it Hesperia, for the same reasons which led them, as their acquaintance with the Mediterranean and with the Atlantic became more accurate, to apply this name to Spain and to the Fortunate Islands. "Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt, As their intercourse with the different parts of the country gave them a more precise idea of the extent and of the varieties of its population, they began to use the names of the tribes with which they had communication; and it is thus that we find Ausonia, Enotria, Ombrica, and other denominations properly belonging to individual tribes, applied to the whole nation. The name Italy was, at first, confined to the southern extremity of the peninsula, below the gulfs of St. Euphemia and of Squillace. From thence it gradually spread northward; and, in the time of Polybius, was already applied to the whole country, from the Sicilian sea to the Alps. It was used in this extensive sense during the social war; and the inscription Vitelliu, which we read on the money of that period, gives the common, and probably also the original Oscan form of it. Etymologists have, with their usual subtilty, offered various explanations of these names. Italy, from its resemblance in sound to a word of the Greek language, was said to allude to the herds of oxen with which the whole country was filled. Enotria signified the land of wine. Nor is it improbable, that the same usage, which has obtained among modern travellers, of designating particular countries by names indicative of their distinguishing characteristics, may have led to a more ready adoption by the Greeks of these words, which sounded to them so much like expressive terms of their own tongue. But we may safely venture to reject the genealogical origin, with which these, and various other denominations applied to particular parts of the country, were adorned by Grecian and Roman vanity. Ausonia was, properly speaking, a large portion of lower Italy, inclusive of Campania. The same tract was subsequently called Opicia. A considerable part of central Italy was known to the Greeks as Tyrrhenia, without their having any very accurate idea of its extent, or of its boundaries. But Italy became, by degrees, the common name; and, although it did not always include Cisalpine Gaul, was generally applied to the whole peninsula. 5. Proceeding now to examine more in detail the situa tion of the various districts of ancient Italy, the first people who demand our attention, are the Siculi or Siceli. The origin of this, as of all the other tribes of the country, has been variously accounted for. But the most reasonable theory makes them a branch of the Aurunci, who were immediate descendants of the great Oscan family. They were the first who ventured to come down from their native mountains into that district around the Tiber, which is still known as the Roman Campagna, or "Agro Romano." Their possessions reached as far as the base of the Apennines, in the direction of Faleria and Fescinnia. The repeated attacks of the Umbri and other Aboriginals, with whom, according to Dionysius, the Pelasgi were associated in arms, gradually drove the Siculi from their original dwellings to the southern parts of the peninsula; and, unable to make firm the hold, which they had gained at their onset, upon these new territories, they were finally constrained to abandon the mainland and take refuge in Sicily. Here they, in turn, became conquerors, chased the Sicani from the eastern coast, established their own seats in the spots which were thus left vacant, and eventually reduced the whole island under their power. This event is placed by some writers eighty years before the Trojan war; by others, two hundred after it. The certainty of it, however, is in no way affected by the difficulty of fixing its precise date. The memory of the Siculi was preserved in central Italy long after their expulsion; and in Sicily itself the Opician language continued to be spoken in the last days of the kingdom of Syracuse. The Umbri also were mountaineers of Oscan origin. The extent of their early possessions is difficult to determine with accuracy; but the concurrent testimony of the ancients proves, that they occupied large tracts on both sides of the Apennines. A valley in the centre of the lofty chain of Gargano bears, even to this day, the name of "Vale of the Umbri." Perugia was founded by one of their tribes; and Ameria, another of their cities, was built, according to the elder Cato, as early as 381 years before Rome. This was the people by whom the Siculi were driven from their possessions in central Italy; and the Sabines, though a warlike and hardy race, suffered severely from their hostile excursions. But when at length their encroachments had brought them into immediate contact with the Etruscans, they were met by a people who were every way able to cope even with their renowned bravery. The long struggle, that ensued, terminated to the disadvantage of the former, who were henceforth compelled to set bounds to their ambition, and contract their dominions within narrower limits. Thus the Umbria best known in ancient geography extends from the eastern side of the Apennines beyond the Utente, near to the Po, and has for its natural boundaries on the west and the north the course of the Tiber and of the Nera. After their subjection by the Etruscans, all feelings of national animosity seem to have subsided, and the two tribes continued thenceforth to live in a state of union, which originated in political dependence, and was strengthened by a community of religious rites and of civil institutions. 