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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME IX SLICE VIII
Ethiopia to Evangelical Association
Articles in This Slice
ETHIOPIA, or Aethiopia (Gr. Αἰθιοπία), the ancient classical name of a district of north-eastern Africa, bounded on the N. by Egypt and on the E. by the Red Sea.[1] The application of the name has varied considerably at different times. In the Homeric poems the Aethiopes are the furthest of mankind both eastward and westward; the gods go to their banquets and probably the Sun sets in their country. With the growth of scientific geography they came to be located somewhat less vaguely, and indeed their name was employed as the equivalent of the Assyrian and Hebrew Cush (q.v.), the Kesh or Ekōsh of the Hieroglyphics (first found in Stele of Senwosri I.), i.e. a country extending from about the 24th to the 10th degree of N. lat., while its limits to the E. and W. were doubtful. The etymology of the name, which to a Greek ear meant “swarthy-faced,” is unknown, nor can we say why in official inscriptions of the Axumite dynasty the word is used as the equivalent of Habashat (whence the modern Abyssinia), which, from the context would appear to denote a tribe located in S. Arabia, whose name was rendered by the Greek geographers as Abaseni and Abissa.
The inhabitants of Ethiopia, partly perhaps owing to their honourable mention in the Homeric poems, attracted the attention of many Greek researchers, from Democritus onwards. Herodotus divides them into two main groups, a straight-haired race and a woolly-haired race, dwelling respectively to the East and West, and this distinction is confirmed by the Egyptian monuments. From his time onwards various names of tribes are enumerated, and to some extent geographically located, most of these appellations being Greek words, applied to the tribes by strangers in virtue of what seemed to be their leading characteristics, e.g. “Long-lived,” “Fish-eaters,” “Troglodytes,” &c. The bulk of our information is derived from Egyptian monuments, whence it appears that, originally occupied by independent tribes, who were raided (first by Seneferu or Snefru, first king of the IVth or last of the IIIrd Dynasty) and gradually subjected by Egyptian kings (the steps in this process are traced by E.W. Budge, The Egyptian Sudan, 1907, i. 505 sqq.), under the XVIIIth Dynasty it became an Egyptian province, administered by a viceroy (at first the Egyptian king’s son), called prince of Kesh, and paying tributes in negroes, oxen, gold, ivory, rare beads, hides and household utensils. The inhabitants frequently rebelled and were as often subdued; records of these repeated conquests were set up by the Egyptian kings in the shape of steles and temples; of the latter the temple of Amenhotep (Amenophis) III. at Soleb or Sulb seems to have been the most magnificent. Ethiopia became independent towards the 11th century B.C., when the XXIst Dynasty was reigning in Egypt. A state was founded, having for its capital Napata (mod. Merawi) at the foot of Jebel Barkal, “the sacred mountain,” which in time became formidable, and in the middle of the 8th century conquered Egypt; an Egyptian campaign is recorded in the famous stele of King Pankhi. The fortunes of the Ethiopian (XXVth) Dynasty belong to the history of Egypt (q.v.). After the Ethiopian yoke had been shaken off by Egypt, about 660 B.C., Ethiopia continued independent, under kings of whom not a few are known from inscriptions. Besides a number whose names have been discovered in cartouches at Jebel Barkal, the following, of whom all but the third have left important steles, can be roughly dated: Tandamane, son of Tirhaka (667-650), Asperta (630-600), Pankharer (600-560), Harsiōtf (560-525), Nastasen (525-500). From the evidence of the stele of the second (the Coronation Stele) and that of the fifth it has been inferred that the sovereignty early in this period became elective, a deputation of the various orders in the realm being (as Diodorus states), when a vacancy occurred, sent to Napata, where the chief god Amen selected out of the members of the royal family the person who was to succeed, and who became officially the god’s son; and it seems certain that the priestly caste was more influential in Ethiopia than in Egypt both before and after this period. Another stele (called the Stele of Excommunication) records the expulsion of a priestly family guilty of murder (H. Schäfer, Klio, vi. 287): the name of the sovereign who expelled them has been obliterated. The stele of Harsiōtf contains the record of nine expeditions, in the course of which the king subdued various tribes south of Meroë and built a number of temples. The stele of the last of these sovereigns, now in the Berlin Museum, and edited by H. Schäfer (Leipzig, 1901), contains valuable information concerning the state of the Ethiopian kingdom in its author’s time. Shortly after his accession he was threatened with invasion by Cambyses, the Persian conqueror of Egypt, but (according to his own account) destroyed the fleet sent by the invader up the Nile, while (as we learn from Herodotus) the land-force succumbed to famine (see [Cambyses]). It further appears that in his time and that of his immediate predecessors the capital of the kingdom had been removed from Napata, where in the time of Harsiōtf the temples and palaces were already in ruins, to Mercë at a distance of 60 camel-hours to the south-east. But Napata retained its importance as the religious metropolis; it was thither that the king went to be crowned, and there too the chief god delivered his oracles, which were (it is said) implicitly obeyed. The local names in Nastasen’s inscription, describing his royal circuit, are in many cases obscure. A city named Pnups (Hierogl. Pa-Nebes) appears to have constituted the most northerly point in the empire. These Ethiopian kings seem to have made no attempt to reconquer Egypt, though they were often engaged in wars with the wild tribes of the Sudan. For the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. the history of the country is a blank. A fresh epoch was, however, inaugurated by Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who is said to have massacred the priests at Napata, and destroyed sacerdotal influence, till then so great that the king might at the priests’ order be compelled to destroy himself; Diodorus attributes this measure to Ergamenes’ acquaintance with Greek culture, which he introduced into his country. A temple was built by this king at Pselcis (Dakka) to Thoth. Probably the sovereignty again became hereditary. Occasional notices of Ethiopia occur from this time onwards in Greek and Latin authors, though the special treatises by Agatharchides and others are lost. According to these the country came to be ruled by queens named Candace. One of them was involved in war with the Romans in 24 and 23 B.C.; the land was invaded by C. Petronius, who took the fortress Premis or Ibrim, and sacked the capital (then Napata); the emperor Augustus, however, ordered the evacuation of the country without even demanding tribute. The stretch of land between Assuan (Syene) and Maharraka (Hiera Sycaminus) was, however, regarded as belonging to the Roman empire, and Roman cohorts were stationed at the latter place. To judge by the monuments it is possible that there were queens who reigned alone. Pyramids were erected for queens as well as for kings, and the position of the queens was little inferior to that of their consorts, though, so far as monumental representations go, they always yielded precedence to the latter. Candace appears to be found as the name of a queen for whom a pyramid was built at Meroë. A great builder was Netekamane, who is represented with his queen Amanetari on temples of Egyptian style at many points up the Nile—at Amara just above the second cataract, and at Napata, as well as at Meroë, Benaga and Naga in the distant Isle of Meroë. He belongs, probably, to the Ptolemaic age. Later, in the Roman period, the type in sculpture changed from the Egyptian. The figures are obese, especially the women, and have pronounced negro features, and the royal person is loaded with bulging gold ornaments. Of this period also there is a royal pair, Netekamane and Amanetari, imitating the names of their conspicuous predecessors. In the 4th century A.D. the state of Meroë was ravaged by the Nubas(?) and the Abyssinians, and in the 6th century its place was taken by the Christian state of Nubia (see [Dongola]).
Contrary to the opinion of the Greeks, the Ethiopians appear to have derived their religion and civilization from the Egyptians. The royal inscriptions are written in the hieroglyphic character and the Egyptian language, which, however, in the opinion of experts, steadily deteriorate after the separation of Ethiopia from Egypt. About the time of Ergamenes, or (according to some authorities) before, a vernacular came to be employed in inscriptions, written in a special alphabet of 23 signs in parallel hieroglyphic and cursive forms. The cursive is to be read from right to left, the hieroglyphic, contrary to the Egyptian method, in the direction in which the figures face. The Egyptian equivalents of six characters have been made out by the aid of bilingual cartouches. Words are divided from each other by pairs of dots, and it is clear that the forms and values of the signs are largely based on Egyptian writing; but as yet decipherment has not been attained, nor can it yet be stated to what group the language should be assigned (F. Ll. Griffith in D.R. MacIver’s Areika, Oxford, 1909, and later researches).
Notices in Greek authors are collected by P. Paulitschke, Die geographische Erforschung des afrikanischen Continents (Vienna, 1880); the inscriptions were edited and interpreted by G. Maspero, Revue archéol. xxii., xxv.; Mélanges d’Assyriologie et d’Égyptologie, ii., iii.; Records of the Past, vi.; T.S.B.A. iv.; Schäfer, l.c., and Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, xxxiii. See also J.H. Breasted, “The Monuments of Sudanese Nubia,” in American Journal of Semitic Languages (October 1908), and the work of E.W. Budge cited above. A description of the chief ruins and the results of Dr D.R. MacIver’s researches in northern Nubia, begun in 1907, will be found under [Sudan]: Anglo-Egyptian.
