No More Learning

In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman conquest. That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the two arms of the Apennines which they subsequently held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical position,
just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons and
l In the alphabet the respecially deserves notice, I of the
being Latin
(R) and not of the Etruscan form (D). and also the z ( ) only be ; it can
derived from the primitive Latin, and must very faithfully represent it. The language likewise has close aflinity with the oldest Latin; Marci
occupation
Acarnlini he cupa, that is, l. l/lan‘iur Acarceliniur lzeic cubat‘:
A. Cotena La. f. . . xenaluo sentzm . . dedet cuando. . auncaplum, that is, Minervae A(ulus Cotena La(rtir)f(ilius) dc senalus senlentia dzdil guando (perhaps:olim) mnceptum. At the same time with these and similar inscriptions there have been found some others in
lncter and language, undoubtedly Etruscan.
Marten/a
difi'erent char
a
i’)
CHAP- VIII BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES
245
that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar fate that has befallen them. Tradition also has to report that the Tuscans wrested from the Umbrians three hundred towns; and, what is of more importance as evidence, in the national prayers of the Umbrian Iguvini, which we still possess, along with other stocks the Tuscans especially are cursed as public foes.
In consequence, as may be presumed, of this pressure exerted upon them from the north, the Umbrians advanced towards the south, keeping in general upon the heights, because they found the plains already occupied by Latin stocks, but beyond doubt frequently making inroads and encroachments on the territory of the kindred race, and intermingling with them the more readily, that the distinction in language and habits could not have been at all so marked then as we find it afterwards. To the class of such inroads belongs the tradition of the irruption of the Reatini and Sabines into Latium and their conflicts with the Romans; similar phenomena were probably repeated all along the west coast. Upon the whole the Sabines maintained their footing in the mountains, as in the district bordering on Latium which has since been called by their name, and so
too in the Volscian land, presumably because the Latin population did not extend thither or was there less dense ; while on the other hand the well-peopled plains were better able to offer resistance to the invaders, although they were not in all cases able or desirous to prevent isolated bands from gaining a footing, such as the Tities and afterwards the Claudii in Rome 55). In this way the stocks here became variously mingled, state of things which serves to explain the numerous relations that subsisted between the Volscians and Latins, and how happened that their district, as well as Sabina, afterwards became so early and speedily Latinized.
The chief branch, however, of the Umbrian stock threw Samnite‘. VOL. r0
1
it
(p. a
146
THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS B00! 1
itself eastward from Sabina into the mountains of the Abruzzi, and the adjacent hill-country to the south of them. Here, as on the west coast, they occupied the mountainous districts, whose thinly scattered population gave way before the immigrants or submitted to their yoke; while in the plain along the Apulian coast the ancient native population, the Iapygians, upon the whole maintained their ground, although involved in constant feuds, especially on the northern frontier about Luceria and Arpi. When these migrations took place, cannot of course be determined; but it was presumably about the time when kings ruled in Rome. Tradition reports that the Sabines, pressed by the Umbrians, vowed a ver sacrum, that swore that they would give up and send beyond their bounds the sons and daughters born in the year of war, so soon as these should reach maturity, that the gods might at their pleasure destroy them or bestow upon them new abodes in other lands. One hand was led by the ox of Mars; these were the Safmi or Samnites, who in the first instance established themselves on the mountains adjoining the river Sagrus, and at later period proceeded to occupy the beautiful plain on the east of the Matese chain, near the sources of the Tifemus. Both in their old and in their new territory they named their place of public assembly-which in the one case was situated near Agnone, in the other near Bojano—from the ox which led them Bovianum. second band was led by the woodpecker of Mars; these were the Picentes, “the woodpecker-people,” who took possession of what now the March of Ancona. A third band was led by the wolf
into the region of Beneventum these were the Hirpini. In similar manner the other small tribes branched off from the common stock—the Praetuttii near Teramo the Vestini on the Gran Sasso the Marrucini near Chieti the Frentani on the frontier of Apulia the Paeligni on the
Majella mountains; and lastly the Marsi on the Fucine
(kirpus)
;
A ;
;
;;
a
is
a
is,
ci-mr. vm BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES
r47
lake, coming in contact with the Volscians and Latins. All of these tribes retained, as these legends clearly show, a vivid sense of their relationship and of their having come forth from the Sabine land. While the Umbrians suc cumbed in the unequal struggle and the western offshoots of the same stock became amalgamated with the Latin or Hellenic population, the Sabellian tribes prospered in the seclusion of their distant mountain land, equally remote from collision with the Etruscans, the Latins, and the Greeks. There was little or no development of an urban life amongst them; their geographical position almost
wholly precluded them from engaging in commercial inter course, and the mountain-tops and strongholds sulficed for the necessities of defence, while the husbandmen continued to dwell in open hamlets or wherever each found the well spring and the forest or pasture that he desired. In such circumstances their constitution remained stationary; like the similarly situated Arcadians in Greece, their communities never became incorporated into a single state ; at the utmost they only formed confederacies more or less loosely con
nected. In the Abruzzi especially, the strict seclusion of the mountain valleys seems to have debarred the several cantons from intercourse either with each other or with the outer world. They maintained but little connection with each other and continued to live in complete isolation from the rest of Italy; and in consequence, notwithstanding the bravery of their inhabitants, they exercised less influence
than any other portion of the Italian nation on the develop ment of the history of the peninsula.
