Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/72

reign (c. 57). But neither Herodotus nor any other ancient writer informs us anything of the original country of the Pelasgians, and all we learn from them is that they were a wandering race, colonizing, commercial and civilized. According to the statement of Dionysius, on whom I have little reliance, they were called Pelasgi from Pelargos a Stork, because they were like that bird, migratory. Why that particular bird was fixed upon for their name, or why they were not at once named therefore Pelargi, he does not tell us. Besides this derivation of the name there have been many others suggested, into the discussion of which I shall not enter, contenting myself with observing that they all appear to me equally fanciful. But I claim an equal right in the field of etymology to suggest one of my own, which appears to me more probable. We have seen that these Pelasgi were not Greeks, as they spoke a different language. At the same time they were scarcely to be styled βαρβαροι or foreigners, as they lived too much amongst them and were too much mixed up with them. They were therefore their immediate neighbours, not only in Greece but also in Asia minor whence both people had sprung. Let us then analyze the name Πελασγοι, as πελασ literally neighbours, and the other syllable formed from γη will only carry out the same idea. This seems to me so easy and natural an explanation of every difficulty, that the wonder is it has not been before suggested. The Greeks found them so much intermixed with themselves, and a people even superior in all the arts of life, that they required no other name for them than this familiar one, the original purport of which afterwards became forgotten. Whether they were respectively Lydians, Mæonians, Carians or otherwise the settlers in Greece, they were probably all of one original nationality, with different local distinctions, but all entitled to the same friendly designation. Be this as it may, the ancient Etruscans or Tyrrhenians are constantly spoken of as Pelasgi which at any rate was only another generic name for colonies from Asia minor. This then is the history of the Etruscans for which I contend. Colonists from Asia minor of a highly civilized character found their way at a very early period into Western Italy, which they found inhabited by a Celtic race, whom they reduced to subjection. It seems to me very unphilosophical and even prejudicial to confuse the student of history by a number of names as of distinct people, and so as it were to darken knowledge instead of elucidating it, when the fact is acknowledged that all the first inhabitants of Italy, whatever were their local names, whether Umbrians, Oscans, Au-