FRANCE.—IBERIAN BLOOD IN GAUL AS WELL AS THE SPANISH PENINSULA.—IBERIANS OF GASCONY, ETC.—LIGURIANS.—HOW FAR KELTIC.—BODENCUS.—INTERMIXTURE.—ROMAN, GERMAN, ARAB.—ALSATIA.—LORRAINE.—FRANCHE-COMTÉ.—BURGUNDY, SOUTHERN, WESTERN, AND NORTHERN FRANCE.—CHARACTER OF THE KELTS.—THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE.—BELGIUM.—ITS ELEMENTS.—KELTIC, GERMAN, AND ROMAN.—SWITZERLAND.—HELVETIA.—ROMANCE, FRENCH, AND GERMAN LANGUAGES.
FRANCE.—IBERIAN BLOOD IN GAUL AS WELL AS THE SPANISH PENINSULA.—IBERIANS OF GASCONY, ETC.—LIGURIANS.—HOW FAR KELTIC.—BODENCUS.—INTERMIXTURE.—ROMAN, GERMAN, ARAB.—ALSATIA.—LORRAINE.—FRANCHE-COMTÉ.—BURGUNDY, SOUTHERN, WESTERN, AND NORTHERN FRANCE.—CHARACTER OF THE KELTS.—THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE.—BELGIUM.—ITS ELEMENTS.—KELTIC, GERMAN, AND ROMAN.—SWITZERLAND.—HELVETIA.—ROMANCE, FRENCH, AND GERMAN LANGUAGES.
ITis convenient to take the ethnology of France next in order to that of Spain, because we have already seen that, when we examine the earliest populations of the two countries we shall find that theIbericstock was common to the two. Although I find no Gauls in Iberia, the Iberians in ancient Gaul were numerous; indeed, they occur in Gascony and Bearn at the present moment.
The predominant stock, however, of Gallia, as is well-known, is theKeltic, still existing, along with its ancient language, and other characteristics in Brittany.
The Iberians belonged chiefly, though notwholly and exclusively, toAquitania. In the reign of Augustus this term denoted apolitical, in that of Julius Cæsar, anethnologicalarea. Theprovincereached from the Pyrenees to the Loire; theAquitaniaof the trueAquitanifrom the Pyrenees to the Garonne.
In the present towns of Bazas, Eauze, and Auch, we have the names of the ancient Vas-ates, Elus-ates, and Ausci; besides which, the Soci-ates, the Tarus-ates, the Garumni, the Bigerriones, the Preciani, the Gari-tes, the Sabuz-ates, the Cocos-ates, the Lector-ates, and the Tarbelli occupied the present provinces of Gascony and Bearn in general. It is usual to say that these names are Iberian. This is scarcely the case. The remarkable peculiarity of them is as follows: the termination -atis Gallic, and probably the sign of the plural number, whilst the radical part is notevidentlyGallic, and, probably, not Gallic at all; or (changing the expression) whilst the Gallicinflexionis common amongst the old names of Gascony, the Gallicroots(-magus,tre-,con-, &c.) are rare; from which I infer that the geographical nomenclature of south-western France was Iberic in respect to its roots, but Gallic in respect to its form; so that the words in question are Iberic names taken from Gallic informants. Nothing, however, of great importance depends on this.
In the parts about Baignerres there was a Roman colony, that of the Convenæ; partly Gallic, partly Iberic, and partly Legionary.[4]
As were Gascony and Bearn, so were Rousillon and the greater part of Languedoc—Iberic; for the Iberi extended to the Rhone.
Along the frontier of the Iberian area there was certainly intermixture between the Aquitanians and the true Gauls, and there were also Gallic settlements, such as Hebro-magus, within the Iberian area itself. Nevertheless, Southern Gaul was Northern Spain, and Northern Spain Southern Gaul.
Provence and Dauphiné differ from Gascony and Languedoc in having had aLigurianrather than an Iberian substratum; in having received Roman influences earlier and more largely, in having been the area of the Phocæan colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, in and around which city there must have been a notable tincture of Greek blood.
Who were the Ligurians?
The Phocæan Greeks founded the colony of Marseilles; and it was not long before the parts along the coast, and to some distance inland, becameimperfectly known. When Prometheus gives to Hercules the details of his travels westwards, he says that, “You” (Hercules) “shall reach the fearless people of the Ligyes, where, with all your bravery, you shall find no fault with their warlike vigour. It is ordained that you shall leave your arrows behind. But as all the country is soft, you shall be unable to find a stone. Then Zeus shall see you in distress, and pity you, and overshadow the land with a cloud, whence a storm of round stones shall rain down. With these you shall easily smite and pursue the army of the Ligyes.” Such is the gist of a quotation from a writer so early as Æschylus, in his drama of the “Prometheus Unbound,” as given by Strabo.
These Ligyes are the Ligurians, better known as a people of Italy, and as the coastmen of the Gulf of Genoa. Southwards and eastwards they extended as far as the Arno, and westwards to the Rhone; where (as already stated) they came in contact with the Iberians. So that the ancient Ligurians were a population common to both Gaul and Italy, just as the Iberians were common to Gaul and Spain. Herodotus places Marseilles in the country of the Ligyes.
The fact of this tract being known so much earlier than the interior of Gaul, known too to the Greeks who first, and more than others, used the termKelt, confirms the view of itsnon-Gallicorigin. At any rate, it makes it either Iberian or Ligurian, and, consequently, only so farKeltic(in the modern sense of the term) as the Ligurians wereKeltæ.
This is the point now under notice. I think that the LigurianswereKelts.
In the first place, the name seems to have a meaning in the Keltic tongue; since Prichard suggests that it may have been derived fromLlygwyr,[5]which means in Welshcoastman.
In my mind it is anativename also; a point upon which Prichard expresses a doubt, since he writes that, “it does not prove that the people were Kelts, since the designation is one more likely to have been bestowed upon them by a neighbouring tribe than assumed by themselves.” Who, however, could have bestowed it? Scarcely any population of the interior, since it isGreeksfrom whom we get it, and thecoastwas the part with which they were chiefly acquainted. Had the name been a late one, and derived from Roman sources, Dr. Prichard’s inference would have been legitimate. As it is, however, we have nothing but Ligurians and Iberians from the Pyrenees to the Arno, and as it cannot be both Iberic and Keltic (in the modern sense of the word), it must, if Keltic, be Ligurian.
Against it lies the evidence of Strabo, who separates the Ligyes from the Kelts as a distinct race; differing, however, butlittle from the Kelts in their mode of life. Now with this qualification, and with the belief that the Kelts whom he contrasted with the Ligyes were, to a great extent, Iberian, I lay but little stress on the evidence of Strabo.
Against it, also, in the eyes of more than one good writer, is a very questionable etymology; which I will give in full, as a lesson of caution. Pliny says that the river Po in the Ligurian language was calledBodencus, orbottomless. Prichard suggests, in a note, that the true reading may have beenBoden-los, and asks whether anybody will venture hence to conjecture that the Ligurians were Germans? Sir Francis Palgrave, taking Prichard’s suggestion as abonâ fidereading, does this; and that with a great degree of confidence. Yet the termination -ncis found in the country of the Allobroges, or Dauphiné,e.g., Lem-incum, Durot-incum, Vap-incum, and is also Gallic,e.g., Aged-incum. It is British as well—Habita-ncum.
The reasons, then,againstthe Keltic origin of the Ligurians are thus exceptionable. Yet those in favour of it are weak. One thing, however, they must have been:a.Kelts;b.Iberians; orc.members of a wholly new, and now extinct, stock.I incline to the first of these views rather than the second, and the second rather than the third. At the same time, they were a well-marked variety; otherwise the Romans would not so invariably have separated them from the Gauls of both Gaul and Italy.