The Axumite Kingdom.—About the 1st century of the Christian era a new kingdom grew up at Axum (q.v.), of which a king Zoscales is mentioned in the Periplus Maris Erythraei. Fragments of the history of this kingdom, of which there is no authentic chronicle, have been made out chiefly by the aid of inscriptions, of which the following is a list:—(1) Greek inscription of Adulis, copied by Cosmas Indicopleustes in 545, the beginning, with the king’s name, lost. (2) Sabaean inscription of Ela Amida in two halves, discovered by J. Theodore Bent at Axum in 1893, and completed by E. Littmann in 1906. (3) Ethiopic inscription probably of the same king, imperfect (Littmann). (4) Trilingual inscription of Aeizanes, the Greek version discovered by Henry Salt in 1805, the Sabaean by Bent, and the Ethiopic (Geez) by Littmann. (5) Ethiopic inscription of Aeizanes (so Littmann), son of Ela Amida, discovered by Eduard Rüppell in 1833. (6) Ethiopic inscriptions of Hetana-Dan’el, son of Dabra Efrem. These are all long inscriptions giving details of wars, &c. The sixth is later than the rest, which are to be attributed to the most flourishing period of the kingdom, the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. The fourth is pagan, the fifth Christian, Aeizanes having in the interval embraced Christianity. It was to this king that the emperor Constantius addressed a letter in 356 A.D.
Aeizanes and his successors style themselves kings of the Axumites, Homerites (Himyar), Raidan, the Ethiopians (Habašat), the Sabaeans, Silee, Tiamo, the Bugaites (Beģa) and Kasu. This style implies considerable conquests in South Arabia, which, however, must have been lost to the Axumites by A.D. 378. They claim to rule the Kasu or Meroitic Ethiopians; and the fifth inscription records an expedition along the Atbara and the Nile to punish the Nuba and Kasu, and a fragment of a Greek inscription from Meroë was recognized by Sayce as commemorating a king of Axum. Except for these inscriptions Axumite history is a blank until in the 6th century we find the Axumite king sending an expedition to wreck the Jewish state then existing in S. Arabia, and reducing that country to a state of vassalage: the king is styled in Ethiopian chronicles Caleb (Kaleb), in Greek and Arabic documents El-Esbaha. In the 7th century a successor to this king, named Abraha or Abraham, gave refuge to the persecuted followers of Mahomet at the beginning of his career (see [Arabia]: History, ad init.). A few more names of kings occur on coins, which were struck in Greek characters till about A.D. 700, after which time that language seems definitely to have been displaced in favour of Ethiopic or Geez: the condition of the script and the coins renders them all difficult to identify with the names preserved in the native lists, which are too fanciful and mutually contradictory to furnish of themselves even a vestige of history. For the period between the rise of Islam and the beginning of the modern history of Abyssinia there are a few notices in Arabic writers; so we have a notice of a war between Ethiopia and Nubia about 687 (C.C. Rossini in Giorn. Soc. Asiat. Ital. x. 141), and of a letter to George king of Nubia from the king of Abyssinia some time between 978 and 1003, when a Jewish queen Judith was oppressing the Christian population (I. Guidi, ibid. iii. 176, 7).
The Abyssinian chronicles, it may be noted, attribute the foundation of the kingdom to Menelek (or Ibn el-Hakim), son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The Axumite or Menelek dynasty was driven from northern Abyssinia by Judith, but soon after another Christian dynasty, that of the Zagués, obtained power. In 1268 the reigning prince abdicated in favour of Yekūnō Amlāk. king of Shoa, a descendant of the monarch overthrown by Judith (see [Abyssinia]).
See A. Dillman, Die Anfänge des axumitischen Reiches (Berlin, 1879); E. Drouin, Revue archéol. xliv. (1882); T. Mommsen, Geschichte der römischen Provinzen, chap. xiii.; W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones selectae, Nos. 199, 200; Littmann u. Kroncker, Vorbericht der deutschen Aksum-Expedition (Berlin, 1906), and Littman’s subsequent researches.
Ethiopic Literature
The employment of the Geez or Ethiopic language for literary purposes appears to have begun no long time before the introduction of Christianity into Abyssinia, and its pagan period is represented by two Axumite inscriptions (published by D.H. Müller in J.T. Bent’s Sacred City of the Ethiopians, 1893), and an inscription at Matara (published by C.C. Rossini, Rendiconti Accad. Lincei, 1896). As a literary language it survived its use as a vernacular, but it is unknown at what time it ceased to be the latter. In Sir W. Cornwallis Harris’s Highlands of Aethiopia (1844) there is a list of rather more than 100 works extant in Ethiopic; subsequent research has chiefly brought to light fresh copies of the same works, but it has contributed some fresh titles. A conspectus of all the MSS. known to exist in Europe (over 1200 in number) was published by C.C. Rossini in 1899 (Rendiconti Accad. Lincei, ser. v. vol. viii.); of these the largest collection is that in the British Museum, but others of various sizes are to be found in the chief libraries of Europe. R.E. Littmann (in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xv. and xvi.) describes two collections at Jerusalem, one of which contains 283 MSS.; and Rossini (Rendiconti, 1904) a collection of 35 MSS. belonging to the Catholic mission at Cheren. Other collections exist in Abyssinia, and many MSS. are in private hands. In 1893 besides portions of the Bible some 40 Ethiopic books had been printed in Europe (enumerated in L. Goldschmidt’s Bibliotheca Aethiopica), but many more have since been published.
Geez literature is ordinarily divided into two periods, of which the first dates from the establishment of Christianity in the 5th century, and ends somewhere in the 7th; the second from the re-establishment of the Salomonic dynasty in 1268, continuing to the present time. It consists chiefly of translations, made in the first period from Greek, in the second from Arabic. It has no authors of the first or even of the second rank. Its character as a sacred and literary language is due to its translation of the Bible, which in the ordinary enumeration is made to contain 81 books, 46 of the Old Testament, and 35 of the New. These figures are most probably obtained by adding to the ordinary canonical books Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Jubilees, Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah, Ezra IV., Shepherd of Hermas, the Synodos (Canons of the Apostles), the Book of Adam, and Joseph Ben Gorion. For the distinction between canonical and apocryphal appears to be unknown to the Ethiopic Church, whose chief service to Biblical literature consists in its preservation of various apocryphal works which other parts of Christendom have lost or possess only in an imperfect form (see [Enoch]; [Jubilees, Book of], &c.). It should be observed that the Maccabees of the Ethiopic Bible is an entirely different work from the books of that name included in the Septuagint, of which, however, the Abyssinians have a recent version made from the Vulgate; specimens of their own Maccabees have been published by J. Horovitz in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. xx. The MSS. of the Biblical books vary very much, and none of them can claim any great antiquity; the oldest extant MS. of the four Books of Kings appears to be one in the Museo Borgiano, presented by King Amda Sion (1314) to the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem (described by N. Roupp, ibid. xvi. 296-342). Hence P. de Lagarde supposed the Ethiopic version to have been made from the Arabic, which indeed is in accordance with a native tradition. This opinion is held by few; C.F.A. Dillman distinguished in the case of the Old Testament three classes of MSS., a versio antiqua, made from the Septuagint (probably in the Hesychian text), a class revised from Greek MSS., and a class revised from the Hebrew (probably through the medium of an Arabic version). An examination of ten chapters of St Matthew by L. Hackspill (ibid. vol. xi.) led to the result that the Ethiopic version of the Gospels was made about A.D. 500, from a Syro-occidental text, and that this original translation is represented by Cod. Paris. Aeth. 32; whereas most MSS. and all printed editions contain a text influenced by the Alexandrian Vulgate, and show traces of Arabic. Rossini (ibid. x. 232) has made it probable that the Abba Salāmā, whom the native tradition identifies with Frumentius, evangelist of Abyssinia, to whom the translation of the Bible was ascribed, was in reality a Metropolitan of the early 14th century, who revised the corrupt text then current. Of the ancient translation the latest book is said to be Ecclesiasticus, translated in the year 678. The New Testament has been published repeatedly (first in Rome, 1548-1549; some letters about its publication were edited by I. Guidi in the Archivio della Soc. Rom. di Storia Patria, 1886), and C.F.A. Dillmann edited a critical text of most of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, but did not live to complete it; portions have been edited by J. Bachmann and others.
Other translations thought to belong to the first period are the Sher‘ata Makhbār, ascribed to S. Pachomius; the Kerilos, a collection of homilies and tracts, beginning with Cyril of Alexandria De recta fide; and the Physiologus, a fanciful work on Natural History (edited by F. Hommel, Leipzig, 1877).
