DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0037
introduction.] POPULAR TRADITIONS OF THE ORIGIN. xxxvii
The reader, when he perceives how many-sided is this
question, will surely thank me for not leading him deeply into
it, yet may hardly like to be left among this chaos of opinions
without a guiding hand. Amid the clash and conflict of such a
host of combatants, who shall attempt to establish harmony ?—
and where there are " giants in the land," who shall hope to
prevail against them ?
I confess I do not perceive that the crowd of authorities who
maintain the Lydian origin of the Etruscans have been put hors
de combat by the dictum of Dionysius. There seems to be life
in them yet. They clearly represent the popular traditions,
not of the Romans only, but of the Etruscans also, for what was
current on such a matter among the former, could not have
been opposed to the traditions of the latter. Nay, we have it
on record that the Etruscans claimed for themselves a Lydian
origin. Tacitus tells us that in the time of Tiberius, deputies
from Sardis recited before the Roman senate a decree of the
Etruscans, declaring their consanguinity, on the ground of the
early colonization of Etruria by the Lydians.2 This popular
tradition might not of itself be decisive of the question, but
when it is confirmed by a comparison of the recorded customs
and the extant monuments of the two people, as will presently
be shown, it comes with a force to my mind, that will not
admit of rejection.3
When a tribe like the Gypsies, without house or home, with-
out literature or history, without fixed religious creed, but
willing to adopt that of any country where their lot may be
cast, with no moral peculiarity beyond their nomade life and
roguish habits—when such a people assert that they come from
Egypt or elsewhere, we believe them in proportion as we find
observes, does not make the analogy native Lydian, and cannot be entitled
less remarkable, for there is no proof to more credit than the truthful his-
that this mixture is not legitimate. torian of antiquity, whose great merit
2 Tacit. Ann. IV. 55. is the simple, trusting fidelity with
3 The argument of Dionysius rests on which he records what he heard' or
the authority of Xanthus ; but why saw. Besides there is a doubt of the
should he be preferred to Herodotus ? genuineness of the works attributed to
They were contemporaries, or nearly so. Xanthus, as Athenseus plainly shows.
Xanthus was a Greek of Sardis, not a Deipnos. XII. c. 3, p. 515.
The reader, when he perceives how many-sided is this
question, will surely thank me for not leading him deeply into
it, yet may hardly like to be left among this chaos of opinions
without a guiding hand. Amid the clash and conflict of such a
host of combatants, who shall attempt to establish harmony ?—
and where there are " giants in the land," who shall hope to
prevail against them ?
I confess I do not perceive that the crowd of authorities who
maintain the Lydian origin of the Etruscans have been put hors
de combat by the dictum of Dionysius. There seems to be life
in them yet. They clearly represent the popular traditions,
not of the Romans only, but of the Etruscans also, for what was
current on such a matter among the former, could not have
been opposed to the traditions of the latter. Nay, we have it
on record that the Etruscans claimed for themselves a Lydian
origin. Tacitus tells us that in the time of Tiberius, deputies
from Sardis recited before the Roman senate a decree of the
Etruscans, declaring their consanguinity, on the ground of the
early colonization of Etruria by the Lydians.2 This popular
tradition might not of itself be decisive of the question, but
when it is confirmed by a comparison of the recorded customs
and the extant monuments of the two people, as will presently
be shown, it comes with a force to my mind, that will not
admit of rejection.3
When a tribe like the Gypsies, without house or home, with-
out literature or history, without fixed religious creed, but
willing to adopt that of any country where their lot may be
cast, with no moral peculiarity beyond their nomade life and
roguish habits—when such a people assert that they come from
Egypt or elsewhere, we believe them in proportion as we find
observes, does not make the analogy native Lydian, and cannot be entitled
less remarkable, for there is no proof to more credit than the truthful his-
that this mixture is not legitimate. torian of antiquity, whose great merit
2 Tacit. Ann. IV. 55. is the simple, trusting fidelity with
3 The argument of Dionysius rests on which he records what he heard' or
the authority of Xanthus ; but why saw. Besides there is a doubt of the
should he be preferred to Herodotus ? genuineness of the works attributed to
They were contemporaries, or nearly so. Xanthus, as Athenseus plainly shows.
Xanthus was a Greek of Sardis, not a Deipnos. XII. c. 3, p. 515.