Etruscans

[Douglas G Kilday]

David L. White (21 Feb 2001) wrote:

>Yes (or maybe), but it seems we are converging on the opinion that
>the Lemnians had probably come from the mainland.  The basic rule is that
>people can maintain their identity, ethnic or linguistic, if they feel like
>it, and we are not much in a position to judge at this remove.

True, and butting heads over medieval or modern examples won't accomplish
much. But unless they fell onto the island like Hephaistos, the Lemnians had
to come from _some_ mainland, plausibly Chalcidice. I must admit, however,
that arguments against Thracian or Anatolian derivation are "ex silentio"
and not particularly compelling.

>Upon further reflection, I think the Semitic intermediary, if there
>was one, was probably Carthaginian or Phonecian, since these folk are known
>to have had markets in the area.  That the version with "ty", as opposed to
>"thou" passed through some non-Greek intermediary is indicated by the lack
>of aspiration.  Note also that it must be earlier.

The aspiration in <Thouskoi> is difficult to explain. The term is not
attested as early as <Tursenoi>, and its signification is apparently
geographic 'residents of Etruria', not ethnic. Had <Thouskoi> been borrowed
directly from Lat. <Tusci>, one would not expect aspiration. The Etruscan
forms <Tursikina>, <Trsk> argue against original aspiration. Perhaps
<Thouskoi> comes through Pelasgian, and the aspiration is a hypercorrection
of the p-Italic form of the name, since we have Sabine <teba> 'hill', Oscan
<tifa> id. < Psg. *the:ba.

Greek <Thumbris> 'Tiber' similarly suggests third-party deformation. The
name is possibly from an Archaic Etr. compound *thihvar 'watercourse'; the
river was earlier called <Albula> (Liv. I.3.5). Pelasgians might have
assimilated the new name to <thumbra> 'pungent herb, satureia, savory'.

>Whether the Umbrians would have borrowed a term for their neighbors from
>Greek depends to some extent on how the neighbors got there.  If they arose
>indigenously, not likely, but if they just happened to have barely beaten
>the Greeks getting out to prime colonization real-estate, and the Umbrians
>were in contact with the Greeks, such a borrowing does not seem unlikely.

I can't argue against that, since I have no direct evidence for the date of
arrival of the Etruscans in central Italy. Helmut Rix once advocated a late
date (late 8th c. BCE) on the grounds of the lack of separation of dialects
in Archaic Etruscan. IMHO such evidence from dialects is extremely difficult
to assess, since we have so very few Archaic texts longer than the
stereotyped phrases of funerary, dedicatory, and possessive inscriptions. I
think it very likely that the Umbrians were in central Italy before the
Etruscans, but that leaves a window of several centuries for the arrival of
the latter.

>I am not merely contradicting (I'm having a argument?).  Where people can
>flow, influences can flow, and where we see Etruscan influence on Lemnos, we
>can't tell which it was.

True. However, if Lemnos or its vicinity were the Etruscan homeland, one
would expect to find a great deal more bearing the Etruscan stamp than one
stele and some potsherds. (Ex silentio again, which is my default form of
argument in these matters.)

Again, if Lemnos were the "mother polity" of the whole sweep of Etruscan
civilization from Campania to the Alto Adige, with its own colonies in
Corsica, Languedoc, and Tunisia, one would expect some general
acknowledgement of this by the classical authors.

>I am grateful for these examples, especially the last one.  All I
>had been able to come up with was "Herecele".

Strictly speaking, <Herecele> for the usual <Hercle> is an example of
anaptyche, like <Cluthumustha> and <Chaluchasu>. It is not parallel to the
epenthesis (or apocope) postulated for *Etrs-/*Turs-.

>Not counting the Lydians and the Aeneid.  /truia/ occurs in Etruscan, where I
>would imagine it must be taken as a Greek borrowing.  But since Greek has what
>might be called "invisible /s/" in some circumstances, /truia/ might have been
>/trusia/.  That is not very far from either /trus-/ or /turs-/.  No, I am not
>saying "it is proven", but we have a very suspicious coincidence here,
>especially once the Turshas are thrown into the mix.

One problem here is that many of the forms involving 'Troy' have the long
vowel /o:/, apparently belonging to the root: thus <Tro:s>, gen. <Tro:os>
'Trojan' (subst.); <Tro:ios>, <Tro:ikos> 'Trojan' (adj.). Forms with short
/o/, diphthongized or not, are evidently later. Hence even if the original
root had /s/, it must also have had a _long_ vowel or a diphthong preceding:
*Tro:s-, *Trows-, or the like. This makes it even more difficult IMHO to
connect 'Troy' with Turs-.

DGK