ITALY.--LIGURIANS.--ETRUSCANS.--VENETIANS AND
LIBURNIANS.--UMBRIANS.--AUSONIANS.--LATINS.--EARLIEST POPULATIONS
OF NORTH-EASTERN ITALY.--SOUTH ITALIANS.--ITALIAN ORIGIN OF THE
GREEKS.--SICILIANS.--ELEMENTS OF
ADMIXTURE.--HERULIAN.--GOTHIC.--LOMBARD.--ARAB.--NORMAN.--ANALYTICAL
SKETCH OF THE POPULATION OF MODERN ITALY.
The only part of Italy of which the ethnology is even moderately simple
is the part belonging to Sardinia, or Piedmont. Here the original
occupancy was Ligurian. Eporedia, the modern Ivrea, is particularly
mentioned as a Ligurian town, and, as its name has generally been
considered Keltic, it has supplied one of the arguments in favour of the
Ligurians being a branch of that stock. Bodencomagus, too, has already
been mentioned. The ancient name of the Upper Po, Eridanus, appears to
contain the same root as the name Rhodanus, and, perhaps, as Rhenus;
whilst Scingo-_magus_ and Rigo-_magus_ give us further instances of the
evidently Keltic termination -_magus_. The parts south of the Po, which
alone constituted the true and proper Liguria in the political sense of
the term, were reduced between the second and third Punic wars; the
following being Niebuhr’s account of them:--
“The Ligurian war is not only insignificant, in comparison with others,
but extremely obscure, on account of our want of an accurate
geographical knowledge of the country. It has some resemblance to the
present undertakings against the Caucasian tribes. The Apennines are
not, indeed, as high as the Caucasus, but they offer the same advantages
for their inhabitants to defend themselves. The Ligurians were
ultimately annihilated, which is always the unavoidable fate of such
nations, when a powerful state is bent upon their destruction. The
Ligurian tribes extended in reality as far as the river Rhone; but as
the Romans were chiefly concerned in securing the frontiers of Etruria,
they made themselves masters only of the territory of Genoa. The wars
did not extend beyond the river Varus, or the frontiers of Provence, for
the hostilities against the Salyes in the neighbourhood of Massilia
belong to a later period. The Ligurian tribes defended themselves and
their poverty with such resolute determination, that the Romans, who
could not expect any rich spoils, aimed at nothing short of extirpating
them, or expelling them from their mountains. The consuls, P. Cornelius
Cethegus and M. Bæbius Tamphilus, therefore transplanted 50,000
Ligurians into Samnium, where Frontinus, as late as the second century
of our own era, found their descendants under the name of the Cornelian
and Bæbian Ligurians. The war was brought to a close before that against
Perseus. It was especially for the purpose of exercising control over
Gaul that the high road of Flaminius, which went as far as Ariminum, was
now continued, under the name of _via Flaminia_, as far as Placentia,
and that the whole country south of the Po was so much filled with
colonies, that the Keltic population disappeared.”
But the parts to the north of that river were conquered later, the
Salassi of the valley of Aosta in the reign of Augustus.
How far the population which I consider to have been allied to the
Ligurian on the one side and the Helvetian on the other, may have
extended eastwards, is difficult to say; but the Tyrol was the centre of
a new stock. This stock was the Etruscan. It is needless to say that we
have now before us one of the _vexatœ quœstiones_ of ethnology.
The account of Herodotus is as follows:--
“The Lydians state amongst other things that they colonized Tyrsenia;
saying thus concerning it. In the days of Atys, the son of Manes, their
king, there was a severe famine over the whole of Lydia. For a while
the Lydians bore up; but, afterwards, when it would not cease, they
sought for a remedy. One invented one thing, one another; and then were
found out dice, _astragali_, the top, and all other kind of games; chess
alone being excepted. But when the evil would not abate, but, on the
contrary, pressed all the more, the king having divided the whole body
of Lydians into two parts, allotted to the one of them to stay at home,
and to the other a departure from the country. With the one that had to
stay at home, the king himself remained at the head; with the other his
son Tyrsenus. They then went to Smyrna, and having contrived a ship and
put therein all that was needful for their voyage, they sailed away in
search of a living, until, having passed by many nations, they came to
the Ombriki, where they settled cities, and where they remain to this
day. Instead of Lydians, they changed their name to that of the king’s
son, who led them, and, taking this, were called Tyrseni.”--I. 94.
Few passages of antiquity are better known than this, and the criticism
which has been bestowed upon it is proportionate to the difficulty of
the question upon which it bears. Niebuhr objected to it on negative
grounds; or rather, he affirmed the opinion of Dionysius of
Halicarnassus who had done so before him; as Xanthus, a native Lydian,
and an historian as well, had said nothing about this Tyrsenian
migration. And this objection may be strengthened. The statement that
the Etruscans of Tuscany called themselves _Tyrseni_ is inaccurate. The
native name was _Rasena_; and _Tyrseni_ was only what their neighbours
called them. Yet, according to the Herodotean account, if one name ought
to be more national than another, that name was the one derived from
their princely leader--Tyrsenus. The stoppage, too, of the expedition at
Smyrna, brings the date of the migration inconveniently low.
Prichard admits that “his (Dionysius’s) arguments weigh heavily against
the credibility of this story.” For reasons too lengthy to be given
here, I wholly disbelieve the Lydian tradition. On the contrary, I lay
what many may consider undue stress upon the account of Livy, who says
that “the dominion of the Tuscans was widely extended before the
prevalence of the Roman arms; their power was predominant on the two
seas which embrace Italy on both sides. Of this the names given to these
branches of the Mediterranean afford a proof; for the nations of Italy
have given to one of these seas the name of Tuscan, from the common
appellation of the people, and to the other that of Adriatic, derived
from Adria, a Tuscan colony. The Greeks term them Tyrrhenian and
Adriatic. The Etruscans, in either territory, possessed twelve cities.
Their first settlements were on this side of the Apennines on the lower
sea; they afterwards sent out as many colonies as the original country
contained principal towns, and these colonies occupied all the country
beyond the Po, as far as the Alps, except the corner belonging to the
Veneti. The same people, doubtless, gave origin to some of the Alpine
nations, particularly to the Rhæti; who, by the nature of the country
which they occupy, have been rendered barbarous, and retain nothing of
their ancient character, except their language, and that in a corrupt
state.”