Of the works belonging to the second period much the most important are those which deal with Abyssinian history. A court official, called sahāfē te’ezāzenet (secretary), having under him a staff of scribes, was employed to draw up the public annals year by year; and on these official compositions the Abyssinian histories are based. The earliest part of the Axum chronicle preserved is that recording the wars of Amda Sion (1314-1344) against the Moslems; it is doubtful, however, whether even this exists in its original form, as some scholars think; according to its editor (J. Perruchon in the Journ. Asiat. for 1889) it is preserved in a recension of the time of King Zar‘a Ya‘kūb. Under King Lebna Dengel (1508-1540) the annals of his four predecessors, Zar‘a Ya‘kūb, Baeda Maryam, Eskender and Na‘od (1434-1508) were drawn up; those of the first two were published by J. Perruchon (Paris, 1893); in the Journ. Asiat. for 1894 the same scholar published a further fragment of the history of Baeda Maryam, written by the tutor to the king’s children, and the history of Eskender, Amda Sion II. and Na’od as compiled in Lebna Dengel’s time. The history of Lebna Dengel was published by the same scholar (Journ. Semit. i. 274) and Rossini (Rendiconti, 1894, v. p. 617); that of his successor Claudius (1540-1559) by Conzelmann (Paris, 1895); that of his successor Minas (1559-1563) by F.M.E. Pereira (Lisbon, 1888); those of the three following kings, Sharsa Dengel, Zā Dengel, and Ya’kūb, by Rossini (Rendiconti, 1893). The history of the next king Sysenius (1606-1632) by Abba Meherka Dengel and Tekla Shelase was edited by Pereira (Lisbon, 1892); the chronicles of Joannes I., Iyasu I. and Bakaffa (1682-1730) by I. Guidi, with a French translation (Paris, 1903-1905); all are contemporary, and the names of the chroniclers of the last two kings are recorded. Besides these we have the partly fabulous chronicle of Lalibela (of uncertain date, but before the Salomonian dynasty was restored), edited by Perruchon (Paris, 1892); and a brief chronicle of Abyssinia, drawn up in the reign of Iyasu II. (1729-1753), embodying materials abridged, but often unaltered, was published by R. Basset, in the Journ. Asiat. for 1882 (cf. Rossini in the Rendiconti, 1893-1894, p. 668), and has since formed the basis for Abyssinian history. Many compilations of the sort exist in MS. in libraries, and great praise is bestowed on the one which E. Rüppell, when travelling in Abyssinia, ordered to be drawn up for his use. It is now in the collection of his MSS. at Frankfurt. Ethiopic scholars speak of a special “historical style” which comes from the mixture of the styles of different periods, and the admixture of Amharic phrases and idioms. The historian of the wars of Amda Sion is credited with some literary merit; most of the chroniclers have little.
The remaining literature of the second period is thought to begin somewhat earlier than these chronicles. To the time of King Yekūnō Amlāk (1268-1283) the historical romance called Kebra Nagaset (Glory of Kings) is assigned by its editor, C. Bezold (Bavarian Academy, 1904); other scholars gave it a somewhat later date. Its purpose is to glorify the Salomonian dynasty, whence, in spite of a colophon which declares it to be a translation, it was regarded as an original work; since, however, it shows evident signs of having been translated from Arabic, Bezold supposes that its author, Ishāk, was an immigrant whose native language was Arabic, in which therefore he would naturally write the first draft of his book. To the time of Yagbea Sion (ob. 1294) belongs the Vision of the Prophet Habakkuk in Kartasā, as also the works of Abba Salāmā, regarded as the founder of the Ethiopic renaissance, one of whose sermons is preserved in a Cheren MS. With his name are connected the Acts of the Passion, the Service for the Dead and the translation of Philexius, i.e. Philoxenus. King Zar‘a Ya‘kūb composed or had composed for him as many as seven books; the most important of these is the Book of Light (Mashafa Berhān), paraphrased as Kirchenordnung, by Dillmann, who gave an analysis of its contents (Über die Regierung des Königs Zar‘a Ya‘kob, Berl. Acad., 1884). He also organized the compilation of the Miracles of the Virgin Mary, one of the most popular of Ethiopic books; a magnificent edition was printed by E.W. Budge in the Meux collection (London, 1900). In the same reign the Arabic chronicle of al-Makīn was translated into Geez. Under Lebna Dengel (ob. 1540), besides the above-mentioned collection of chronicles, we hear of the translation from the Arabic of the history and martyrdom of St George, the Commentary of J. Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the ascetic works of J. Saba called Aragāwī manfasāwī. Under Claudius (1540-1559) Maba Sion is said to have translated from the Arabic The Faith of the Fathers, a vast compilation, including the Didascalia Apostalorum (edited by Platt, London, 1834), and the Creed of Jacob Baradaeus (published by Cornill, ZDMG. xxx. 417-466), and to the same reign belong the Book of Extreme Unction (Mashafa Kandīl), and the religious romance Barlaam et Joasaph also paraphrased from the Arabic (partly edited by A. Zotenberg in Notices et Extraits, vol. xxviii.). The Confession of Faith of King Claudius has been repeatedly printed. The reign of Sharsa Dengel (ob. 1595) was marked by many literary monuments, such as the religious and controversial compilation called Mazmura Chrestos, and the translation, by a certain Salik, of the religious encyclopaedia (Mashafa Hāiā) of the monk Nikon; an Arab merchant from Yemen, who took on conversion the name Anbākōm (Habakkuk), translated a number of books from the Arabic. Under Ya’kūb (ob. 1605) the valuable chronicle of John of Nikiou was translated from Arabic (edited by A. Zotenberg with French translation in Notices et extraits, vol. xxiv.). Under John, about 1687, the Spiritual Medicine of Michael, bishop of Adtrib and Malig, was translated. The literature that is not accurately dated consists largely of liturgies, prayers and hymns; Ethiopic poetry is chiefly, if not entirely, represented by the last of these, the most popular work of the kind being an ode in praise of the Virgin, called Weddase Maryam (edited by K. Fries, Leipzig, 1892). Various hymn-books bear the names Degua, Zemmare and Mawas‘et (Antiphones); there is also a biblical history in verse called Mashafa Madbal or Mestīra Zamān. Homilies also exist in large numbers, both original and translated, sometimes after the Arabic fashion in rhymed prose. Hagiology is naturally an important department in Ethiopic literature. In the great collection called Synaxar (translated originally from Arabic, but with large additions) for each day of the year there is the history of one or more saints; an attempt has been made by H. Dünsing (1900) to derive some actual history from it. Many texts containing lives of individual saints have been issued. Such are those of Maba Sion and Gabra Chrestos, edited by Budge in the Meux collection (London, 1899); the Acts of S. Mercurius, of which a fragment was edited by Rossini (Rome, 1904); the unique MS. of the original, one of the most extensive works in the Geez language, was burned by thieves who set fire to the editor’s house. The same scholar began a series of Vitae Sanctorum antiquiorum, while Monumenta Aethiopiae hagiologica and Vitae Sanctorum indigenarum have been edited by B. Turaiev (Leipzig and St Petersburg, 1902, and Rome, 1905). Other lives have been edited by Pereira, Guidi, &c. Similar in historical value to these works is the History of the Exploits of Alexander, of which various recensions have been edited by Budge (London, 1895). See further [Alexander the Great], section on the legends, ad fin.
Of Law the most important monument is the Fatha Nagaset (Judgment of Kings), of which an official edition was issued by I. Guidi (Rome, 1899), with an Italian translation; it is a version probably made in the early 16th century of the Arabic code of Ibn ‘Assal, of the 12th century, whose work, being meant for Christians living under Moslem rule, was not altogether suitable for an independent Christian kingdom; yet the need for such a code made it popular and authoritative in Abyssinia. The translator was not quite equal to his task, and the Brit. Mus. MS. 800 exhibits an attempt to correct it from the original.
Science can scarcely be said to exist in Geez literature, unless a medical treatise, of which the British Museum possesses a copy, comes under this head. Philosophy is mainly represented by mystical commentaries on Scripture, such as the Book of the Mystery of Heaven and Earth, by Ba-Hailu Michael, probably of the 15th century, edited by Perruchon and Guidi (Paris, 1903). There is, however, a translation of the Book of the Wise Philosophers, made by Michael, son of Abba Michael, consisting of various aphorisms; specimens have been edited by Dillmann in his Chrestomathy, and J. Cornill (Leipzig, 1876). There is also a translation of Secundus the Silent, edited by Bachmann (Berlin, 1888). Far more interesting than these is the treatise of Zar‘a Ya‘kūb of Axum, composed in the year 1660 (edited by Littman, 1904), which contains an endeavour to evolve rules of life according to nature. The author reviews the codes of Moses, the Gospel and the Koran, and decides that all contravene the obvious intentions of the Creator. He also gives some details of his own life and his occupation of scribe. A less original treatise by Walda Haywat accompanies it. Epistolography is represented by the diplomatic correspondence of some of the kings with the Portuguese and Spanish courts; some documents of this sort have been edited by C. Beccari, Documenti inediti per la storia d’ Etiopia (Rome, 1903); lexicography, by the vocabulary called Sawāsew. The first Ethiopic book printed was the Psalter (Rome, 1513), by John Potken of Cologne, the first European who studied the language.
