by Hyginus and Frontinus.

Veii was situated not quite ten English miles from Rome. Its circumference, according to Dionysius, was like that of Rome under Servius Tullius, and the same as the ancient Attic ἄστυ. However, it is scarcely credible that Dionysius should have possessed such accurate information about a town which had been razed to the ground long before his own time. It is well known, that Veii was destroyed by the Romans even before the Gallic period, because the plebeians had declared that they would emigrate to Veii, if the patricians thought them unworthy of being members of the same state. For this reason, the patricians and the senate systematically destroyed the place. Its site is undoubted, but scarcely any traces of Etruscan remains are found there. In the reign of Tiberius, we find it mentioned as a military colony, but we do not know when or how it was constituted as such. About thirty years ago, excavations were made on the spot, and some beautiful works of art, and among them a very fine statue of Tiberius, were discovered; but most of the things found there are not above mediocrity, and all the inscriptions refer to the restoration of the place by Tiberius. Henceforth, and down to the overthrow of the western empire, Veii remained a small country town in the neighbourhood of the capital. A bishop of Veii occurs as late as the fifth century. It is quite in accordance with the natural course of things, that places which were great before Rome rose to eminence, and for a time her equals, were in the end subdued and perished in the wars with their rival. In places of this kind a new population gradually sprang up, and corporations were formed which were nothing else but military colonies, and could not last long, as most of the men were unmarried. Such a population was generally of the worst kind, consisting of inn-keepers, carters, and the like; the places were in reality suburbs of Rome, though at a considerable distance from it.

Capena was about the same distance from Rome as Veii; it is mentioned in the earlier times, but afterwards completely disappears, and its inhabitants, according to all appearances, were removed to Rome after the Punic war. Sutrium and Nepet were for a long time the frontier towns of Etruria towards the territory of Rome.

Vulsinii, situated on lake Bolsena, was one of the largest Etruscan towns. When after the Gallic war we find Etruria in arms, we must suppose that the Vulsinians were the soul of those undertakings. They were involved in hostilities with Rome even before the Gallic war; afterwards they are, for a time, not mentioned at all, whence their relations with Rome seem to have ceased; the frontier heights between Rome and Etruria were allowed to grow wild and to become covered with an impenetrable forest, as has been the case in modern times in the neighbourhood of Licca, on the frontier between Croatia and Turkish Bosnia. This is the Ciminian forest, the description of which in Livy is exaggerated in a ridiculous manner; it often happens that his great imaginative power leads him to make descriptions which would be excellent in a novel, but are ludicrous in a work where truth is the object. The history of Vulsinii is remarkable both for its facts and for its fables. It is a fact that ever since A.U. 440, and for a period of thirty years, Vulsinii offered a resistance to the Romans, which larger Etruscan towns recoiled from, and that at length Rome, in the height of her power, when she was the mistress of Italy, with difficulty conquered and then destroyed it. In later times it re-appears, for Sejanus was a native of Vulsinii. Metrodorus of Scepsis says that the real cause of the destruction of Vulsinii was the circumstance that the Romans wanted to obtain possession of 2000 magnificent statues which existed there. This is a fable, and no doubt the view of a Greek, which he attributed to the Romans. The latter were far from attaching such value to works of art; gold and silver were the things they sought after. The real reason was that Vulsinii, by its thirty years’ resistance, had distinguished itself above all Etruscan tribes; and the Romans, therefore, were determined to take the sap out of the tree, so as to prevent its ever growing again. The ancient inhabitants had called in the Romans against their slaves. These slaves, however, must not be understood to have been domestic slaves, but serfs, or the subdued ancient population, whom elsewhere the Etruscan magnates kept in servitude, while the Vulsinians had given them freedom and the franchise. The commonalty, having thus become free, did not stop short there, but, indignant at the ancient wrong done to them, they attacked their former tyrants; they did not, however, expel, but only weakened them. The latter then applied to Rome, and preferred having their town destroyed to living on a footing of equality with the commonalty. The correct spelling of the name is Vulsinii and not Volsinii, for, as I have already mentioned, the Etruscans had no o; hence we find Vulsinii in the Capitoline Fasti, though in genuine Roman words it is more correct to write o after v, as volnus and not vulnus.