The analysis of this extract will verify its importance. The last
sentence contains a statement in the way of evidence, and an opinion in
the shape of an inference. I admit the former, and demur to the latter.
The statement as to the language of the Rhæti being Etruscan, is that of
an author whose advantages of time, place, and circumstances were great.
As a native of Padua he was as well-placed for knowing how the Rhætian
differed from the Latin as a Lowland Scot is for giving evidence to the
distinct character of the Gaelic. On the other hand, he was the adviser
and reviewer of an antiquarian work of the Emperor Claudius on the very
subject of Etruscan history; so that, his testimony on this point, is
that of no common author. He speaks to what he had the means of knowing,
and he speaks to a cotemporary fact.
But the inference from this similarity of speech is a different matter;
one that the modern investigator, with a wider knowledge of the general
phenomena of ethnological distribution, may venture to correct. The
occupation of a mountain-range by the inhabitants of a plain country is
a reversal of the usual order of events. It is far more likely that the
mountaineers should have become refined under the influences of a
fertile soil, milder climate, and an enlarged commerce, than that the
Etruscans of Etruria should have become rude and barbarous. After all,
however, the question is only one of degree. It is no opinion of Livy’s
that the Rhætian Alps were colonized from the Etrurians of Tuscany.
Their occupants must have been derived from the plains at their foot,
from the Northern Etrurians of the Venetian territory and Lombardy; and
whether these extended a little more or a little less in the direction
of the Tyrol is unimportant. The primary fact is, that, according to the
only cotemporary evidence existing, the Valley of the Adige was as
Etruscan as the Valley of the Arno.
How far the Etrurians south of the Tyrol were indigenous populations,
or how far they were intrusive conquerors, is difficult, perhaps
impossible, to determine. It is difficult, too, to say where they came
in contact with the Ligurians, where they first encroached on the
Umbrians, and what boundary separated them from the Venetians and
Liburnians. Perhaps, we may give them all Lombardy, the western third of
the Venetian territory, Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Ferrara, I think
that in all these parts they were intrusive conquerors, and, _à
fortiori_, that they were intrusive conquerors in Tuscany. In Ferrara,
and the parts due north of the mouth of the Po, they were, for reasons
which will appear in the sequel, _necessarily_ so. In Campania they were
comparatively recent colonists.
The western third of the Venetian territory may easily have been
Etruscan, Rhætian, or Etrusco-Rhætian; the other two-thirds were
_Liburnian_, or _Venetian_, the country of the Veneti and Liburni. The
affinities of these populations, which were closely allied to each
other, was with the Illyrians of Dalmatia. In other words, it was only
in a political point of view that they were Italians at all. For some of
the higher questions of ethnology, however, the _Liburni_ and _Veneti_
are tribes of exceeding importance.
Now, if we are right in supposing the Ligurians to have been Kelts, the
earliest historical occupants of Lombardy, Etruscans, and the
Liburnians and Venetians members of a distinct stock, we have to go far
towards the south before we find the population with which the ideas
suggested by the term _Italian_ are connected; before we find a language
allied to the Latin, or before we find a civilization and polity akin to
that of the Romans. As far as we have gone hitherto, the nations of the
Po and Arno are as little Italian as the Basques are Castilian. They
have been the nation not _out of_ which, but in _spite of_ which Italy
became the country of the Italian language. No immediate affinities have
yet been found for Rome.
Language will be the chief test; and of the languages allied to the
Latin the most northern were the Umbrian and the Latin itself; the
former on the east, the latter on the west coast; the former spoken as
far north as the mouth of the Po (in lat. 45°), the latter no further
than that of the Tiber (in lat. 42°).
The particular division of those ancient Italian populations of which
the language was Umbrian rather than Latin or Oscan, occupied, at the
beginning of the historical period, the present districts of Urbino and
Perugia, but as there is strong _primâ facie_ evidence of their original
area having been much wider, as well as traditions (if not historical
records) of the Umbrians having suffered considerable displacement both
on the north and west, in the direction of Lombardy, and in the
direction of Tuscany, Ferrara, the Romagna, parts of Bologna and Tuscany
may be added to the Umbrian area in its oldest form. Southwards, too, it
may be carried to the March of Ancona, or the northern part of the Upper
Picentine. The ancient Umbrians consisted of separate tribes, of which
the one first known to the Romans was that of the Camertes. Yet they
were, at the earliest times, the cultivators of the soil, and the
builders of cities; and as the Umbrians, in general, passed for the
oldest occupants, their capital Ameria, was one of the oldest cities of
Italy. Pliny gives the date of its foundation as 381 years before the
foundation of Rome.
The Umbrians here meant are the people who used the language of what are
known as the Eugubine Inscriptions, so called from the place of their
discovery, Gobbio, the ancient Iguvium; which the researches of
Grotefend and others have shown to be undeniably akin to the Latin.
From the famous Sabines, in the strict sense of the word, and from the
Sabine population in its purest form, the Italians who may best claim a
descent are those occupants of that part of the states of the church
which lies due north of the Campagna di Roma, and is bounded by the
Tiber, the Teverone, the Nera, and the Apennines, the country people of
the parts about Narri, Otricoli, and Rieti. The Campagna di Roma is
pre-eminently _Latin_.
For the north-western Neapolitans in the Upper Abruzzo, the descent is
from the southern Piceni, the Vestini, the Frentani, the Peligni, the
Marsi, and other less important tribes, which it is difficult to
distribute, _i.e._, to say, how far they approached the Umbrian type in
the north, or the Samnite, in the centre of Italy. It is difficult, too,
to say whether some of them were Latin or Oscan most.
All this is difficult, but, except to the minute ethnologist,
unimportant. It is enough to remember that when we reach the ancient
Samnium and Campania, the type has changed, at least, in respect to
language; for the speech is neither Umbrian nor Latin, though the detail
of the differences and agreements between the Samnite and Campanian
dialects is difficult.
The language itself is the Oscan, or Opican, spoken at different times
as far north as the neighbourhood of Rome, and as far south as Bruttium;
where, however, it was not indigenous. It was common to Samnium and
Campania, but not to Lucania and Apulia, _originally_. The general name
for the nations that spoke it will be _Ausonian_.
