rejected this very theory a century ago, and have since rejected the far more plausible one of Lanzi, will now be ready to admit the fact that the radical letters of Rasena occur in the name of a town on the banks of the Tigris, or that those of Lydia are supposed by modern interpreters to be contained in a certain Egyptian hieroglyphic, as evidence that the Etruscans drew their blood and their language either from Assyria or Egypt, in the absence of all antient authority, or of a shadow of resemblance between the existing Etruscan inscriptions and any known dialect either of the Aramaic or Coptic tongues. Still greater stress, however, is laid by Mrs. Gray, and doubtless with better show of reason, on the Egyptian character of many of the Etruscan monuments :- -a point on which we shall take this opportunity of offering a few general remarks. The style of these monuments subdivides itself under two principal heads—first, the primitive Etruscan style; second, the later imitative style; which last may again be classed as either Hellenic imitation, or EgyptoOriental imitation. The primitive Etruscan style is a variety of that rude but expressive type of art common to the early efforts of all nations, and which among many of those of the Mediterranean shore may possibly have emanated from, or been influenced by, the previous models of Egypt, as a country which from a remote period we know to have taken a lead in this department of civilized life. The same may also hold good of certain primæval notions of religion or cosmogony. But it would be rather a bold leap to infer, wherever traces of this style or of these notions can be detected, the settlement of an Egyptian colony, or the direct influence of Egypt. This prejudice, however, as to the universality of Egyptian influence and art, so fostered by the high state of preservation in which, from a combination of favourable circumstances, the monuments of the Nile have reached our own age, while those of other great emporia of primitive art have disappeared, has proved for centuries a formidable bar to sound criticism on this class of subjects; and will, perhaps, long continue to haunt the popular traveller or geographer on his route along the shores, not only of Greece or Italy, but of Mexico and Peru, of China and Hindostan. To ourselves the proper Etruscan variety of this primitive type of art, as exemplified chiefly or solely in their sepulchral remains, appears not only to differ from the Egyptian, but to connect itself, both in its style and the character of its subjects, with another foreign region; the only one, as we shall see, to which either historical data or sound criticism entitle us to look, beyond the soil of Etruria, for its origin. As regards the later periods of Etruscan design there cannot be a doubt that the Egyptian style extensively prevails; but it pre E2 vails vails in common with that of Greece and other nations, and under such circumstances as, together with the comparatively recent period at which it can be clearly identified, show it to be the result of that spirit of imitation and taste for exotic novelty which, amid all their gloomy nationality of genius, so strikingly characterises the history both of art and religion among this singular people, and which their extensive foreign commerce during their flourishing ages enabled them amply to gratify, even probably from sources still more distant than Egypt.* Mrs. Gray attaches much importance to the splendid Etruscan collection of General Galassi, exhibited in Rome some years ago, as confirming her Egyptian theory. We happen ourselves on one occasion to have visited that collection with a friend of very high authority in matters of Hindoo antiquity, and well remember the astonishment expressed by him at the extraordinary resemblance, both in subject and design, between several of the more costly metallic ornaments or implements there exhibited and similar works of Indian art; with his remark, that had he found them in a museum of Madras or Calcutta, he would not have hesitated to specify the particular district or school of native design-mentioning a name which has escaped our recollection-from whence they emanated. Upon Mrs. Gray's principle we might here be entitled also to assume a Hindoo colony in Tuscany. It is farther worthy of notice, that all or most of the works distinctly marked by either an Egyptian or Oriental character are of a portable description; ornamental armour-collarssalvers-metallic vases-scarabees, &c. ; while no similar work of such a nature as must have been necessarily executed on the spot, architectural decoration, painted interiors, &c., in genuine Egyptian style, has yet been discovered; which would seem to prove that those of the former class were either exclusively of foreign introduction, or that the imitative skill of the native artists was limited to a close adherence to the imported foreign models. That the scarabees, originally introduced from Egypt