even the more ancient mode of inclosing the remains in a sarchophagus had been devised. "We condescended at last to approach these rocks, that we might examine them more closely, and found beneath each engraved door, if I may use the expression, an open one, six or eight feet We met with We shall now bring before our readers another species of sepulchre, one more im- lower, which led into the burial chamber. It would appear that these cavern mouths had formerly been mediately connecting Etruria with the East covered up with earth; and that nothing remained than any we have yet seen. After leaving above ground but the smooth face of the rock, with Agylla, our authoress went to visit the its false Egyptian door and narrow cornice. We monuments which were said to be visible at entered several of these sepulchres. Of those we Castel d'Asso, and which have been hither- did enter the greater part consisted of a single low to almost unknown to the literati of Europe. chamber, and the roof was hewn out of the rock, It is believed, with much probability, to be two chambers, the inner one being lower than the and was either vaulted or flat; some consisted of the site of the ancient Voltumna, the pre-outer. Almost all, if not every one of these cise position of which has been hitherto caverns, had a ledge round it; sometimes grooved, unknown, and which was the great gather- for vases or other ornaments, at others merely for ing place of the Etruscan chiefs. Here it sarcophagi; and in some instances with stones was that their great national assembly was laid across the ledge, on which the uncoffined body held every year, for all purposes, whether had been placed, like the grave of the Larthia, at Agylla. The further we advanced, and the more of politics or religion, if, at these early we saw, the stronger was the impression which times, a distinction can be drawn between these caverns made upon us, and the more solemn them. Here, too, was the temple of Vol- and exalted became our ideas, as to the grand and tumna, the protecting divinity of their race magnificent conception which had first dedicated and country, though the precise spot on them to the memories of those whose fame they which it stood can be no longer ascertain- were intended to render immortal. ed, if it be not that on which the oratory of two or three that were very little injured. They San Giovanni now stands, and which has were large and perfect in form, and deeply hewn, from time immemorial been a place of de- their very simplicity. About a quarter of a mile and we thought them truly noble monuments from votion to all the neighboring country. The from where we had first detected the hand of art, monuments at Castel D'Asso bear a strong we began to perceive deep regular lines of inscripresemblance to those of the Egyptian kings tion in the rocks. The letters were a foot high, at "Biban el Melek," near Thebes, and and sometimes chiselled two inches deep in the consist of two rows of sepulchral chambers, stone; they were all in the oldest Etruscan chacut out of the solid rock. These chambers tance, perhaps even from the other side of the racter, and evidently intended to be read at a disface each other, like the sides of a long and valley. We were shown one or two, which on magnificent street, and extend about a mile account of the difficulty of access we did not aton each side of the steep valley, in the mid- tempt to enter, but which have an upper chamber dle of which rise the rock and castle from above the vault, ascended by a spiral staircase cut which it derives its name. They would be in the rock. In the inside of some we saw the relike the tombs of Petra, described by La-mains of a very narrow cornice, cut in the stone, borde, but for the sculptured figures with which the latter are adorned. Unlike that of Petra, where not a blade of grass is to be seen, the Valley of Castel D'Asso is so overrun with trees and underwood that the ruins are not immediately perceived, and Mrs. Gray was at first about to turn back in despair; but we shall allow her to describe her feelings on the occasion. "We walked on about twenty yards, and then sat down to try and make out if there really was any thing remarkable within our view. We walked on twenty more, and then began to copy what we saw. We walked on twenty more, and we fairly fell into ecstasies worthy of Orioli or Marini, or any other scavant who may have written upon Castel d'Asso. They [meaning her guides] had their revenge. Ay,' said one guide, this is just the way Signor Dodwell went on. He was a learned Englishman, who visited this place twenty years ago. He at first saw nothing, and then he began to draw, and then he measured, and then he talked, and then he held up his hands like you!' of them the roof itself had some ornamental squares. and going all round beneath the roof; and in one The fortress is seen from all the tombs that we entered; and, indeed, even commanded and protected the sacred gorge. We could not help thinking it probable that the sepulchres in this glen were all the tombs of noted warriors, laid in front of the castle. Those of the centre might be of kings and These valleys of hallowed dust, these cliffs which statesmen, those nearer the temple