The Oscan is known to us from inscriptions, and is, at the least, as
closely allied as the Umbrian to--
_The Latin._--I think the Latin was the language of the _more southern
of the earliest_ inhabitants of Etruria; so that at the time of the
foundation of Rome, important as it was destined to become afterwards,
it was in the position of the Cornish of Cornwall about three centuries
ago. It may also be compared with the modern Frisian of Friesland, a
tongue spoken at present over a small and unimportant area, but one
which was once spread far and wide over northern Germany. If the Welsh
were to reconquer England, or the Frisians Germany, the phenomenon which
I imagine to have been presented by the history of Rome would be
repeated. A people conquered up to a certain point react on their
conquerors, vanquish them, and a fourth of the world besides. This
opinion is, of course, the result of general ethnological reasoning,
rather than the testimony of historians; yet I am not aware of any
undoubted fact that it opposes. It stands or falls by the phenomena it
explains. The chief of these is the peculiar character of the Latin
language.
Is any one prepared to consider it the result of an intermixture of two
or more dialects?
Or to limit its original area to a district not twenty miles across?
For myself I do neither one nor the other. I look upon it as a separate
and independent mode of speech, even as the Umbrian and the Oscan, and,
I cannot think that the Seven Hills of Rome were sufficient to
constitute the area of its development. Yet to these it must be limited;
for the Etruscan reached below Veii, the Oscan to the neighbourhood of
Ardea and Præneste, and the Sabine below Cures; and it must be
remembered that, however like the two dialects may have been, the
_Sabine was not Latin_.
_The Etruscans of Tuscany were an intrusive and foreign population_ (if
this be not admitted the reasoning on it falls to the ground), and the
_earlier tribes that they dispersed were the Italians of the Latin
type_; for assuredly, if such Italians, other than those of Latium, ever
existed it is in the parts north of the Tiber that they are to be sought
in the first instance; since it is there that the evidence of
displacement is strongest. Something earlier than the Etruscans of
Etruria must have existed in the Patrimonio di San Pietro and the
southern part of Tuscany, and these, I imagine to have been Latins--just
as Devonshire was once Cornish, and would have been so again, had the
Cornishmen been to England, what the Romans were to Italy.
At the same time _some_ extension southwards and eastwards must be
allowed; since tradition, perhaps history, makes both the Sabines and
the Volscians more or less intrusive. The main extension, however, of
the populations of the Latin type was Etruria.
And now, before we go to Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, we must revert to
the parts on the Lower Po, the parts which, at the beginning of the
historical period, were occupied by Etruscans, more or less displaced by
Gauls--partially, at first, wholly, afterwards; the Gauls themselves
being about to be superseded by the Romans.
A statement has already been made to the effect that in Ferrara and the
country northwards, the Etruscans were necessarily _intruders_ rather
than aboriginal inhabitants. The reasons for this statement were
reserved. They will now be given.
The earliest populations of the Lower Po must have come under conditions
which, _unless we suppose them to have been intermediate to the Umbrians
and Liburnians_, the ancient Etruscans (unless _they_ were themselves
similarly intermediate) did not meet. They must have connected the
languages allied to the ancient tongues of Central Italy, with those of
ancient Noricum--the former being (as is admitted and generally known)
allied to the Latin, the latter (as is assumed for the present, but as
will be supported by reasons in the sequel) being Slavonic and allied to
the Servian, _i.e._, just what they are now, only in an older stage.
Now, whoever admits the validity of the valuable philological researches
of those scholars, who, by showing the extent to which languages
apparently as different as the German, the Greek, the Latin, the
Lithuanian, or the Russian, are essentially cognate, have reduced the
leading tongues of Europe to a single great class, falling, after the
manner of the classes in zoology and botany, into definite divisions and
subdivisions--a class which, though somewhat inconveniently denominated
Indo-European, is still, as far as it goes, a true and natural
group--must see the necessity of bringing the languages thus allied into
as close geographical contact as possible; since the divisions to which
they, respectively, belong, are the two most allied members of the class
in question. For that the Sarmatian and classical tongues are nearer
each other than the classical and German, the classical and Keltic,
notwithstanding the opinions of several eminent scholars to the
contrary, is a safe assertion; perhaps it is also the preponderating
opinion.
To connect, therefore, the areas where languages thus allied are spoken,
by areas belonging to transitional and intermediate populations is an
ethnological necessity; and, however much subsequent changes may have
obliterated such areas of connexion, however early those changes may
have occurred; however complete they may have been; and however much
they may have been followed up by others, the original continuity must,
_at one time or other, earlier or later_, have had an existence.
Unless we admit this, we must suppose that similar names for similar
objects, and similar inflections for similar moods, tenses, and cases,
have been developed independently of community of origin; a doctrine
upheld by few, and one which would require the most transcendental
philology to support it; a doctrine which, without condemning as
unreasonable, we may fairly say has never much influenced the current
doctrine of ethnologists.
Admitting it, however, we must recognise a long series of difficult
problems; problems that have so rarely been dealt with as to be
considered wholly new and foreign; problems that occur whenever two
allied tongues are separated from each other by any form of speech
_other than intermediate_. The languages thus related may be ever so
like, or ever so unlike; but as long as they are liker to each other
than those which intervene, the problem in question will recur, _viz._,
the reconstruction of the state of things that existed before the
original separation, and which is implied by the existing points of
similarity.
It occurs in Great Britain. No matter how unlike the Scotch Gaelic and
the Welsh may be, they are more like than the English that lies between
them.
It occurs, as will soon be seen, in the ethnology of Greece.
It occurs in the question before us; leading to the inference that if
both the Keltic of the Cisalpine Gauls, and the Etruscan of Circumpadane
Etrurians were less unequivocally Indo-European than the Slavonic of the
Norici and the Umbrian of the Umbri, the original occupants of the
intervening area must have been neither Gauls nor Etrurians, but one of
four things--
1. Members of the class to which the Umbrians belonged--
2. Members of the class to which the Norici belonged--
3. Partly Norici and partly Umbrians--
4. Transitional populations sufficiently different from each to
constitute a third class, but sufficiently allied to each to be more
Norican or more Umbrian than aught else.