See C.C. Rossini, “Note per la storia letteraria Abissina,” in Rendiconti della R. Accad. dei Lincei (1899); Fumagalli, Bibliografia Etiopica (1893); Basset, Études sur l’histoire de l’Éthiopie (1882); Catalogues of various libraries, especially British Museum (Wright), Paris (Zotenberg), Oxford and Berlin (Dillmann), Frankfurt (Goldschmidt). Plates illustrating Ethiopic palaeography are to be found in Wright’s Catalogue; an account of the illustrations in Ethiopic MSS. is given by Budge in his Life of Maba Sion; and a collection of inscriptions in the church of St Stefano dei Mori, in Rome, by Gallina in the Archivio della Soc. Rom. di Storia Patria (1888).
(D. S. M.*)
[1] For the topography and later history see [Sudan] and [Abyssinia].
ETHNOLOGY and ETHNOGRAPHY (from the Gr. ἔθνος, race, and λόγος, science, or γράφειν, to write), sciences which in their narrowest sense deal respectively with man as a racial unit (mankind), i.e. his development through the family and tribal stages into national life, and with the distribution over the earth of the races and nations thus formed. Though the etymology of the words permits in theory of this line of division between ethnology and ethnography, in practice they form an indivisible study of man’s progress from the point at which anthropology (q.v.) leaves him.
Ethnology is thus the general name for investigations of the widest character, including subjects which in this encyclopaedia are dealt with in detail under separate headings, such as [Archaeology], [Art] (and allied articles), [Commerce], [Geography] (and the headings for countries and tribes), [Family], [Name], [Ethics], [Law], [Mythology], [Folk-Lore] (and allied articles), [Philology] (and allied articles), [Agriculture], [Architecture], [Religion], [Sociology], &c., &c. It covers generally the whole history of the material and intellectual development of man, as it has passed through the stages of (a) hunting and fishing, (b) sheep and cattle tending, (c) agriculture, (d) industry. It investigates his food, his weapons, tools and implements, his housing, his social, economic and commercial organization, forms of government, language, art, literature, morals, superstitions and religious systems. In this sense ethnology is the older term for what now is called sociology. At the present day the progress of research has in practice, however, restricted the “ethnologist” as a rule to the study of one or more branches only of so wide a subject, and the word “ethnology” is used with a somewhat vague meaning for any ethnological study; each country or nation has thus its own separate ethnology. It becomes more convenient, therefore, to deal with the ethnology as a special subject in each case. “Ethnography,” in so far as it has a distinctive province, is then conveniently restricted to the scientific mapping out of different racial regions, nations and tribes; and it is only necessary here to refer the reader to the separate articles on continents, &c., where this is done. The only fundamental problem which need here be referred to is that of the whole question of the division of mankind into separate races at all, which is consequential on the earlier problem (dealt with in the article [Anthropology]) as to man’s origin and antiquity.
If we assume that man existed on the earth in remote geological time, the question arises, was this pleistocene man specifically one? What evidence is there that he represented in his different habitats a series of varieties of one species rather than a series of species? The evidence is of three kinds, (1) anatomical, (2) physiological, (3) cultural and psychical.
1. Dr Robert Munro, in his address to the Anthropological section of the British Association in 1893, said: “All the osseous remains of man which have hitherto been collected and examined point to the fact that, during the larger portion of the quarternary period, if not, indeed, from its very commencement, he had already acquired his human characteristics.” By “characteristics” is here meant those anatomical ones which distinguish man from other animals, not the physical criteria of the various races. Do, then, these anatomical characteristics of pleistocene man show such differences among themselves and between them and the types of man existing to-day as to justify the assumption that there has ever been more than one species of man?
The undoubted “osseous remains” of pleistocene man are few. Burial was not practised, and the few bones found are for the most part those which have by mere chance been preserved in caves or rock-shelters. Of these the three chief “finds,” in order of probable age, are the Trinil (Java) brain-cap, the lowest human skull yet described, characterized by depressed cranial arch, with a cephalic index of 70; the Neanderthal (Germany) skull, remarkable for its flat retreating curve with an index of 73-76; and the two nearly perfect skeletons found at Spy (Belgium), the skulls of which exhibit enormous brow ridges with cranial indices of 70 and 75. All these skulls, taken in conjunction with other well-authenticated human remains such as those found at La Naulette (Belgium), Shipka (Balkan Peninsula), Olmo (Italy), Predmert (Bohemia) and in Argentina and Brazil, make it possible to reconstruct anatomically the varying types of pleistocene man, and to establish the fact that in essential features the same primitive type has persisted through all time. The skeleton bones show differences so slight as to admit of pathological or other explanation. What Professor Kollmann says of man to-day was true in the remotest ages. Referring to Cuvier’s statement that from a single bone it is possible to determine the very species to which an animal belongs, he says, “Precisely on this ground I have mainly concluded that the existence of several human species cannot be recognized, for we are unacquainted with a single tribe from a single bone of which we might with certainty determine to what species it belonged.” Such differences as the bones exhibit are progressive modifications towards the higher neolithic and modern types, and are in themselves entirely incapable of supporting the theory that the owner of the Trinil skull, say, and the “man of Spy” belonged to separate species. All these “osseous remains” belong to the palaeolithic period, and from the cranial indices it is thus clear that palaeolithic man was long-headed. Neolithic man is, speaking generally, round-headed, and it has been urged that round-headedness is entirely synchronous with the neolithic age, and that the long-headed palaeolithic species of mankind gave place all at once to the round-headed neolithic species. The point thus raised involves the physiological as well as, indeed more than, the anatomical proofs of man’s specific unity.
2. All physiologists agree that species cannot breed with species. Darwin himself laid it down as a fundamental principle. If then the palaeolithic and neolithic types represented separate species, they would be found to remain distinct through all time. This is not the case. There is evidence that extreme dolichocephaly continued into neolithic times, and was only slowly modified into brachycephaly. In the neolithic caves of Italy, Austria, Belgium, and the barrows of Great Britain, skulls of all types are found. The later cave-dwellers and early dolmen builders of Europe were at first long-headed, then of medium type, and finally in some places exclusively round-headed. In England the round-heads appear to be synchronous with the metal age, as shown by the contents of the barrows, and, as on the continental mainland, the two types gradually blended. Permanent fertility between them in prehistoric Europe is thus proved. And this is the case throughout the habitable globe. An examination of the osseous remains of American man supports the view that the human species has not varied since quaternary times. The palaeolithic type is to be found among modern European populations. Certain skulls from South Australia seem cast in almost the same mould as the Neanderthal. After thousands of years nearly pure descendants of quaternary man are found among living races. And man’s mutual fertility in prehistoric is repeated throughout historic times: strict racial purity is almost unknown. Thus the unity of the species man is proved by the test of fertility.
3. The works of early man everywhere present the most startling resemblance. The palaeolithic implements all over the globe are all of one pattern. “The implements in distant lands,” writes Sir J. Evans, “are so identical in form and character with the British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the same hands.... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of the European types have been discovered; while in Somaliland, in an ancient river-valley at a great elevation above the sea, Sir H.W. Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent.” This identity in the earliest arts is repeated in the later stages of man’s culture; his arts and crafts, his manners and customs, exhibit a similarity so close as to compel the presumption that all the races are but divisions of one family. But perhaps the greatest psychical proof of man’s specific unity is his common possession of language. Theodore Waitz writes: “Inasmuch as the possession of a language of regular grammatical structure forms a fixed barrier between man and brute, it establishes at the same time a near relationship between all people in psychical respects.... In the presence of this common feature of the human mind, all other differences lose their import” (Anthropology, p. 273). As Dr J.C. Prichard urged, “the same inward and mental nature is to be recognized in all races of men. When we compare this fact with the observations, fully established, as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the Universe we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one species and one family.” It has been argued that stock languages imply stock races, but this assumption is untenable. There are some fifty irreducible stock languages in the United States and Canada, yet, taking into consideration the physical and moral homogeneity of the American Indian races, he would be a reckless theorist who held that there were therefore fifty separate human species. If it were so, how have they descended? There are no anthropoid apes in America, none of the ape family higher than the Cebidae, from which it is impossible to trace men. Again, in Australia there is certainly one stock language, yet there are not even Cebidae. In Caucasia, there are many distinct forms of speech, yet all the peoples belong to the Caucasic division of mankind.
Man, then, may be regarded as specifically one, and thus he must have had an original cradle-land, whence the peopling of the earth was brought about by migration. The evidence tends to prove that the world was peopled by a generalized proto-human form. Each division of mankind would thus have had its pleistocene ancestors, and would have become differentiated into races by the influence of climatic and other surroundings. As to the man’s cradle-land there have been many theories, but the weight of evidence is in favour of Indo-Malaysia.
Of all animals man’s range alone coincides with that of the habitable globe, and the real difficulty of the “cradle-land” theory lay in explaining how the human race spread to every land. This problem has been met by geology, which proves that the earth’s surface has undergone great changes since man’s appearance, and that continents, long since submerged, once existed, making a complete land communication from Indo-Malaysia. The evidence for the Indo-African continent has been summed up by R.D. Oldham,[1] and proofs no less cogent are available of the former existence of an Eurafrican continent, while the extension of Australia in the direction of New Guinea is more than probable. Thus the ancestor of man was free to move in all directions over the eastern hemisphere. The western hemisphere was more than probably connected with Europe and Asia, in Tertiary times, by a continent, the existence of which is evidenced by a submarine bank stretching from Scotland through the Faeroes and Iceland to Greenland, and on the other side by continuous land at what is now the Behring Straits.