of high-priests. were supposed to eternize the names and deeds of the mighty, whose spirits had fled, give rise to noble ideas; and so much did they grow upon us the more we considered them ;-and so profound was the impression they left, that at this moment I feel as I did before we set off to visit them, that I had rather have seen the glens of Castel d'Asso than any other spot in Europe, except Rome." These extracts may give the reader some idea of these monuments of an extinct people; and even those who may not have it in their power to consult the original work of Mrs. Gray, and the plates by which it is illustrated, will admit that they are well enti tled to the attention of the learned world. | bors, and compelled them so often to abanEven previously to the discovery of these don their well-tilled fields and seek more remarkable remains, the Etruscans occu- peaceful settlements elsewhere, that their pied a distinguished place in early Euro. very name became synonymous with wanpean history; and the evidence which derer, and was used to designate the man these monuments present of their civili- who had neither a home nor a residence in zation and refinement, has but deepened the land. A branch of this wandering peothe interest with which we regard a people ple, the legend says, set sail for the shores so singular, powerful, and enlightened, as of Italy; and after many perils by sea and they must once have been. They must land, despite the opposition of the natives, have had a literature, or at least a written and after many a reverse of fortune, suc. language, if we are to judge from their re- ceeded at length in finding a resting-place mains; they must have been wealthy and in the territory of the Siculi. They built luxurious, if we may infer from the repre- the cities of Agylla and Pisa, Saturnia and sentations depicted on their walls; their Alsion, and sowed the seeds of that future streets must once have been lined with the eminence, which was attained by their sucbusy hum of industry and commerce; and cessors and conquerors the Etruscans.we know that their sway extended from This vague tradition does not assume the Genoa to Venice, and from Naples to the consistency of history, but supported as it Alps. What was their origin? How were is by the testimony of later times, and by their wealth and knowledge acquired the monuments of remote antiquity which ?And how has that knowledge been subse- Agylla itself affords, it will justify us in asquently destroyed, and destroyed so utter- serting that the Pelasgian migration into ly, as to leave scarely a memorial behind, Italy, must be something more than a lesave those which the persevering zeal of gend, and that this city must have been the speculator and the antiquary have ex-among the original seats of Etrurian civilitracted from their tombs ? zation; that before the Trojan war it must have attained a considerable degree of refinement, and prior to the domination of the Etruscans, was probably inherited by an earlier race of people. But our purpose is with the Etruscans. By some, and more especially the Greek writers, they have been confounded with the Tyrrhenians, from whom they were altogether distinct. The Romans called them indiscriminately Etrusi and Trusci, and their country Etru ria. By themselves they were called Rasenæ, and their country Rasena. Pliny derives their origin from the Rhetian Alps, while others would have us believe, that the course of their migration was in an op. posite direction. Müller and Micali, with There is no part of ancient history more obscure than the migrations of those early races of men, by which the world was first possessed and peopled. The origin of the Etruscans, as of the others, can at best be nothing but a plausible conjecture. The traditions of the Greeks would derive them from the Pelasgians, and thus claim their civilization as kindred to its own. In early times, long before the Trojan war, traditionary legends would say, there dwelt in Greece, a peaceful and industrious race of men; a branch they were of a wide-spread people who possessed the countries northward to the Danube. Quiet and unwarlike in their habits, they preferred agricultural labor to the excitement and peril of war; much ingenuity, suppose them to have and would rather derive subsistence from been an aboriginal people of the Apenthe fertility of the soil, than extort it by nines, who, abandoning their mountain force, from the weakness and timidity of homes, established themselves in the valothers. What Manco Capac was to the leys of the Tiber and the Arno, and thence, Peruvians, the Pelasgi were to the original after having become a powerful and enlightinhabitants. They made them acquainted ened and numerous people, to have colonwith the mysteries of agriculture; they ized the rich plains of Lombardy, and extaught them to sow the seed, to reap the tended their sway to the Alps. Between corn, to gather and to save the produce, to these opposite and conflicting statements, know the fitting times and seasons, to pre- supported, respectively, by some of the vent the mountain stream from carrying greatest names of ancient and modern desolation through their fields, and from times, it is impossible to ascertain