Such is the way in which here, as elsewhere, we must attempt the
reconstruction of what may be called _areas of original connection_.
In the present case, then, north-eastern Italy was originally divided
between the true Italians, akin to the Umbri, and the extinct or
modified Slavonians of Liburnia and the country of the Veneti.
Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, to which we may now attend, I imagine, in
the earliest times, to have been occupied _by the ancestors of the
Greeks_, a doctrine to which I direct the careful consideration of
scholars; since it implies a great change in all our preconceived
opinions, and not only makes the Hellenes of Greece as foreign to
Hellas, as the Anglo-Saxons were once to England, but deduces them from
Italy, and that by means of a _maritime_ migration--a maritime migration
which implies not only that they were a population foreign to the Greek
soil, but that their descendants were a mixed stock; since no mode of
migration is less favourable to the purity of the migrant population
than a sea-voyage, where space is limited and females are an
incumbrance. Such was, undoubtedly, the origin of the Greeks of Asia
Minor and the Ægean Islands. Such, I believe, to have been the origin of
the Greeks of Peloponnesus and Northern Hellas.
The observations on the relation between the Slavonic and Latin
languages have prepared the way to this hypothesis, wherein the
necessity of finding a geographical connection between cognate forms of
speech recurs.
Now the connection between the Greek and Latin languages is a fact that
few have denied, and no one has explained. Unless we derive one from the
other, we must refer both to some common source. But the locality of
this mother tongue is difficult to fix--so difficult that no
satisfactory doctrine concerning it has ever been exhibited. Greece is
an eminently small area, and Italy is of no great size; for it must be
remembered that the ancient country of the nations whose language was
allied to the Latin, and, through the Latin, to the Greek, are not found
far north of the Tiber, at the beginning of the truly historical period.
The Valley of the Arno was Etruscan; the Valley of the Po, Gallic,
Etruscan, and Liburnian; so that the northern boundary of the more
western of the two classical languages was the Tiber, and that of the
most eastern one the Ambracian Gulf--for farther than this it is not
safe to carry Ancient Greece. Perhaps it cannot be carried so far.
Be this, however, as it may, the scholar who recognises the fundamental
affinity between the Greek and Latin languages, and at the same time
requires either an _original geographical continuity_ or a _series of
migrations_ to account for it, has a vast mass of difficulties to deal
with: and I cannot think that these have ever been fairly met. The
intervening area which lies between the Hellenes and Italians is of no
ordinary magnitude. It is not only larger than either Greece or Italy
separately, but larger than both put together. It is this if we give it
the most favourable conditions imaginable. It is this if we suppose
that, on the head of the Adriatic Gulf, there existed in early times a
population from which the Italians on one side, and the Greeks on the
other, are descended--at the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and no where
else.
I limit this hypothetical population to a small area, because, as no
trace of its existence can be found, the smaller it is supposed to have
been, the more easily its extinction is accounted for; and I place it in
a locality equidistant to Greece and Italy, because, by so doing, the
amount of its extension is diminished. The more distant we make it, the
more improbable that extension becomes; and the larger it is, the more
improbable its disappearance. I have put it, then, under the most
favourable conditions. Yet, even here, its position is eminently
doubtful. The first nations which we meet with in these quarters are the
Liburnians; and few have a less claim to be considered either Greek or
Italian, or, yet, intermediate to the two.
The bolder doctrine is the assumption of what has been called The
Thraco-Pelasgic stock. This maintains that the extinct populations and
languages of Thrace, Mœsia, and Pannonia were intermediate to those
of the two peninsulas, and that, by a sort of divarication, the western
extension of their southern members peopled Italy, and the eastern,
Greece. This view has the advantage of being difficult to refute--since
it is the current belief that the original languages of the three
countries in question are extinct, and that, as nothing is known about
them, it is as easy to say that they were the mother tongues of the
Greek and Latin as aught else. The assumed displacements, however, are
enormous; besides which, the ancient Thracians must have been more Greek
than were the ancient Italians; which is unlikely.
But the great difficulty in fixing a locality for this Thraco-Pelasgic,
or Helleno-Latin language (call it what we will) lies in a reason which
the reader of the first chapter of this book may, perhaps, anticipate.
It lies in the existence of the Albanian language; a fact, which I said,
on the onset, was one of such importance as to require being treated as
a special and separate preliminary to the ethnology of Greece and Italy,
as well as on its own merits. Whence came this remarkable tongue, and
whence the populations who speak it? For a long time both were
considered recent introductions,--introductions from Caucasus, perhaps,
or from some other locality equally plausible. But this origin is no
longer admitted by any competent investigator; and the modern Skipetar,
or Albanians, are now looked upon as the descendants of the ancient
Illyrians, and of such Epirots as were not truly Greek. So that the
Thraco-Pelasgic hypothesis is materially weakened by the inconvenient
locality, and the impracticable antiquity of this nation. So awkwardly
does it lie, that it fills up full two-thirds of the area required for
the hypothetical tongue in question.
Hence the line of such transitional populations as, by connecting Greece
and Italy, account for the ethnological affinities of their respective
occupants, must not be a straight one. On the contrary, it must trend
_round_ the Albanian country, _viâ_ Macedon, Thrace, Servia, Croatia,
and Carniola.
The assumption of a stream of population from Asia Minor across Turkey,
Servia, and the parts to the north of the Adriatic is the
Thraco-Pelasgian doctrine modified; since it deduces both tongues from a
common source.
The assumption of a similar stream across the islands of the Ægean does
the same. Yet each is beset with difficulties. If one fact be better
supported than another, it is that the Ægean islands and the Asiatic
coast were peopled from Greece rather than _vice versâ_.
So serious, then, are the difficulties involved in the notion of either
a continuous Helleno-Italian population originally extended from Greece
to Italy but subsequently displaced, or an isolated intermediate
locality from which both Hellenes and Italians were given-off as
colonies, that I would rather believe that the likeness between the
Greek and Latin languages proved nothing more than is proved by the
presence of Norman-French words in English (viz., simple intermixture
and intercourse) than admit it. I do not ask the reader to go thus far.