On the other hand the Samnite people decidedly ex-
hibited the highest political development among the eastern 5:3: Italian stock, as the Latin nation did among the western. Mi From an early period, perhaps from its first immigration, a comparatively strong political bond held together the Samnite nation, and gave to it the strength which subse~
Their
148
THE UMBRO-SABELLIAN STOCKS BOOK I
quently enabled it to contend with Rome on equal terms for the first place in Italy. We are as ignorant of the time and manner of the formation of the bond, as we are of its federal constitution ; but it is clear that in Samnium no single community was preponderant, and still less was there any town to serve as a central rallying point and bond of union for the Samnite stock, such as Rome was for the Latins. The strength of the land lay in its communes of husbandmen, and authority was vested in the assembly formed of their representatives; it was this assembly which in case of need nominated a federal commander-in-chief. In consequence of its constitution the policy of this confederacy was not aggressive like the Roman, but was limited to the defence of its own bounds; only where the state forms a unity is power so concentrated and passion so strong, that the ex tension of territory can be systematically pursued. Accord_ ingly the whole history of the two nations is prefigured in their diametrically opposite systems of colonization. What ever the Romans gained, was a gain to the state: the conquests of the Samnites were achieved by bands of volunteers who went forth in search of plunder and, whether they prospered or were unfortunate, were left to their own resources by their native home. The conquests, however, which the Samnites made on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian and Ionic seas, belong to a later age; during the regal period in Rome they seem to have been only gaining possession of the settlements in which we afterwards find them. As a single incident in the series of movements among the neighbouring peoples caused by this Samnite settlement may be mentioned the surprise of Cumae by Tyrrhenians from the Upper Sea, Umbrians, and Daunians
‘24. in the year 2 30. If we may give credit to the accounts of the matter which present certainly a considerable colouring of romance, it would appear that in this instance, as was often the case in such expeditions, the
can. vrn BEGINNINGS OF THE SAMNITES
I49
intruders and those whom they supplanted combined to form one army, the Etruscans joining with their Umbrian enemies, and these again joined by the Iapygians whom the Umbrian settlers had driven towards the south. Neverthe less the undertaking proved a failure: on this occasion at least the Hellenic superiority in the art of war, and the bravery of the tyrant Aristodemus, succeeded in repelling the barbarian assault on the beautiful seaport.
Etruscan nationality.
THE Etruscan people, or Ras,1 as they called themselves, present a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well as to the Greeks. They were distinguished from these nations by their very bodily structure: instead of the slender and symmetrical proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms. Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian stocks. The religion of the Tuscans in particular, presenting a gloomy fantastic character and delighting in the mystical handling of numbers and in wild and horrible speculations and practices, is equally remote from the clear rationalism of the Romans and the genial image-worship of the Hellenes. The conclusion which
these facts suggest is confirmed by the most important and authoritative evidence of nationality, the evidence of language. The remains of the Etruscan tongue which have reached us, numerous as they are and presenting as they do various data to aid in deciphering occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no one hitherto succeeded in interpreting these remains, but no one has been able even to determine precisely the place of
Rar-ermae, with the gentile termination mentioned at p. 152.
150
THE ETRUSCANS BOOK 1
CHAPTER IX
THE rmwscrms
1
it,
cm. I: THE ETRUSCANS
r5r
Etruscan in the classification of languages. Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly dis tinguished. In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception avoided. 1 By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations, and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this sod: and melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became intolerably harsh and rugged! ‘ They changed
for example ramuSaf into ramsa, Tarquinius into Tarclmqf, Minerva into Illenrva, Menelaos, Polydeukes, Alexandros, into Mimie, Pultuke, Elc/zsentre. The indistinct and rugged nature of their pronunciation is shown most clearly by the fact that at a very early period the Etruscans made no distinction of a from u, b from p, c from g, d from t. At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial syllable. The aspirate consonants were treated in a similar fashion; while the Italians rejected them with the exception of the aspirated b or the j; and the Greeks, reversing the case, rejected this sound and retained the others 3, ¢, x, the Etruscans allowed the softest and most pleasing of them, the to drop entirely except in words borrowed from other languages, but made use of the other three to an extraordinary extent, even where they had no proper place Thetis for example became Tlzetilis, Telephus Tlzelap/u, Odysseus Uluze or Ut/ruze. Of the few termina tions and words, whose meaning has been ascertained, the greater part are far remote from all Graeco-Italian analogies
such as, all the numerals; the termination a! employed as
To this period belong ag. inscriptions on the clay vases of Caere, such as, minicmmamimaSumaramliriafirfurmaiefizerairieepanamine Sunartavkelefu, or mi ramuhafkaiufinaia.
We may form some idea of the sound which the language now had from the commencement of the great inscription of Perusia; eulat Iamm [arm] amwaxr lautn rlelfirime . rtlaafuna: sleleBcaru.
’1
a;
;
4>,
152
THE ETRUSCANS nooK 1
of descent, frequently of descent from the mother, ag. Cam'al, which on a bilingual inscription of Chiusi is translated by Cairmia natus; and the termination . ra in the names of women, used to indicate the clan into which they have married, eg. Lemesa denoting the spouse of a Lia'm'us. So cela or clan with the inflection clam-i means son; sex daughter; ril year; the god Hermes becomes Turms, Aphrodite Turan, Hephaestos Set/11am, Bakchos Fufluns. Alongside of these strange forms and sounds there certainly occur isolated analogies between the Etruscan and the Italian languages. Proper names are formed, substantially, after the general Italian system. The frequent gentile termination was or em:1 recurs in the termination mus which is likewise of frequent occurrence in Italian, especially in Sabellian clan-names; thus the Etruscan names Mauenas and Spurinna correspond closely to the Roman Maea'us and Spurius. A number of names of divinities, which occur as Etruscan on Etruscan monu ments or in authors, have in their roots, and to some extent even in their terminations, a form so thoroughly Latin, that, if these names were really originally Etruscan, the two
designation
must have been closely related; such as Usi: (sun and dawn, connected with ausum, aurum, aurora, sol), M'nema (menervare), Lara (lam'vus), Mptunus, Voltumna. As these analogies, however, may have had their origin
in the subsequent political and religious relations between the Etruscans and Latins, and in the accommoda tions and borrowings to which these relations gave rise, they do not invalidate the conclusion to which we are led by the other observed phenomena, that the Tuscan language differed at least as widely from all the Graeco-Italian
1 Such as Maecenas, Porsena, Vivenna, Caecina, Spurinna. The vowel in the penult is originally long, but in consequence of the throwing hack of the accent upon the initial syllable is frequently shortened and even rejected. Thus we find Porsena as well u Porsena. and Ceicne as
well as Caecina.
languages
only
can. 1x THE ETRUSCANS
r53
dialects as did the language of the Celts or of the Slavonians. So at least it sounded to the Roman ear; “Tuscan and Gallic ” were the languages of barbarians, “ Oscan and Volscian ” were but rustic dialects.
