One more element is to be considered there in the far south.  Our Lucanian and Bruttian and Iapygian refugees,—­themselves, or some of them, naturally the oldest people in Italy, the most original inhabitants,—­would find themselves, when they arrived there, very much de-civilized; but, because the coast is full of fine harbors, probably sooner or later in touch with settlers from abroad.  It is a part that would tempt colonists of any cultured or commercial peoples that might be spreading out from Greece or the West Asian centers or elsewhere; and so it was Magna Graecia of old, and a mixing-place of Greek and old Italian blood; and so, since, has been held by Saracens, Normans, Byzantines, and Spaniards.

The result of all this diversity of racial elements would be that Italy could only difficultly attain national unity at any time; but that once such unity was attained, she would be bound to play an enormous part.  No doubt again and again she has been a center of empire; it is always your ex-melting-pot that is.

Who were the earliest Italians?  The earliest, it least, that we can guess at?—­Once on a time the peninsula was colonized by folk who sailed in through the Straits of Gibraltar from Ruta and Daitya, those island fragments of Atlantis; and (says Madame Blavatsky) you should have found a pocket of these colonists surviving in Latium, strong enough for the most part to keep the waves of invaders to the north of them, and the refugees to the high Apennines.  Another relic of them you would have found, probably, driven down into the far south; and such a relic, I understand, the Iapygians were.

One more ethnic influence,—­an important one.  Round about the year 1000 B.C., all Europe was in dead pralaya, while West Asia was in high manvantara:  under which conditions, as I suggested just now, such parts as the Lombard Plain and Tuscany might tempt West Asians of enterprise;—­as Spain and Sicily tempted the Moslems long afterwards.  Supposing such a people came in; they would be, while the West Asian manvantara was in being, much more cultured and powerful than their Italian neighbors; but the waning centuries of their manvantara would coincide with the first and orient portion of the European one; so, as soon as that should begin to touch Italy, things would begin to equalize themselves; till at last, as Europe drew towards noon and West Asia towards evening, these West Asians of Etruria would go the way of the Spanish Moors.  There you have the probable history of the Etruscans.

All Roman writers say they came from Lydia by sea; which statement could only have been a repetition of what the Etruscans said about themselves.  The matter is much in dispute; but most likely there is no testimony better than the ancient one.  Some authorities are for Lydia; some are for the Rhaetian Alps; some are for calling the Etruscans ’autochthonous,’—­which I hold to be, like Mesopotamia, a ‘blessed