The Earliest Migrations into Italy
Primitive Races of Italy
We have no information, not even a tradition, concerning the first
migration of the human race into Italy. It was the universal
belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as elsewhere, the first
population had sprung from the soil. We leave it to the province
of the naturalist to decide the question of the origin of different
races, and of the influence of climate in producing their diversities.
In a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of
any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population
of a country were autochthones or immigrants. But it is incumbent
on the historical inquirer to bring to light the successive strata of
population in the country of which he treats, in order to trace,
from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of
civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races
less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher
standing.
Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and
presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of
civilization. The results of German archaeological research lead
to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany
and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those
lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps
of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and fishing,
making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves
with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with
agriculture and the use of the metals. In India, in like manner, the
Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population
less susceptible of culture. But in Italy we neither meet with
fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the
Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains;
nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto
pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed
skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what
is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity. Nothing has
hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that
mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of
agriculture and of the smelting of the metals; and if the human
race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of
that primitive stage of culture which we are accustomed to call
the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared.
Individual tribes, or in other words, races or stocks, are the
constituent elements of the earliest history. Among the stocks which
in later times we meet with in Italy, the immigration of some, of
the Hellenes for instance, and the denationalization of others,
such as the Bruttians and the inhabitants of the Sabine territory,
are historically attested. Setting aside both these classes, there
remain a number of stocks whose wanderings can no longer be traced
by means of historical testimony, but only by a priori inference,
and whose nationality cannot be shown to have undergone any radical
change from external causes. To establish the national individuality
of these is the first aim of our inquiry. In such an inquiry,
had we nothing to fall back upon but the chaotic mass of names of
tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical tradition,
the task might well be abandoned as hopeless. The conventionally
received tradition, which assumes the name of history, is composed
of a few serviceable notices by civilized travellers, and a mass
of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been combined with
little discrimination of the true character either of legend or
of history. But there is another source of tradition to which we
may resort, and which yields information fragmentary but authentic;
we mean the indigenous languages of the stocks settled in Italy from
time immemorial. These languages, which have grown with the growth
of the peoples themselves, have had the stamp of their process
of growth impressed upon them too deeply to be wholly effaced
by subsequent civilization. One only of the Italian languages is
known to us completely; but the remains which have been preserved
of several of the others are sufficient to afford a basis for
historical inquiry regarding the existence, and the degrees, of
family relationship among the several languages and peoples.
In this way philological research teaches us to distinguish three
primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that
which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main
branches,--the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the
Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong.
Iapygians
As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information. At the
south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian
peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language(1) have been
found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect
of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition
also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks.
Statements deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the
conclusion that the same language and the same stock were indigenous
also in Apulia. What we at present know of this people suffices
to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians,
but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned
to them and to their language in the history of the human race. The
inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected
that they ever will be, deciphered. The genitive forms, -aihi- and
-ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek --oio--,
appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic
family. Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants
and the avoiding of the letters m and t as terminal sounds, show
that this Iapygian dialect was essentially different from the
Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects.
The supposition of an especially close affinity between the Iapygian
nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent
occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions,
and in the surprising facility with which that people became
Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this
respect of the other Italian nations. Apulia, which in the time
of Timaeus (400) was still described as a barbarous land, had in
the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek,
although no direct colonization from Greece had taken place;
and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various
indications of a similar tendency. With the recognition of such
a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the
Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means
goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a
rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least
in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result
be attainable.(2) The lack of information, however, is not much
felt; for this race, already on the decline at the period when
our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and
disappearing. The character of the Iapygian people, little capable
of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees
well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds
probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical
autochthones of Italy. There can be no doubt that all the primitive
migrations of nations took place by land; especially such as were
directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea
only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's
time wholly unknown to the Hellenes. But if the earlier settlers
came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin
of mountains from their stratification, the historical inquirer
may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards
the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy; and it is just
at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the Iapygian
nation.
Italians
The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy
tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the
same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of
being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian
nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since
upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is
divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians;
the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and
Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical
times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks
has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic
chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed
an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds
there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they
agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic
and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself.
The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout,
and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally
foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of
their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f
or -h. The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense
with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the
original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date,
which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome.
Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly
dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding
consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in
the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops
even these. In connection with this we find that the middle voice
has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.
Relation of the Italians to the Greeks
These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena
suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as
distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family,
and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest
relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and
the Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the
Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned
early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations
themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word
of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to
every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous
appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and
Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to
the Iapygians or Etruscans.
Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites
Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands
in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects. It is true
that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are
in some degree known to us, and these even in a manner extremely
defective and uncertain. Of the rest some, such as the Marsian
and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable
us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to
classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and
precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception
of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial
Latin, completely disappeared. A conjoint view, however, of the
facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these
dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian
stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to
Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin.
In the pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian
used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages
otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p
is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic
and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and
in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed,
whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little;
and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman
weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved,--a
modification which does not take place in the kindred group of
languages. The genitive of words in -a is in this group as among
the Greeks -as, among the Romans in the matured language -ae;
that of words in -us is in the Samnite -eis, in the Umbrian -es,
among the Romans -ei; the locative disappeared more and more from
the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the
other Italian dialects; the dative plural in -bus is extant only
in Latin. The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in -um is foreign to the
Romans; while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root -es after
the Greek fashion (-her-est- like --leg-so--) has almost, perhaps
altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by
the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from
-fuo-(-amabo-). In many of these instances, however--in the forms
of the cases, for example--the differences only exist in the two
languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide. It
thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent
position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it
bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of
the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian
and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between
the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta.
Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation
of an historical event. With perfect certainty they guide us to
the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages
there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the
Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period,
the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the
western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern
became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans.
When and where these separations took place, language of course
cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope
its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the
earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration
which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines.
On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with
accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree
of culture which the people had reached when these separations took
place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is
nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially
in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the
degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of
the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records
the future will not fail to draw information as to those times
regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.
Indo-Germanic Culture
During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now
separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they
attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary
corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried
along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common
dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it
we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions,
perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the
impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but
also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects
their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are
the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot
be explained either on the principle of an uniform development
in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having
subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess
evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch
in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit
-gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is
the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-,
Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--;
Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture
at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the
Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single
exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit
-yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must
indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated
plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in
the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude
the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances
of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult
in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice
among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and
Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may
all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the
other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians
only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks
they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild
in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain. While,
however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light
is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most
important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly
in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification.
-Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-,
anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is
pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are
thus very ancient; but their more definite application to the field
(-ager-), to the grain to be ground (-granum-), to the implement
which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea
(-aratrum-), to the juice of the grape (-vinum-), had not yet taken
place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it
is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came
to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the
corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it
(Gothic -quairinus-, Lithuanian -girnos-,(4)) received their names
from the Sanscrit -kurnu-. We may accordingly assume it as probable,
that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with
agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but
a very subordinate part in their economy; for had it at that time
held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans,
it would have left a deeper impression upon the language.
On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans
is attested by the Sanscrit -dam(as)-, Latin -domus-, Greek --domos--;
Sanscrit -vesas-, Latin -vicus-, Greek --oikos--; Sanscrit -dvaras-,
Latin -fores-, Greek --thura--; further, the building of oar-boats
by the names of the boat, Sanscrit -naus-, Latin -navis-, Greek
--naus--, and of the oar, Sanscrit -aritram-, Greek --eretmos--,
Latin -remus-, -tri-res-mis-; and the use of waggons and the breaking
in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit -akshas-
(axle and cart), Latin -axis-, Greek --axon--, --am-axa--; Sanscrit
-iugam-, Latin -iugum-, Greek --zugon--. The words that denote
clothing- Sanscrit -vastra-, Latin -vestis-, Greek --esthes--; as
well as those that denote sewing and spinning-Sanscrit -siv-, Latin
-suo-; Sanscrit -nah-, Latin -neo-, Greek --netho--, are alike
in all Indo-Germanic languages. This cannot, however, be equally
affirmed of the higher art of weaving.(5) The knowledge of the
use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a
primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations; and the same may
be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed
as implements or ornaments by man. At least the names of copper
(-aes-) and silver (-argentum-), perhaps also of gold, are met with
in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely have originated before
man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores; the Sanscrit
-asis-, Latin -ensis-, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic
weapons.