But, while the Etruscans differed thus widely from the Graeco-Italian family of languages, no one has yet succeeded in connecting them with any other known race. All sorts of dialects have been examined with a view to discover afi'inity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interroga tion, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain. The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally suggest it for comparison; but even in the Basque language no analogies of a decisive character have been brought forward. As little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have reached our time, consisting of local and personal names, indicate any con nection with the Tuscans. Even the extinct nation which has constructed those enigmatical sepulchral towers, called Nuraglu, by thousands in the islands of the Tuscan Sea, especially in Sardinia, cannot well be connected with the Etruscans, for not a single structure of the same character is to be met with in Etruscan territory. The utmost we can say is that several traces, that seem tolerably trust worthy, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on the whole numbered with the Indo-Germans. Thus mi in the beginning of many of the older inscriptions is certainly élu’, rim’, and the genitive form of consonantal stems veneruf, ra zwuf is exactly reproduced in old Latin, corresponding to the old Sanscrit termination as. In like manner the name of the Etruscan Zeus, Tina or Tim'a, is probably connected with the Sanscrit dina, meaning day, as Zév is connected with the synonymous a’iwan. But, even granting this, the Etruscan people appears withal scarcely less isolated. “The Etruscans,” Dionysius said long ago, “are like no other nation in language
Home
of the Etruscans.
and manners ;” and we have nothing to add to his statement.
It is equally diflicult to determine from what quarter the Etruscans migrated into Italy; nor is much lost through our inability to answer the question, for this migration belonged at any rate to the infancy of the people, and
their historical development began and ended in Italy. No question, however, has been handled with greater zeal than this, in accordance with the principle which induces anti quaries especially to inquire into what is neither capable of being known nor worth the knowing—to inquire “who was Hecuba’s mother,” as the emperor Tiberius professed to do. As the oldest and most important Etruscan towns lay far inland—in fact we find not a single Etruscan town of any note immediately on the coast except Populonia, which we know for certain was not one of the old twelve cities— and the movement of the Etruscans in historical times was
from north to south, it seems probable that they migrated into the peninsula by land. Indeed the low stage of civilization, in which we find them at first, would ill accord with the hypothesis of immigration by sea. Nations even in the earliest times crossed a strait as they would a stream ; but to land on the west coast of Italy was a very different matter. We must therefore seek for the earlier home of the Etruscans to the west or north of Italy. It is not wholly improbable that the Etruscans may have come into Italy over the Raetian Alps; for the oldest traceable settlers in the Grisons and Tyrol, the Raeti, spoke Etruscan down to historical times, and their name sounds similar to that of the Ras. These may no doubt have been a remnant of the Etruscan settlements on the Po; but it is at least quite as likely that they may have been a portion of the people which remained behind in its earlier abode.
In glaring contradiction to this simple and natural view stands the story that the Etruscans were Lydians who had
I54
THE ETRUSCANS BOOK 1
crutr. rx THE ETRUSCAN S
! 55
emigrated from Asia. It is very ancient: it occurs even Story
of their
Lydian
in Herodotus ; and it reappears in later writers with innu merable changes and additions, although several intelligent origin. inquirers, such as Dionysius, emphatically declared their disbelief in and pointed to the fact that there was not
the slightest apparent similarity between the Lydians and Etruscans in religion, laws, manners, or language.
possible that an isolated band of pirates from Asia Minor
may have reached Etruria, and that their adventure may
have given rise to such tales; but more probably the whole
story rests on mere verbal mistake. The Italian Etruscans
or the Turs-ennae (for this appears to be the original form
and the basis of the Greek Tvpzr-vyvot’, Tvfifnyvoi', of the Umbrian Turs-ci, and of the two Roman forms Turn’, Etrum') nearly coincide in name with the Lydian people of
the Tofifvqfior' or perhaps also Tvfifr-qvot', so named from the
town Tfififia. This manifestly accidental resemblance in
name seems to be in reality the only foundation for that hypothesis-not rendered more trustworthy its great antiquity-and for all the pile of crude historical speculations
that has been reared upon By connecting the ancient maritime commerce of the Etruscans with the piracy of the Lydians, and then confounding (Thucydides the first
who has demonstrably done so) the Torrhebian pirates, whether rightly or wrongly, with the bucaneering Pelasgians
who roamed and plundered on every sea, there has been produced one of the most mischievous complications of historical tradition. The term Tyrrhenians denotes some
times the Lydian Torrhebi—as the case in the earliest sources, such as the Homeric hymns sometimes under the
form Tyrrheno-Pelasgians or simply that of Tyrrhenians,
the Pelasgian nation; sometimes, in fine, the Italian Etruscans, although the latter never came into
contact with the Pelasgians or Torrhebians, or were at all connected with them by common descent.
lasting
is ;
by
it.
is
by
a
it,
It is
Settle merits
of the Etrustnns In Italy.