6. History hardly presents an obscurer and more embarrassing question, than that of the Pelasgi-Tyrrheni. Their navigations have been described by the ancients, with the minuteness of history, but with all the coloring of fable. Nor do historians agree in the accounts which they have given of the origin and migrations of this people; some representing them in one light, others in another. The moderns also, with all their learning and research, have gone little further than to form what must at the best be considered as untenable, though ingenious hypotheses. Enough, however, may be gathered with certainty from what has hitherto been written upon this subject, to show that a people bearing the name of Pelasgi made their appearance in Europe at an early period of ancient history; that they bore some part in the revolutions of the peninsula ; that they acquired here the additional appellation of Tyrrheni ; and that their wanderings to and fro, in Asia and in Europe, have a close connexion with many of the events of that obscure age of tradition and of fable. Thus much may be relied on; and the absolute failure of every attempt at minuter detail should convince us of the folly of wasting in idle conjectures the time, which may, with so much more advantage, be given to the study of points, that admit of clear and satisfactory illustration. 7. Such a one may be found in the history of the Etruscans. The works of Claudius,* of Dionysius, of Aristotle, and, in short, of all the writers by whom the events of Etruscan history, and the peculiarities of their manners and customs, had been minutely described, are lost; but the numerous monuments which are brought to light from day to day, and those fragments of the ancients which have survived the general wreck of their works, afford an accurate, if not always a complete, guide to the critical historian. that The express testimony of Dionysius should satisfy us, the Etruscans were of the primitive Italian stock. The incongruous systems, by which a Lydian and a Pelasgic origin have in turns been attributed to them, should alone be sufficient to convince us of the futility of these disputes, even were there any thing in the language, the manners, or the usages of the Etruscans to give color to such a theory. They were originally called Raseni by the natives; Tyrrheni, or Tyrseni, by the Greeks; Tusci, or Etrusci, by the Romans. During the first centuries of Rome, and after the subjection of the Umbri, the state of central Etruria was bounded by the following natural lines. (1.) The summit of the winding chain of the Apennines, from the sources of the Serchio to those of the Tiber. (2.) The Tiber, from its rise to the sea. (3.) The coast, from the mouth of the Tiber to that of the Arno. The early attention which this people paid to agriculture and to commerce, together with their courage and their skill in the use of arms, put their power upon a strong and durable foundation. In their wars with the Umbri, which are placed about five hundred years before the building of Rome, they were probably assisted by the Pelasgi. Previous to this epoch also, they had extended their possessions beyond the Apennines, into what is now called the Bolognese and Ferrarese. They spread thence over the adjacent plains between the Apennines and the Alps. The state of the soil, still The Emperor Claudius, we are sorry to say, was as good a scholar as he was foolish and impotent for an emperor. Besides various other works, he wrote a history of the Etruscans, in Greek. covered with water, either stagnant or flowing with too rapid and uncertain a current to admit of its being rendered subservient to the ordinary purposes of commercial communication, opposed an insuperable barrier to their progress on the side of the Veneti; and they seem not to have passed the Trebbia in the opposite direction. But all the remaining tracts betwixt the Po and the Alps were occupied by strong and active colonies, which copied closely the laws and the institutions of the mother country. Of the twelve great cities which stood at the head of this new alliance, we know the names of but four; Adria, which lent its name to the Adriatic sea, and which, although originally built on a gulf, near the lower branch of the Adige, is now somewhat more than fifteen miles from the coast; Mantua; Felsina, now called Bologna; and Melpo. Like the citizens of the parent state, they early directed their attention to agriculture and those arts which are most conducive to civilization. The country, constantly exposed to inundations and cut up by marshes and lagoons, could only be won to use by the slow process of draining; nor could this have been accomplished without a considerable progress in hydraulics and in the sciences on which it depends. They cultivated also those arts for which central Etruria was so renowned; and inscriptions, bronzes, and painted vases have been found, in great abundance, in almost every part of their territories. But in the second century of Rome, the great Gallic invasion, which so long separated these regions from the rest of Italy, overthrew this flourishing colony, and put an effectual stop to the progress of civilization in the north of the peninsula. Those of the inhabitants, who escaped from the sword of the barbarians, were driven for shelter to the mountains and the strong fastnesses of Rezia. Proofs of their residence there have been discovered in monuments brought to light in our own times. By a series of wars and of conquests, which it would be not only useless but impossible to describe in detail, the confederation of central Etruria extended its power likewise in the south of Italy. The war with the Latins terminated in a firm friendship, and in the adoption by the latter of many Etruscan rites and ceremonies. The Volsci were subdued, and the conquerors gradually advanced as far as the Garigliano, The inviting aspect of the fertile tract, which lies be |