Etruscans

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at nb.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 11:42 PM

>> Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
>> I have not been able to find it.

> A tangential reference, I think, Aeneid 8.454:

> "Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, ..."

> -- Doug Wilson

[Ed Selleslagh]

I'm sorry I had overlooked that. However, this (Pater Lemnius) is simply a
reference to Hephaistos/Vulcanus, who was thrown on the island by one of his
parents.

Nonetheless, the subsequent verses - which I looked up again after your remark
- are relevant for Vergilius' idea (and confusion) about the origin of the
Etruscans and Italic people:

Book 8.478: Haud procul hinc saxo incolitur fundata vetusto urbis Agyllinae
sedes, ubi Lydia quondam gens, bello praeclara, iugis insedit Etruscis. ["hinc"
(from here) means 'from Rome'. J. Dryden identifies Agylla with the Etruscan
city of Caere. His translation of "iugis Etruscis" as "from the Tuscans('
yoke)" is inacceptable: it contradicts the whole context. If it were true, in
Vergilius' words, the Lydian immigrants would have chased the Etruscans from
the place. That would possibly mean that the Tuscans are confounded with the
Umbrians, an interesting possibility]

Book 8.499: O Maeoniae delecta iuventus, flos veterum virtusque virum, quos
iustus in hostem fert doloret merita accendit Mezentius ira, nulli fas Italo
tantam subiungere gentem: externos optate duces.[Maeonia is a region in Lydia].

So he clearly thinks the Etruscans are of Lydian origin (quite common in his
days) and are distinct from the Italic people. Of course he has to posit that
Aeneas is somehow Italic, otherwise his nationalistic epic wouldn't make sense.
On the other hand, he has him come from Troy, a city with a complex history of
successive cultures, most probably (in my view) first Anatolian - maybe Hittite
or some other/older culture from Anatolia - then Achaean/Greek. Its double name
Troy/Ilion could well be a sign of its mixed ethnic/linguistic history: the
root IL/R(I), UR(I) is found all over the Eastern Mediterranean (Mesopotamia,
Hebrew, some Greek toponyms like Hyria...), and in Basque (iri = city,
formerly ili); Iliki (now Alcudia, from 'the hill' in Arabic: it is a tell) was
an outpost of an Iberian settlement (now Elche in the Spanish province of
Alicante). Troy isn't all that far from Lemnos, on the route to S. Greece and
the rest of the Mediterranean.

So, all this is compatible with the idea that the Etruscans were of
geographically Anatolian origin, and possibly related to peoples speaking a
language somehow related to the Anatolian branch of "wide" PIE, and that some
of them were (still) in Kaminia on Lemnos in the 6th or 7th c. B.C. If the
relation to the Trojan war contains any truth at all, the forefathers of the
Etruscans would probably have left the region in the 12th c. B.C., which
corresponds to the earliest estimate of their arrival in Etruria. But who would
bet on that?

These are just some ideas, not intended to convince anyone who has good reasons
to think otherwise.

Ed.