It on the other hand, matter of historical interest to determine what were the oldest traceable abodes of the Etruscans, and what were their further movements when they issued thence. Various circumstances attest that before the great Celtic invasion they dwelt in the district to the north of the Po, being conterminous on the east along the Adige with the Veneti of Illyrian (Albanian? ) descent, on the west with the Ligurians. This proved in particular by the already-mentioned rugged Etruscan dialect, which was still spoken in the time of Livy by the inhabitants of the Raetian Alps, and by the fact that Mantua remained Tuscan down to late period. To the south of the Po and at the mouths of that river Etruscans and Umbrians were mingled, the former as the dominant, the latter as the older race, which had founded the old commercial towns of Atria and Spina, while the Tuscans appear to have been the founders of Felsina (Bologna) and Ravenna. A long time elapsed ere the Celts crossed the Po hence the Etruscans and Umbrians left deeper traces of their existence on the right bank of the river than they had done on the left, which they had to abandon at an early period. All
the regions, however, to the north of the Apennines passed too rapidly out of the hands of one nation into those of another to permit the formation of any continuous national development there.
Far more important in an historical point of view was the great settlement of the Tuscans in the land which still bears their name. Although Ligurians or Umbrians were probably at one time (p. 143) settled there, the traces of them have been almost wholly effaced by the Etruscan occupation and civilization. In this region, which extends along the coast from Pisae to Tarquinii and shut in on the east by the Apennines, the Etruscan nationality found its permanent abode and maintained itself with great tenacity down to the time of the empire. The northern
156
THE ETRUSCAN S BOOK 1
Etruria.
is
;
a
is
is,
a
can. 1x THE ETRUSCAN S
I57
boundary of the proper Tuscan territory was formed by the Arnus ; the region north from the Arnus as far as the mouth of the Macra and the Apennines was a debateable border land in the possession sometimes of Ligurians, some times of Etruscans, and for this reason larger settlements were not successful there. The southern boundary was
probably formed at first by the Ciminian Forest, a chain of hills south of Viterbo, and at a later period by the Tiber. We have already 144) noticed the fact that the territory between the Ciminian range and the Tiber with the towns of Sutrium, Nepete, Falerii, Veii, and Caere appears not to have been taken possession of the Etruscans till considerably later than the more northern districts, possibly not earlier than in the second century of Rome, and that the original Italian population must have maintained its ground in this region, especially in Falerii, although in relation of dependence.
From the time at which the river Tiber became the line Relations
of demarcation between Etruria on the one side and Umbria of the Etruscans
and Latium on the other, peaceful relations probably upon to latium. the whole prevailed in that quarter, and no essential change
seems to have taken place in the boundary line, at least so
far as concerned the Latin frontier. Vividly as the Romans
were impressed by the feeling that the Etruscan was foreigner, while the Latin was their countryman, they yet seem to have stood in much less fear of attack or of danger from the right bank of the river than, for example, from their kinsmen in Gabii and Alba; and this was natural, for they were protected in that direction not merely by the broad stream which formed natural boundary, but also by the circumstance, so momentous in its bearing on the mercantile
and political development of Rome, that none of the more powerful Etruscan towns lay immediately on the river, as did Rome on the Latin bank. The Veientes were the nearest to the Tiber, and was with them that Rome and
period
it
a
aa
by
a
(p.
524s
Latium came most frequently into serious conflict, especially for the possession of Fidenae, which served the Veientes as a sort of téle de font on the left bank just as the Janiculum served the Romans on the right, and which was sometimes in the hands of the Latins, sometimes in those of the Etruscans. The relations of Rome with the somewhat more distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early times. There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times of distant anti quity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere ; Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to an especially close connection between the two ancient centres of commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria. Sure traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. It is true that Etruscans are named in the first ranks of the great barbarian host, which Aristodemus annihilated in 230 under the walls of Cumae 148) but, even we regard this account as deserving credit in all its details, only shows that the Etruscans had taken part in great plundering expedition. It far more important to observe that south of the Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication whatever discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the Latin nation. The possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber remained, far as we can see, undis puted in the hands of the Romans. As to the migrations of bodies of Etruscans to Rome, we find an isolated state ment drawn from Tuscan annals, that Tuscan band, led
Caelius Vivenna of Volsinii and after his death by his
158
THE ETRUSCANS loo: 1
by
so a
is
(p.
is
a
it
if
;
can. 1! THE ETRUSCAN S
159
faithful companion Mastarna, was conducted by the latter to Rome. This may be trustworthy, although the derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is certainly nothing but an improbable conjecture of the archaeologists who busied themselves with legendary parallels. The name of the “Tuscan quarter” at the foot of the Palatine 64) points further to Etruscan settlements in Rome.
It can hardly, moreover, be doubted that the last regal The family which ruled over Rome, that of the Tarquins, was of Tarquin‘ Etruscan origin, whether belonged to Tarquinii, as the
legend asserts, or to Caere, where the family tomb of the Tarchnas has recently been discovered. The female name Tanaquil or Tanchvil interwoven with the legend, while
not Latin, common Etruria. But the traditional story --according to which Tarquin was the son of Greek who
had migrated from Corinth to Tarquinii, and came to settle
in Rome as metoz1€0s—-is neither history nor legend, and
the historical chain of events manifestly in this instance
not confused merely, but completely torn asunder. If anything more can be deduced from this tradition beyond
the bare and at bottom indifferent fact that at last family
of Tuscan descent swayed the regal sceptre in Rome,
can only be held as implying that this dominion of man
of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either as
dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community
over Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria. There in fact, no sufficient ground
either for the one hypothesis or for the other. The history
of the Tarquins had its arena in Latium, not in Etruria;
and Etruria, so far as we can see, during the whole regal
period exercised no influence of any essential moment on
either the language or customs of Rome, and did not at all
is,
in is
it (p.
a
ait is
a
a
is
a
it
The Etruscan constitu tion.