The primary population, then, of Gaul (supposing the Ligurians to have been Keltic) was of a twofold character:—
1. Iberic, in Aquitania, and
2. Keltic (in the modern sense of the term) elsewhere—the Keltic falling into three divisions:—
α. The Belgic—
β. The proper Gallic—
γ. The Ligurian (?).
The history of the displacement and intermixture is complex. Along the Ibero-Gallic frontier, or in the parts north of the Garonne, and west of the Rhone, there must have been small and partial quarrels, sufficient to create intermixture, and a gradual change of the boundaries from the earliest times. Perhaps, too, it may be added that the Gauls encroached on the Iberians rather than the Iberians on the Gauls.
Along the valley of the Rhine, or the Germano-Gallic frontier, there was the same mutual encroachment, but to a far greater degree, and the wars, of which the conquest of Ariovistus is asample, introduced German, and, perhaps Slavonic blood into Gaul in more quarters than one.
At present—
Alsatiacontains the least amount of Keltic blood of all the provinces of France, inasmuch as it is German in language, and French in respect to its political relations only. The fifth century is the date of its conquest, and it was by Germans of the High German division from Suabia and Franconia that it was reduced. Before this it was Romanized. What was it before its reduction by Rome? Many at once answer “German,” because its occupants were theTriboci, whom Tacitus calls “haud dubie Germani.” For reasons given elsewhere,[6]I believe that they were Germanized Gauls rather than true Germans.
Lorraine, originally Keltic, and afterwards Romano-Keltic, is less German than Alsatia, but more so than Champagne. Its name,Hlothringen, is German. I cannot, however, say whether the German blood in Lorraine was introduced from the north or from the south; by the High Germans of Alsatia and Franche-Comté, or the Low-Germans of Clovis.
InFranche-Comtéthe particular descent is from the Sequani, the tribe which, of all others equally far from the German frontier, was mostGermanized. For when Cæsar was in Gaul, the Sequani called in the Suevi and Marcomanni of Ariovistus, and gave up one-third of their land as the price of his tyrannical protection. Now the army of Ariovistus was mixed, and there is reason for believing that even Slavonians were to be found in it. At any rate it infused German blood into the Sequani more than into their neighbours. The process, however, of Romanizing went on all the same, until the fifth century, when the invasion that gave their names to the present province and to Burgundy took place. From which time forwards the ethnology ofFranche-Comté, or the country of theFranks, is that of—
Burgundy.—Here the Kelts were the Sequani, and the Germans, certain High-Germans of Franconia. Sir James Stephen, in his valuable “Lectures on the History of France,” draws a broad distinction between the German blood introduced by the Burgundians, and the German blood introduced by the Franks of Clovis; exaggerating, however, in my mind, the rudeness of the latter, as well as the cultivation of the former. Speaking of the Germany of Tacitus, he says, that it better suited the author to “pourtray the more striking characteristics of the Teutonic tribes collectively, than to investigate the more minute peculiarities which distinguished them from each other. Yet we cannot doubt that, even in hisday, they were far more widely discriminated in fact, than in his delineation of them, as, beyond all controversy, they were so in the age of Clovis.
“Thus, for example, the Burgundians, before their irruption to Gaul, were remarkable for their skill as artizans; and in the poems in which, not long after that event, they were described by Sidonius Apollinaris, we have the best attestation of their resemblance to the kind and simple-hearted German of our own days. Thus also the Gothic people, almost immediately after their settlement in Aquitaine, manifested a singular aptitude for a yet higher civilization. For, if St. Jerome was correctly informed, Ataulph their king seriously projected the substitution of a new Gothic for the old Roman empire; a scheme in which the character of Julius was to be ascribed to Alaric, that of Augustus being reserved for the projector himself. Euric, the successor of Ataulph, filled his court at Toulouse with rhetoricians, poets, and grammarians; and coveted (and not altogether in vain) the applause of the Italian critics for the pure Latinity of his despatches.
“The Franks, on the other hand, were a barbarous people, and their history is in fact a barbaric history. At their entrance into Gaul they were worshippers of Odin, and believed that the gates of the Walhalla rolled back spontaneouslyon their hinges to admit the warrior who had dyed, with the blood of his enemies, the battle-field on which he had himself fallen. From their settlements on the lower Rhine they had sometimes marched to the defence of the Romano-Gallic province, but more frequently and gladly to the invasion of it. Their appetite for rapine was insatiate, unrestrained, and irresistible. In war they were the prototypes of the Norman pirates of a later age, or of the West Indian buccaneers of more modern times. In peace they were the very counterpart of the North American Indians, as depicted by the early travellers in Canada; a comparison which almost every commentator on Tacitus has instituted and verified.”
Now I have great doubts about the superior civilization of the conquerors of Burgundy, Alsatia, and Franche-Comté; but these arise from a view, perhaps, peculiar to myself, of the nature of the Frank confederacies. I believe the word Frank to have distinguished the Germans who were independent of Rome from those who were in allegiance to the empire, and, consequently, that it might be borne by different divisions of the German stock, and by wholly unconnected alliances. More than this—if it separated the Romanized from the independent Germans, it separated, to a certain extent, the rude from the refined, the Pagan from the Christian. Now, ofthese two classes, the rude independent Pagans were the more likely conquerors of Burgundy and Franche-Comté; in which case the differences of their civilization is likely to have been inconsiderable. It is true that they may have been Christianized by time—but so were the Salians of Clovis. On the other hand, their contact with the undoubtedly Christian Goths of Dauphiné and Languedoc, had a truly civilizing tendency.
It was the Franks of Franche-Comté, and not the Salians of Clovis, amongst whom we find the dynasty of the Merovings: Ptolemy, at least, places theΜαροὑιγγοιin the country of the Burgundians, anterior to their passage of the Rhine and their conquest of the Gallic provinces beyond it. Hence, the trueMerovingwas the Burgundian princess Chlotilda, the wife of Clovis, rather than Clovis himself.
InSavoythe foreign intermixture has been but small; the population being, in the more mountainous parts at least, simply Romano-Keltic—and then more Keltic than Roman.
Dauphiné, Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony carry us to the Ligurian and Iberian areas.
Between the second and third Punic wars the Ligyes of Gaul were reduced, rather later than the Ligurians of Italy. They seem from the firstto have been a warlike nation. Æschylus, as has been seen, arms them against Hercules; and their brothers in the Apennines defended themselves with valour and obstinacy. The Salyes were their chief tribe. How far they extended inwards is uncertain. It is only safe to say that Provence was Ligurian, and Dauphiné Gallo-Ligurian before it became Romanized: and that the remainder of the ethnological history of the Ligurians of Gaul is nearly the same as that of the Gallic Iberians.
Next to the Spanish peninsula, the southern provinces of France were the most deeply tinctured withArabinfluences of any part of Europe.
In the parts between the Loire and Garonne, Poitou, Santonge, Limoges, and Perigord, exhibit, in a modern form, the names of the ancient Pictones, Santones, Lemovici, and Petrocorii, all of which were Gallic, though, perhaps, not so typically Gallic as the Parisii, Carnutes, Turones, and Bituriges of the Isle of France, the Orleannois, Touraine, and Berri. In these parts the admixture of Roman and Keltic blood, has been less disturbed by subsequent admixture of Arabs and Goths than elsewhere; not that even here it is pure. The Franks of the Netherlands, Lorraine, and the Franks of Burgundy and Franche-Comté must have seriously tinctured the bloodeven in these parts. Champagne, too, may be in the same category.