No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental
ideas on which the development of all Indo-Germanic states ultimately
rests; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement
in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the
absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions
of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days
of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon. On the
other hand the positive organization of the body politic, the decision
of the questions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of
the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble
houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong
altogether to a later age.
Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community
of origin. The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit
-satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek --e-katon--, Gothic
-hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the
fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-). The idea of Deity
itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek --theos--), and many
of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism,
belong to the common inheritance of the nations. The conception,
for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of
being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place
to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths,
the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are
fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman
mythologies. Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even
in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus
the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater,
Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has
been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology
by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The
hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention;
they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East.
The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the
golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing
rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover
faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed,
becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas,
or Hermeias; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing
of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt connected with the
Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the
meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant
conception of nature.
Graeco-Italian Culture
The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which
the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks
properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world. It
is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain,
so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian
nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted. Nor is this
a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which
Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of the national
history.
Agriculture
While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life
and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild
state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Graeco-Italians
were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people.
The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of agriculture
itself common to both, for this does not upon the whole warrant
the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit
it. An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture
and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be
disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans,
or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture
was certainly still unknown. The truth is, that the more advanced
races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly
exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation;
and when the annals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture
to the introduction of five species of grain that took place under
a particular king in a particular year, the story undoubtedly depicts
correctly, at least in a general way, the relations subsisting in
the earliest epochs of civilization. A common knowledge of agriculture,
like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war chariots, of purple,
and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the
inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their
original unity. But as regards the Greeks and Italians, whose
mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis that
agriculture as well as writing and coinage first came to Italy by
means of the Hellenes may be characterized as wholly inadmissible.
On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection
between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other is
attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions
relating to it; -ager-, --agros--; -aro aratrum-, --aroo arotron--;
-ligo-alongside of --lachaino--; -hortus-, --chortos--; -hordeum-,
--krithei--; -milium-, --melinei--; -rapa-, --raphanis-; -malva-,
--malachei--; -vinum-, --oinos--. It is likewise attested by
the agreement of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the
plough, which appears of the same shape on the old Attic and the old
Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain,
millet, barley, spelt; in the custom of cutting the ears with the
sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten
threshing-floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain -puls-
--poltos--, -pinso- --ptisso--, -mola- --mulei--; for baking was
of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always
used in the Roman ritual instead of bread. That the culture of the
vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration,
is shown by the appellation "wine-land" (--Oinotria--), which
appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers. It
would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture,
or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the
earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians
had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the
Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion. Moreover,
at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians
appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with
each other, but with other members of the great family; at least,
it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation,
while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic
family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic
as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.(6)
The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and
their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is
still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its
details and gradations. The investigation of languages with this
view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its
representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language,
but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of
tradition. For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate
the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in
its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the
Graeco-Italians still lived together. The task of discriminating
the results of culture which are common to the European members of
this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which
the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the
Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be
accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in
linguistic and historical inquiries. But there can be no doubt
that, with the Graeco-Italians as with all other nations, agriculture
became and in the mind of the people remained the germ and core of
their national and of their private life. The house and the fixed
hearth, which the husbandman constructs instead of the light hut
and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the
spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or --Estia--
almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic yet from the first
common to both nations. One of the oldest legends of the Italian
stock ascribes to king Italus, or, as the Italians must have
pronounced the word, Vitalus or Vitulus, the introduction of the
change from a pastoral to an agricultural life, and shrewdly connects
with it the original Italian legislation. We have simply another
version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite stock which
makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the
oldest Latin national names which designate the people as reapers
(-Siculi-, perhaps also -Sicani-), or as field-labourers (-Opsci-).
It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the
so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pastoral
and hunting people as founding a city. Legend and faith, laws and
manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes are throughout
associated with agriculture.(7)
Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement
of it, however rude. Accordingly, the measures of surface and the
mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on
a like basis among both peoples. The Oscan and Umbrian -vorsus-
of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with the Greek
--plethron--. The principle of marking off boundaries was also
the same. The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference
to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the first
place two lines, one from north to south, and another from east to
west, his station being at their point of intersection (-templum-,
--temenos-- from --temno--); then he drew at certain fixed distances
lines parallel to these, and by this process produced a series of
rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by
boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-,
usually --oroi--). This mode of defining boundaries, which is
probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find
among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient
records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have
borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines:
it is an ancient possession common to all. A peculiar characteristic
of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of
the principle of the square; even where the sea or a river formed
a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their
allocation of the land with the last complete square.
Other Features of Their Economy
It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close
relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; it is unmistakably
manifest also in the other provinces of man's earliest activity.
The Greek house, as described by Homer, differs little from the
model which was always adhered to in Italy. The essential portion,
which originally formed the whole interior accommodation of the
Latin house, was the -atrium-, that is, the "blackened" chamber,
with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals,
and the hearth; and precisely similar is the Homeric --megaron--,
with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof. We
cannot say the same of ship-building. The boat with oars was an
old common possession of the Indo-Germans; but the advance to the
use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken
place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical
terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians except such
as are also general among the Indo-Germanic family. On the other
hand the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common
midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the
introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the
Cretan Syssitia; and the earliest Romans further agreed with the
Cretans and Laconians in taking their meals not, as was afterwards
the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting
posture. The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces
of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is
certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the
appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood,
"the rubber" (--trypanon--, -terebra-), and the "under-layer"
(--storeus--, --eschara--, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-,
--tetamai--). In like manner the dress of the two peoples
is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with
the --chiton--, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller --himation--.
Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change,
the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two
principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,--a fact
which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the
earliest names for warriors (-pilumni--arquites-),(8) and is in
keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly
adapted to a close struggle. Thus, in the language and manners of
Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations
of human existence may be traced back to the same primary elements;
the oldest problems which the world proposes to man had been
jointly solved by the two peoples at a time when they still formed
one nation.
Difference of the Italian and the Greek Character
It was otherwise in the mental domain. The great problem of man--how
to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and
with the whole to which he belongs--admits of as many solutions
as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this,
and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display
their divergences of character. The exciting causes which gave
rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian
period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians
had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character
became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day.
The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and
in Greece respectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly
national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also
the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost
concealed from our view. That Hellenic character, which sacrificed
the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township,
and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in
the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of
idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying
the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length
produced the internal dissolution of even local authority; which in
its view of religion first invested the gods with human attributes,
and then denied their existence; which allowed full play to the
limbs in the sports of the naked youth, and gave free scope to
thought in all its grandeur and in all its awfulness;--and that
Roman character, which solemnly bound the son to reverence the
father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the
gods; which required nothing and honoured nothing but the useful
act, and compelled every citizen to fill up every moment of his
brief life with unceasing work; which made it a duty even in the
boy modestly to cover the body; which deemed every one a bad citizen
who wished to be different from his fellows; which regarded the
state as all in all, and a desire for the state's extension as the
only aspiration not liable to censure,--who can in thought trace
back these sharply-marked contrasts to that original unity which
embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at
length produced them? It would be foolish presumption to desire
to lift this veil; we shall only endeavour to indicate in brief
outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections
with an earlier period--to direct the guesses of the discerning
reader rather than to express them.
The Family and the State
All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state rested
in Greece and Italy on the same foundations. Under this head comes
especially the moral and decorous arrangement of social life,(9)
which enjoined monogamy on the husband and visited with heavy
penalties the infidelity of the wife, and which recognized the
equality of the sexes and the sanctity of marriage in the high
position which it assigned to the mother within the domestic circle.
On the other hand the rigorous development of the marital and still
more of the paternal authority, regardless of the natural rights of
persons as such, was a feature foreign to the Greeks and peculiarly
Italian; it was in Italy alone that moral subjection became
transformed into legal slavery. In the same way the principle of
the slave being completely destitute of legal rights--a principle
involved in the very nature of slavery--was maintained by the Romans
with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences;
whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early
introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of
slaves, for example, being recognized as a legal relation.
On the household was based the clan, that is, the community of the
descendants of the same progenitor; and out of the clan among the
Greeks as well as the Italians arose the state. But while under
the weaker political development of Greece the clan-bond maintained
itself as a corporate power in contradistinction to that of
the state far even into historical times, the state in Italy made
its appearance at once complete, in so far as in presence of its
authority the clans were quite neutralized and it exhibited an
association not of clans, but of citizens. Conversely, again, the
individual attained, in presence of the clan, an inward independence
and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely
in Greece than in Rome--a fact reflected with great clearness in
the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came
to assume very different forms. In the more ancient Greek names
the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form
to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were
aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later
-praenomen-. But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early
disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely
among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual
name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate. It seems as if the small
and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the
Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared
with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks,
were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic
of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote
the free development of personality. The association in communities
of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to
have prevailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear different
enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic polities; yet
it must have already contained the germs out of which the future
laws of both nations were moulded. The "laws of king Italus,"
which were still applied in the time of Aristotle, may denote the
institutions essentially common to both. These laws must have
provided for the maintenance of peace and the execution of justice
within the community, for military organization and martial law
in reference to its external relations, for its government by a
patriarchal chief, for a council of elders, for assemblies of the
freemen capable of bearing arms, and for some sort of constitution.
Judicial procedure (-crimen-, --krinein--, expiation (-poena-,
--poinei--), retaliation (-talio-, --talao--, --tleinai--, are
Graeco-Italian ideas. The stern law of debt, by which the debtor
was directly responsible with his person for the repayment of what
he had received, is common to the Italians, for example, with
the Tarentine Heracleots. The fundamental ideas of the Roman
constitution--a king, a senate, and an assembly entitled simply to
ratify or to reject the proposals which the king and senate should
submit to it--are scarcely anywhere expressed so distinctly as
in Aristotle's account of the earlier constitution of Crete. The
germs of larger state-confederacies in the political fraternizing
or even amalgamation of several previously independent stocks
(symmachy, synoikismos) are in like manner common to both nations.
The more stress is to be laid on this fact of the common foundations
of Hellenic and Italian polity, that it is not found to extend to
the other Indo-Germanic stocks; the organization of the Germanic
community, for example, by no means starts, like that of the Greeks
and Romans, from an elective monarchy. But how different the
polities were that were constructed on this common basis in Italy
and Greece, and how completely the whole course of their political
development belongs to each as its distinctive property,(10) it
will be the business of the sequel to show.
Religion
It is the same in religion. In Italy, as in Hellas, there lies
at the foundation of the popular faith the same common treasure
of symbolic and allegorical views of nature: on this rests that
general analogy between the Roman and the Greek world of gods and
of spirits, which was to become of so much importance in later
stages of development. In many of their particular conceptions
also,--in the already mentioned forms of Zeus-Diovis and Hestia-Vesta,
in the idea of the holy space (--temenos--, -templum-), in various
offerings and ceremonies--the two modes of worship do not by mere
accident coincide. Yet in Hellas, as in Italy, they assumed a shape
so thoroughly national and peculiar, that but little even of the
ancient common inheritance was preserved in a recognizable form, and
that little was for the most part misunderstood or not understood
at all. It could not be otherwise; for, just as in the peoples
themselves the great contrasts, which during the Graeco-Italian
period had lain side by side undeveloped, were after their division
distinctly evolved, so in their religion also a separation took
place between the idea and the image, which had hitherto been but
one whole in the soul. Those old tillers of the ground, when the
clouds were driving along the sky, probably expressed to themselves
the phenomenon by saying that the hound of the gods was driving
together the startled cows of the herd. The Greek forgot that the
cows were really the clouds, and converted the son of the hound
of the gods--a form devised merely for the particular purposes of
that conception--into the adroit messenger of the gods ready for
every service. When the thunder rolled among the mountains, he
saw Zeus brandishing his bolts on Olympus; when the blue sky again
smiled upon him, he gazed into the bright eye of Athenaea, the
daughter of Zeus; and so powerful over him was the influence of the
forms which he had thus created, that he soon saw nothing in them
but human beings invested and illumined with the splendour of
nature's power, and freely formed and transformed them according to
the laws of beauty. It was in another fashion, but not less strongly,
that the deeply implanted religious feeling of the Italian race
manifested itself; it held firmly by the idea and did not suffer
the form to obscure it. As the Greek, when he sacrificed, raised
his eyes to heaven, so the Roman veiled his head; for the prayer
of the former was contemplation, that of the latter reflection.