as objects of curiosity, or in the way of coin or barter-money, became afterwards an extensive article of home manufacture, there can be no doubt. The accuracy of this view is in some degree confirmed by the opposite case of the works of Etrusco-Hellenic imitation, executed in a great measure it is certain by native artists, for the most part people of Hellenic race, and the more remarkable of which accordingly are of such a nature as must have been completed in the country: architectural frontage, sculptured reliefs on stone or marble, painted interiors, &c. &c. We at last come to the view opened up by Professor Thiersch: * See Quarterly Review,' vol. liv. p. 447. but but let not the reader be alarmed lest we should be about to bewilder his ideas by some new subtlety of verbal interpretation. The Etruscan language we shall allow to rest in the same state of mysterious incomprehensibility in which it was found by Maffei, and has been left by Sir W. Betham. As little do we propose still further to mystify the historical element of the inquiry by any similar attempt at speculative novelty. Our object is rather to recal attention to the old paths' of classical tradition, which have been too long systematically abandoned for the more seductive courses of alternate mysticism and scepticism; but which, as illustrated both in the records of antiquity and through the discoveries of our own day, by solid monumental evidence, still seem to hold out the best, the only satisfactory solution, of the grand enigma of Etruscan origin. It is a trite remark that in no case where any important statement of fact is made by Herodotus on his own authority, or on testimony to which he subscribes, however improbable or unpalatable to modern opinions or prejudices,-in no such case, where opportunity has been opened up for closer investigation, has that statement, if understood in the spirit of the age or the author, been found destitute of solid historical basis. This canon appears likely to meet with a new and striking illustration in regard to our present subject of inquiry. We have seen that the authority of this writer, who makes the Etruscans a Lydian colony, while backed by the unanimous acquiescence of all subsequent antiquity, with the single exception of Dionysius, has been almost as unanimously set at nought in our own age, chiefly on the grounds stated by the latter author-to wit, that Xanthus, the Lydian historian, was silent as to any such colony, and that the language and manners of Etruria differed from those of Lydia. The fallacy of the preference here given to the authority of Xanthus over that of Herodotus has been well pointed out by Thiersch. Xanthus was after all but a Greek writer of Sardis, and could have access to no data relative to the primitive annals of Lydia which were not equally open to Herodotus, who visited that country about the same period. If the report of the two authors differ, it follows merely that there were two versions of the Lydian tradition respecting the sons of Atys; that while Xanthus adopts the one which kept Torrhebus at home, Herodotus takes that which sent him to Italy; and that Herodotus, the writer of highest authority, as Dionysius himself admits,* is entitled to a preference. His knowledge of a variety of the legend unknown to his predecessor, and which he expressly cites on native Lydian See the very slighting manner, as compared with Herodotus, in which he speaks of Xanthus in Judicio de Thucyd, c. 5. authority, authority, may therefore reasonably be held as the result of access to sources which were not explored by Xanthus. Niebuhr's arbitrary hypothesis that Herodotus, and with him all subsequent antiquity, have confounded his supposed Pelasgo-Tyrrhenians of the coast of Asia with the genuine Lydians among whom he assumes them to have dwelt, is in some measure confuted even by the testimony of Xanthus, with whom Torrhebus—whose name, as Thiersch remarks, and even Müller admits, is but a variety of Tyrrhenus-although not the leader of a colony, is yet, as with Herodotus, a genuine Lydian hero. The misunderstanding is more probably on the part of Plutarch, the only author who seems to favour Niebuhr's view, and who himself appears to have confounded the primitive Lydo-Tyrrhenians of Herodotus with the later Pelasgian wanderers of Lemnos and Athos.