the truth. being a minister of destruction, to make it When they do come within the domain of even an agent of fertility. Their quiet and history, they are found in occupation of industrious habits, coupled with their un- the best and richest part of central Italy; skilfulness in war, made them more than constituting several great federal republics; once a prey to their more savage neigh-one in northern Italy, another between the make it, a strict monopoly. They would permit none else, if possible, to share it with them. The ports frequented by their traders, and the sources of their wealth, were, as far as in them lay, a mystery to the nations. No eye but their own was to see where their mines of gold, and tin, and silver lay, or to search the deep from which their amber was extracted. The "El Dorado" was only to be arrived at through the perils of many a stormy sea, and by braving the fury of many a dragon and monster dire, that kept its watchful_guard over the charge committed to it. The golden apples of the Hesperides were to be won only by valor and perseverance more than human. The commerce of the ancient world was professedly exclusive. It would have no traders but its own; no merchandize but what was freighted in its own vessels; these traders must have the market entirely in their own hands, and buy and sell at their own prices alone. Acting on this principle, the Etruscans wished to destroy the commerce of the Greeks, by the destruction of their settlements in Sicily. Failing in that attempt, and probably overrating their own strength, they were vanquished and crushed themselves, and had their commer Tiber and the Arno, in what we may call Etruria proper; and another to the south of Rome, though the existence of the latter is denied by Niebuhr. Each of these republics was independent of the other, and was itself subdivided into twelve divisions, or cantons; for we may convey our meaning more clearly by employing a modern illustration. Each of these cantons consisted of a principal city, and of several dependencies; and was subject to a chief magis trate, elected for a term of years, and by the suffrages of the people. He is known by the peculiarly Etruscan term of Lucumo. The cities of the confederacy on the right bank of the Tiber are better known by our classical readers. They are those which have been visited by Mrs. Gray, and are intimately connected with the history of Rome. The Etruscan power, in its greatest extent (which is supposed to have been at the time of the Roman monarchy), comprehended the greatest part of central Italy. The cantons at the foot of the Alps are said to have been connected with those of Campania by an unbroken chain of tributary principalities. The Etruscan fleets were not unfrequent visitors in Ionian Greece, and in the cities of the Nile; while from Sicily to Gibraltar, they had no rivals cial existence destroyed, by the operation but those of Carthage. The commerce of the western coast of the Mediterranean was engrossed by these two maritime powers, and the Greeks have preserved the memory of several commercial treaties, which were in all probability directed chiefly against themselves. The establishment of the Greek colonies in Sicily, and on the western side of the Italian peninsula, enabled them first to compete with, and then to undermine, the Etruscan superiority by sea. It seemed never to have recovered the loss sustained in the naval victory obtained by the Greeks at Cuma, and after a brief struggle to have resigned its legitimate commercial character, and to have sunk into that of privateers. Their rivalry and the subsequent defeat of the Etruscans, had their source in the jealousy of their commercial interests. Each power was anxious to crush the other. However extensive may have been the intercourse of the trading nations of antiquity, their commerce was never conducted on those enlarged, and if we may use the word, catholic principles, which it is the just pride of modern times to discover, and however partially as yet, to some extent at least to act on. The commerce of Tyre, and Carthage, and Etruria, and Greece, was, as far as their respective powers could of the very same principles of monopoly and exclusiveness, by which they themselves were governed and impelled. The remains of Etruscan art will enable us to trace their progress as a people. In the rude simplicity and massiveness of some of their architectural remains, may, we think, be traced the work of those who introduced the first knowledge of the arts. The similarity of style and construction would class them with those remains which are found in Greece, which are discovered in Thessaly and Epirus, and which, by general tradition, are said to have been the work of the Pelasgi. These remains, which Sir William Gell has traced along the line of the Etruscan cities, are undoubtedly the work of those who first introduced the knowledge of the arts into Western Europe. The tomb of Atreus, at Mycenæ, seems to have been built by the same people who erected the tomb at Agylla. The advantages of their position must have necessarily directed their attention to nautical pursuits. The remembrance of their early voyaging cannot have vanished from their minds; and