I only request him to compare the size of the Greek and Italian areas
with the size of the parts between them, which are neither one nor the
other. This will lead him to the threshold of the difficulties involved
in the usual views as to the _origin of the Hellenic population within
Hellas itself_; and, provided that he be willing to examine patiently
rather than reject hastily, an apparent paradox, it will also prepare
him for a train of reasoning of which the result will be a Greece, or
Hellas, as different from the Greece or Hellas of the current
historians, as England is different from Britain. By which I mean that,
if, by the term _Greece_ we denote the present kingdom of King Otho,
irrespective of its population, and with a view only to the portion of
the earth’s surface that it constitutes, the Hellenes will come out
Greek, just as the Anglo-Saxons are British, _i.e._, not at all. Instead
of this, the true and primitive Greeks will be the analogues of the now
extinct or modified Britons of Kent and Northumberland, the Hellenes
being those of the Angle, Frisian, and other Germanic conquerors of our
island.
But to catch it in its full clearness, the point of view from which the
physical history of the Hellenes is to be contemplated, the critic
should go somewhat further than this, and attempt his own reconstruction
of the state of those European populations which existed when the Greek
and Latin languages, with their several points of likeness and
difference, were first developed.
Let him try to do this by assuming that the necessary movements and
displacements were made by _land_, and he will find that it must be by
ringing changes upon such suppositions as the following--
1. Occupancy of Greece from Italy.
2. Occupancy of Italy from Greece.
3. Extension into Greece, on one side, or--
4. Into Italy, on one side, or--
5. Into both Greece and Italy--from some
common point different from each.
6. Absolute continuity of a Helleno-Latin population
from Calabria to the Morea.
In each of the first two alternatives there is the displacement of some
population earlier than the one--Greek or Italian, as the case may
be--which we supposed to have been immigrant.
In the three next there is the same; with the additional difficulty of
fixing the point from which the migrations diverged.
In the last there is the enormous displacement requisite to account for
the utter absence of any population transitional to the Hellenic and
Italian north of the Po on one side, and the Peneus on the other.
But this--as, indeed, are all the others--is reducible to a question of
displacement.
Now it is the last four of the previous alternatives that are the most
complicated. They are also those to which the current opinions most
incline. The term Thraco-Pelasgic indicates this: since it shows that,
instead of deriving the Greeks from the Italians, or the Italians from
the Greeks, both are deduced from a third population.
Upon this third population we must concentrate our attention; and define
our ideas as to its conditions.
If continuous, it must have been of considerable magnitude: and even if
isolated, it can scarcely have been very small. Now the greater we make
it the more mysterious is its present non-existence.
It must have spoken a language intermediate in character to the Hellenic
and Italian. Unless it did this it is of no avail. To be simply like the
Greek is not enough; nor yet to be what is called Indo-European. It must
be sufficiently transitional in character to act as a link.
It must have been either ancient Albanian, which it cannot have been,
ancient Thracian, which it is unlikely to have been, or, some third
language winding itself into continuity between the most south-western
Thracians and the most north-eastern Illyrians, _i.e._, populations akin
to the Skipetar.
So much for its conditions on the side of Greece. As it approached Italy
they must been equally mysterious. Unless we suppose the Liburnians and
Venetians to have spoken such a tongue it must have lapped round the
area of the northern populations of the Adriatic, so as to be thrown
considerably westwards. But, to all appearances, Circumpadane Etruria
began where the Veneti and Liburni left off.
The special classical scholar best knows how far the Pelasgi--how far,
indeed, any ancient populations--fulfil these conditions. Of course, by
assuming an unlimited amount of displacement and migration they can be
made to do so. But such assumed displacements may be illegitimately
large. Whether they are so or not depends upon the extent to which they
are necessary.
Such is a sketch of the difficulties involved in the hypothesis that
Greece and Italy were appropriated by similar populations by means of
migrations by _land_.
A little consideration will show that by looking to the _sea_ as the
medium of communication we get rid of the gravest of the previous
difficulties; though it must be admitted that we get another in the
place of it. It may fairly be urged that conquests by sea are less
complete and perfect than those by land; so that though they may be
admitted as explanatory of settlements on the coast, they are
insufficient to account for the reduction of the more inland and
mountainous parts of a country. This is an objection as far as it goes:
yet it would be hazardous to say that either Greece was more purely
Hellenic, or Italy more exclusively Italian, at the beginning of their
respective historical areas, than England was Anglo-Saxon in the reign
of Alfred. Yet the Anglo-Saxon conquest was maritime.
That, at the very earliest dawn of the historical period, there was a
great amount of Greek elements in Southern Italy is universally
admitted; the only doubtful point being as to the way of explaining
them. They fall into two classes--
1. Those that are accounted for by colonization from Greece to Italy
within the historical period.
2. Those that are not so explained.
It is the latter upon which a partial confirmation of the doctrine of
the present chapter is based.
_a._ The Æolus of Homer, who in spite of some difficulties of detail, we
must look upon as the eponymus of Æolia, has his residence in the
islands off the south coast of Italy; and, it must be remembered, that,
except so far as this Æolus is the eponymus he is here considered to be,
Homer knows nothing of the Æolians.
_b._ The Ionian Sea is the sea that washes the coasts of Italy, and not
the sea which comes in contact with the shores of _Ionian_ Asia.
_c._ Old geographical names, significant in the Greek language, are
commoner in Southern Italy and Sicily, than in Greece itself; as
Phalacrium Promontorium, Nebrodes Mons, Clibanus Mons, Petra, Xiphonia
Promontorium, Crotalus Fluvius, &c. Nowhere are these commoner than in
the Sicanian country, the part generally considered the most barbarian,
but, more probably, the part where the character of the aborigines
survived longest--Panormus, Ercta, Bathys Fluvius, Cetaria (probably a
fishery), Drepanum, Selinus, Ægithallus. Almost all the islands have
names more or less Greek, Strongyle, Phœnicodes, Ericodes, and a
great number ending in -_usa_, as Pithec-_usa_, &c. Ortygia, is
mentioned by Hesiod.
_d._ The names which, in Greek, end in -οεις take, in Southern Italy,
the older forms in -_ntum_--as Μαλοεις, Maleve_ntum_; Σολοεις,
Solve_ntum_.
_e._ The Greeks themselves recognise the existence of colonies planted
by their forefathers in Italy long anterior to the beginning of the
historical period, _e.g._, that of Cumæ, seventeen generations before
the Trojan war. This may fairly be construed into an admission of their
ignorance as to their origin.