Acclimatization has been urged as an argument against the cradle-land theory, but the peopling of the globe took place in inter-Glacial if not pre-Glacial ages, when the climate was much milder everywhere, and thus pleistocene man met no climatic difficulties in his migrations.
Probably before the close of Palaeolithic times all the primary divisions of man were specialized in their several habitats by the influence of their surroundings. The profound effect of climate is seen in the relative culture of races. Thus, tropical countries are inhabited by savage or semi-savage peoples, while the higher races are confined to temperate zones. The primary divisions of mankind, Ethiopic, Mongolic, Caucasic, were certainly differentiated in neolithic times, and these criteria had almost certainly occurred not consecutively in one area but simultaneously in several areas. A Negro was not metamorphosed into a Mongol, nor the latter into a White, but the several semi-simian precursors under varying environments developed into generalized Negro, generalized Mongol, generalized Caucasian.
Taking, then, these three primary divisions as those into which it is most reasonable broadly to divide mankind they may be analysed as to their racial constituents and their habitats as follows:—
1. Caucasic or White Man is best divided, following Huxley, into (a) Xanthochroi or “fair whites” and (b) Melanochroi or “dark whites.” (a) The first—tall, with almost colourless skin, blue or grey eyes, hair from straw colour to chestnut, and skulls varying as to proportionate width—are the prevalent inhabitants of Northern Europe, and the type may be traced into North Africa and eastward as far as India. On the south and west it mixes with that of the Melanochroi and on the north and east with that of the Mongoloids. (b) The “dark whites” differ from the fair whites in the darkening of the complexion to brownish and olive, and of the eyes and hair to black, while the stature is somewhat lower and the frame lighter. To this division belong a large part of those classed as Celts, and of the populations of Southern Europe, such as Spaniards, Greeks and Arabs, extending as far as India, while endless intermediate grades between the two white types testify to ages of intermingling. Besides these two main types, the Caucasic division of mankind has been held with much reason to include such aberrant types as the brown Polynesian races of the Eastern Pacific, Samoans, Hawaiians, Maoris, &c., the proto-Malay peoples of the Eastern archipelago, sometimes termed Indonesians, represented by the Dyaks of Borneo and the Battaks of Sumatra, the Todas of India and the Ainus of Japan.
2. Mongolic or Yellow Man prevails over the vast area lying east of a line drawn from Lapland to Siam. His physical characteristics are a short squat body, a yellowish-brown or coppery complexion, hair lank, straight and black, flat small nose, broad skull, usually without prominent brow-ridges, and black oblique eyes. Of the typical Mongolic races the chief are the Chinese, Tibetans, Burmese, Siamese; the Finnic group of races occupying Northern Europe, such as Finns, Lapps, Samoyedes and Ostyaks, and the Arctic Asiatic group represented by the Chukchis and Kamchadales; the Tunguses, Gilyaks and Golds north of, and the Mongols proper west of, Manchuria; the pure Turkic peoples and the Japanese and Koreans. Less typical, but with the Mongolic elements so predominant as to warrant inclusion, are the Malay peoples of the Eastern archipelago. Lastly, though differentiated in many ways from the true Mongol, the American races from the Eskimo to the Fuegians must be reckoned in the Yellow division of mankind.
3. Negroid or Black Man is primarily represented by the Negro of Africa between the Sahara and the Cape district, including Madagascar. The skin varies from dark brown to brown-black, with eyes of the same colour, and hair usually black and always crisp or woolly. The skull is narrow, with orbital ridges not prominent, the jaws protrude, the nose is flat and broad, and the lips thick and everted. Two important families are classed in this division; some authorities hold, as special modifications of the typical Negro to-day, others as actually nearer the true generalized Negroid type of neolithic times. First are the Bushman of South Africa, diminutive in stature and of a yellowish-brown colour: the neighbouring Hottentot is believed to be the result of crossing between the Bushman and the true Negro. Second are the large Negrito family, represented in Africa by the dwarf races of the equatorial forests, the Akkas, Batwas, Wochuas and others, and beyond Africa by the Andaman Islanders, the Aetas of the Philippines, and probably the Senangs and other aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula. The Negroid type seems to have been the earliest predominant in the South Sea islands, but it is impossible to say certainly whether it is itself derived from the Negrito, or the latter is a modification of it, as has been suggested above. In Melanesia, the Papuans of New Guinea, of New Caledonia, and other islands, represent a more or less Negroid type, as did the now extinct Tasmanians.
Excluded from this survey of the grouping of Man are the aborigines of Australia, whose ethnical affinities are much disputed. Probably they are to be reckoned as Dravidians, a very remote blend of Caucasic and Negro man. For a detailed discussion of the branches of these three main divisions of Man the reader must refer to articles under race headings, and to [Negro]; [Negritos]; [Mongols]; [Malays]; [Indians], [North American]; [Australia]; [Africa]; &c., &c.
Bibliography.—J.C. Prichard, Natural History of Man (London, 1843), Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (5 vols., 1836-1847); T.H. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature (London, 1863), and “Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind,” in Journ. Anthropological Institute for 1870; Theodore Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker (1859-1871); A. de Quatrefages, Histoire générale des races humaines (Paris, 1889); E.B. Tylor, Anthropology (1881); Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times (1865; 6th ed., 1900) and Origin of Civilization (1870; 6th ed., 1902); F. Ratzel, History of Mankind (Eng. trans., 1897); A.H. Keane, Ethnology (2nd ed., 1897), and Man: Past and Present (2nd ed., 1899); G. de Mortillet, Le Préhistorique (Paris, 1882; 3rd ed., 1900); D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples (1890); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900); Hutchinson’s Living Races of Mankind (1906).
[1] Writing in the Geographical Journal, March 1894, on “Evolution of Indian Geography,” he says: “The plants of Indian and African coal measures are without exception identical, and among the few animals which have been found in India one is indistinguishable from an African species, another is closely allied, and both faunas are characterized by the very remarkable genus group of reptiles comprising the Dicynodon and other allied forms (see Manual of Geology of India, 2nd ed. p. 203). These, however, are not the only analogies, for near the coast of South Africa there are developed a series of beds containing the plant fossils in the lower part and marine shells in the upper, known as the Uitenhage series, which corresponds exactly to the small patches of the Rajmahál series along the east coast of India. The few plant forms found in the lower beds of Africa are mostly identical with or closely allied to the Rajmahál species, while of the very few marine shells in the Indian outcrops, which are sufficiently well preserved for identification, at least one species is identical with an African form. These very close relationships between the plants and animals of India and Africa at this remote period appear inexplicable unless there were direct land communications between them over what is now the Indian Ocean. On the east coast of India in the Khasi Hills, and on the coast of South Africa, the marine fossils of late Jurassic and early cretaceous age are largely identical with, or very closely allied to each other, showing that they must have been inhabitants of one and the same great sea. In western India the fossils of the same age belong to a fauna which is found in the north of Madagascar, in northern and eastern Africa, in western Asia, and ranges into Europe—a fauna differing so radically from that of the eastern exposures that only a few specimens of world-wide range are found in both. Seeing that the distances between the separate outcrops containing representatives of the two faunas are much less than those separating the outcrops from the nearest ones of the same fauna, the only possible explanation of the facts is that there was a continuous stretch of dry land connecting South Africa and India and separating two distinct marine zoological provinces.”
ETHYL, in chemistry, the name given to the alkyl radical C2H5. The compounds containing this radical are treated under other headings; the hydride is better known as ethane, the alcohol, C2H5OH, is the ordinary alcohol of commerce, and the oxide (C2H5)2O is ordinary ether.
ETHYL CHLORIDE, or Hydrochloric Ether, C2H5Cl, a chemical compound prepared by passing dry hydrochloric acid gas into absolute alcohol. It is a colourless liquid with a sweetish burning taste and an agreeable odour. It is extremely volatile, boiling at 12.5° C. (54.5° F.), and is therefore a gas at ordinary room temperatures; it is stored in glass tubes fitted with screw-capped nozzles. The vapour burns with a smoky green-edged flame. It is largely used in dentistry and slight surgical operations to produce local anaesthesia (q.v.), and is known by the trade-name kelene. More volatile anaesthetics such as anestile or anaesthyl and coryl are produced by mixing with methyl chloride; a mixture of ethyl and methyl chlorides with ethyl bromide is known as somnoform.
ETHYLENE, or Ethene, C2H4, or H2C:CH2, the first representative of the series of olefine hydrocarbons, is found in coal gas. It is usually prepared by heating a mixture of ethyl alcohol and sulphuric acid. G.S. Newth (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1901, 79, p. 915) obtains a purer product by dropping ethyl alcohol into syrupy phosphoric acid (sp. gr. 1.75) warmed to 200° C., subsequently raising the temperature to 220° C. It can also be obtained by the action of sodium on ethylidene chloride (B. Tollens, Ann., 1866, 137, p. 311); by the reduction of copper acetylide with zinc dust and ammonia; by heating ethyl bromide with an alcoholic solution of caustic potash; by passing a mixture of carbon bisulphide and sulphuretted hydrogen over red-hot copper; and by the electrolysis of a concentrated solution of potassium succinate,
(CH2·CO2K)2 + 2H2O = C2H4 + 2CO2 + 2KOH + H2.
