Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/701

691 Miscellaneous Observations. 691 ^'IV. Oscans, Opicans, Aurancians ; principal branch of the great primitive Italian stock : called by the Greeks Auso- nians : generic name of the indigenous tribes established as far as the extreme point of the peninsula. Fierce foreign nations of lUyrians, Liburnians, Pelasgo-Thessalians, pass from the opposite shore of the Adriatic to the coasts of Italy ; press the natives in many directions, and cause the wars which after- wards changed the abodes^ names, and existence of many Italian tribes.'*'' From this outline it will be seen that Micali's views differ widely from those of Niebuhr : principally in his considering the aborigines to be the indigenous population of the whole of Italy, whereas Niebuhr, adhering more closely to the ancient accounts, restricts them to Latium : in his referring the Sicu- lians to the Oscan race, whereas according to Niebuhr they are Pelasgians : and in his making the Etruscans an aboriginal people, whereas Niebuhr believes that the Pelasgians or Pelasgo-Tyrrhenians Avere the earliest inhabitants of Italy known to history, and that the Etruscans or Rasenae were a conquering tribe, which descended into Etruria from Rhaetia. Whichever of these opposite opinions the progress of historical enquiry may tend to confirm, the Italian writer at least de- serves credit for having freed himself from the system accre- dited by Lanzi and his followers, and for having recognized the entire dissimilarity of the Etruscan and Greek languages. Speaking of the indigenous population of the inland parts of Italy, Mr Micali remarks that the mountaineers being essentially shepherds, were unwilling to occupy districts of unhealthy atmosphere, or marshes, or swamps, where the pas- ture was neither good of their kind nor sufficient in quantity : and undoubtedly the habits of their ordinary life kept them at a distance from the sea, and unaccustomed to it. The sea- shore was therefore generally uninhabited, uncultivated, and ill guarded by the natives. '^And this (he continues) is in my opinion the chief reason why the strangers who first landed on the coasts of Italy were able to establish themselves there so easily with little or no opposition from the natives, who withdrew towards the interior, to their habitual and safer abodes in the mountains.^' (Vol. i. p. 178-9.) Hence, having asserted that the establishment of the Lucanians in the south- Vol. II. No. 6. 4T