French Flanders, Artois, and part of Picardy are just more Romano-Keltic and less German than the French provinces of Belgium. Normandy has its peculiar and characteristic Scandinavian elements.
If France, then, be essentially and fundamentally Romano-Keltic, it is the parts of which Orleans is the centre, where the mixture is in the most normal proportions; as is shown by even the names of the provinces. Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, Provence, Gascony,—each of these indicates something either more or less Roman and Keltic than the typical and central parts of the middle Loire and Seine. Thus,—
1. Brittany is more Keltic, and consequently less Roman.
2. Normandy, is not only Romano-Keltic, but Scandinavian.
3. Flanders, more or less German.
4. Lorraine, the same.
5. Franche-Comté and Burgundy, Frank and Burgundian,i.e., German.
6. Provence, inordinately Roman; the basis being Ligurian, and the superadded elements Gothic and Arab.
7. Gascony—Roman on an Iberian basis.
It is now time to consider the physical and moral characters of the ancient Kelts. It is just possible that, from the admixture of German and other blood, the average stature of the Italians may have increased; so that the difference between a Gaul and an Italian may have been greater in the time of Cæsar than now. That the stature of the French and Germans has decreased is improbable. Be this, however, as it may, the evidence not only of the second-hand authorities amongst the classics, but of Cæsar himself, is to the effect that the Gauls when compared with the soldiers that were led against them, were taller and stouter. “The generality despise our men for their shortness, being themselves so tall.” Thus writes Cæsar. A good series of measurements from ancient graves, would either confirm or overthrow this and similar testimonies. For my own part, I am dissatisfied with them. The habit of magnifying the thews and sinews of the conquered, is a common habit with conquerors, and Cæsar had every motive for giving their full value to his Gallic conquests great as they really were. Again,—we may easily believe that both the slaves who were bought and sold, and the individual captives who ornamented the triumph were picked men; as also would be those who were “butchered to make a Roman holiday” in the amphitheatres.
Again,—differences of dress and armour have generally a tendency to exaggerate the size of the wearers; and hence it is that the Scotch Highlanders, amongst ourselves, are often considered as larger men than they really are. All who have investigated the debated question as to the stature of the Patagonians, have recognized in the bulky, baggy dress, a serious source of error in all measurements taken by the eye only.
Nevertheless, the external evidence is to the great stature of the ancient Gauls: evidence which the present size of the French slightly invalidates. As far, too, as my knowledge extends, the exhumations of the older skeletons do the same.
As to their hair, whether flaxen, yellow, or red, it waslight(ξἁνθος), rather than dark. Livy applies to it the termrutilatæsuggesting that it wasreddenedrather than simplyred, and Diodorus Siculus expressly states that it was so; artificial means being used to heighten the natural hue.
A long list of Keltic gods can be made out, if we allow to the Keltic Pantheon every deity whose name can be found in inscriptions, or whosecultushas been attributed to theGalli. But it is not safe to admit this.
It is by no means certain that even the Galliof northern Italy held a common religion with those of Gaul; and still less is it certain that the numerous tribes like the Scordisci, and others of the Tyrol, Styria, and Carniola, were Gallic; although both Roman writers call themGalli, and Greek,Galatæ. Neither are inscriptions conclusive. I doubt, indeed, whether they be evenprimâ facieevidence. We find them generally, as may be expected, in the neighbourhood of the towns. Of these many were military posts. Now the cohorts that occupied them were Dacians, Moors, Germans, Spaniards, Pannonians,—anything, in short, but Romans. What then are we to say, when an inscription to such a goddess as Isis is dug up,—as has actually been the case in Britain? Not that Isis was a British divinity, but that the garrison consisted of her worshippers. In the way of detail, however,—
HesusandTeutates, as Gallic gods, rest on the authority of Lucan.Taranis, whom he also mentions, has a further claim to notice. By supposing him to be the God ofThunder, we find his name in the present Welshtaran.
“Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diroTeutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus,Et Taranis Scythicæ non mitior ara Dianæ.”
“Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diroTeutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus,Et Taranis Scythicæ non mitior ara Dianæ.”
Belenusrests on the authority of Ausonius;and as he was worshipped in the Italian town of Aquileia, he may fairly be considered as common property to the Galli of Gaul, and the Galli of Italy. At the same time, Tertullian assigns him to theNorici, who were, probably, other than Gauls; whilst his name has a look suspiciously Slavonic, sincebelmay be the first syllable inbjelibog, thewhite god.
Ogmiusseems to be a true Gallic name, and we learn from Lucian that his attributes were intermediate to those of Hercules and Mercury.
Peninuswas, perhaps, the name of a locality rather than a deity; although Livy writesDeus Penninus. The name evidently contains the Keltic wordpen, and signifies probably some sacred mountain-top amongst the Pennine Alps.
Andortawas a goddess of victory, andEponaone of horses; the latter belonging to the Gauls of Italy.
All these may fairly be considered Keltic; though the evidence for none of them is conclusive. The names that are supplied by inscriptions—names which, like the previous ones, I take from Zeuss without having examined the details—exhibit a remarkable preponderance of the termination -enn-, orneh-. Thus we have Nehal-ennia, Ruma-nehæ, Vacalli-nehæ, Maviat-inehæ, Gesat-enæ, Etrai-enæ, Aserici-nehæ, and Leher-ennius. I can throw no light on the termination.Two other names ending in -ast, Arbog-astand Morit-ast, seem Slavonic; and, as such, are probably referable to some garrison.
Dusiushas a better claim than any word hitherto mentioned, since it exists in the present worddeuce.
It is little, then, that the minute ethnologist can add to the current description of the ancientDruidism, for by that name it is convenient to express the Paganism of Britain, in which Gaul, to a certain degree, shared. The Druid as the priest, and the Bard as the poet—such are the native names in the Gallic religion and literature. That certain deities were analogous to the Roman Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva, is expressly stated, but what names each bore, and how close the parallel ran is unknown. “Deum maxime Mercurium colunt: hujus sunt plurima simulacra, hunc omnium inventorem artium ferunt, hunc viarum atque itinerum ducem, hunc ad quæstus pecuniæ mercaturasque habere vim maximam arbitrantur. Post hunc, Apollinem et Martem et Jovem et Minervam. De his eandem fere quam reliquæ gentes, habent opinionem: Apollinem morbos depellere; Minervam operum atque artificiorum initia transdere; Jovem imperium cœlestium tenere; Martem bella regere.”
Their social constitution was a system of chiefs, retainers, and slaves; nevertheless, the full developmentof such a form of government is not easily to be reconciled with the existence of towns or cities, and such centres of regular industry as we know the ancient Gauls to have possessed. Whatever it may have been in the Belgic area, there are good reasons for believing it to have been considerably modified in the southern and central parts of Gaul.
The Gauls knew the use of the Greek alphabet, they cultivated land, they built towns. It is impossible, in the face of this, to allow them a capacity for civilization less than that of the Iberians, or even than the Italians themselves, so far as these last were not improved by Greek and Etruscan influences.
That, contrasted with the Germans, they displayed a great mobility of temper, is likely enough. To the literature and political power of Rome, after the reduction of Gaul to a province, they contributed largely—less, perhaps, than the Spaniards who gave to their conquerors Seneca and Lucan as writers, and Trajan and Adrian as rulers, but still largely: for Cornelius Gallus, in the palmy days of Roman literature, and Ausonius in its decline, as well as others, had Gallic blood in their veins.
