Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/145



Etruscan people, or Ras, as they called themselves, present a 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 heads and thick arms. Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with them, point to the conclusion that this nation was originally quite distinct from the Græco-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 so many data to aid in deciphering it, occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no one hitherto succeeded in its interpretation, but no one has been able even to determine precisely its proper place in the classification of languages. Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly distinguished. In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception