CHAPTER XIX.

ITALY AND ITS PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS,

"ITALIA, too, ITALIA! looking on thee,

Full flashes on the soul the light of ages,

Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee,

To the last halo of the chiefs and sages

Who glorify thy consecrated pages:

Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still

The fount at which the panting mind assuages

Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,

Flows from the eternal source of ROME's imperial hill."-BYRON,

ROME AND HER EMPIRE-ITS RELATION TO ITALY-DESCRIPTION OF THE PENINSULA-THE ALPS AND APENNINES-COMPARISON WITH GREECE-NATURAL UNITY OF ITALY-ITS PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS-ITS THREE CHIEF STOCKS-THE IAPYGIAN RACE-THE ITALIAN RACE-ITS TWO DIVISIONS, LATIN AND SABELLIAN-THE ETRUSCANS—THEIR COUNTRY-THEIR ORIGIN-TYRRHENIANS AND RASENNA-THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGETHEIR EARLY POWER BY LAND AND SEA-RELATIONS TO GREECE AND CARTHAGETHEIR DECLINE AND CONQUEST BY THE ROMANS-THE ETRUSCAN CONFEDERACYTHEIR RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS-ETRUSCAN ART AND SCIENCE-ARCHITECTURESEPULCHRES-STATUARY AND METAL-WORK-PAINTINGS-DOMESTIC LIFE-SCIENCE, BORROWED BY THE ROMANS.

THE power which was destined at length to raise an universal empire on the ruins of the eastern monarchies, of the free states of Greece, and of the commercial oligarchy of Carthage, combined in itself the strongest points of the systems that it superseded. A material force, if not so vast, yet truly greater than that wielded by any oriental despot, was regulated by political principles, of which a regard for law was the most conspicuous, and all was consolidated by the mighty bond of an aristocratic government based on a patriarchal foundation. If the Hellenic republics were fitted to give the freest scope to personal and political liberty, the polity of Rome was an instrument specially adapted to achieve imperial power abroad by subordinating individual freedom to the concentrated action of the state. This mighty power was purchased at the price of an internal struggle, which, when it had once broken out, became perpetual, between the privileges of the ruling class, often abused to the most selfish ends, and the claims of the lower orders to personal freedom and political power. Just when the conquest of the countries which form the seat of ancient civilization—the countries lying round the basin of the Mediterranean -was completed, this internal conflict was brought to its crisis by

the utter corruption of the state through the plunder of the world. Under a single ruler the government of the empire was consolidated, from the borders of Caledonia and the banks of the Rhine and Danube to the Libyan Desert and the cataracts of the Nile: and the barbarian tribes, that had long been pressing down from regions as yet beyond the pale of civilization, were kept at bay, till the work of diffusing Christianity throughout the Roman world was completed. Then the empire and classic paganism fell together; and the deluge of nations that overflowed them settled down into the new order of the modern world.

To comprehend rightly the origin of this power, we must not be content to take our stand upon the Seven Hills of Rome, and to look round upon Italy, as if it were a foreign country, to be gradually brought under the sway of the new city. It is necessary at first to regard Rome from the Italian point of view rather than Italy from the Roman. Nay more, in speaking of Italy, even as "a geographical expression," we must greatly modify our present conception of its meaning. Fitted as the peninsula, with its large adjacent island, is to form one great state, from the Alps to the Adriatic, the Ionian, and the African Seas, and ardent as must be the hopes of every friend of human progress to see it thus united, the consummation is a vision of the future, not a tradition of the early past. As a strictly ethnic term, the country of the Itali, or Siceli, or Siculi (for the words are varieties of one)* was confined to Sicily and the southern half of the peninsula; and even in the wider meaning, in which it embraced several other tribes, it could not be extended, in any proper sense, north of the Apennines.†

As in the case of Greece, the physical formation of the peninsula had a marked influence on the political relations of its inhabitants. It resembles Greece in projecting far out into the waters of the Mediterranean, upheld by central highlands; but the highlands of Italy do not ramify, like those of Greece, into a network of ridges, cutting up the whole country into valleys comparatively isolated, nor do their extremities run out into the sea so as to form the

* The interchange of the hard mutes, c and t, and the loss of the initial s—both among the commonest changes in language-account for the difference. Siceli and Siculi are Greek and Latin varieties. The old Italian tradition, which derives the name of the peninsula from a King Vitalus, or Vitulus, serves to show that the word began with a consonant.

The name acquired this wider meaning after the conquest of the Italian states by the Romans, about B.C. 264. It was not till the time of Augustus that it was made to include the whole region up to the Alps.

deeply indented coast-line and chains of islands, which made the Greeks of necessity a race of adventurous mariners. The mountains of the Italian peninsula form one great continuous chain; their slopes and valleys spread out into more extensive and connected spaces: the coast-line, though long, is very regular, undulating in wide bays rather than deep gulfs. These differences will be more clearly seen from a description of the whole peninsula, with the vast plain which stretches across its head, and which, though not properly a part of ancient Italy, has always been closely connected with its history.

Viewed in this wider sense, the land of Italy is the western division of that beautiful region of Southern Europe, which is enclosed in so marked a way by the gigantic chain of the Alps and its prolongations eastward to the Black Sea. These mountains, the grand passes of which are ascended by a long and gradual slope from the north side, sink down abruptly on the south, as if to form a rampart about the fair lands at their feet. This sudden descent upon the southern side forms one of the chief charms of that first passage over the Alpine chain, which marks an epoch in the traveller's life, when

"He instantly receives into his soul

A sense, a feeling, that he loses not

A something that informs him 'tis an hour

Whence he may date henceforward and for ever."