Their aptitude for war can scarcely be measured by the early Gallic aggressions on the Republic. He is a bold man who would saythat the Teutones and Cimbri were Keltic at all, whilst, in respect to the Galli of Brennus, the Insubrians, the Cenomani, and other Gauls of the second Punic war, they were Cisalpine rather than Gallic Kelts. Still, they were Kelts—though Kelts beyond the pale of the Keltic fatherland. The same applies to the Boii.
I must now change the subject to remark that those differences of blood and pedigree, corresponding with (but, by no means, necessarily, creating) a difference of habits and civilization which the previous investigations have afforded, are only good up to the thirteenth century; so that it must not be supposed that those peculiarities (whatever they were), which the Ligurian and Iberian bases, the earlier admixture of Romans, the subsequent influence of the Goths, and the final introduction of Arab and Spanish elements evolved, exist at the present moment. If it were so, the difference between the northern and southern French would be greater than it really is. I do not say whether this is little or much. I only say that, had the original influences and intermixture taken their course, the present French of Languedoc and Provence would show certain characteristics which they have now lost, or, if they retain them, exhibit in a slighter degree. But in the thirteenth century, the north of France was turned against the south.There are good writers who put so high a value on the admixture of Arab and Hispano-Arabic influences as to have persuaded themselves that Provence and part of Gascony were on the high road to Mahometanism when the Albigensian crusade arrested their career. One would willingly believe that there was some reason for one of the most horrible campaigns of history, which might, as far as a murderous fanaticism can be put under the shadow of an excuse, palliate its atrocities. The physical historian, however, looks only to its more material effects; and these were to replace a vast proportion of the French of the southern by the French of the northern type and lineage; for this is the effect of wars of extermination, or (hoping that such have never existed in the full extent of the dire import of the word) of those conquests that either lust or fanaticism teaches to simulate them. I shall quote Sir James Stephen to show that the Albigensian Crusade was of the kind in question. He has given, with painful eloquence, the sickening details of the wars under Simon de Montfort:—
“The church of the Albigenses had been drowned in blood. Those supposed heretics had been swept away from the soil of France. The rest of the Languedocian people had been over-whelmedwith calamity, slaughter, and devastation. The estimates transmitted to us of the numbers of the invaders and of the slain, are such as almost surpass belief. We can neither verify nor correct them; but we certainly know, that, during a long succession of years, Languedoc had been invaded by armies more numerous than had ever before been brought together in European warfare since the fall of the Roman empire. We know that these hosts were composed of men inflamed by bigotry, and unrestrained by discipline,—that they had neither military pay nor magazines,—that they provided for all their wants by the sword, living at the expense of the country, and seizing at their pleasure both the harvests of the peasants and the merchandise of the citizens. More than three-fourths of the landed proprietors had been despoiled of their fiefs and castles. In hundreds of villages, every inhabitant had been massacred. There was scarcely a family of which some member had not fallen beneath the sword of De Montfort’s soldiers, or been outraged by their brutality. Since the sack of Rome by the Vandals, the European world had never mourned over a national disaster so wide in its extent, or so fearful in its character.”[7]
From the beginning of the thirteenth centuryto the present time everything has had a tendency to amalgamate the component ethnological elements of France—to make it a country of one nation, rather than the area of many varieties. Itscivilhistory, however, is the source for our knowledge of all this.
* * * *
The ethnology of Belgium is comparatively simple. Its elements are the same as those of Northern France,—Keltic, German, and Roman; for the analysis (as has perhaps been observed) grows simpler when we passed the Seine. And this was but natural, as the scene receded from the great centre of conquest and the great points of international contact.
In Belgium the Roman element is somewhat less, the occupation being somewhat more imperfect; whilst the Keltic basis is referable to the Belgic variety—a point in which Picardy, French Flanders, Artois, and part of Champagne agree.
In Belgium the German element is more uniform,i.e., it is more exclusively referable to a single division of the German stock. No Goths, no High-German Burgundians are here; but Franks of the Lower Rhine the followers of Clojo and Clovis; Franks from the Ysel orSalianFranks; Franks whose chief locality in the country that they conquered was the parts about Tournay inHainault; Franks who, if they differed at all from the Franks of Charlemagne, whose line subsequently replaced that of Clovis, did so but slightly; Franks, too, of the Platt-Deutsch division of the German stock, whose nearest representatives are the Dutch of Holland, and the Low-Germans of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg. I believe that whether the kings of these Germans ruled from Tournay or from Aix la-Chapelle, the section to which they belonged was the same, herein differing from those writers who, because Charlemagne was an Austrasian, contrast his descent somewhat strongly with that of Clovis.
To begin, however, with the earliest ethnological history of Belgium, I remark that the same question which presented itself in the case of Alsatia re-appears here. Were the oldest known occupants of the country Gauls, or Germans, or Germanized Gauls? I believe that they were the latter, though not to any great extent; for it must be remembered that Treves, Juliers, and Berg, where the modification was considerable, lie beyond the Belgic frontier. Still, as Tongres (a locality which the express evidence of Tacitus makes German) is in Belgium, and as Cæsar calls the Nervii, Pæmani and others,Germans(by which I understand that they belonged to a Germanic confederacy) the existence of a considerableand early intrusion of the tribes beyond the Rhine must be admitted. So that the Romans, when they reduced Belgium, reduced a country which, like Alsatia, although Gallic, was alsoQuasi-Germanic.
But they reduced it, and they Romanized it; and as we find the more active emperors coercing the Batavi, Chamavi, and other populations beyond the Rhine, we may reasonably suppose that they Romanized it throughout.
The analogue to the Burgundian conquest of Burgundy and Franche-Comté began in the fourth century, and not with the invasion of Clovis, as is often imagined. Constantius and Julian had to defend the frontier by land, and Carausius the Menapian by sea. And Julian was the last emperor who defended it successfully. At the beginning of the fifth century a Frank chief, not less formidable than Clovis, although less famous, Clojo, invaded Gaul, and penetrated as far as the Somme. Hainault, Brabant, and West Flanders he seems to have permanently reduced; and what Clojo left undone, Clovis completed.
In the reign of Charlemagne, the process of Germanizing went on, but soon after his death it came to a close; so that about four hundred years is the time that must be allowed for the displacementof the Romano-Belgic language of Belgium,i.e., of Antwerp, South Brabant, Limburg, West Flanders, and Hainault; to which may be added French Flanders, Artois, and the northern part of Picardy—for to this extent it seems to have gone when it attained itsmaximum. And, then, a reaction took place, and the French has encroached ever since. Artois, French Flanders, and Northern Picardy have been wholly recovered in respect to their language to France, and the Belgian provinces partially. Such is the evidence of theFlemishlanguage in Belgium, of the parts wherein it is still spoken, and of the traces of it in as far south as the frontier of Normandy.
But it is not the only native language of Belgium—I saynative, because the French as it is spoken at Brussels and the towns is, to all intents and purposes, as foreign a language as English is in Argyle or Inverness. In Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg, the speech is what is calledWalloon, the same word asWelsh, and derived from the German rootwealh, aforeigner. By this designation the Germans of the Flemish tongue denoted the Romano-Belgic population whose language was akin to the French, and whom a hilly and impracticable country (the forest districts of the Ardennes) had more or less protectedfrom their own arms. Now the Walloon is a form of the Romano-Keltic, so peculiar and independent, that it must be of great antiquity,i.e., as old as the oldest dialect of the French, and no extension of the dialects of Lorraine, or Champagne from which it differs materially. It is also a language which must have been formed on a Keltic basis, a fact which (as stated elsewhere) is a strong argument against the doctrine of the Belgæ of Cæsar and Tacitus having been Germans.
The Walloons, then, are Romano-Keltic; whereas the Flemings are Germans, in speech and in blood—either Romano-Kelts Germanized, or else absolute Germans; for upon the extent to which the Flemish language is a measure of German descent, I venture no opinion. We must remember, however, that as the Franks came from the other side of the Rhine, and from a not very distant locality, the number of females who accompanied them may have been considerable. Still, I think, that intermixture was the rule, and purity of blood the exception.
In stature, the Flemish Belgians are larger men than the French, and, in the country districts, more frequently fair-complexioned. In certain families, too, there is a mixture of Spanish blood.
The Walloons are less bulky than the Flemings, dark-eyed and black-haired.
The particular Germans who reduced the Flemish parts of Belgium, as well as the north-western parts of France, were the Salii of Saal-land on the Ysel in the parts about Zutphen and Deventer. But not alone. The Chamavi of Hamaland were with them; and, probably tribes of Holland and the Lower Rhine besides. Even there they were not altogether indigenous, as will be seen when the ethnology of Holland comes under notice.
In the foregoing account Luxembourg, and Limburg, although politically belonging to Holland, have been considered Belgian.
* * * *
Switzerland, from having a Keltic basis, comes next in order. The ancient Helvetia is at the present moment partly German, partly French, partly Italian, and partly Romance; that is, if we look to its languages and dialects only. Now as the last three tongues are derived from the Roman, we may express the character of the Swiss tongues in more general language, and reduce them to two great classes, the Gothic and the Latin. This, however, will not give us the ethnology of the country, since the blood is far more mixed than the speech. The analysis of this is complex.
In the time of Cæsar the term Helvetia coincided with the modern country of Switzerlandsufficiently closely for all practical purposes of general, perhaps for those of minute, ethnology also.
The Helvetii, also, of Cæsar were Kelts; so that the basis of the population is Keltic—although the variety of that stock was probably a very marked one.
The famousHelvetian migrationis one of the earliest and greatest facts in the Swiss history. Orgetorix, a Keltic name, is the king. The boundaries, on three sides, are well marked, but not on the fourth. The Jura range separates them from the Sequani of Franche-Comté, the Rhine from the populations of Baden and Wurtemburg (which Cæsar callsGerman), and the Rhone and the Lake of Geneva from Savoy, which was part of the RomanProvincia. The boundaries in the direction of the Tyrol are undescribed, probably because they were unascertained. An excess of population is the motive for their emigration. It is undertaken with due foresight. Two years beforehand, they buy up all kinds of vehicles and beasts of burden, and sow as much corn as the ground will allow them. Alliances are sought with the neighbouring powers. The Rauraci, Tulingi, Latobriges, and Boii, are asked to burn their towns and join the expedition. The parts about Thoulouse are their object. It is abortive. Cæsar defeats them and breaks it up; the numbersof its component members being afterwards found to be as follows:—
Of these, the number of warriors was 110,000, the rest being old men, women, and children.
But as the historian of these movements is the conqueror of Gaul, we must expect, ere long, the reduction of Helvetia to a Roman province. It takes place as a matter of course. It is Cæsar who effects it; and the process of Romanizing begins. The Roman language, however, I think, extends itself into Switzerland from three points; from Gaul, from Italy, and from the Tyrol. Such, at least, is the inference from the present dialects; since in Tessino and the Valteline we have the Italian; in Geneva and the Valais, the French; and in the Grisons, the Romance.
This last requires notice. If we follow the Rhine from the Lake of Constance, we are carried up into the narrow valley in which it rises, and here the dialect is neither French nor Italian, but a separate substantive tongue which, like them, is derived from the Latin, and accordingly,it is known as theRomanceorRumonschof the Grisons or Graubünten. The Inn must then be traced upwards in like manner, when in the valley of its head-waters, and the water-shed between it and the Rhine, the Romance will be found again. It is reduced to writing and spoken in several dialects and subdialects; so as to have all the appearance of a language of long standing.
Now this, I imagine, represents the Latin of Rhætia—i.e., of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg—rather than that of Gaul, and it was from the Tyrol and Vorarlberg, conquered in the reign of Augustus by Tiberius and Drusus, that it was introduced.
In few countries reduced by Rome must the blood on the mother’s side have been more aboriginal than in Helvetia, and in few countries is the extent to which the speech is Latin less a measure of the Latinity of the descent.
Until the fifth century Switzerland was Keltic and Latin, even as France was; and then mixture set in, partially. The Germans of Suabia and Franconia, Germans of the High-German division, Germans by whom Alsatia, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemburg, Burgundy, and Franche-Comté, were Germanized—some perfectly, some partially—extended their conquests to the present cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden, and the othercantons of the German language; the populations of which are Keltic, Roman, andGerman, those of the rest of Switzerland being simply Keltic and Roman.
Switzerland, then, is the third country in which the basis is Keltic, and the superadded elements Roman and German.
ITALY.—LIGURIANS.—ETRUSCANS.—VENETIANS AND LIBURNIANS.—UMBRIANS.—AUSONIANS.—LATINS.—EARLIEST POPULATIONS OF NORTH-EASTERN ITALY.—SOUTH ITALIANS.—ITALIAN ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS.—SICILIANS.—ELEMENTS OF ADMIXTURE.—HERULIAN.—GOTHIC.—LOMBARD.—ARAB.—NORMAN.—ANALYTICAL SKETCH OF THE POPULATION OF MODERN ITALY.
ITALY.—LIGURIANS.—ETRUSCANS.—VENETIANS AND LIBURNIANS.—UMBRIANS.—AUSONIANS.—LATINS.—EARLIEST POPULATIONS OF NORTH-EASTERN ITALY.—SOUTH ITALIANS.—ITALIAN ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS.—SICILIANS.—ELEMENTS OF ADMIXTURE.—HERULIAN.—GOTHIC.—LOMBARD.—ARAB.—NORMAN.—ANALYTICAL SKETCH OF THE POPULATION OF MODERN ITALY.
THEonly part of Italy of which the ethnology is even moderately simple is the part belonging to Sardinia, or Piedmont. Here the original occupancy was Ligurian. Eporedia, the modern Ivrea, is particularly mentioned as a Ligurian town, and, as its name has generally been considered Keltic, it has supplied one of the arguments in favour of the Ligurians being a branch of that stock. Bodencomagus, too, has already been mentioned. The ancient name of the Upper Po, Eridanus, appears to contain the same root as the name Rhodanus, and, perhaps, as Rhenus; whilst Scingo-magusand Rigo-magusgive us further instances of the evidently Keltic termination -magus. The parts south of the Po, which alone constituted the true and proper Liguria inthe political sense of the term, were reduced between the second and third Punic wars; the following being Niebuhr’s account of them:—
“The Ligurian war is not only insignificant, in comparison with others, but extremely obscure, on account of our want of an accurate geographical knowledge of the country. It has some resemblance to the present undertakings against the Caucasian tribes. The Apennines are not, indeed, as high as the Caucasus, but they offer the same advantages for their inhabitants to defend themselves. The Ligurians were ultimately annihilated, which is always the unavoidable fate of such nations, when a powerful state is bent upon their destruction. The Ligurian tribes extended in reality as far as the river Rhone; but as the Romans were chiefly concerned in securing the frontiers of Etruria, they made themselves masters only of the territory of Genoa. The wars did not extend beyond the river Varus, or the frontiers of Provence, for the hostilities against the Salyes in the neighbourhood of Massilia belong to a later period. The Ligurian tribes defended themselves and their poverty with such resolute determination, that the Romans, who could not expect any rich spoils, aimed at nothing short of extirpating them, or expelling them from their mountains. The consuls, P. Cornelius Cethegus and M. Bæbius Tamphilus,therefore transplanted 50,000 Ligurians into Samnium, where Frontinus, as late as the second century of our own era, found their descendants under the name of the Cornelian and Bæbian Ligurians. The war was brought to a close before that against Perseus. It was especially for the purpose of exercising control over Gaul that the high road of Flaminius, which went as far as Ariminum, was now continued, under the name ofvia Flaminia, as far as Placentia, and that the whole country south of the Po was so much filled with colonies, that the Keltic population disappeared.”
