Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/147

Rh enus, which is likewise of frequent occurrence in Italian, especially in Sabellian clan-names; thus the Etruscan names Vivena and Spurinna correspond closely to the Roman Vibius or Vibienus, and Spurius. A number of names of divinities, which occur as Etruscan on Etruscan monuments 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 languages must have been closely related; such as Usil (sun and dawn, connected with ausum, aurum, aurora, sol), Minerva (menervare), Lasa (lascivus), Neptunus, 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 accommodations 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 as widely from all the Græco-Italian dialects as did the languages 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 thus were far removed from the Græco-Italian stock, 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 their affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in vain. The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally suggest it as not unlikely to be cognate; 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 connection with the Tuscans. Even the extinct nation which has constructed in thousands those enigmatical sepulchral-towers called  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 Etruria. The most