Note 1217 — Chapter VIII · Rome

The method is of course much older than Pais; cp. G. C. Lewis, Credib. Early Rom. Hist. I. p. 228, “we have no difficulty in explaining the fictitious character of the events of that early period provided we consider them fictitious.” For an early instance see Bachofen, Tanaquil (1870), where the Etruscan Tarquin-Tanaquil are equated with the Lydian Heracles (ancestor of Demaratus)-Omphale; cp. Damonno, the wife of Gyges, etc. (above, p. 135). Bachofen’s comparison may be not altogether groundless, but it is sufficiently explained by assuming, as these stories perhaps imply, that the political status of women among the Lydo-Etruscans was not quite so backward as it has hitherto been in Europe generally. The traces of impropriety which Bachofen detected in these ladies’ behaviour may be merely a reflexion of the European attitude towards the claims of women for any sort of political equality with men.