But the parts to the north of that river were conquered later, the Salassi of the valley of Aosta in the reign of Augustus.
How far the population which I consider to have been allied to the Ligurian on the one side and the Helvetian on the other, may have extended eastwards, is difficult to say; but the Tyrol was the centre of a new stock. This stock was the Etruscan. It is needless to say that we have now before us one of thevexatœ quœstionesof ethnology. The account of Herodotus is as follows:—
“The Lydians state amongst other things that they colonized Tyrsenia; saying thus concerning it. In the days of Atys, the son of Manes, their king, there was a severe famine over the whole ofLydia. For a while the Lydians bore up; but, afterwards, when it would not cease, they sought for a remedy. One invented one thing, one another; and then were found out dice,astragali, the top, and all other kind of games; chess alone being excepted. But when the evil would not abate, but, on the contrary, pressed all the more, the king having divided the whole body of Lydians into two parts, allotted to the one of them to stay at home, and to the other a departure from the country. With the one that had to stay at home, the king himself remained at the head; with the other his son Tyrsenus. They then went to Smyrna, and having contrived a ship and put therein all that was needful for their voyage, they sailed away in search of a living, until, having passed by many nations, they came to the Ombriki, where they settled cities, and where they remain to this day. Instead of Lydians, they changed their name to that of the king’s son, who led them, and, taking this, were called Tyrseni.”—I. 94.
Few passages of antiquity are better known than this, and the criticism which has been bestowed upon it is proportionate to the difficulty of the question upon which it bears. Niebuhr objected to it on negative grounds; or rather, he affirmed the opinion of Dionysius of Halicarnassus who had done so before him; as Xanthus,a native Lydian, and an historian as well, had said nothing about this Tyrsenian migration. And this objection may be strengthened. The statement that the Etruscans of Tuscany called themselvesTyrseniis inaccurate. The native name wasRasena; andTyrseniwas only what their neighbours called them. Yet, according to the Herodotean account, if one name ought to be more national than another, that name was the one derived from their princely leader—Tyrsenus. The stoppage, too, of the expedition at Smyrna, brings the date of the migration inconveniently low.
Prichard admits that “his (Dionysius’s) arguments weigh heavily against the credibility of this story.” For reasons too lengthy to be given here, I wholly disbelieve the Lydian tradition. On the contrary, I lay what many may consider undue stress upon the account of Livy, who says that “the dominion of the Tuscans was widely extended before the prevalence of the Roman arms; their power was predominant on the two seas which embrace Italy on both sides. Of this the names given to these branches of the Mediterranean afford a proof; for the nations of Italy have given to one of these seas the name of Tuscan, from the common appellation of the people, and to the other that of Adriatic, derived from Adria, a Tuscan colony. The Greeks term them Tyrrhenianand Adriatic. The Etruscans, in either territory, possessed twelve cities. Their first settlements were on this side of the Apennines on the lower sea; they afterwards sent out as many colonies as the original country contained principal towns, and these colonies occupied all the country beyond the Po, as far as the Alps, except the corner belonging to the Veneti. The same people, doubtless, gave origin to some of the Alpine nations, particularly to the Rhæti; who, by the nature of the country which they occupy, have been rendered barbarous, and retain nothing of their ancient character, except their language, and that in a corrupt state.”
The analysis of this extract will verify its importance. The last sentence contains a statement in the way of evidence, and an opinion in the shape of an inference. I admit the former, and demur to the latter. The statement as to the language of the Rhæti being Etruscan, is that of an author whose advantages of time, place, and circumstances were great. As a native of Padua he was as well-placed for knowing how the Rhætian differed from the Latin as a Lowland Scot is for giving evidence to the distinct character of the Gaelic. On the other hand, he was the adviser and reviewer of an antiquarian work of the Emperor Claudius on the very subject of Etruscan history; so that, his testimonyon this point, is that of no common author. He speaks to what he had the means of knowing, and he speaks to a cotemporary fact.
But the inference from this similarity of speech is a different matter; one that the modern investigator, with a wider knowledge of the general phenomena of ethnological distribution, may venture to correct. The occupation of a mountain-range by the inhabitants of a plain country is a reversal of the usual order of events. It is far more likely that the mountaineers should have become refined under the influences of a fertile soil, milder climate, and an enlarged commerce, than that the Etruscans of Etruria should have become rude and barbarous. After all, however, the question is only one of degree. It is no opinion of Livy’s that the Rhætian Alps were colonized from the Etrurians of Tuscany. Their occupants must have been derived from the plains at their foot, from the Northern Etrurians of the Venetian territory and Lombardy; and whether these extended a little more or a little less in the direction of the Tyrol is unimportant. The primary fact is, that, according to the only cotemporary evidence existing, the Valley of the Adige was as Etruscan as the Valley of the Arno.
How far the Etrurians south of the Tyrol wereindigenous populations, or how far they were intrusive conquerors, is difficult, perhaps impossible, to determine. It is difficult, too, to say where they came in contact with the Ligurians, where they first encroached on the Umbrians, and what boundary separated them from the Venetians and Liburnians. Perhaps, we may give them all Lombardy, the western third of the Venetian territory, Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Ferrara, I think that in all these parts they were intrusive conquerors, and,à fortiori, that they were intrusive conquerors in Tuscany. In Ferrara, and the parts due north of the mouth of the Po, they were, for reasons which will appear in the sequel,necessarilyso. In Campania they were comparatively recent colonists.
The western third of the Venetian territory may easily have been Etruscan, Rhætian, or Etrusco-Rhætian; the other two-thirds wereLiburnian, orVenetian, the country of the Veneti and Liburni. The affinities of these populations, which were closely allied to each other, was with the Illyrians of Dalmatia. In other words, it was only in a political point of view that they were Italians at all. For some of the higher questions of ethnology, however, theLiburniandVenetiare tribes of exceeding importance.
Now, if we are right in supposing the Ligurians to have been Kelts, the earliest historical occupantsof Lombardy, Etruscans, and the Liburnians and Venetians members of a distinct stock, we have to go far towards the south before we find the population with which the ideas suggested by the termItalianare connected; before we find a language allied to the Latin, or before we find a civilization and polity akin to that of the Romans. As far as we have gone hitherto, the nations of the Po and Arno are as little Italian as the Basques are Castilian. They have been the nation notout ofwhich, but inspite ofwhich Italy became the country of the Italian language. No immediate affinities have yet been found for Rome.
Language will be the chief test; and of the languages allied to the Latin the most northern were the Umbrian and the Latin itself; the former on the east, the latter on the west coast; the former spoken as far north as the mouth of the Po (in lat. 45°), the latter no further than that of the Tiber (in lat. 42°).