It is a colourless gas of somewhat sweetish taste; it is slightly soluble in water, but more so in alcohol and ether. It can be liquefied at −1.1° C., under a pressure of 42½ atmos. It solidifies at −181° C. and melts at −169° C. (K. Olszewski); it boils at −105° C. (L.P. Cailletet), or −102° to −103° C. (K. Olszewski). Its critical temperature is 13° C., and its specific gravity is 0.9784 (air = 1). The specific gravity of liquid ethylene is 0.386 (3° C.). Ethylene burns with a bright luminous flame, and forms a very explosive mixture with oxygen. For the combustion of ethylene see [Flame]. On strong heating it decomposes, giving, among other products, carbon, methane and acetylene (M. Berthelot, Ann., 1866, 139, p. 277). Being an unsaturated hydrocarbon, it is capable of forming addition products, e.g. it combines with hydrogen in the presence of platinum black, to form ethane, C2H6, with sulphur trioxide to form carbyl sulphate, C2H4(SO3)2, with hydrobromic and hydriodic acids at 100° C. to form ethyl bromide, C2H5Br, and ethyl iodide, C2H5I, with sulphuric acid at 160-170° C. to form ethyl sulphuric acid, C2H5·HSO4, and with hypochlorous acid to form glycol chlorhydrin, Cl·CH2·CH2·OH. Dilute potassium permanganate solution oxidizes it to ethylene glycol, HO·CH2·CH2·OH, whilst fuming nitric acid converts it into oxalic acid. Several compounds of ethylene and metallic chlorides are known; e.g. ferric chloride in the presence of ether at 150° C. gives C2H4·FeCl3·2H2O (J. Kachtler, Ber., 1869, 2, p. 510), while platinum bichloride in concentrated hydrochloric acid solution absorbs ethylene, forming the compound C2H4·PtCl2 (K. Birnbaum, Ann., 1868, 145, p. 69).
ÉTIENNE, CHARLES GUILLAUME (1778-1845), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born near Saint Dizier, Haute Marne, on the 5th of January 1778. He held various municipal offices under the Revolution and came in 1796 to Paris, where he produced his first opera, Le Rêve, in 1799, in collaboration with Antoine Frédéric Gresnick. Although Étienne continued to write for the Paris theatres for twenty years from that date, he is remembered chiefly as the author of one comedy, which excited considerable controversy. Les Deux Gendres was represented at the Théâtre Français on the 11th of August 1810, and procured for its author a seat in the Academy. A rumour was put in circulation that Étienne had drawn largely on a manuscript play in the imperial library, entitled Conaxa, ou les gendres dupés. His rivals were not slow to take up the charge of plagiarism, to which Étienne replied that the story was an old one (it existed in an old French fabliau) and had already been treated by Alexis Piron in Les Fils ingrats. He was, however, driven later to make admissions which at least showed a certain lack of candour. The bitterness of the attacks made on him was no doubt in part due to his position as editor-in-chief of the official Journal de l’Empire. His next play, L’Intrigante (1812), hardly maintained the high level of Les Deux Gendres; the patriotic opera L’Oriflamme and his lyric masterpiece Joconde date from 1814. Étienne had been secretary to Hugues Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano, and in this capacity had accompanied Napoleon throughout his campaigns in Italy, Germany, Austria and Poland. During these journeys he produced one of his best pieces, Brueys et Palaprat (1807). During the Restoration Étienne was an active member of the opposition. He was seven times returned as deputy for the department of Meuse, and was in full sympathy with the revolution of 1830, but the reforms actually carried out did not fulfil his expectations, and he gradually retired from public life. Among his other plays may be noted: Les Deux Mères, Le Pacha de Suresnes, and La Petite École des pères, all produced in 1802, in collaboration with his friend Gaugiran de Nanteuil (1778-1830). With Alphonse Dieudonné Martainville (1779-1830) he wrote an Histoire du Théâtre Français (4 vols., 1802) during the revolutionary period. Étienne was a bitter opponent of the romanticists, one of whom, Alfred de Vigny, was his successor and panegyrist in the Academy. He died on the 13th of March 1845.
His Œuvres (6 vols., 1846-1853) contain a notice of the author by L. Thiessé.
ETIQUETTE, a term for ceremonial usage, the rules of behaviour observed in society, more particularly the formal rules of ceremony to be observed at court functions, &c., the procedure, especially with regard to precedence and promotions in an organized body or society. Professions, such as the law or medicine, observe a code of etiquette, which the members must observe as protecting the dignity of the profession and preventing injury to its members. The word is French. The O. Fr. estiquette or estiquet meant a label, or “ticket,” the true English derivative. The ultimate origin is Teutonic, from sticken, to post up, stick, affix. Cotgrave explains the word in French as a billet for the benefit or advantage of him that receives it, a form of introduction and also a notice affixed at the gate of a court of law. The development of meaning in French from a label to ceremonial rules is not difficult in itself, but, as the New English Dictionary points out, the history has not been clearly established.
ETNA (Gr. Αἴτνη, from αἴθω, burn; Lat. Aetna), a volcano on the east coast of Sicily, the summit of which is 18 m. N. by W. of Catania. Its height was ascertained to be 10,758 ft. in 1900, having decreased from 10,870 ft. in 1861. It covers about 460 sq. m., and by rail the distance round the base of the mountain is 86 m., though, as the railway in some places travels high, the correct measurement is about 91 m. The height cannot have been very different in ancient times, for the so-called Torre del Filosofo, which is only 1188 ft. below the present summit, is a building of Roman date. The shape is that of a truncated cone, interrupted on the west by the Valle del Bove, a huge sterile abyss, 3 m. wide, bounded on three sides by perpendicular cliffs (2000 to 4000 ft.). Its south-west portion, which is the deepest, was perhaps the original crater. There are also some 200 subsidiary cones, some of them over 3000 ft. high, which have risen over lateral fissures. On the slopes of the mountain there are three distinct zones of vegetation, distinguished by Strabo (vi. p. 273 ff.). The lowest, up to about 3000 ft., is the zone of cultivation, where vegetables, and above them where water is more scanty, vines and olives flourish. Owing to its extraordinary fertility it is densely populated, having 930 inhabitants per sq. m. below 2600 ft., and 3056 inhabitants per sq. m. in the triangle between Catania, Nicolosi and Acireale. The next zone is the wooded zone, and is hardly inhabited, only a few isolated houses occurring. The lower part of it (up to about 6000 ft.) consists chiefly of forests of evergreen pines (Pinus nigricans), the upper (up to about 6800 ft.) of birch woods (Betula alba). A few oaks and red beeches occur, while chestnut trees grow anywhere between 1000 and 5300 ft. In the third and highest zone the vegetation is stunted, and there is a narrow zone of sub-Alpine shrubs, but no Alpine flora. In the last 2000 ft. five phanerogamous species only are to be found, the first three of which are peculiar to the mountain: Senecio Etnensis (which is found quite close to the crater), Anthemis Etnensis, Robertsia taraxacoides, Tanacetum vulgare and Astragalus siculus. No trace of animal life is to be found in this zone; for the greater part of the year it is covered with snow, but by the end of summer this has almost all melted, except for that preserved in the covered pits in which it is stored for use for cooling liquids, &c., in Catania and elsewhere. The ascent is best undertaken in summer or autumn. From the village of Nicolosi, 9 m. to the N.W. of Catania, about 7 or 8 hours are required to reach the summit. Thucydides mentions eruptions in the 8th and 5th centuries B.C., and others are mentioned by Livy in 125, 121 and 43 B.C. Catania was overwhelmed in 1169, and many other serious eruptions are recorded, notably in 1669, 1830, 1852, 1865, 1879, 1886, 1892, 1899 and March 1910.
According to Lyell, Etna is rather older than Vesuvius—perhaps of the same geological age as the Norwich Crag. At Trezza, on the eastern base of the mountain, basaltic rocks occur associated with fossiliferous Pliocene clays. The earliest eruptions of Etna are older than the Glacial period in Central and Northern Europe. If all the minor cones and monticules could be stripped from the mountain, the diminution of bulk would be extremely slight. Lyell concluded that, although no approximation can be given of the age of Etna, “its foundations were laid in the sea in the newer Pliocene period.” From the slope of the strata from one central point in the Val del Bue he further concluded that there once existed a second great crater of permanent eruption. The rocks erupted by Etna have always been very constant in composition, viz. varieties of basaltic lava and tuff containing little or no olivine—the rock type known as labradorite. At Acireale the lava has assumed the prismatic or columnar form in a striking manner; at the rock of Aci it is in parts spheroidal. The Grotte des Chèvres has been regarded as an enormous gas-bubble in the lava. The remarkable stability of the mountain appears to be due to the innumerable dikes which penetrate the lava flows and tuff beds in all directions and thus bind the whole mass together.