* The implicit credence given by Niebuhr and others to the insulated statement of Dionysius that Rasena was the true, and, as they further assume, the only proper native title of the Etruscans, shows how small an amount of evidence will often satisfy the most sceptical inquirer, when in favour of his own theories. How cautious one ought to be in regard to such incidental notices, when unsupported by valid collateral evidence, may be illustrated, in closely parallel cases, by the example of better authorities than Dionysius, where access to such evidence has been obtained. That Rasena was an Etruscan word we do not doubt, but we require some better evidence to satisfy us that it signified ‘an Etruscan.' That it occurs several times in the Perugian inscription is perhaps rather an argument on the other side, as it is not very likely that the common title of the whole race should be so *Niebuhr's further assertion (vol. i. 2nd edit. p. 44, Berlin, 1827), that the Tyrrhenian pirates of the Homeric hymn to Bacchus were from the Lydian rather than the Tuscan coast, is disproved by the whole internal evidence of that lively narrative; the character of the Etruscans for piracy, on which Niebuhr himself elsewhere lays great stress, being in every age proverbial, while no such stigma attaches to the tribes of the Lydian coast. His appeal to the phrase Patria Mæonia est,' which Ovid (Met. iii. 583) in his account of the adventure puts into the mouth of the pilot, is scarcely worthy of his scholarship; the same, or similar expressions, being familiar among Latin poets for the Etrurian coast. Thus with Virgil (Æn. viii. 499) the troops of Mezentius are 'Mæoniæ delecta juventus;' and Statius (Sylv. iv. 4, 6) calls the banks of the Tyber 'Lydia ripa,' &c. Ovid's expression 'Tusca urbs' (v. 624) can indeed leave no reasonable doubt as to his meaning. Nor is the popular attribute of the Dolphin (into which animal the contumacious navigators were metamorphosed) of Tyrrhenian fish' (Senec. Agam. 449; Stat. Achill., i. 56) ever by our authorities brought into connexion with any other than the Italian Tyrrhenia. For example: Herodotus (ii. 143), in describing a series of statues of Egyptian priests, tells us, on the authority of his Ciceroni, that each of them was a Piromi-son of a Piromi; and that Piromi, in Egyptian, signified noble and excellent.' The genuine extant remains of the Egyptian tongue prove that Piromi was indeed an Egyptian word-but that it meant simply 'a man;' and in that sense it is evident from the context it was used by the historian's informants, their object being to show that the originals of the statues were of mortal, not of divine race. frequently frequently introduced in a mere local document. It may have denoted some privileged class or order of citizens. That Tyrrhen, on the other hand, or Tarchun-which, as Müller observes, was probably the genuine Etruscan form of the name-was also a genuine Etruscan hero, and, as such, the popular eponyme of the race, is evinced by the circumstance of his appearing everywhere in the native tradition as the fabulous founder or extender of their power and institutions.* Still less weight can attach to Dionysius' statement that in language and manners the Etruscans differed from the Lydians. The Lydian language of his day, even assuming a distinct dialect to have then been extant under that name, would be no criterion for that of the particular one of the several tribes formerly comprehended in the Lydian empire which Tyrrhenus led to Italy. As regards the ancient Lydian manners, it is on record that Cyrus took even extraordinary means to eradicate them, and the subsequent entire Hellenization of the province would in any case have tended to that effect; yet Dionysius himself, as we shall see, mentions several remarkable coincidences between the habits of the old Lydians and the Etruscans; and had he collated the ancient monuments of the two countries with any care, others would not have failed to present themselves. Niebuhr denies, in his usual dogmatical way, that the Etruscans themselves either knew or acquiesced in the Lydian tradition of their origin. The opposite conclusion is warranted not only by the silence of all their historians, native or foreign, as to any doubt or denial of it on their part; but, as the more accurate Thiersch observes, by their direct testimony to the contrary (pp. 428, 429): 'That the tradition of a colonial connexion between the Lydians and Hetrurians, through the settlement of a Lydian colony in Italy, was not only universally received (with the single exception of Dionysius' illgrounded opposition), but that it was supported by the mutual acknowledgment of the two races, is evinced by the passage of Tacitus (Ann. iv. 56), wherein the deputies from Sardis, in the time of Tiberius, are mentioned as reciting before the Roman senate a decree of the Hetrurians, characterising the two nations as kinsmen. . . . It seems evident that this decree must date from the period of Hetrurian independence, as alluding to political relations between the two states, which it was the object of such documents to cement, but which were obviously incomMüller, Introd. c. ii. § 1 seq. Mrs. Gray, p. 52 seq. Tarinate and Tarsinate in the Eugubian tables (4th, 6th, 7th) may be the Umbrian forms of Tyrrhenian and Tyrsenian; Tuske or Turske, in the same texts, would seem to represent Tuscus, or Etruscus. * He further asserts, p. 42, on the authority of Dion. Hal., that their own traditions represented them as an indigenous Italian people. We can find no such statement in that author. patible |