The particular division of those ancient Italian populations of which the language was Umbrian rather than Latin or Oscan, occupied, at the beginning of the historical period, the present districts of Urbino and Perugia, but as there is strongprimâ facieevidence of their original area having been much wider, as well as traditions (if not historical records) of the Umbrians having sufferedconsiderable displacement both on the north and west, in the direction of Lombardy, and in the direction of Tuscany, Ferrara, the Romagna, parts of Bologna and Tuscany may be added to the Umbrian area in its oldest form. Southwards, too, it may be carried to the March of Ancona, or the northern part of the Upper Picentine. The ancient Umbrians consisted of separate tribes, of which the one first known to the Romans was that of the Camertes. Yet they were, at the earliest times, the cultivators of the soil, and the builders of cities; and as the Umbrians, in general, passed for the oldest occupants, their capital Ameria, was one of the oldest cities of Italy. Pliny gives the date of its foundation as 381 years before the foundation of Rome.
The Umbrians here meant are the people who used the language of what are known as the Eugubine Inscriptions, so called from the place of their discovery, Gobbio, the ancient Iguvium; which the researches of Grotefend and others have shown to be undeniably akin to the Latin.
From the famous Sabines, in the strict sense of the word, and from the Sabine population in its purest form, the Italians who may best claim a descent are those occupants of that part of the states of the church which lies due north of the Campagna di Roma, and is bounded by the Tiber, the Teverone, the Nera, and the Apennines,the country people of the parts about Narri, Otricoli, and Rieti. The Campagna di Roma is pre-eminentlyLatin.
For the north-western Neapolitans in the Upper Abruzzo, the descent is from the southern Piceni, the Vestini, the Frentani, the Peligni, the Marsi, and other less important tribes, which it is difficult to distribute,i.e., to say, how far they approached the Umbrian type in the north, or the Samnite, in the centre of Italy. It is difficult, too, to say whether some of them were Latin or Oscan most.
All this is difficult, but, except to the minute ethnologist, unimportant. It is enough to remember that when we reach the ancient Samnium and Campania, the type has changed, at least, in respect to language; for the speech is neither Umbrian nor Latin, though the detail of the differences and agreements between the Samnite and Campanian dialects is difficult.
The language itself is the Oscan, or Opican, spoken at different times as far north as the neighbourhood of Rome, and as far south as Bruttium; where, however, it was not indigenous. It was common to Samnium and Campania, but not to Lucania and Apulia,originally. The general name for the nations that spoke it will beAusonian.
The Oscan is known to us from inscriptions,and is, at the least, as closely allied as the Umbrian to—
The Latin.—I think the Latin was the language of themore southern of the earliestinhabitants of Etruria; so that at the time of the foundation of Rome, important as it was destined to become afterwards, it was in the position of the Cornish of Cornwall about three centuries ago. It may also be compared with the modern Frisian of Friesland, a tongue spoken at present over a small and unimportant area, but one which was once spread far and wide over northern Germany. If the Welsh were to reconquer England, or the Frisians Germany, the phenomenon which I imagine to have been presented by the history of Rome would be repeated. A people conquered up to a certain point react on their conquerors, vanquish them, and a fourth of the world besides. This opinion is, of course, the result of general ethnological reasoning, rather than the testimony of historians; yet I am not aware of any undoubted fact that it opposes. It stands or falls by the phenomena it explains. The chief of these is the peculiar character of the Latin language.
Is any one prepared to consider it the result of an intermixture of two or more dialects?
Or to limit its original area to a district not twenty miles across?
For myself I do neither one nor the other. I look upon it as a separate and independent mode of speech, even as the Umbrian and the Oscan, and, I cannot think that the Seven Hills of Rome were sufficient to constitute the area of its development. Yet to these it must be limited; for the Etruscan reached below Veii, the Oscan to the neighbourhood of Ardea and Præneste, and the Sabine below Cures; and it must be remembered that, however like the two dialects may have been, theSabine was not Latin.
The Etruscans of Tuscany were an intrusive and foreign population(if this be not admitted the reasoning on it falls to the ground), and theearlier tribes that they dispersed were the Italians of the Latin type; for assuredly, if such Italians, other than those of Latium, ever existed it is in the parts north of the Tiber that they are to be sought in the first instance; since it is there that the evidence of displacement is strongest. Something earlier than the Etruscans of Etruria must have existed in the Patrimonio di San Pietro and the southern part of Tuscany, and these, I imagine to have been Latins—just as Devonshire was once Cornish, and would have been so again, had the Cornishmen been to England, what the Romans were to Italy.
At the same timesomeextension southwards and eastwards must be allowed; since tradition,perhaps history, makes both the Sabines and the Volscians more or less intrusive. The main extension, however, of the populations of the Latin type was Etruria.
And now, before we go to Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, we must revert to the parts on the Lower Po, the parts which, at the beginning of the historical period, were occupied by Etruscans, more or less displaced by Gauls—partially, at first, wholly, afterwards; the Gauls themselves being about to be superseded by the Romans.
A statement has already been made to the effect that in Ferrara and the country northwards, the Etruscans were necessarilyintrudersrather than aboriginal inhabitants. The reasons for this statement were reserved. They will now be given.
The earliest populations of the Lower Po must have come under conditions which,unless we suppose them to have been intermediate to the Umbrians and Liburnians, the ancient Etruscans (unlesstheywere themselves similarly intermediate) did not meet. They must have connected the languages allied to the ancient tongues of Central Italy, with those of ancient Noricum—the former being (as is admitted and generally known) allied to the Latin, the latter (as is assumed for the present, but as will be supported by reasons in the sequel) being Slavonic and allied to theServian,i.e., just what they are now, only in an older stage.
Now, whoever admits the validity of the valuable philological researches of those scholars, who, by showing the extent to which languages apparently as different as the German, the Greek, the Latin, the Lithuanian, or the Russian, are essentially cognate, have reduced the leading tongues of Europe to a single great class, falling, after the manner of the classes in zoology and botany, into definite divisions and subdivisions—a class which, though somewhat inconveniently denominated Indo-European, is still, as far as it goes, a true and natural group—must see the necessity of bringing the languages thus allied into as close geographical contact as possible; since the divisions to which they, respectively, belong, are the two most allied members of the class in question. For that the Sarmatian and classical tongues are nearer each other than the classical and German, the classical and Keltic, notwithstanding the opinions of several eminent scholars to the contrary, is a safe assertion; perhaps it is also the preponderating opinion.
To connect, therefore, the areas where languages thus allied are spoken, by areas belonging to transitional and intermediate populations is an ethnological necessity; and, however much subsequentchanges may have obliterated such areas of connexion, however early those changes may have occurred; however complete they may have been; and however much they may have been followed up by others, the original continuity must,at one time or other, earlier or later, have had an existence.
Unless we admit this, we must suppose that similar names for similar objects, and similar inflections for similar moods, tenses, and cases, have been developed independently of community of origin; a doctrine upheld by few, and one which would require the most transcendental philology to support it; a doctrine which, without condemning as unreasonable, we may fairly say has never much influenced the current doctrine of ethnologists.
Admitting it, however, we must recognise a long series of difficult problems; problems that have so rarely been dealt with as to be considered wholly new and foreign; problems that occur whenever two allied tongues are separated from each other by any form of speechother than intermediate. The languages thus related may be ever so like, or ever so unlike; but as long as they are liker to each other than those which intervene, the problem in question will recur,viz., the reconstruction of the state of things that existed before the original separation, andwhich is implied by the existing points of similarity.
It occurs in Great Britain. No matter how unlike the Scotch Gaelic and the Welsh may be, they are more like than the English that lies between them.
It occurs, as will soon be seen, in the ethnology of Greece.