Throughout the whole of nature he adored the spiritual and the
universal. To everything existing, to the man and to the tree, to
the state and to the store-room, was assigned a spirit which came
into being with it and perished along with it, the counterpart of
the natural phenomenon in the spiritual domain; to the man the male
Genius, to the woman the female Juno, to the boundary Terminus,
to the forest Silvanus, to the circling year Vertumnus, and so on
to every object after its kind. In occupations the very steps of
the process were spiritualized: thus, for example, in the prayer
for the husbandman there was invoked the spirit of fallowing, of
ploughing, of furrowing, sowing, covering-in, harrowing, and so
forth down to that of the in-bringing, up-storing, and opening of
the granaries. In like manner marriage, birth, and every other
natural event were endowed with a sacred life. The larger the
sphere embraced in the abstraction, the higher rose the god and the
reverence paid by man. Thus Jupiter and Juno are the abstractions
of manhood and womanhood; Dea Dia or Ceres, the creative power;
Minerva, the power of memory; Dea Bona, or among the Samnites
Dea Cupra, the good deity. While to the Greek everything assumed
a concrete and corporeal shape, the Roman could only make use of
abstract, completely transparent formulae; and while the Greek for
the most part threw aside the old legendary treasures of primitive
times, because they embodied the idea in too transparent a form, the
Roman could still less retain them, because the sacred conceptions
seemed to him dimmed even by the lightest veil of allegory. Not
a trace has been preserved among the Romans even of the oldest and
most generally diffused myths, such as that current among the Indians,
the Greeks, and even the Semites, regarding a great flood and its
survivor, the common ancestor of the present human race. Their
gods could not marry and beget children, like those of the Hellenes;
they did not walk about unseen among mortals; and they needed no
nectar. But that they, nevertheless, in their spirituality--which
only appears tame to dull apprehension--gained a powerful hold on
men's minds, a hold more powerful perhaps than that of the gods of
Hellas created after the image of man, would be attested, even if
history were silent on the subject, by the Roman designation of faith
(the word and the idea alike foreign to the Hellenes), -Religlo-,
that is to say, "that which binds." As India and Iran developed from
one and the same inherited store, the former, the richly varied
forms of its sacred epics, the latter, the abstractions of the
Zend-Avesta; so in the Greek mythology the person is predominant,
in the Roman the idea, in the former freedom, in the latter necessity.
Art
Lastly, what holds good of real life is true also of its counterfeit
in jest and play, which everywhere, and especially in the earliest
period of full and simple existence, do not exclude the serious,
but veil it. The simplest elements of art are in Latium and Hellas
quite the same; the decorous armed dance, the "leap" (-triumpus-,
--thriambos--, --di-thyrambos--); the masquerade of the "full people"
(--satyroi--, -satura-), who, wrapped in the skins of sheep and
goats, wound up the festival with their jokes; lastly, the pipe,
which with suitable strains accompanied and regulated the solemn
as well as the merry dance. Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
close relationship of the Hellenes and Italians come to light so
clearly as here; and yet in no other direction did the two nations
manifest greater divergence as they became developed. The training
of youth remained in Latium strictly confined to the narrow limits
of domestic education; in Greece the yearning after a varied
yet harmonious training of mind and body created the sciences of
Gymnastics and Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by
individuals as their highest good. Latium in the poverty of its
artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized
peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its
religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of
these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of
which history has not again to show. In Latium no other influences
were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and
strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful
ascendency of beauty, to minister to the fair boy-friend with an
enthusiasm half sensuous, half ideal, and to reanimate their lost
courage with the war-songs of the divine singer.