In the centre of Etruria there was no ruling city, nay, no Etruscan place at all. Augustus established there Sena Julia as a military colony, the sixth legion being stationed there. As there was no road through the centre of the country, but only one along the coast, and another through the eastern part, Augustus made the one running by Aquapendente.

The Etruscan towns in the eastern part of the country were Clusium, Perusia, Cortona (though its Etruscan character is doubtful), Arretium, and Faesulae.

The greatness of Clusium belongs to the most ancient times, for in Roman history it is not of any importance; nor do the Romans mention any ruins of Clusium, for all that is related of the buildings of Porsena, belongs to the domain of fable.

Perusia was situated east of Clusium. During the period described in the ninth and tenth books of Livy, Perusia acts the same part as the other Etruscan towns; but after having suffered a defeat, it concluded a truce. The Perusines undertook the war in a foolish manner, and the first reverse discouraged them. Here, too, a military colony was afterwards established, probably by Sulla. The town is remarkable in history for the obstinate resistance it offered to Augustus, as in fact the descendants of Sulla’s soldiers in the military colonies were almost everywhere opposed to the party of Caesar. The town was taken and the most illustrious citizens put to death, or rather butchered, at the altar of Julius Caesar. Afterwards a new military colony was sent thither under the name of Colonia Julia Augusta Perusina.

Cortona, also a military colony, probably likewise founded by Sulla, was situated on a very high hill and in a very strong position. Its ancient walls do not appear to have been particularly strong.

Arretium was more important than Cortona, and probably one of the largest cities of Etruria. Its greatness may be inferred from the fact that in the Hannibalian war it furnished arms for 30,000 men of the army of Scipio. We must not, however, conceive these towns to have been confined to their own territories, but as sovereigns of districts of many square miles, whence they were able to do things which seem to us impossible. Arretium was an industrial place, and rich by its manufactures, especially its potteries, like Staffordshire in England; whence Augustus, in a fragment of a letter to Maecenas, calls him a Tuscan potter. Augustus often tried to be witty, but his witticisms were mostly dull. The pottery of Arretium was highly valued even during the middle ages, though otherwise few collections were made. At present such vessels are extremely rare: I have brought with me from Italy a small piece as a relic, for I am not rich enough to purchase an entire Arretine vase. They are not painted, but have figures, leaves, animals, and the like, in relief, and are of exquisite beauty. Arretium completely shared the fate of Etruria itself. There were three different Arretiums, vetus, fidens and Julium. Sulla destroyed the city, sold its inhabitants as slaves, and founded in the vicinity a new colony for his soldiers, under the name of Arretium fidens. Augustus built Arretium Julium in the neighbourhood of the two others. The modern Arezzo occupies the site of Arretium Julium, whence it contains no Etruscan antiquities; but the Roman town was much more important than the present Arezzo. If systematic excavations were made in the neighbourhood, many things might certainly be discovered. I regret not having visited the Grand Duke of Tuscany, an excellent young man, full of taste for, and appreciation of, knowledge, for I might perhaps have induced him to make excavations, especially near Arezzo and Chiusi.

Faesulae was situated on a hill above Florence. Florentine traditions call it the metropolis of Florence, which would accordingly be a colony of Faesulae; but a statement in Machiavelli and others describes Florence as a colony of Sulla, and this statement must have been derived from some local chronicle. Faesulae was no doubt an ancient Etruscan town, probably one of the twelve. It was taken in the war of Sulla, and was then in the same desperate condition as Arretium and Volaterrae, both of which were deprived by Sulla of their freedom and territory. Hence a Sullanian colony is mentioned by Cicero as existing there in the war of Catiline. My conjecture is, that Sulla not only built a strong fort on the top of the hill of Faesulae, but also the new colony of Florentia below, and gave to it the ager Faesulanus. If this be true, the statement before alluded to would be correct, though we cannot trace it to any authentic source. The Etruscans built their towns on inaccessible hills in order to be able to control their subjects; the Romans not being under this necessity, built their towns in convenient and accessible places, to which they could make roads. Faesulae could not be reached, except on foot or on horseback; no vehicle could get up the hill, whereas the Romans employed many vehicles in the intercourse among the towns. But although Florentia was a colony of Sulla, the agrimensores subsequently describe it as a colony of the triumvirs, and it is indeed possible that not one of the twenty-eight military colonies of Sulla may have been kept up until the time of the triumvirs. This subject is in the greatest confusion, and no one has yet attempted to clear it up. First we have the colonies of the republic, then the military colonies of Sulla, then again a second series of military colonies under Caesar, and lastly those of the triumvirs and Augustus. The earlier colonies lost their character through the Lex Julia, and became municipia; then followed the Sullanian and Julian colonies, so that the same place at three different times may have had three different colonies. This view of the matter makes clear that which Cluver and Cellarius, with all their merits, have left in utter confusion.

