Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/75

Rh be taken as a criterion. Here then we copy the statement of Dionysius, who we must again remember stands alone against the whole current of authority on the subject. He begins by quoting Hellenicus the Lesbian who says: "the Tyrrheni who were before called Pelasgi, received the name they are now known by after they had settled in Italy," and narrates other circumstances to show that different colonies had settled in Italy sometimes under one name, and sometimes under another, but all referable to an Eastern origin which is the fact in dispute between us. He than on the other hand goes on to refer to Xanthus, Niebuhr's unexceptionable authority. He says, "Xanthus the Lydian who was as much acquainted with ancient history as any one and whose testimony may be as much relied on in that of his own country does not in any part of his history either name Tyrrhenus as a prince of the Lydians or know any thing of the arrival of a colony of Mæonians in Italy, neither does he make the least mention of Tyrrhenia as a Lydian colony, though he takes notice of several things of less importance." Such is his first statement, and before going on the second, I will dispose of this unexceptionable authority of Xanthus by pointing out to your attention that it reduces itself to being no authority at all. An inference alone and that a very unsatisfactory one is to be deduced from the silence of a Lydian historian with regard to a Lydian colony. Xanthus might certainly deserve the eulogium, which Dionysius awards him: but I cannot find that he is mentioned by any other writer who has come down to us, and his silence is surely not to outweigh the positive statements of Herodotus and so many other writers, who must have founded their assertions upon native as well as Eastern records. Herodotus was also a native of Halicarnassus which though not in Lydia was so near it as to enable his authority even if directly contradicted by Xanthus to have been considered equally admissable. But when we find it met merely by a non-mention of the circumstance, it is no contradiction at all, and shows only a fallacy on the part of Dionysius and of those who follow him. So much for this unexceptionable authority. Dionysius then further says, "I do not think the Tyrrhenians were a colony of the Lydians, for they do not use the same language with the latter, neither worship the same gods with the Lydians, nor make use of the same laws and institutions." He also says, "they call themselves from the name of one of their leaders Razena," a fact for which we have no other authority, but which seems to be of little importance, as it might be only local or explicable otherwise.