CHAPTER IX

The Etruscans

Etruscan Nationality

The Etruscan people, or Ras,(1) as they called themselves, present a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well as to the Greeks.  They were distinguished from these nations by their very bodily structure:  instead of the slender and symmetrical proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms.  Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian stocks.  The religion of the Tuscans in particular, presenting a gloomy fantastic character and delighting in the mystical handling of numbers and in wild and horrible speculations and practices, is equally remote from the clear rationalism of the Romans and the genial image-worship of the Hellenes.  The conclusion which these facts suggest is confirmed by the most important and authoritative evidence of nationality, the evidence of language.  The remains of the Etruscan tongue which have reached us, numerous as they are and presenting as they do various data to aid in deciphering it, occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no one hitherto succeeded in interpreting these remains, but no one has been able even to determine precisely the place of Etruscan in the classification of languages.  Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly distinguished.  In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception avoided.(2) By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations, and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this soft and melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became intolerably harsh and rugged.(3) They changed for example -ramu*af-into -ram*a-, Tarquinius into -Tarchnaf-, Minerva into -Menrva-, Menelaos, Polydeukes, Alexandros, into -Menle-, -Pultuke-, -Elchsentre-.  The indistinct and rugged nature of their pronunciation is shown most clearly by the fact that at a very early period the Etruscans made no distinction of -o from -u, -b from -p, -c from -g, -d from -t.  At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial syllable.  The aspirate consonants were treated in a similar fashion; while the Italians rejected them with the exception of the aspirated -b or the -f, and the Greeks, reversing the case, rejected this sound and retained the others —­theta, —­phi, —­chi, the Etruscans allowed the softest and most pleasing of them, the —­phi, to drop entirely except in words borrowed from other languages, but made use of the other three to an extraordinary extent, even where they had no proper place; Thetis