Within the territory of Tuscia or Etruria, we find on the banks of the Tiber a place, or rather a tribe, which in all our maps is described as a part of Etruria, but which the ancients, Strabo, e.g., expressly say did not belong to Etruria. This is the people of the Faliscans. Respecting their nationality, the ancients have in reality only this negative statement, and we cannot ascertain to what race they belonged, except by divination and indirect evidence. Virgil in his Aeneid speaks of Aequi Falisci, which the commentators, and even the ancient scholiasts, taking Aequi as an adjective, translate “just Faliscans”; but it is highly probable that Aequi is a name, and that we have to regard the expression in the same light as, e.g., Chaonii Campi, where Campi is explained even by the scholiasts as the name of a people. The identity of the Aequians and Faliscans is confirmed also by other evidence. Among the Faliscans we find the word hirpus, whence their language may be inferred to be a branch of the Oscan, in which, as we have seen, this word signifies a wolf. Lastly, the name of the Faliscans may be traced at once to that of the Volscians, Volsci, Volisci, Falisci; and as we know that they were of foreign, that is, non-Etruscan origin, we cannot, considering the geographical position of the people, doubt the correctness of the view here expounded. There is some plausibility also in the other tradition which is traced to Cato, that the country, before it was taken possession of by the Faliscans, was inhabited by Siculians. This quite agrees with our supposition of successive conquests. The most ancient inhabitants were Pelasgians, who were succeeded by an Ausonian people, and the latter again are pushed onward by the Sabines; for it should be observed, that the Sabines did not penetrate between these Faliscans and Aequians and the Volscians until a later period.

The Faliscans had several towns, of which Falerii was the most important. For reasons which are quite unknown to us, the Romans, after the first Punic war, conquered and destroyed this town. This fact is all we know; but we may suppose that the place, to escape from oppression, was tempted to a rash and inconsiderate act, for the condition of Italy was then such as to render any undertaking against Rome hopeless. The town was afterwards restored. Near Civita Castellana, there is a place called Falera, which is no doubt the ancient Falerii; Faliscan inscriptions are still found there. It was a deeply rooted mistake among the first scholars after the revival of letters, to suppose that Civita Castellana was the ancient Veii; but this error was refuted even by Lucas Holstenius. The real town of Falerii was situated a little to the east of it.

Mount Soracte, which is always visible from Rome, was in the country of the Faliscans. Horace, in one of his Odes, speaks of Soracte as being covered with snow, and this has given rise to the erroneous inference, that the climate of Rome is now changed and milder than in antiquity. The Abruzzi, Leonessa, and other heights, may be covered with snow, without its being cold at Rome, but when there is snow on mount Soracte the cold at Rome is severe. This is indeed not often the case; but when it does happen, the snow-capped Soracte, is seen very distinctly from Rome. Horace has not availed himself of a poetical license in this respect. I mention this, because people, very frequently, if not generally, speak of poetical license as if an inaccurate expression in a poet ought to be pardoned. There may, indeed, be poets of this kind, as, for example, Ausonius, and Greek poets of the period of decay; and modern poets, too, very frequently make use of such licenses; but it is quite certain that the good poets of antiquity give to things only such epithets as are quite clear and true to their own minds.

Umbria.