we thus find, that, in very early times, they are bold and adventurous navigators of the seas. The success of their first efforts, and the wealth with which their enterprise was rewarded, must have stimulated them still further to exertion, and ex cited many of the neighboring cities to an honorable rivalry of gain. How far this advance in nautical skill is to be attributed to the Etruscans, or their predecessors in the occupation of the land, it is not, at this distance of time, and with our imperfect means of information, possible to ascertain. The frequency of their intercourse with Egypt may be inferred from the strong infusion of Egyptian art which is visible in all their more ancient remains. Even though we admit that its first development was owing to the intellectual vigor of the people, still there cannot be a doubt that its after-studies were formed in an Egyptian model. To Egypt belong the numerous sarcophagi, the scarabei or beetles of gold and precious stones, which were always objects of veneration in the latter country. The style of architecture, too, has evidently had its origin on the banks of the Nile. The paintings of Tarquinia are in the manner of coloring similar to those on the tombs of the kings, near Thebes; and the admission of females to their banquets, on terms of social equality, are peculiar to Egypt and Etruria alone. The very construction of the door is that by which an oriental artist would secure the sepulchre from intrusion, as may be seen in Thebes, and in those which are called the tombs of the sons of David, near Jerusalem. This Egyptian character is so strongly manifested in the productions of Etrurian art, that the impression made on the minds of those who see them for the first time is that they are admitted to a collection of Egyptian antiquities. But this Egyptian character is not found in all, and least in those of later times. If we have the sarcophagus and scarabeus, and the images of Osiris and Horus, we have also the illustrations of Grecian story, and the fables of its mythology; we have the story of Edipus and the sphynx, and the expedition of the Argonauts, and many an inscription in Grecian letters and language bearing testimony to the country of the artist. These vases and works of art are precisely similar in shape to those which once were made at Corinth, and which, after the destruction of the city, were dug out of the sepulchres by the Roman colonists established on its ruins. These pieces of art were purchased by the curious in ancient Rome at exorbitant prices, as those of Tarquinia and Veji are by the curious and wealthy of our time. The date of this great improvement in the arts must have been contemporary with the Roman monarchy, which was also the most briliant period of Etruscan sway. The intercourse of Etruria with Greece was frequent, when wealthy citizens of the latter country, like Demeratus, the father of Tarquin, took refuge there when driven from their own by violence, and the contemplation of the matchless productions of Grecian art served to enkindle the zeal and to correct the taste of their artists. We meet several instances of Greek artists having been employed in Etruria and in Rome, and the influence they exerted was eminently salutary. Greece was at this time becoming a noble school for the artist. To Egypt was she also indebted for the elements of her civilization and the rudiments of the arts; but on the banks of the Ilyssus and the shores of the Ægean they found a more genial home. Art came to the shores of Greece arrayed in the uncouth habiliments of Egyptian symbolism, stiff and distorted, from the monstrous and unnatural forms which it had been compelled to assume, and chilled by its connection with the sarcophagus and the tomb; but the quick imaginative genius of the Greek soon set the captive free. From the gloom of the temple, and the loneliness of the sepulchre, she was led by her votary abroad in the bright gleam of the summer sun, and by the brink of many a crystal stream and fountain, and was worshipped in the still repose of many a wooded dale, and was induced to shed her graces on the light enjoyments of the domestic hearth, and by his own fireside, and, in the very seclusion of his home, to become the handmaid of his happiness and refinement. Art was not, as in Egypt, the servile minister of a crushing despotism, or the organ of a gloomy superstition, leading, by the majesty and power of its creations, men's hearts and souls away from the best impulses of nature and the rights of social life. In Greece it was an active and useful element of society; and as it was the record and the monument, so was it among the sources, of some of its noblest achievements. The humblest citizen could look forward to the day when his name too would be inscribed on the chronicles of his country, when the memory of his deeds would be preserved on the canvas, or engraved on the marble. As he passed along the streets, or repaired to scenes of public festivity or private relaxation, the monuments of departed excellence were ever before him. The image of the patriot of other times looked on approvingly from its pedestal, and even the lips which moved not sent forth their mute encouragement. Theirs was