160 THE ETRUSCANS BOOK 1
interrupt the regular development of the Roman state or of the Latin league.
The cause of this comparatively passive attitude of Etruria towards the neighbouring land of Latium is probably to be sought partly in the struggles of the Etruscans with the Celts on the Po, which presumably the Celts did not cross until after the expulsion of the kings from Rome, and partly in the tendency of the Etruscan people towards seafaring and the acquisition of supremacy on the sea and seaboard -a tendency decidedly exhibited in their settlements in Campania, and of which we shall speak more fully in the next chapter.
The Tuscan constitution, like the Greek and Latin, was based on the gradual transition of the community to an urban life. The early direction of the national energies towards navigation, trade, and manufactures appears to have called into existence urban commonwealths, in the strict sense of the term, earlier in Etruria than elsewhere in Italy. Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is mentioned in Greek records. On the other hand we find that the Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the
for war than the Romans and Sabellians: the un-Italian custom of employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among the Etruscans at a very early period. The oldest constitution of the communities must in its general outlines have resembled that of Rome. Kings or Lucumones ruled, possessing similar insignia and probably therefore a
similar plenitude of power with the Roman kings. A strict line of demarcation separated the nobles from the common people. The resemblance in the clan-organization is attested by the analogy of the system of names; only, among the Etruscans, descent on the mother’s side received much more consideration than in Roman law. The con
stitution of their league appears to have been very lax. It did not embrace the whole nation; the northern and the
disposition
can. I: THE ETRUSCAN S 16:
Campanian Etruscans were associated in confederacies of their own, just in the same way as the communities of Etruria proper. Each of these leagues consisted of twelve communities, which recognized a metropolis, especially for purposes of worship, and a federal head or rather a high priest, but appear to have been substantially equal in respect of rights; while some of them at least were so powerful that neither could a hegemony establish itself, nor could the central authority attain consolidation. In Etruria proper Volsinii was the metropolis ; of the rest of its twelve towns we know by trustworthy tradition only Perusia, Vetulonium, Volci, and Tarquinii. It was, however, quite as unusual for the Etruscans really to act in concert, as it was for the Latin confederacy to do otherwise. Wars were ordinarily carried on by a single community, which endea voured to interest in its cause such of its neighbours as it could; and when an exceptional case occurred in which war was resolved on by the league, individual towns very frequently kept aloof from The Etruscan confederations appear to have been from the first—still more than the other Italian leagues formed on similar basis of national
affinity-deficient
in firm and paramount central authority.
VOL.
I
1I
a
it. a
Relations of Italy with other lands.
CHAPTER X
THE HELLENES IN ITALY-MARITIME SUPREMACY OF THE TUSCANS AND CARTHAGINIANS
IN the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east. While the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed civilization. It falls
to the lot of most nations in the early stages of their deve lopment to be taught and trained by some rival sister nation; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the lot of the peoples of Italy. The circumstances of its geographical position, however, prevented this influence from being ‘brought to bear upon the peninsula by land.
No trace is to be found of any resort in early times to the diflicult route by land between Italy and Greece. There were in all probability from time immemorial tracks for purposes of traflic, leading from Italy to the lands beyond the Alps; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po— on which account the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the home of amber-and this route was joined by another leading across the peninsula over the Apennines to Pisae ; but from these regions no elements of civilization could come to the Italians. It was the seafaring nations
I6: THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK
crrar. 1 THE HELLENES IN ITALY
163
of the east that brought to Italy whatever foreign culture reached it in early times.
The oldest civilized nation on the shores of the Mediter- lfhoeni
ranean, the Egyptians, were not a seafaring people, and therefore exercised no influence on Italy. But the same may be with almost equal truth aflirmed of the Phoenicians. It is true that, issuing from their narrow home on the extreme eastern verge of the Mediterranean, they were the first of all known races to venture forth in floating houses on the bosom of the deep, at first for the purpose of fishing and dredging, but soon also for the prosecution of trade. They were the first to open up maritime commerce; and at an incredibly early period they traversed the Mediter ranean even to its furthest extremity in the west. Maritime stations of the Phoenicians appear on almost all its coasts earlier than those of the Hellenes: in Hellas itself, in Crete and Cyprus, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and likewise on the western Italian main. Thucydides tells us that all around Sicily, before the Greeks came thither or at least before they had established themselves there in any con siderable numbers, the Phoenicians had set up their factories on the headlands and islets, not with a view to gain terri tory, but for the sake of trading with the natives. But it was otherwise in the case of continental Italy. No sure proof has hitherto been given of the existence of any Phoenician settlement there excepting one, a Punic factory at Caere, the memory of which has been preserved partly by the appellation Pum'cum given to a little village on the Caerite coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself, Agylla, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of
Pelasgic origin, but is a Phoenician word signifying the “ round town ”-precisely the appearance which Caere pre sents when seen from the sea. That this station and any similar establishments which may have elsewhere existed on the coasts of Italy were neither of much importance nor of
m
Greeks in Italy.
long standing, is evident from their having disappeared almost without leaving a trace.
We have not the smallest reason to think them older than the Hellenic settlements of a similar kind on the same coasts. An evidence of no slight weight that Latium at least first became acquainted with the men of Canaan through the medium of the Hellenes is furnished by the Latin appellation “Poeni,” which is borrowed from the Greek. All the oldest relations, indeed,
of the Italians to the civilization of the east point decidedly towards Greece; and the rise of the Phoenician factory at Caere may be very well explained, without resorting to the pre-Hellenic period, by the subsequent well-known relations between the commercial state of Caere and Carthage. In fact, when we recall the circumstance that the earliest navi gation was and continued to be essentially of a coasting character, it is plain that scarcely any country on the Mediterranean lay so remote from the Phoenicians as the Italian mainland. They could only reach it either fi'om
the west coast of Greece or from Sicily; and it may well be believed that the Seamanship of the Hellenes became developed early enough to anticipate the Phoenicians in braving the dangers of the Adriatic and of the Tyrrhene seas. There is no ground therefore for the assumption that any direct influence was originally exercised by the Phoenicians over the Italians. To the subsequent relations between the Phoenicians holding the supremacy of the western Mediterranean and the Italians inhabiting the shores of the Tyrrhene sea our narrative will return in the sequel.