It occurs in the question before us; leading to the inference that if both the Keltic of the Cisalpine Gauls, and the Etruscan of Circumpadane Etrurians were less unequivocally Indo-European than the Slavonic of the Norici and the Umbrian of the Umbri, the original occupants of the intervening area must have been neither Gauls nor Etrurians, but one of four things—
1. Members of the class to which the Umbrians belonged—
2. Members of the class to which the Norici belonged—
3. Partly Norici and partly Umbrians—
4. Transitional populations sufficiently different from each to constitute a third class, but sufficiently allied to each to be more Norican or more Umbrian than aught else.
Such is the way in which here, as elsewhere, we must attempt the reconstruction of what may be calledareas of original connection.
In the present case, then, north-eastern Italywas originally divided between the true Italians, akin to the Umbri, and the extinct or modified Slavonians of Liburnia and the country of the Veneti.
Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, to which we may now attend, I imagine, in the earliest times, to have been occupiedby the ancestors of the Greeks, a doctrine to which I direct the careful consideration of scholars; since it implies a great change in all our preconceived opinions, and not only makes the Hellenes of Greece as foreign to Hellas, as the Anglo-Saxons were once to England, but deduces them from Italy, and that by means of amaritimemigration—a maritime migration which implies not only that they were a population foreign to the Greek soil, but that their descendants were a mixed stock; since no mode of migration is less favourable to the purity of the migrant population than a sea-voyage, where space is limited and females are an incumbrance. Such was, undoubtedly, the origin of the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Ægean Islands. Such, I believe, to have been the origin of the Greeks of Peloponnesus and Northern Hellas.
The observations on the relation between the Slavonic and Latin languages have prepared the way to this hypothesis, wherein the necessity offinding a geographical connection between cognate forms of speech recurs.
Now the connection between the Greek and Latin languages is a fact that few have denied, and no one has explained. Unless we derive one from the other, we must refer both to some common source. But the locality of this mother tongue is difficult to fix—so difficult that no satisfactory doctrine concerning it has ever been exhibited. Greece is an eminently small area, and Italy is of no great size; for it must be remembered that the ancient country of the nations whose language was allied to the Latin, and, through the Latin, to the Greek, are not found far north of the Tiber, at the beginning of the truly historical period. The Valley of the Arno was Etruscan; the Valley of the Po, Gallic, Etruscan, and Liburnian; so that the northern boundary of the more western of the two classical languages was the Tiber, and that of the most eastern one the Ambracian Gulf—for farther than this it is not safe to carry Ancient Greece. Perhaps it cannot be carried so far.
Be this, however, as it may, the scholar who recognises the fundamental affinity between the Greek and Latin languages, and at the same time requires either anoriginal geographical continuityor aseries of migrationsto account for it, has a vast mass of difficulties to deal with: and Icannot think that these have ever been fairly met. The intervening area which lies between the Hellenes and Italians is of no ordinary magnitude. It is not only larger than either Greece or Italy separately, but larger than both put together. It is this if we give it the most favourable conditions imaginable. It is this if we suppose that, on the head of the Adriatic Gulf, there existed in early times a population from which the Italians on one side, and the Greeks on the other, are descended—at the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and no where else.
I limit this hypothetical population to a small area, because, as no trace of its existence can be found, the smaller it is supposed to have been, the more easily its extinction is accounted for; and I place it in a locality equidistant to Greece and Italy, because, by so doing, the amount of its extension is diminished. The more distant we make it, the more improbable that extension becomes; and the larger it is, the more improbable its disappearance. I have put it, then, under the most favourable conditions. Yet, even here, its position is eminently doubtful. The first nations which we meet with in these quarters are the Liburnians; and few have a less claim to be considered either Greek or Italian, or, yet, intermediate to the two.
The bolder doctrine is the assumption of whathas been called The Thraco-Pelasgic stock. This maintains that the extinct populations and languages of Thrace, Mœsia, and Pannonia were intermediate to those of the two peninsulas, and that, by a sort of divarication, the western extension of their southern members peopled Italy, and the eastern, Greece. This view has the advantage of being difficult to refute—since it is the current belief that the original languages of the three countries in question are extinct, and that, as nothing is known about them, it is as easy to say that they were the mother tongues of the Greek and Latin as aught else. The assumed displacements, however, are enormous; besides which, the ancient Thracians must have been more Greek than were the ancient Italians; which is unlikely.
But the great difficulty in fixing a locality for this Thraco-Pelasgic, or Helleno-Latin language (call it what we will) lies in a reason which the reader of the first chapter of this book may, perhaps, anticipate. It lies in the existence of the Albanian language; a fact, which I said, on the onset, was one of such importance as to require being treated as a special and separate preliminary to the ethnology of Greece and Italy, as well as on its own merits. Whence came this remarkable tongue, and whence the populations who speak it? For a long time both were consideredrecent introductions,—introductions from Caucasus, perhaps, or from some other locality equally plausible. But this origin is no longer admitted by any competent investigator; and the modern Skipetar, or Albanians, are now looked upon as the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, and of such Epirots as were not truly Greek. So that the Thraco-Pelasgic hypothesis is materially weakened by the inconvenient locality, and the impracticable antiquity of this nation. So awkwardly does it lie, that it fills up full two-thirds of the area required for the hypothetical tongue in question.
Hence the line of such transitional populations as, by connecting Greece and Italy, account for the ethnological affinities of their respective occupants, must not be a straight one. On the contrary, it must trendroundthe Albanian country,viâMacedon, Thrace, Servia, Croatia, and Carniola.
The assumption of a stream of population from Asia Minor across Turkey, Servia, and the parts to the north of the Adriatic is the Thraco-Pelasgian doctrine modified; since it deduces both tongues from a common source.
The assumption of a similar stream across the islands of the Ægean does the same. Yet each is beset with difficulties. If one fact be better supported than another, it is that the Ægeanislands and the Asiatic coast were peopled from Greece rather thanvice versâ.
So serious, then, are the difficulties involved in the notion of either a continuous Helleno-Italian population originally extended from Greece to Italy but subsequently displaced, or an isolated intermediate locality from which both Hellenes and Italians were given-off as colonies, that I would rather believe that the likeness between the Greek and Latin languages proved nothing more than is proved by the presence of Norman-French words in English (viz., simple intermixture and intercourse) than admit it. I do not ask the reader to go thus far. I only request him to compare the size of the Greek and Italian areas with the size of the parts between them, which are neither one nor the other. This will lead him to the threshold of the difficulties involved in the usual views as to theorigin of the Hellenic population within Hellas itself; and, provided that he be willing to examine patiently rather than reject hastily, an apparent paradox, it will also prepare him for a train of reasoning of which the result will be a Greece, or Hellas, as different from the Greece or Hellas of the current historians, as England is different from Britain. By which I mean that, if, by the termGreecewe denote the present kingdom of King Otho, irrespective of its population, and with a view only to the portionof the earth’s surface that it constitutes, the Hellenes will come out Greek, just as the Anglo-Saxons are British,i.e., not at all. Instead of this, the true and primitive Greeks will be the analogues of the now extinct or modified Britons of Kent and Northumberland, the Hellenes being those of the Angle, Frisian, and other Germanic conquerors of our island.
But to catch it in its full clearness, the point of view from which the physical history of the Hellenes is to be contemplated, the critic should go somewhat further than this, and attempt his own reconstruction of the state of those European populations which existed when the Greek and Latin languages, with their several points of likeness and difference, were first developed.
Let him try to do this by assuming that the necessary movements and displacements were made byland, and he will find that it must be by ringing changes upon such suppositions as the following—