_f._ The epithet _Magna_ in _Magna Græcia_ as applied to Southern Italy,
is an adjective which in every other instance of its use, denotes the
_mother country_--the _colony_ being designated by the contrary epithet
_little_.
_g._ The _cultus_ of the eminently Greek goddess, Demeter, was in the
eminently Sikel district of Henna.
_h._ The recognition of Xuthus, the father of Ion, an eponymus strange
to Hellenic Greece, as one of the six sons of Æolus, in the Sicilian
genealogies, genealogies which are evidently of independent
origin.--“Xuthus was king over the Leontine country which, even now, is
called Xuthia; Agathyrnus, of the Agathyrnian country, who built the
city called after him, Agathyrnus.”--Diod. Sic. v. 8.
The foregoing facts are unimportant and unsatisfactory if taken by
themselves. Neither do they constitute the main argument in favour of
the Italian origin of the Greeks. That lies in the necessity of
effecting a geographical continuity between the Greek and Latin
languages, and the inordinate difficulty of doing so by means of an
extension of either of the areas northwards.
The weightiest objection to it is the following. If the southern
Italians were so closely allied to the Greeks as the present doctrine
makes them, how came the later colonists not to discover the affinity?
Surely the settlers at Croton, Sybaris, Thurii, and the towns of Sicily,
would not have failed to find out that they had cast their lot amongst
cousins and kinsmen of their own stock, if such had actually been the
case. They would have found out that the populations with which they
came in contact spoke Greek--possibly with solecisms--but still Greek. I
reply to this by stating that, if, in (say) the reign of Edward the
Confessor, the English descendants of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of
Britain in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries had colonized the
coasts of their mother country, they would not, unless they had hit upon
a few exceptional localities, have found out, from the evidence of
language or manners, that they had revisited the land of their fathers.
The language had changed, and the population had been mixed and
displaced. The Franks had conquered the tribes originally akin to the
Saxons. Now that which the Franks did with the Saxons of Germany, the
Lucanians and Bruttians seem to have done with the original Greeks of
Italy. Such is the doctrine; such the chief objection to it; and such
the answer.
Another arises from the following words:--κὑβιττον, λἑπορις, πατἱνη,
κἁτινος, μοἱτον, γἑλυ, and νἑποδες. They are glosses from the Greek
writers of Sicily. They are _not_ Greek. They _are_ Latin--_cubitus_,
_lepus_, _patina_, _catinus_, _mutuum_, _gelu_, _nepotes_. I admit this
to be weighty. Nevertheless, as the Sicilian dialects are considered
to connect the Greek with the Latin, their presence is not conclusive.
Besides this, the Sikeli were, probably, more Italian than the Sikani.
There were Epirote (Skipetar) elements in Southern Italy; since several
names were common to both sides of the Ionian Sea--Chaones, Molossi,
Acheron, Pandosia.
There were Pelasgians (whatever the Pelasgians may have been) also; as
is to be inferred from the mention of the slaves of the colonists being
so called.
The name by which the south Italian stock, the parent stock of the
Hellenes, is best denoted is uncertain. The adjective _Œnotrian_,
from the Œnotri, is suggested.
It is wholly unnecessary to assume the existence of a new stock for the
population of ancient Sicily. The south Italians seem to have extended
themselves to the island, and when we first find them there, we also
find fresh evidence of their Greek character, as has already been shown
in the geographical names of the Sikanian area.
At the same time they must have fallen into two or more well-marked
varieties; varieties which are easily accounted for. There were the
earliest occupants of the island, and there were recent immigrants from
Italy, differing from each other as the present Danes of Iceland do from
the native Icelanders. For in this way I interpret the difference
between the _Sik_-eli and the _Sik_-ani, not doubting that both come
from the same root; although the authority of Thucydides is against this
view.
Thucydides’s account is as follows. In the western part of the island
were the _Sikani_, from the river Sikanus, driven thence by the
Iberians. Then came the Sikeli, driven from Italy by the Opiki. Thirdly,
there were the Elymi of Eryx and Egesta, who were originally Trojans,
but who escaped to Sicily, and settled themselves on the Sikanian
frontier, having built the cities of Eryx and Egesta. A few Phocians
(also from Troy) joined them, having first gone over to Libya. The
Phœnicians held certain settlements on the southern coast; Motye,
Soloeis, and Panormus. Lastly, came the Sikeliôts, or Greeks of Sicily,
whose colonies were as follows--
_a._ Naxos from Khalcis in Eubœa; Leontini and Katana from
Naxos.--Ionic.
_b._ Syracuse from Corinth; Acræ, Casmenæ, and Camarina, from
Syracuse.
_c._ Megara from Megara; Trotilus and Selinus from Megara.--Doric.
_d._ Gela from Rhodes and Crete; Akragas from Gela.--Doric.
_e._ Zankle from the Campanian Cuma, itself Chalcidic in
origin.--Ionic.
A reference to his own text justifies our disbelief in the essential
difference between the Sikani and the Sikeli, implied by Thucydides.
That such was the case was the opinion of only the historian; whilst, on
his own showing, it was not the opinion of the Sicanians themselves.
After the Cyclopes and Læstrygones the “Sikani are the first
inhabitants. As they say themselves, they are even earlier, being
_autokhthones_; but, in real truth, they are Iberians from the river
Sikanus, driven out by the Ligyes; and from them the island as well was
named Sikania, being first called Thrinakria.”[8] The Iberic doctrine is
evidently an inference from the name of the river; an inference which
the incompatible opinion of the Sikanians themselves opposes, and, in my
mind, outweighs. But the objections do not end here. The evidence of
Diodorus is as follows; _i.e._, that Philistus supported the Thucydidean
view, but that Timæus proved him wrong, and clearly showed that they
were Autokhthones. Hence, the testimony that we set against that of
Thucydides is the testimony of an equally competent local antiquary,
though an inferior general historian: for less influence than this
cannot well be attributed to the name of Timæus.
The statement respecting the Phocians is remarkable. It shows the
existence of Greeks anterior to the colonial era; Greeks whose presence
was inexplicable, except under the idea of a return from a doubtful
expedition.