The chain, so venerable for its towering height and the diadem of perpetual snow, from which it receives its name,* results from the most recent of the great upheavings by which our continent has been formed. The primitive rocks have burst through all the superincumbent strata, to give the crowning beauty to the face of the country, in such ranges as those of Scandinavia, the western mountains of our own islands, of Brittany, and the Spanish peninsula, the Atlas in Africa, and the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines and Balkan on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean basin. The primitive chain of the High Alps has been thrown up in that remarkable curve which encloses the great plain of Northern Italy. On both its flanks lie those great secondary strata, of which the most conspicuous is the "Jura limestone," so called

Alp is generally supposed to be the root so common in Celtic (as in Albion, Albany, &c.), and which also appears in the Latin albus and alba, signifying white. Singularly enough, however, the name Alp is applied in Switzerland, not to the high mountains (which are called horns, peaks, needles, &c., or by the figurative names of Giant, Monk, Virgin, &c.), but to the upland pastures of comparatively moderate elevation, such as the Wengern Alp.

from the great chain which faces the Alps across the plain of north-western Switzerland, and forms a member of the system. Along the northern side of the plain of Lombardy, the chain extends through Switzerland and the Tyrol, as far as the "Great Bellman" (Gross Glöckner) near the sources of the Drave, whence one branch pursues its course to Vienna, and connects itself beyond the Danube with the Carpathians, while another branch, turning to the south-east close round the head of the Adriatic, is prolonged along the Illyrian coast, and then down the whole peninsula of Greece, after it has thrown off the great chain which reaches the Danube under the name of Hæmus, or the Balkan. Returning to the western extremity of the chain at Mont Blanc, we trace it southward to the sources of the Var, where it bends to the east round the Gulf of Genoa, and is then continued in the chain of the Apennines.

Neither in direction nor in geological character is there any marked transition from the Maritime Alps to the Apennines. Some geographers place the division at the natural depression in the chain, above Savona; others, farther down the western shore of the Gulf of Genoa, at the bold headland of the Capo delle Melle. At first the Apennines pursue their course eastward, but slightly verging to the south, almost parallel to the Po, as if to meet the shore of the Adriatic. The secondary strata, which form a part of the system, bordered by a narrow belt of tertiary formation, do in fact reach the opposite shore, in the neighbourhood of Ariminum (Rimini, 44° 10′ N. lat.), marking the physical boundary between the true peninsula of Italy and the alluvial basin of the Po, which is thus enclosed within the mighty sweep of the Alps and Apennines, except on the east, where it lies open to the Adriatic, on the waters of which it is constantly encroaching.* It was in agreement with this physical division, that the political boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul was placed at the petty, but ever memorable river RUBICON. From about the same latitude, the Apennine chain itself turns off to the south-east, and forms the back-bone of the peninsula. About the same point, the primitive rocks cease to rise above the surface, only reappearing near the centre of the peninsula, in the ancient Sabine territory, and again in the "toe" of the "boot," to which Italy bears so

* Our map exhibits the change made in the coast-line by the alluvial deposits of the Po, the Adige, the Piave, and the lesser streams which flow down from the Carnic Alps. As compared with the ancient state of things, Venice is, literally, "a city in the sea."

curious a resemblance, and on the opposite point of Sicily, from Messina down to Etna. The "heel" is formed by a lower range, in which tertiary deposits predominate. The prevalence of the secondary formations, and chiefly of the later limestones, gives to the chain a character altogether different from the pointed peaks of the primitive Alps and Pyrenees, or the battlemented escarpments of the ancient limestone of the Jura. The highest summit, Monte Corno (the ancient Cunarus), east of Aquila, reaches little above 9500 feet, and, though another mountain in the Sabine territory boasted the name of Nivosus (snowy), the limit of perpetual snow, in the mild climate of Italy, does not embrace the highest summits of the Apennines. There are few parts in which vegetation does not reach quite, or almost, to the tops of the mountains, whose smoothly rounded forms, and easy passes, form no difficult obstacle to human intercourse or even habitation, while their remoter recesses, especially where the ancient limestone and granite break out, as in the Abruzzi and Calabria, have always secured fastnesses for the wilder tribes of ancient times-such as those in the Sabine and Samnite territory-and for the brigands of later days. The great tertiary plains, which slope down on both sides of the chain, and in its great southern fork, watered by innumerable streams, and by some considerable rivers-as the Arno, Tiber, and several others-clothed with exuberant fertility, except where the rivers have been permitted to form pestilential marshes, and varied by undulating hills,-seem provided by nature for the abode of great peoples, with their "tower'd cities" and "the busy hum of men," till some one, stronger than the rest in arms or influence, should unite all into a powerful state. The most remarkable of these plains are those of Etruria, Latium, and Northern Campania in the west, Apulia on the east (stretching down from the "spur" of Mount Garganus), and that of Lucania in the south, opening on to the great Gulf of Tarentum. Both physically and politically, the island of Sicily forms as natural an appendage of Italy, as the "Island of Pelops " does of Greece, the Isthmus of the latter being replaced in the former by the narrow strait or "rent," which gave a name to the town of Rhegium.* Its central mountains, which are a prolongation of the Apennines, are bordered, especially on the south and east, by a tertiary belt of unsurpassed fertility, which has already engaged our attention as the seat of great Hellenic cities. The great plains grassy hill-sides of the whole peninsula give it capabilities,

and

* Ρήγιον signifies a rent.