Thus the two nations in which the civilization of antiquity
culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they
were in origin identical. The points in which the Hellenes excel
the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more
brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he
was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of
self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own
gods, form the rich treasure of the Italian nation. Both nations
underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development;
it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the
Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii
and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve
like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes. It was in fact the
most peculiar and the best feature in the character of the Greek
people, that rendered it impossible for them to advance from national
to political unity without at the same time exchanging their polity
for despotism. The ideal world of beauty was all in all to the
Greeks, and compensated them to some extent for what they wanted
in reality. Wherever in Hellas a tendency towards national union
appeared, it was based not on elements directly political, but
on games and art: the contests at Olympia, the poems of Homer,
the tragedies of Euripides, were the only bonds that held Hellas
together. Resolutely, on the other hand, the Italian surrendered
his own personal will for the sake of freedom, and learned to obey
his father that he might know how to obey the state. Amidst this
subjection individual development might be marred, and the germs
of fairest promise in man might be arrested in the bud; the Italian
gained in their stead a feeling of fatherland and of patriotism
such as the Greek never knew, and alone among all the civilized
nations of antiquity succeeded in working out national unity in
connection with a constitution based on self-government--a national
unity, which at last placed in his hands the mastery not only over
the divided Hellenic stock, but over the whole known world.
Notes for Book I Chapter II
1. Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound;
as -theotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino- and -dasiihonas platorrihi
bollihi-.
2. The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between
the Iapygian language and the modern Albanian; based, however, on
points of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory
in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is
involved. Should this relationship be confirmed, and should the
Albanians on the other hand--a race also Indo-Germanic and on a par
with the Hellenic and Italian races--be really a remnant of that
Hellene-barbaric nationality traces of which occur throughout all
Greece and especially in the northern provinces, the nation that
preceded the Hellenes would be demonstrated as identical with
that which preceded the Italians. Still the inference would not
immediately follow that the Iapygian immigration to Italy had taken
place across the Adriatic Sea.
3. Barley, wheat, and spelt were found growing together in a wild
state on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west from Anah
(Alph. de Candolle, Geographie botanique raisonnee, ii. p. 934).
The growth of barley and wheat in a wild state in Mesopotamia had
already been mentioned by the Babylonian historian Berosus (ap.
Georg. Syncell. p. 50 Bonn.).
4. Scotch -quern-. Mr. Robertson.
5. If the Latin -vieo-, -vimen-, belong to the same root as our
weave (German -weben-) and kindred words, the word must still, when
the Greeks and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to
plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably
in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed
that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not
reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted
with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the
preparation of linseed-oil. Hemp probably became known to the
Italians at a still later period than flax; at least -cannabis-
looks quite like a borrowed word of later date.
6. Thus -aro-, -aratrum- reappear in the old German -aran-
(to plough, dialectically -eren-), -erida-, in Slavonian -orati-,
-oradlo-, in Lithuanian -arti-, -arimnas-, in Celtic -ar-, -aradar-.
Thus alongside of -ligo- stands our rake (German -rechen-), of
-hortus- our garden (German -garten-), of -mola- our mill (German
-muhle-, Slavonic -mlyn-, Lithuanian -malunas-, Celtic -malin-).
With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was
a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely
pastoral husbandry. If it was the possession of cattle, and not of
land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard
of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture
was of later introduction, but that it was at first conducted on
the system of joint possession. Of course a purely agricultural
economy cannot have existed anywhere before the separation of
the stocks; on the contrary, pastoral husbandry was (more or less
according to locality) combined with it to an extent relatively
greater than was the case in later times.
7. Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection
of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during
the earliest epoch of culture. Thus the gods in Italy immediately
concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch,
Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301),
in Greece Demeter (Plutarch, Conjug. Praec. init.); in old Greek
formulas the procreation of children is called --arotos--(ii.
The Family and the State, note); indeed the oldest Roman formof
marriage, -confarreatio-, derives its name and its ceremony from
the cultivation of corn. The use of the plough in the founding of
cities is well known.
8. Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any
can be shown to be certainly related; -lancea-, although doubtless
connected with -logchei-, is, as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps
borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards.
9. Even in details this agreement appears; e.g., in the designation of
lawful wedlock as "marriage concluded for the obtaining of lawful
children" (--gauos epi paidon gneision aroto--, -matrimonium
liberorum quaerendorum causa-).
10. Only we must, of course, not forget that like pre-existing
conditions lead everywhere to like institutions. For instance,
nothing is more certain than that the Roman plebeians were a growth
originating within the Roman commonwealth, and yet they everywhere
find their counterpart where a body of -metoeci- has arisen alongside
of a body of burgesses. As a matter of course, chance also plays
in such cases its provoking game.