to Sardinia.  It came also to pass that in the days of Atys, son of Manes, a famine broke out and raged throughout Lydia:  the king, unable to provide food for his people, had them numbered, and decided by lot which of the two halves of the population should expatriate themselves under the leadership of his son Tyrsenos.  Those-who were thus fated to leave their country assembled at Smyrna, constructed ships there, and having embarked on board of them what was necessary, set sail in quest of a new home.  After a long and devious voyage, they at length disembarked in the country of the Umbrians, where they built cities, and became a prosperous people under the name of Tyrseni, being thus called after their leader Tyrsenos.*

* Herodotus, whence all the information of other classical writers is directly or indirectly taken.  Most modern historians reject this tradition.  I see no reason for my own part why they should do so, at least in the present state of our knowledge.  The Etrurians of the historical period were the result of a fusion of several different elements, and there is nothing against the view that the Tursha—­one of these elements—­should have come from Asia Minor, as Herodotus says.  Properly understood, the tradition seems well founded, and the details may have been added afterwards, either by the Lydians themselves, or by the Greek historians who collected the Lydian traditions.

The remaining portions of the nations who had taken part in the attack on Egypt—­of which several tribes had been planted by Ramses III. in the Shephelah, from Gaza to Carmel—­proceeded in a series of successive detachments from Asia Minor and the AEgean Sea to the coasts of Italy and of the large islands; the Tursha into that region which was known afterwards as Etruria, the Shardana into Sardinia, the Zakkala into Sicily, and along with the latter some Pulasati, whose memory is still preserved on the northern slope of Etna.  Fate thus brought the Phonician emigrants once more into close contact with their traditional enemies, and the hostility which they experienced in their new settlements from the latter was among the influences which determined their further migration from Italy proper, and from the region occupied by the Ligurians between the Arno and the Ebro.  They had already probably reached Sardinia and Corsica, but the majority of their ships had sailed to the southward, and having touched at Malta, Gozo, and the small islands between Sicily and the Syrtes, had followed the coast-line of Africa, until at length they reached the straits of Gribraltar and the southern shores of Spain.  No traces remain of their explorations, or of their early establishments in the western Mediterranean, as the towns which they are thought—­with good reason in most instances—­to have founded there belong to a much later date.  Every permanent settlement, however, is preceded by a period of exploration and research, which may last