Who the Elymæans really were is uncertain. Assuming that they
constituted a variety of the Sicilian population, and asking whence they
may best be derived, the answer is Sardinia--Middle Italy, and
Mauritania. In this latter case they belong to the original Libyan,
Gætulian, Numidian or Mauritanian stock, rather than the Punic. Or they
may have been Tuscans. Possibly, Phœnicians _direct_ from
Phœnicia, or Canaanites, or Jews.
That true Mauritanians, as opposed to the Phœnicians of Carthage,
existed, in at least one Sicilian locality, is a reasonable inference
from the name of a town on the eastern coast--_Thapsus_. This is a word
which now only occurs on the northern coast of Africa, but has a meaning
in the modern Berber, where _thifsah_ means _sand_; a likely name for
the low coast of the part which Virgil calls _Thapsum jacentem_.
In the Elymæan country were two rivers, one called _Simoïs_, and the
other _Scamander_. How they came to be called so is unknown. The effect
was to engender the story of the Trojan colony; unless, indeed, we
choose to argue that such a phenomenon proves too much, and is evidence
in favour of the reality of a Trojan war, and a subsequent dispersion of
Trojan colonists. Or they have been Sardinian _Tli_-enses.
The Carthaginian blood in Sicily was certainly foreign, and the Elymæan
was probably so. That of the Sikels was allied to the older Sikanian;
perhaps, as the Danish of the Northmen in England was to that of the
Anglo-Saxons. Such were the elements that came _into_ the island. But,
according to our hypothesis, there was an efflux out of it, to Æolian
and Ionian Greece, and, perhaps, to some of those parts of Asia and the
Ægean sea-board, which are claimed by the Hellenes as colonies from
their own shores. Subsequent to this there went on the contest between
the Sikani and Sikeli, even as the struggle between the Danes and
Saxons went on in Alfred’s time; whilst Sikeliot Greeks and
Phœnicians were making settlements on the coasts, and meditating a
contest for the supremacy over both. First from Sicily and Southern
Italy to Greece; then from Greece to Sicily and Southern Italy--such is
the hypothetic line of migration, analogies to which may be found
elsewhere. Sumatra, for instance, and the Malaccan Peninsula are
considered to stand in the same relation. The island (Sumatra) is first
peopled from the Peninsula, the tribes then occupying it being
comparatively rude and savage. But, in the island, civilization
increases, just as the South Italians are supposed to advance in their
social condition when transplanted to Hellenic soil. Thirdly, the
islanders (the Sumatrans), after the development of a powerful kingdom,
make settlements on the mother-country (the Peninsula of Malacca), and
(an important circumstance in our criticism) partly from the effect of
changes upon themselves, and partly from changes in the parent stock, no
recognition of the original affinity takes place. The aborigines of
Malaya look upon their sovereigns of the sea-coast as strangers,
themselves being considered what a Greek would call _barbarians_. The
true affinity is only known to the European ethnologists. So far, then,
is the present hypothesis from being deficient in analogies to support
it.
The historical period begins with the contest between the Greeks and the
Carthaginians as to who should hold in vassalage the Sikeli and Sikani;
with a subordinate series of jealousies between the Doric and Ionic
branches of the Greeks. Until about 300 B.C., the struggle is,
comparatively, uncomplicated. Afterwards, however, the free introduction
of mercenaries from Southern Italy, of Opican, Samnite, and Lucanian
origin, engenders new elements of admixture. The Carthaginian power
attains its height about this time. Then the island becomes the
battle-field between the two republics, and from 250 B.C., to 450 A.D.
(in round numbers), a period of 700 years, Sicily is a Roman province.
That the legionaries and officials were Roman in their political
relations only, is nearly certain. Ethnologically they must have been
chiefly South Italian. And the female part must have been native
Sicilian. What does this mean--Greek, Carthaginian, Sikanian, or
Sikelian? Any one in particular, or a little of each? The paramount fact
for this question is the evidence to the existence of Sikeli and Sikani
up to the reduction of the island. From then we hear no more of them:
not, however, because they are known to have become extinct, but because
their relations to Greece have ceased, and the historians who might
mention them are wanting. Rome had no contemporary literature; and when
it had, the Sicilian was known only as opposed to the Roman; for the
writers use the word _Siculi_, in a general sense, making no distinction
between the _Sikel_, the _Sikan_, and the _Sikeliot_. They were treated,
however, as Greeks, not as barbarians; and the Latin language was not
forced upon them. This is an inference from more than one expression in
Cicero’s Oration against Verres, where they are spoken of as
Greek.--“Novum est in Siculis, quidem, et in omnibus Græcis monstri
simile.”--ii. 11. 65. Again, “Itaque eum non solum patronum istius
insulæ sed etiam _sotera_ inscriptum vidi Syracusis.”--_Ibid._ 63.
If the Romans disturbed the ethnology but little, the question is
reduced to the extent to which the Greek colonies either displaced the
earlier inhabitants, or effected an intermixture. Of Ducetius, a Sikel
king, powerful in the middle of the island, we hear in the times between
Gelon and the Athenian invasion; and of other less important chiefs
(some with Greek names), we hear until the first Punic war. They are
always, however, Sikel. Of the Sikanians, Elymæans, and the so-called
Phocian Greeks, little or nothing is said. At the downfall of the Roman
Empire, Sicily seems to have been Greek in speech, and Sikelo-Sikanian,
strongly crossed with Greek, in blood. Then came the piracies of
Genseric and his Vandals; then the invasion of the Goths of Theodoric;
then the island is reconquered by Belisarius as a general of the
_Eastern_ empire; none of which events were of much ethnological
importance. Not so the events of the ninth century. The Arab conquest
was a physical as well as a moral influence.
[Sidenote: A.D. 827-878.]