To all appearance, therefore, the Hellenic mariners were the first among the inhabitants of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to navigate the coasts of Italy. Of the
important questions however as to the region from which, and as to the period at which, the Greek seafarers came thither, only the former admits of being answered with
I54
THE HELLENES IN ITALY 800! I
CHAP. x THE HELLENES IN ITALY
165
some degree of precision and fulness. The Aeolian and Home of . . . . . theGreek
Ionian coast of Asia Minor was the region where Hellenic immi_ maritime traflic first became developed on a large scale, grant! and whence issued the Greeks who explored the interior of
the Black Sea on the one hand and the coasts of Italy on
the other. The name of the Ionian Sea, which was retained by the waters intervening between Epirus and Sicily, and that of the Ionian gulf, the term by which the Greeks in earlier times designated the Adriatic Sea, are memorials of the fact that the southern and eastern coasts of Italy were once discovered by seafarers from Ionia. The oldest Greek settlement in Italy, Kyme, was, as its name and legend tell, founded by the town of the same name on the Anatolian coast. According to trustworthy Hellenic tradi tion, the Phocaeans of Asia Minor were the first of the
Hellenes to traverse the more remote western sea. Other Greeks soon followed in the paths which those of Asia Minor had opened up; Ionians from Naxos and from Chalcis in Euboea, Achaeans, Locrians, Rhodians, Cor inthians, Megarians, Messenians, Spartans. After the dis covery of America the civilized nations of Europe vied with one another in sending out expeditions and forming settlements there ; and the new settlers when located amidst barbarians recognized their common character and common interests as civilized Europeans more strongly than they had done in their former home. So it was with the new discovery of the Greeks. The privilege of navigating the western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive property of a single Greek province or of a single Greek stock, but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation; and, just as in the formation of the new North American world, English and French, Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Greek Sicily and “ Great Greece” became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of Hellenic races often so amalgamated as to
166 THE HELLEN ES IN ITALY ‘BOOK 1
be no longer distinguishable. Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated position-such as that of the Locrians with its offsets Hipponium and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocaeans which was not founded till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea)—we may distinguish in a general view three leading groups. The original Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns, included in Italy Cumae with the other Greek settlements at Vesuvius and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Catana, Leontini, and Himera. The Achaean group embraced Sybaris and the greater part of the cities of
Magna Graecia. The Dorian group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea. On the whole the preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more ancient Hellenic influx, that of the Ionians and the stocks settled in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration. Among the Dorians only the communities with a mixed population, such as Corinth and Megara, took a special part, whereas the purely Doric provinces had but a subordinate share in the movement. This result was naturally to be expected, for the Ionians were from ancient times a trading and sea faring people, while it was only at a comparatively late period that the Dorian stocks descended from their inland mountains to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce. The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable, especially by their monetary standards. The Phocaean settlers coined according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia. The Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European Greece, and more especially the modification of it which is found occurring in Euboea. The Achaean
CHAP- x THE HELLENES IN ITALY 167
communities coined by the Corinthian standard ; and lastly
the Doric colonies followed that which Solon introduced
in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception of 694. Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces
adopted rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the Dorians in Sicily.
The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will Time ofthe probably always remain enveloped in darkness. We may 25:53:‘, still, however, distinctly recognize a certain order of sequence. In the oldest Greek document, which belongs,
like the earliest intercourse with the west, to the Ionians of
Asia Minor-the Homeric poems-the horizon
extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Sailors driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire: but in the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy information
Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west; and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in the air. In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy is still regarded as a
group of islands. On the other hand, in all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the Hellenes. The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision. Thucydides evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the west; and certainly he was not mistaken. It is true that many a landing-place lay
scarcely
respecting
l68 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK I
nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated ; and that such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement, is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected for it on the mainland—the steep but well-protected cliff, which still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian mother-city. Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west, full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world. On the supposition, moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae, the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries afterwards to designate the Italians collectively. There is a further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this
Ionians from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead. Naxos in Sicily is said to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict colonization in Italy or Sicily ; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations followed, but not until a later period.
It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of this series of events with even approximate accuracy. The founding of the Achaean city of Sybaris
721. 708. in 33, and that of the Dorian city Tarentum in 46, are
immigration
the most ancient dates in Italian history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness, of
probably
can’. it THE HELLENES IN ITALY
169
which may be looked upon as established. But how far beyond that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the poems of Hesiod or even of Homer.
If Herodotus is correct in the period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome. The date thus 850. assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference;
and any one who carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with the Greek people before the name
“ Hellenes” had emerged for the race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes from the stock of the G111! ’ or Graeci that early fell into abeyance in Hellas,1 will be inclined to carry back the earliest intercourse of the
1 Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may be left an open question ; it must at a remote period have belonged to a prominent stock
or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and have passed over from these
to the nation as a whole. In the Eoai of Hesiod it appears as the older collective name for the nation, although it is manifest that it is intentionally
thrust aside and subordinated to that of Hellenes. The latter does not
occur in Homer, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is found in Archilochus
about the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably 700. earlier (Duncker, Gen/r. a’. Alt. iii. 18, 556). Already before this period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the Greeks
that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas, was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation, even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation. It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic stocks belonged to one race than the latter them selves, and that hence the collective designation should have become more definitely fixed among the former than with the latter-not the less. that it was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the nearest to them. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with this fact the state ment that a century before the foundation of Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor. We shall speak of the alphabet below ; its history yields entirely similar results. It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer on the strength of such considerations ; but is there no rashness in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of this kind 7
170
THE HELLENES IN ITALY 800K I
Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably more remote.