Of this country I have little to say. Umbria, in its proper sense, in which the name is used by the Romans, is situated for the most part in the Apennines, though we cannot even positively assert that it extended to the southern slope of the Apennines. But in more ancient times it extended much farther on both sides. There is great probability in the tradition that the Umbrians were confined to their small territory by the Etruscans, who are said to have taken 300 Umbrian towns. This number, however, must not be taken literally, for it is only a general number like μυρίοι, and sexcenti. Its earlier and larger extent is also attested by the river Umbro in the territory of Siena, and by the fact, that even at a later time a part of Etruria continued to be called Umbria. At one period the Umbrians also possessed the whole country about Rimini as far as the mouth of the Padus; there they were either expelled or subdued by the Gauls, or, as is still more probable, completely extirpated, for the Gauls were most fearful enemies and barbarians in the strictest sense of the term, annihilating and devastating everything that came in their way. During the Roman period, the Umbrians were extremely weak, and down to the fifth century, when the Romans came in contact with them, they were no doubt tributary to the Gauls. What could they in fact have done against such an enemy? They were obliged either to repel them or pay tribute to them. We know that other neighbouring tribes did so, whence it is probable that the Umbrians did the same. The Gauls, who so often advanced to the lower Tiber, cannot have come through any other country but Umbria, for the Etruscans in their towns defended themselves against them, and were protected in the north by the Apennines. Hence the unfortunate country of Umbria had constantly to suffer from the passages of the Gauls, who, in like manner, always took their road to Apulia through Picenum.

At the time when the Umbrians come in contact with the Romans, they seem to act as one nation, though it does not follow from this that they actually formed one state. A fact, however, which may seem to support this view is, that the different districts of the country are mentioned under the name of tribus or plagae (tribus Materina, Sapinia), which denote parts of one great whole. Yet this union, if it did exist, can have embraced only a portion, for the Sarsinates, or Sassinates, stood apart, and in the war of Pyrrhus they alone, for a time, defended their independence against the Romans. The Umbrians allowed themselves to become involved in the war of the Samnites and Gauls, but appear to have carried it on without energy; and a treaty seems to have been concluded with them similar to that with the Etruscans, for both are mentioned among the nations which supported Scipio. I am well aware that Italicans did the same, but they did it in a different manner.

Several of the Umbrian towns were made Roman colonies, especially Spoletium and Narnia, previously called Nequinum; both places were fortified by the Romans (Narnia after the second Samnite war, and Spoletium afterwards), for the purpose of keeping the country in subjection, and of protecting the frontier against the Gauls.

All Umbria was full of towns: Hispellum, Tuder, Fulginium, Assisium, Camerinum, and Iguvium (Gubbio), were places of considerable importance. In the last of them, tables have been dug out of the ground with inscriptions in Etruscan and in another language in Latin characters; the latter language seems to resemble the Latin and Oscan. When once the Oscan language shall be better known, more light will perhaps be thrown upon the Umbrian language also. The name Umbria and the Greek Ὀμβρικοὶ seem actually to be akin to Ὀπικοί, which is in fact intimated in a passage of Philistus; whence the Umbrians probably belonged to the great Ausonian race. So far as I have seen Umbria, it is a very excellent and picturesque country; the Apennines are there much more beautiful than in Tuscany; they are covered with particularly fine forests, and have magnificent, rich, and fertile valleys. All the rest of Italy is ill-suited to the breeding of oxen, but Umbria has the most splendid kinds: I have seen a herd of white oxen near the well of Clitumnus, which consisted of the finest and noblest animals of the kind; they were like those in southern Poland and Russia. The cattle here in Germany is wretched. The extension and change of the races of animals in Italy may be traced back to the times of antiquity: buffaloes, for example, were introduced into Campania in the seventh century, when the country was almost a wilderness.

Gallia Cisalpina or Togata.

Down to the middle of the fourth century, the country beyond the Apennines was called northern Etruria, but after that time it bore the name Gallia Cisalpina or Togata, but it extended further than Etruria proper, for the sea-coast as far as the river Aesis never belonged to Etruria.

The country now called Lombardy in its narrower sense, was inhabited in the earliest times by Ligurians, as is clear from most indubitable indications, and hence we must suppose, that subsequently they were driven by the Etruscans across the Ticinus. But these events belong to too remote an epoch, and I cannot say much either of this or of the Etruscan period. Certain it is that Etruscan towns existed in those parts, and that Etruscans dwelt there as the conquerors of the Ligurians and as the lords of the land; and there can be no doubt that after descending from the Alps the Etruscans established their first settlements there. Melpum is said to have been a great Etruscan settlement in the neighbourhood of Milan; and Felsina (Bononia), Mutina, Parma, and Brixia, are spoken of in the same way. Verona is sometimes called Raetian and sometimes Etruscan, and Mantua is called Etruscan by Virgil. It is possible that Verona may have been termed Raetian because it was situated on the Raetian frontier, and may for all this have been an Etruscan town.