a noiseless eloquence, which supported the sufferer in his country's cause, which discoursed sweet music to him in the hour of his darkest despondency; when his heart these souls are light and cheerful in the was heaving within him with the bitter feel- consciousness of innocence: others seem ing of injustice, when his actions were mis- afflicted with the apprehension of approach. construed, his motives suspected, or, like ing calamity. The tears are seen to flow the virtuous Aristides, he became the injur- as the evil genius brings to the mind the ed victim of popular envy, the sustaining torturing remembrance of the deeds done influence of art came soothingly over his in the flesh. This evil genius is representsoul, supporting him in the hour of his ad-ed with almost a Christian accuracy of outversity, cheering his sinking spirits, and, line: the artist has given him, as did probalike a herald from on high, telling him of bly the general belief, a negro configuration other times and of other men who would do of countenance, and a more than negro' darkjustice to his character. ness of color; while round his temples is In Etruria it would have exercised the coiled a serpent, the head of which is brought same influence, and been productive of the close to the ear of the individual whom the same results, had not the national mind been evil genius is addressing. Another evil more akin to that of Egypt. We find tra- genius, yet more black and ugly, has his ces of the same serenity of thought, of the eyes depicted as very coals of fire. They same national gravity of character, of the are conducted by a good genius, whose cosame gloomy massiveness-to use the word lor and appearance are quite the opposite of -of the public taste. Etruscan art seems the others. These paintings are done in never to have completely emancipated her- fresco, and in an excellent style of art: they self from the thraldom of Egypt, and, to her are especially valuable, as telling us how very latest development, to bear the impress of her dependence. All her great public works seem to speak of the subjection of the masses of the people, by whose toil they were constructed, and are but echoes of that sepulchral voice, which, in a grander scale and in louder accents, is addressed to us from the pyramids of Cairo and the palaces of Carnak. clear a conception this people must have had of a future judgment. This great fragment of the primitive tradition seems to have been carefully preserved among them. A few, in the pride of their intelligence, may have disputed and denied its truth, as they subsequently did in Rome; and as many, in the pride of their philosophy, have done at the present day, mistaking, for the If we strip the Grecian mythology of some prejudices of education, what was but the of its most fanciful and legendary stories, witnessing of the Divine voice within them; we shall have an idea of what the Etruscan but the great body of the people always redivinities were in times of old ;-we shall tained some sense of their future responsihave their gods, but under different names. bility. With their incorrect sense of moral Who would recognize his old acquaintances duty, it could have had but little moral inJupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mercury, under fluence; but an influence of some extent it the strange Etruscan names of Tina and must have had and exercised. To the parTalne, Turan and Turms? The latter name tial influence of this belief are generally asis evidently the Hermes of the Greeks. The cribed those virtues of the natural order Egyptian mythos also was substantially the which distinguished the old Roman characsame, though the names and symbolical rep. ter. They were indebted for them to this resentation of the respective deities were maxim of their religion, which in its defiwidely different; and was, in all probability, nite form they borrowed from the Etrusthe parent stock from which the others were cans. But while acknowledging the purity derived. The religious rites and ceremo- of their belief in this great truth, we must nies of the Etruscan worship are known to admit, that they are strongly suspected of us through the medium of the Roman cere-iningling with their religious rites, the hor monial, the latter having been avowedly de- rible and revolting practice of human sacririved therefrom, and formed on the Etruscan fices. This abominable rite was probably model. The practice of augury, or divin- introduced among them from their intering by the flight of birds, was also Etrus- course with Carthage, where it prevailed in can. This people were deeply imbued with its foulest enormity; though it may not ima feeling of moral responsibility. The paint- probably be assigned to the frequency of ings in the chambers of Tarquinia, are con- their intercourse with the people of the clusive evidence of their belief in a judg-eastern coast of the Mediterranean, where ment to come, and in a future state of re- the rites of the Canaanite superstition were wards and punishments. One painting rep- practised, and where every grove and altar resents a procession of souls to judgment, was stained with the abominable crime of conducted by good and evil genii. Some of Moloch. |