“With a fleet of one hundred ships and an army of seven hundred horse,
and ten thousand foot, the Arabs landed at Mazara, but after some
partial victories, Syracuse was delivered by the Greeks, and the
invaders reduced to the necessity of feeding on the flesh of their own
horses; in their turn they were relieved by a powerful reinforcement of
their brethren of Andalusia: the largest and western part of the island
was gradually reduced, and the commodious harbour of Palermo was chosen
for the seat of the naval and military power of the Saracens. Syracuse
preserved about fifty years the faith which she had sworn to Christ and
to Cæsar. In the last and fatal siege, her citizens displayed some
remnant of the spirit which had formerly resisted the powers of Athens
and Carthage. They stood above twenty days against the battering-rams
and catapultæ, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the place
might have been relieved, if the mariners of the imperial fleet had not
been detained at Constantinople in building a church to the Virgin
Mary. The deacon, Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy, was dragged in
chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a subterranean dungeon, and
exposed to the hourly peril of death or apostasy; his pathetic, and not
inelegant complaint, may be read as the epitaph of his country. From the
Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the
primitive isle of Ortygia, had insensibly declined; yet the relics were
still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds
of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of pieces of
gold (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling), and the captives
must have out-numbered the seventeen thousand Christians who were
transported from the sack of Tauromenium into African servitude. In
Sicily, the religion and language of the Greeks were eradicated; and
such was the docility of the rising generation, that fifteen thousand
boys were circumcised and clothed on the same day with the son of the
Fatimite caliph. The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbours of
Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and
Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of Rome be
defended by the name of the Cæsars and apostles. Had the Mahometans been
united, Italy must have fallen an easy and glorious accession to the
empire of the prophet; but the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their
authority in the west; the Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces
of Africa; their emirs of Sicily aspired to independence, and the design
of conquest and dominion was degraded to a repetition of predatory
inroads.”[9]
A.D. 1029, Aversa was founded; a fact common to the history of both
Sicily and Southern Italy; from which the rule of the Normans in Sicily,
Apulia, and Calabria dates. Its details are those of a romance; the
deeds of a small but unscrupulous body of adventurers, too few to
impress any new character on the stock with which they came in contact.
Still they require mention, though but a handful of men. They were of
mixed blood themselves; Scandinavian on the fathers’, French on the
mothers’, side; French, too, in speech. They were recruited by
heterogeneous accessions from Southern Italy.
“Si vicinorum quis perniciosus ad illos
Confugiebat, eum gratanter suscipiebant:
_Moribus et linguâ_ quoscunque venire videbant
Informant propriâ, gens efficiatur ut una.”[10]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1204.]
The beginning of the thirteenth century sees the break-up of the Norman
power, and Sicily transferred to the empire; one of the more notable
facts of this transfer being the removal of sixty thousand Saracens to
Nocera, in the south of Italy. _Saracen_, however, though it means
Mahometan, by no means, necessarily, means Arab. Then we have the
dominion of the French, ending with the Sicilian Vespers, and the death
of eight thousand of them. Catalonians, Genoese, Modern Greeks, and
Albanians (?) complete the list of the elements of intermixture in
Sicily; notwithstanding which, and notwithstanding all the previous
immigrations, I believe the basis of the stock to be Sikel chiefly, and
next to Sikel, Greek.
[Sidenote: A.D. 400.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 406.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 476-490.]
With continental Italy the elements of admixture, until the time of
Odoacer, were due to the barbarian legions in the service of Rome,
rather than to the inroads of any barbarian conquerors; since Alaric,
with his Visigoths, Radagaisus, with his medley of Slavono-Germans,
Genseric with his Vandals, and Attila with his Huns, made but ephemeral
impressions. Of the army, however, of Radagaisus, a large proportion was
sold as slaves. Odoacer’s conquest was somewhat more permanent; whilst
the elements he introduced are uncertain. Reasons, however, may be given
for referring the Skiri, at least, and possibly the Heruli and Rugii to
the same stock as the Huns and Bulgarians--the Turk, a stock from which
few grafts were transplanted to Italy; though a Bulgarian colony in
Samnium was existing in the time of the Lombards, and possibly a few
other similar offsets besides.
[Sidenote: A.D. 490-553.]
The Gothic conquest, however, was not only permanent, but it was the
first of three from the same stock. Themselves, probably, of mixed
blood, having taken it up during their various settlements on the Lower
and Middle Danube, from the Slavonians and Turks of the countries with
which they came in contact, the Ostrogoths, to the amount of not less
than two hundred thousand, settled in the most favoured parts of the
country, and, dominant as they were amongst a population of serfs, must
have played much the same part in Italy as the Normans did in England.
And when Italy is recovered by Narses and Belisarius, more than one
hundred and fifty years after, they are only ejected from power--not
bodily put out of the land.
As has been stated already, they were only the first of three--we may
say of four--hordes of invaders, each of which was more or less
Germanic; for the Lombard dominion rapidly succeeded the Ostrogoth, and,
besides this, partial invasions of Bavarians, Suabians, and Alemanni
were, for a time, successful. But the Lombards ruled over all Italy with
the exception of the Exarchate of Ravenna, till the conquest by
Charlemagne, and over the present kingdom of Naples, under the name of
the Duchy of Beneventum, until the Norman Conquest. Of all the Germanic
elements, the Lombard is possibly the greatest. But it was no pure
strain.
[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
The infusion of Slavonic and Turk blood amongst the followers of Alboin
was considerable.
For Calabrian and Apulian Italy the history is nearly the same as that
of Sicily.
Now, if after the sketch of these numerous elements of intermixture we
ask which part of Italy is most Roman, the answer gives but a small
proportion of that illustrious blood. Taking the narrowest view of the
question, and distinguishing the Latin area from the Oscan, Umbrian, and
Etruscan, the amount is inordinately insignificant--and Rome itself was
but a mixture. By generalizing, however, our language, and making
_Roman_ identical with _Italian_, we gain a larger area, coinciding
pretty closely, though not exactly, with the States of the Church. This
is the least mixed part of Italy, as well as the most Italian; the least
mixed because it is south of the pre-eminently German, and north of the
pre-eminently Arab area of invasion, and the most Italian, because the
original basis was Umbrian, and Sabine rather than Etruscan, Gallic,
Ligurian, or Œnotrian.
Piedmont, perhaps, is the next in order of comparative purity; at least,
as far as modern intermixture is concerned: the oldest basis being
Ligurian.
In Lombardy the elements are Umbrian, Etruscan, Gallic, Roman,
Ostrogoth, and Lombard; in the Venetian territory, Umbrian, Etruscan,
Gallic, Roman, Ostrogoth, Lombard, and _Slavonic_ (_Liburnian_); in the
kingdom of Naples, Ausonian and Œnotrian, with Greek, Arab, and
Norman superadditions.