The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of the history of Italy; the Hellenic colonists of the migration. west always retained the closest connection with their original home and participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes. But it is of importance even as
bearing on Italy, that we should indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an influence on Italy.
Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton, Caulonia, Temesa,
Terina, and Pyxus. These colonists, taken as a whole, belonged to a Greet‘. stock which steadfastly adhered to its own peculiar dialect, having closest aflinity with the Doric, and for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which had elsewhere come into general use ; and which preserved its own nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution. The language of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may be applied also to these Italian Achaeans; “Not only did they live in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws, like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same
and judges. ”
This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a coloniza
tion. The cities had no harbours-Croton alone had a
Character of the Greek im
magistrates, councillors,
CHAD. 2 THE HELLENES IN ITALY
17!
paltry roadstead—and they had no commerce of their own ; the Sybarite prided himself on growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians and Etruscans
and sold for him. These Achaean Greeks, however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the “land of wine” and “of oxen” (Oivw-rpt’a, ’Im)t[a) or the “great Hellas,” the native agicultural population was compelled
to farm their lands and to pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs. Sybaris-in its time
the largest city in Italy—exercised dominion over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was
able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea. The exceedingly fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines—it was there perhaps that grain was first cultivated for exportation. The height of prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful work manship—the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to be coined in 174. These coins show 580. that the Achaeans of the west did not simply participate in
the noble development of plastic art that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were even superior in technical skill. For, while the silver pieces which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only
on one side, and in general without inscription, the Italian Achaeans with great and independent skill struck from two similar dies partly cut in relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with inscriptions, and display
ing the advanced organization of a civilized state in the mode of impression, by which they were carefully protected
bought
I72
THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK 1
from the process of counterfeiting usual in that age-the plating of inferior metal with thin silver-foil.
Nevertheless this rapid bloom bore no fruit. Even Greeks speedily lost all elasticity of body and of mind in a life of indolence, in which their energies were never tried either by vigorous resistance on the part of the natives or by hard labour of their own. None of the brilliant names in Greek art or literature shed glory on the Italian
Achaeans, while Sicily could claim ever so many of them, and even in Italy the Chalcidian Rhegium could produce its Ibycus and the Doric Tarentum its Archytas. With this people, among whom the spit was for ever turning on the hearth, nothing flourished from the outset but boxing. The rigid aristocracy which early gained the helm in the several communities, and which found in case of need a sure reserve of support in the federal power, prevented the rise of tyrants ; but the danger to be apprehended was that the government of the best might be converted into a government of the few, especially if the privileged families in the different communities should combine to assist each other in carrying out their designs. Such was the pre dominant aim in the combination of mutually pledged "friends ” which bore the name of Pythagoras. It enjoined the principle that the ruling class should be “honoured like gods,” and that the subject class should be “held in subservience like beasts,” and by such theory and practice
a formidable reaction, which terminated in the annihilation of the Pythagorean “friends” and the renewal of the ancient federal constitution. But frantic party feuds, insurrections en mil-$86 of the slaves, social abuses of all sorts, attempts to supply in practice an impracticable state philosophy, in short, all the evils of demoralized civilization never ceased to rage in the Achaean communities, till under the accumulated pressure their political power utterly broke down.
provoked
CHAP- it THE HELLENES IN ITALY
173
It is no matter of wonder therefore that the Achaeans settled in Italy exercised less influence on its civilization than the other Greek settlements. An agricultural people, they had less occasion than those engaged in commerce to extend their influence beyond their political bounds. With in their own dominions they enslaved the native population and crushed the germs of their national development as Italians, while they refused to open up to them by means of complete Hellenization a new career. In this way the Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region ; and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real prosperity. This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time to the succeeding period.
The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different [one character, and exercised a very different effect upon Italy. Dorian They by no means despised agriculture and the acquisition
of territory; it was not the wont of the Hellenes, at least
when they had reached their full vigour, to rest content
after the manner of the Phoenicians with a fortified factory
in the midst of a barbarian land. But all their cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade, and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achaeans,
they were uniformly established beside the best harbours
and lading-places. These cities were very various in their
origin and in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet,1 and in the very
1 Thus the three old Oriental forms of the i (5), l (/\) and r (P), for
Tarentum.
Dorism of their language, which made its way at an early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example,1 originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect. These settlements were of very various degrees of importance in their hear ing on the development of Italy : it is suflicient at present to mention those which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae.
Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined to play the most brilliant part. The excellent harbour, the only good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural emporium for the traflic of the south of Italy, and for some portion even of the commerce of the Adriatic. The rich fisheries of its gulf,
the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine murex, which rivalled that of Tyre-both branches of industry introduced there from Miletus in Asia Minor-employed thousands of hands, and added to the carrying trade a traflic of export. The coins struck at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce of the Tarentines. At this epoch, when Tarentum was still contending with Sybaris for the first place among the Greek cities of Lower Italy, its extensive commercial con nections must have been already forming; but the Taren tines seem never to have steadily and successfully directed their efforts to a substantial extension of their territory after the manner of the Achaean cities.
which as apt to be confounded with the forms of the r, g, and p the signs I I, R were early proposed to be substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant use among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at
any rate chiefly the more recent forms.
1 Big. the inscription on an earthen vase of Cumae runs thus :
Taraler épl Mguhor' F6: 6’ U as xMdw'ct SWSM: firms.