From the earliest times the mountain has naturally been the subject of legends. The Greeks believed it to be either the mountain with which Zeus had crushed the giant Typhon (so Pindar, Pyth. i. 34 seq.; Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, 351 seq.; Strabo xiii. p. 626), or Enceladus (Virgil, Georg. i. 471; Oppian, Cyn. i. 273), or the workshop of Hephaestus and the Cyclopes (Cic. De divin. ii. 19; cf. Lucil., Aetna, 41 seq., Solin, 11). Several Roman writers, on the other hand, attempted to explain the phenomena which it presented by natural causes (e.g. Lucretius vi. 639 seq.; Lucilius, Aetna, 511 seq.). Ascents of the mountain were not infrequent in those days—one was made by Hadrian.
See Sartorius von Waltershausen, Atlas des Ätna (Leipzig, 1880); E. Chaix, Carta Volcanologica e topographica dell’ Etna (showing lava streams up to 1892); G. de Lorenzo, L’Etna (Bergamo, 1907).
ETNA, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in the western part of the state, on the W. bank of the Allegheny river (about 5 m. from its junction with the Monongahela), and about 2 m. N. of the city of Pittsburg, of which it is a suburb. Pop. (1880) 2334; (1890) 3767; (1900) 5384 (1702 foreign-born); (1910) 5830. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway and by electric lines. Among its industrial establishments are rolling mills, tube and pipe works, furnaces, steel mills, a brass foundry, and manufactories of electrical railway supplies, boxes, asbestos coverings, enamel work and ice. The city’s industrial history dates from 1820, when a small factory for the manufacture of scythes and sickles was set up. Natural gas, piped from Butler county, was early used here as a fuel in the iron mills. Etna, formerly called Steuart’s Town, was incorporated as a borough in 1869.
ETON, a town of Buckinghamshire, England, on the north (left) bank of the river Thames, opposite Windsor, within which parliamentary borough it is situated. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3301. It is famous for its college, the largest of the ancient English public schools. The “King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor” was founded by Henry VI. in 1440-1441, and endowed mainly from the revenues of the alien priories suppressed by Henry V. The founder followed the model established by William of Wykeham in his foundations of Winchester and New College, Oxford. The original foundation at Eton consisted of a provost, 10 priests, 4 clerks, 6 choristers, a schoolmaster, 25 poor and indigent scholars, and the same number of poor men or bedesmen. In 1443, however, Henry considerably altered his original plans; the number of scholars was increased to 70, and the number of bedesmen reduced to 13. A connexion was then established, and has been maintained ever since, though in a modified form, between Eton and Henry’s foundation of King’s College, Cambridge. One of the king’s chief advisers was William of Waynflete, who had been master of Winchester College, and was appointed provost of Eton in 1443. Among further alterations to the foundation in this year was the establishment of commensales or commoners, distinct from the scholars; and these under the name of “oppidans” now form the principal body of the boys. The college survived with difficulty the unsettled period at the close of Henry’s reign; while Edward IV. curtailed its possessions, and was at first desirous of amalgamating it with the ecclesiastical foundation of St George, Windsor Castle. In 1506 the annual revenue amounted to £652; and through benefactions and the rise in the value of property the college has grown to be very richly endowed. In 1870 commissioners under an act of 1868 appointed the governing body of the college to consist of the provost of Eton, the provost of King’s College, Cambridge, five representatives nominated respectively by the university of Oxford, the university of Cambridge, the Royal Society, the lord chief justice and the masters, and four representatives chosen by the rest of the governing body. By this body the foundation was in 1872 made to consist of a provost and ten fellows (not priests, but merely the members of the governing body other than the provost), a headmaster of the school, and a lower master, at least seventy scholars (known as “collegers”), and not more than two chaplains or conducts. Originally it was necessary that the scholars should be born in England, of lawfully married parents, and be between eight and sixteen years of age; but according to the statutes of 1872 the scholarships are open to all boys who are British subjects, and (with certain limitations as to the exact date of birth) between twelve and fifteen years of age. A number of foundation scholarships for King’s College, Cambridge, are open for competition amongst the boys; and there are besides several other valuable scholarships and exhibitions, most of which are tenable only at Cambridge, some at Oxford, and some at either university. The teaching embraces the customary range of classical and modern subjects; but until the first half of the 19th century the normal course of instruction remained almost wholly classical; and although there were masters for other subjects, they were unconnected with the general business of the school, and were attended at extra hours.
The school buildings were founded in 1441 and occupied in part by 1443, but the whole original structure was not completed till fifty years later. The older buildings consist of two quadrangles, built partly of freestone but chiefly of brick. The outer quadrangle, or school-yard, is enclosed by the chapel, upper and lower schools, the original scholars’ dormitory (“long chamber”), now transformed, and masters’ chambers. It has in its centre a bronze statue of the royal founder. The buildings enclosing the inner or lesser quadrangle contain the residence of the fellows, the library, hall and various offices. The chapel, on the south side of the school-yard, represents only the choir of the church which the founder originally intended to build; but as this was not completed Waynflete added an ante-chapel. The chapel was built upon a raised platform of stone, as was the hall, in order to lift it above the flood-level of the Thames. It contains some interesting monuments of provosts of the college and others, and at the west end of the ante-chapel is a fine marble statue of the founder in his royal robes, by John Bacon. A chantry contains the tomb of Roger Lupton (provost 1503-1535), whose most notable monument is the fine tower between the school-yard and the cloisters to the east; though other parts of his building also remain. The space enclosed by two buttresses on the north side of the chapel, at the point where steps ascend to the north door, is the model of the peculiar form of court for the game of fives which takes name from Eton, with its “buttress” (represented by the projecting balustrade), the ledges round the walls, and the step dividing the floor into two levels. From the foundation of the college the chapel was used as the parish church until 1854, and not until 1875, after the alteration of the ancient constitution had secularized the foundation, was the parish of Eton created into a separate vicarage. The chapel does not accommodate the whole school; and a new chapel, from the designs of Sir Arthur Blomfield, is used by the lower school. The library contains many manuscripts (notably an Oriental and Egyptian collection) and rare books; and there is also a library for the use of the boys. The college in modern times has far outgrown its ancient buildings, and new buildings, besides the lower chapel, include the new schools, with an observatory, a chemical laboratory, science schools and boarding-houses. In 1908 King Edward VII. opened a fine range of buildings erected in honour of the Old Etonians who served in the South African War, and in memory of those who fell there. The architect was Mr L.K. Ball, an old Etonian. The buildings include a school hall, a domed octagonal library, and a classical museum.
The principal annual celebration is held on the 4th of June, the birthday of King George III., who had a great kindness for the school. This is the speech-day; and after the ceremonies in the school a procession of boats takes place on the Thames. In the sport of rowing Eton occupies a unique position among the public schools, and a large proportion of the oarsmen in the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat-race are alumni of the school. Another annual celebration is the occasion of the contest between collegers and oppidans at a peculiar form of football known as the wall game, from the fact that it is played against a wall bordering the college playing-field. This game takes place on St Andrew’s Day, the 30th of November. The field game of football commonly played at Eton has also peculiar rules. The annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow schools, at Lord’s ground, London, is always attended by a large and fashionable gathering. A singular custom termed the Montem, of unknown origin, but first mentioned in 1561, was observed here triennially on Whit-Tuesday. The last celebration took place in 1844, the ceremony being abolished just before it fell due in 1847. It consisted of a procession of the boys in a kind of military order, with flags and music, headed by their “captain,” to a small mound called Salt Hill, near the Bath road, where they levied contributions, or “salt,” from the passers-by and spectators. The sum collected sometimes exceeded £1000—the surplus, after deducting certain expenses, becoming the property of the captain of the school. The average number of pupils at Eton exceeds 1000.
See E.S. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, with Notices of the Early History of the College (1850); Sketches of Eton (1873); Sir H.C. Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton College from 1440 to 1875 (1875); J. Heneage Jesse, Memoirs of Celebrated Etonians (1875); The Eton Portrait Gallery, by a Barrister of the Inner Temple (1875); A.C. Benson, Fasti Etonienses (1899); L. Cust, History of Eton College (1899).
ÉTRETAT, a watering-place of France, in the department of Seine-Inférieure, on the coast of the English Channel, 16½ m. N. by E. of Havre by road. Pop. (1906) 1982. It is situated between fine cliffs in which, here and there, the sea has worn archways, pinnacles and other curious forms. The small stream traversing the valley, at the extremity of which Étretat lies, flows underground for some distance but rises to the surface on the beach. A Roman road and aqueduct and other Roman and Gallic remains have been discovered. The church of Notre-Dame, a Romanesque building, with a nave of the 11th century and a central tower and choir of the 13th century, is a fine example of the Norman architecture of those periods. Fishing is carried on, though there is no port and the fishermen haul their boats up the beach; the old hulks (caloges) serve as sheds and even as dwellings. Étretat sprang into popularity during the latter half of the 19th century, largely owing to the frequent references to it in the novels of Alphonse Karr.
