Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/149

Rh may have been a portion of the nation 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 emigrated from Asia. It is very ancient: it already occurs in Herodotus; and it reappears in later writers with innumerable changes and additions, although several intelligent inquirers, such as Dionysius, expressly declared their disbelief in it, and pointed to the fact that there was not the slightest similarity apparent between the Lydians and Etruscans in religion, laws, manners, or language. It is 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 a mere verbal mistake. The Italian Etruscans, or the Tursennæ (for this appears to be the original form and the basis of the Greek 🇬🇷, 🇬🇷, of the Umbrian Turs-ci, and of the two Roman forms Tusci, Etrusci), nearly coincide in name with the Lydian 🇬🇷, or perhaps also 🇬🇷, so named from the town 🇬🇷. This manifestly accidental resemblance in name seems to be in reality the only foundation for that hypothesis—not rendered more reliable by its great antiquity—and for all the pile of crude historical speculation that has been reared upon it. By connecting the ancient maritime commerce of the Etruscans with the piracy of the Lydians, and then by confounding (Thucydides is the first who has demonstrably done so) the Torrhebian pirates, whether rightly or wrongly, with the filibustering Pelasgians, who roamed and plundered on every sea, there has been produced one of the most unhappy complications in historical tradition. The term Tyrrhenians denotes sometimes the Lydian Torrhebi—such is the case in the earliest sources, as in 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 lasting contact with the Pelasgians or Torrhebians, nor at all connected with them by common descent.

It is, on the other hand, a matter of historical interest to determine what were the oldest traceable abodes of the Etruscans, and what were their further movements when they left these. Various circumstances attest that before the great Celtic invasion they dwelt in the district to the north