114
THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK 1
CHAP. X THE HELLENES IN ITALY
175
While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy Greek thus rapidly rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to
the north, in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a
more moderate prosperity. There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria (Ischia) to the mainland, and had built a second home on a hill close by
the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia (afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the “new city,” Neapolis. They lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily, in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100) had established, under a constitution democratic but modified by a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council of members selected from the wealthiest men-a constitu tion which proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob. We know little as to the external relations of these Campanian Greeks. They remained, whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of even narrower limits than the Tarentines ; and issuing from it not for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives,
created the means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization in Italy.
650
they
While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the
whole southern coast of the mainland and its western coast
as far as Vesuvius, and on the other the larger eastern half regions to of the island of Sicily, were Greek territory, the west coast the Greek-‘t of Italy northward of Vesuvius and the whole of the east
coast were in a position essentially different. No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of the Adriatic;
and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively
small number and subordinate importance of the Greek
colonies planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the
Relation,
X12560
I76
THE HELLENES IN ITALY 8008 I
numerous adjacent islands. Two considerable mercantile
towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium (now Durazzo, 127), and 587. Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during the regal
period of Rome ; but no old Greek colony can be pointed out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about
No adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from the earliest times there existed a regular traflic to that region from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra
580. 174? ).
(Corfu) 710. founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traflic, which
had as its emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina. and Atria, situated at the mouth of the P0. The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain this fact. But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those that lay to the west. The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus (Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of the Adriatic. Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention along the whole east coast-the rise of Ancona belongs to a far later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium—it may well be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently discharged their cargoes at Tarentum. The
CHAP. x THE HELLENES IN ITALY
177
Tarentines had also much intercourse with Apulia by land ; all the Greek civilization to be met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them. That civilization, however, was during the present period only in its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of Apulia was developed.
It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west Relations
coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very of the western
early times by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic Italians factories on its promontories and islands. Probably the to the
Greeks. earliest evidence of such voyages is the localizing of the
legend of Odysseus on the coasts of the Tyrrhene Sea. 1 When men discovered the isles of Aeolus in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens, at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial mound of Elpenor, when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is the “wild,” and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in the “inmost recess of the holy islands,” or, according to a more recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe, and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso—we
in these legends ancient sailors’ tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea. The same noble vivid< ness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization
1 Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his materials), and the writer known as Scylax. The first of these sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old; so that the origin of these legends may, on the_whole, be confidently placed in the regal period of Rome.
VOL. I I2
recognize
178
THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK 1
of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions frequented by the Cumaean mariners.
Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria ; and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near S. Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names, but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere and the Etruscan cities generally. Aethalia, the “fire-island,” with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traflic with the natives; the more especially as they could not have found the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded island without intercourse with the mainland. The silver mines of Populonia also on the headland opposite to Elba were
perhaps already known to the Greeks and wrought by them.
as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to carry them off ‘as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the right of retaliation; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in the south of Italy,
attested not merely by the legends to that effect, but by the actual results. In these regions the Italians succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile cities and mercantile ports, but also of their
is
If,
CHAP. X THE HELLENES IN ITALY
r79
own sea. The same Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central Italy—very much indeed against the will of their instructors-towards navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance from the sea, were-like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the south—certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations. It is not in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was of the greatest
as bearing upon the further development of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly Tuscan and adjoining provinces.
Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin Hellenel with the “ wild Tyrrhenian,” and the peaceful beach at the and Latin! ‘ mouth of the Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci.
This cannot mean that Greek colonization was tolerated in
some of the provinces of Central Italy, but not permitted in
others. Northward of Vesuvius there existed no independent
Greek community at all in historical times; if Pyrgi once
was such, it must have already reverted, before the period
at which our tradition begins, into the hands of the Italians
or in other words of the Caerites. But in southern Etruria,
in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful inter
course with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such was not the case elsewhere. The
importance
Hellenes and Etrus cans.
180 THE HELLENES IN ITALY BOOK 1
position of Caere was especially remarkable. “The Caerites,” says Strabo, “were held in much repute among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because, powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery. ” It is not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of Caere must have indulged like every other. But Caere was a sort of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks. We have already mentioned the Phoenician station —-subsequently called Punicum-and the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium (pp. 163, 178). It was these ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood, early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths of the Tiber and P0. The cities we have just named are those which. appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece. The first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum. Spina and Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the shrine ; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle, is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome. These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became pre eminently wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.
Matters stood on a different footing with the “wild Tyr rhenians. " The same causes, which in the province of Latium, and in the districts on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the Po that were perhaps
CHAP. X THE HELLENES IN ITALY 18!
rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than strictly Etruscan, Etruscan
had led to the emancipation of the natives from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in conse quence possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which we are not acquainted. The Etruscans were not content with dislodging the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader was
not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks. It was not without reason that the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans. The rapidity with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their proceedings
,in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts. The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and the Greeks at Vesuvius ; but between them and by their side the Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum. The Volscians became clients of the Etruscans ; their forests contributed the keels for the Etruscan galleys; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners the name of the Laestrygones. The high promontory of Sorrento with the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute of any harbour-a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays of Naples and Salerno— was early occupied by the Etruscans. They are aflirmed even to have founded a “league of twelve towns ” of their own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in its inland districts in times quite historical.
maritime
power.
apparently
Etruscan commerce.
554
182 THE HELLENES IN ITALY noon 1
These settlements were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the Cumaeans at Vesuvius.
The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves to robbery and pillage. The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek towns is attested by the gold and silver coins which, at least from the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard. The circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks. For commerce they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium. Inhabiting the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the
Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains of Capua and Nola. They were the holders of the most important Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the amber which was brought to them from the Baltic (p. r62). Under the protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude naviga tion act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish. It need not surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian merchants competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to learn that the combination of privateer ing and commerce on a great scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the vigour of Etruria early wasted away.