ETRU'RIA, TYRRHE'NIA, TCSCIA, designated, at a period anterior to the foundatior. of Rome, nearly the whole of Italy, together with some of its most important western islands. Its northern part, from the Alps to the Apennines, was known under the name of Etruria Ciremnpadana; its southern, from the Tiber down to the gulf of Paes tum, or, according to some, to the Sicilian sea, under that of Etruria Campaniana; while the central portion, bounded on the n. by the Apennines and the river Macro., s. and e. by the Tiber, and w. by the Tyrrhenian sea, was called Etruria propria. The two first, however, did not long remain Etruscan territory, but were. either reconquered by the surrounding tribes to whom they had originally belonged, or fell into the hands of new immigrants. No historical records of that brief period of any moment having yet come to light, they do not claim our attention; while Etruria proper, scanty though our infor mation about it still be, deserves our interest in the highest degree. For its physical features, we refer the reader to Tuscany, Lucca, and the Transtiberine portion of the present papal dominions; and have only to remark, that vast expanses of that country, which now are either covered with deep forest, or are shunned on account of the malaria, were in those times fruitful, densely peopled regions. For political, or rather administrative purposes, Etruria proper was divided into twelve sovereign cities, or rather cantons, among which the most important were Tarquinii (Corneto), the cradle of the royal family of the Tarquins, who at one time wielded the scepter of Rome; Caere (Agylla, Cervetri), which, during the war of Rome with the Gauls, offered a refuge to the Roman Flamen Quirinalis and vestal virgins; Vcii, the greatest and most powerful city of Etruria, with 100,000 inhabitants, which carried on seven wars with Rome; Clusium (Kamars, Chiusi), the chief of which, Porsena, as principal commander of the Etruscan troops, dictated a humiliating peace to Rome after she had expelled the Tarquins; Perusia (Perugia), destroyed in the Perusian civil war (40); Arretiurri(Arezzo), birthplace of Mmcenas. Of other not sovereign places may be mentioned Luca (Lucca),
Pisw (Pisa), on the Arnus, with the Portus Pisanus, now Leghorn, and Florentia (Firenze, Florence), on the Arnus.
To what nation the inhabitants—called Etruscans (=Exteri, strangers) or Tuscans in the Roman, Tyrrheni or Tyrseni (gurrenoi, Tursenoi) in the Greek, and Rasena (Tesue Rasne) in their own language—originally belonged, and what country they came from, is a question which was debated many hundred years before Christ, and is not settled yet. All the most ancient writers, save one of the most trustworthy, Dionysius of Hali carnassus, implicitly follow Herodotus, who— i confounding them, perhaps, as is his wont, with the Lydian Turrenoi, or inhabitants of the city of Tyrrha—pronounces them. to be Lydians, although there is not the slightest similarity between these two nations. and although Xanthus, the Lydian historian, knows nothing whatever about a fabled famine of eighteen years' duration in Lydia, followed by an immigration to Italy under a prince Tyrrhenus. Dionysius himself offers no opinion; he Calls them an indigenous race—which means nothing; and it is surprising that some modern investigators should, despairing of a rational solution of the old riddle, have fallen back upon this evasive theory of "autochthons." Thucydides, in first mixing up the Torrliebian pirates with the Pelasgian filibusters, gave rise to the most hopeless confusion about their very name. As to the innumerable theories and hypotheses that have been put forward since his day, we will only mention that while Ciampi and Collar hold them to be of Slavonic origin, Freret calls them Celts; Micali, Albanese; Larni, Pfitzmaier, and Stickel, Semit ics; and others variously make them Goths, Scandinavians, Basques, Assyrians, Pheni clans, Egyptians, and Armenians. The most rational and generally accepted opinion is that of Niebuhr—modified more or less by Ottfried Muller, Lanzi, Lepsius, Steub—of their being, when they first appear in history, a of an eastern tribe, which had settled for a while in the Rlimtian Alps (the Tyrol of to-day), and Pelasgians, whom.