DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0038
xxxvm PROBABILITY OF THE LYDIAN ORIGIN, [intboduction.
their physiognomy, language, and peculiar customs, are in
accordance with those of the land whence they claim their
origin. Their tradition is credible only when confirmed from
other sources. But when a people, not a mere tribe, but spread
over a large extent of territory, not a nomade, semibarbarous,
unlettered race, but a nation settled for ages in one country,
possessing a Uterature and national annals, a systematic form of
government and ecclesiastical polity, and a degree of civilization
second to that of no contemporary people, save Greece,— a
nation in constant intercourse with the most polite and civilized
of its fellows, and probably with the very race from which it
claimed its descent,—when such a people lays claim traditionally
to a definite origin, which nothing in its manners, customs, or
creed appears to belie, but many things to confirm—how can we
set the tradition at nought ?—why hesitate to give it credence ?
It was not so much a doubtful fiction of poetry, assumed for a
peculiar purpose, like the Trojan origin of Rome, as a record
preserved in the religious books of the nation, like the Chronicles
of the Jews.
If this tradition of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans be
borne out by their recorded manners, and by monumental
evidence, it must entirely outweigh the conflicting and unsup-
ported testimony of Dionysius. Nay, granting him to have
spoken advisedly in asserting that there was no resemblance
between the two people in language, religion, or customs, it
were well explained by the lapse of more than a thousand years
from the traditional emigration to his day,—a period much
more than sufficient to efface all superficial analogies between
people so widely severed, and subjected to such different external
influences, and a period during which the Lydians were pur-
posely degraded by Cyrus, till they had " lost all their pristine
virtue,"4 while the Etruscans, though also subjected to a foreign
yoke, continued to advance in the arts of civilized life.5
* Herod. I. 155, 156 ; Justin. I. 7. as to the dissimilarity of language is
See Grote's Greece, III. p. 288, et sej. of no account, if Strabo's assertion be
6 In customs, however, as will be true, that in his day not a vestige re-
presently shown, there existed strong mained of the Lydian tongue, even in
analogies between the Lydians and Lydia itself. XIII. p. 631.
Etruscans. And Dionysius' statement
their physiognomy, language, and peculiar customs, are in
accordance with those of the land whence they claim their
origin. Their tradition is credible only when confirmed from
other sources. But when a people, not a mere tribe, but spread
over a large extent of territory, not a nomade, semibarbarous,
unlettered race, but a nation settled for ages in one country,
possessing a Uterature and national annals, a systematic form of
government and ecclesiastical polity, and a degree of civilization
second to that of no contemporary people, save Greece,— a
nation in constant intercourse with the most polite and civilized
of its fellows, and probably with the very race from which it
claimed its descent,—when such a people lays claim traditionally
to a definite origin, which nothing in its manners, customs, or
creed appears to belie, but many things to confirm—how can we
set the tradition at nought ?—why hesitate to give it credence ?
It was not so much a doubtful fiction of poetry, assumed for a
peculiar purpose, like the Trojan origin of Rome, as a record
preserved in the religious books of the nation, like the Chronicles
of the Jews.
If this tradition of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans be
borne out by their recorded manners, and by monumental
evidence, it must entirely outweigh the conflicting and unsup-
ported testimony of Dionysius. Nay, granting him to have
spoken advisedly in asserting that there was no resemblance
between the two people in language, religion, or customs, it
were well explained by the lapse of more than a thousand years
from the traditional emigration to his day,—a period much
more than sufficient to efface all superficial analogies between
people so widely severed, and subjected to such different external
influences, and a period during which the Lydians were pur-
posely degraded by Cyrus, till they had " lost all their pristine
virtue,"4 while the Etruscans, though also subjected to a foreign
yoke, continued to advance in the arts of civilized life.5
* Herod. I. 155, 156 ; Justin. I. 7. as to the dissimilarity of language is
See Grote's Greece, III. p. 288, et sej. of no account, if Strabo's assertion be
6 In customs, however, as will be true, that in his day not a vestige re-
presently shown, there existed strong mained of the Lydian tongue, even in
analogies between the Lydians and Lydia itself. XIII. p. 631.
Etruscans. And Dionysius' statement