ETRURIA, an ancient district of Italy, the extent of which varied considerably, and, especially in the earliest periods, is very difficult to define (see section Language). The name is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Τυρρηνία or Τυρσηνία, which is used by Latin writers also in the forms Tyrrhenia, Tyrrhenii; the Romans also spoke of Tusci, whence the modern Tuscany (q.v.). In early times the district appears to have included the whole of N. Italy from the Tiber to the Alps, but by the end of the 5th century B.C. it was considerably diminished, and about the year 100 B.C. its boundaries were the Arnus (Arno), the Apennines and the Tiber. In the division of Italy by Augustus it formed the seventh regio and extended as far north as the river Macra, which separated it from Liguria.
History.—The authentic history of Etruria is very meagre, and consists mainly in the story of its relations with Carthage, Greece and Rome. At some period unknown, prior to the 6th century, the Etrurians became a conquering people and extended their power not only northwards over, probably, Mantua, Felsina, Melpum and perhaps Hadria and Ravenna (Etruria Circumpadana), but also southwards into Latium and Campania. The chronology of this expansion is entirely unknown, nor can we recover with certainty the names of the cities which constituted the two leagues of twelve founded in the conquered districts on the analogy of the original league in Etruria proper (below). In the early history of Rome the Etruscans play a prominent part. According to the semi-historical tradition they were the third of the constituent elements which went to form the city of Rome. The tradition has been the subject of much controversy, and is still an unsolved problem. It is practically certain, however, that there is no foundation for the ancient theory (cf. Prop. iv. [v.] 1. 31) that the third Roman tribe, known as Luceres, represented an Etruscan element of the population, and it is held by many authorities that the tradition of the Tarquin kings of Rome represents, not an immigrant wave, but the temporary domination of Etruscan lords, who extended their conquests some time before 600 B.C. over Latium and Campania. This theory is corroborated by the fact that during the reigns of the Tarquin kings Rome appears as the mistress of a district including part of Etruria, several cities in Latium, and the whole of Campania, whereas our earliest picture of republican Rome is that of a small state in the midst of enemies. For this problem see further under [Rome]: History, section “The Monarchy.”
After the expulsion of the Tarquins the chief events in Etruscan history are the vain attempt to re-establish themselves in Rome under Lars Porsena of Clusium, the defeat of Octavius Mamilius, son-in-law of Tarquinius Superbus, at Lake Regillus, and the treaty with Carthage. This last event shows that the Etruscan power was formidable, and that by means of their fleet the Etruscans held under their exclusive control the commerce of the Tyrrhenian Sea. By this treaty Corsica was assigned to the Etruscans while Carthage obtained Sardinia. Soon after this, decay set in. In 474 the Etruscan fleet was destroyed by Hiero I. (q.v.) of Syracuse; Etruria Circumpadana was occupied by the Gauls, the Campanian cities by the Samnites, who took Capua (see [Campania]) in 423, and in 396, after a ten years’ siege, Veii fell to the Romans. The battle of the Vadimonian Lake (309) finally extinguished Etruscan independence, though for nearly two centuries still the prosperity of the Etruscan cities far exceeded that of Rome itself. Henceforward Etruria is finally merged in the Roman state.
Etruscan Antiquities
The large recent discoveries of Etruscan objects have not materially altered the conclusions arrived at a generation ago. It is not so much our appreciation of the broad lines of the manners and arts of the Etruscans that has altered as our understanding of the geographic and social causes which made them what they were. One great difficulty in the study of the remains is that a very large portion of them have been found by unofficial excavators who have been naturally unwilling to tell whence they came, and that certain other excavations, such as those carried out by Comm. Barnabei for the Villa Giulia museum, have been carried out under conditions which help but little towards increasing our knowledge.[1] The increase has, however, been steady, even if not all one could wish.
Ethnology.—The origin of the Etruscans will most likely never be absolutely fixed,[2] but their own tradition (Tacitus, Ann. iv. 55) that they came out of Lydia seems not impossible. Herodotus (i. 94) and Strabo (v. 220) tell of Lydians landing at the mouth of the Po and crossing the Apennines into Etruria. Thus it seems certain that though the earliest immigrants, known to the later Etruscans as the Rasena, may have come down from the north, still they were joined by a migration from the east before they had developed a civilization of their own, and it is this double race that became the Etruscans as we know them in tradition and by their works. To give a date to the migration of the Rasena from the north, for which the only evidence is the fact that the Etruscan language is found in various parts of north Italy,[3] is impossible, but we can perhaps give an approximate one to the coming of the Lydians or Tyrrhenians (Thuc. iv. 109; Herod. i. 57). We know that there was a great wave of migration from Greece to Italy about 1000 B.C., and as the earliest imported Greek objects found in the tombs cannot be dated many generations later than this, this year may be considered as giving us roughly the time when the real Etruscan civilization began.
It has been, and still is, a common mistake to speak of the Etruscans as though they were closely confined to that part of Italy called Etruria on the maps, but it is quite certain that in the early stages of their development they were differentiated from the Umbrians on the north-east and the Latins on the south in ways due rather to the locality than to race or essential character.[4] To primitive peoples open seas or deserts are a greater hindrance to intercourse than mountains or rivers, and even these did not cut off Etruria from the neighbouring regions of Italy. The Apennines that separated her from Umbria were not difficult to cross, and the Tiber which formed the boundary between her and Latium has been a far greater element of separation in the minds of modern authors than it ever was in reality. Narrow, not particularly swift, often shallow, such a stream can never have caused more than a moment’s delay to the hardy Etruscans. When Rome was founded, the river of course could be used like a moat round a castle as a means of defence, but that is very different from its being a permanent bar to the spread of a given culture. The fact that the alphabets used in other parts of Italy besides Etruria are derived from the Etruscan or from similar Grecian sources, that Rome was ruled by Etruscan kings, that the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline was decorated by Etruscan artists (Livy x. 23; Pliny, H.N. xxxv. 157), that the decorations of the temple found by Signor Mazzoleni near Conca (Notizie degli scavi, 1896) are of the same kind as others found in Etruria, show that the influences which grew to their clearest development in the region west of the Tiber had a marked effect over a broader region than is usually admitted. This too was the belief of the Greek historians, many of whom considered Rome as a Tyrrhenian city.[5]
Cities and Organization.—The chief cities of Etruria proper were Veii, Tarquinii, Falerii, Caere, Volci, Volsinii, Clusium, Arretium, Cortona, Perusia, Volaterrae (Volterra), Rusellae, Populonium and Faesulae. That the country was thickly settled is made plain by the ruins that have been found. It was governed by kings who were elected for life, but whose power depended largely on the leaders (lucumones) of the separate states or regions and on the aristocracy (Censorinus, De die natali, iv. 13). Later the office of king was abolished and replaced by annual magistrates (Livy v. 1). Below the aristocracy came the free people, who were divided into curiae (Serv. ad Aen. x. 202), and then the slaves. There can be little doubt that the early organization of the people at Rome was typical of Etruria (Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. 2nd ed. i. 389).
A league of twelve cities is mentioned by the ancients (Livy iv. 23), whose delegates met at the temple of Voltumna, but we are not told which cities formed the league, and there can be little doubt that the list changed from time to time. A glance at the map makes clear some of the general relations of these cities to one another and to the outer world. They are well spread all over the country, and by no means only along the coast. None of the important ones is among the mountains. This means that the earliest inhabitants of the country were not roving traders like the Mycenaean Greeks, and that the cities drew their wealth and strength from agricultural pursuits, for which the country was well suited, as the three rivers, Arnus, Umbro and Tiber, with their feeders (not to mention several lesser streams), channel it in all directions. We get a hint as to the government of the cities from the fact that many of the Roman forms and apanages of office were derived from the Etruscans (Dion. Hal. iii. 61); for instance, the diadem worn by those honoured with a triumph, the ivory sceptre and the embroidered toga (Tertull. De Cor. 13), and so too the golden bulla and the praetexta (Festus, s.v. “Sardi”). Such things give us an idea as to the aristocratic basis of the government. Of the actual laws we know something also. Cicero (Div. ii. 23) tells the story of the miraculous uncovering by a ploughboy of a child who had the wisdom of a sage, and how the child’s words were written down by the amazed folk, and became their archives and the source of their law. Coming down to historic times we find that their code, known as the libri disciplinae Etruscae, consisted of various parts (Festus, s.v. “Ritualis”). There were the libri haruspicini (Cic. Div. i. 33, 72), which dealt with the interpretation of the will of the gods by means of sacrifice; the libri fulgurales, which explained the messages of the gods in the thunder and lightning; and finally the libri rituales, which held the rules for the conduct of daily life—how to found cities, where to place the gates, how to take the census, and the general ordering of the people both in peace and war.
Natural Resources and Commerce.—Such was the country and such the laws. The people were a warrior stock with little commercial skill. Much of their wealth was due to trade, but they were not the restless, conquering blood that goes in search of new markets. They waited for the buyers to come to them. That their wealth and consequent power were gathered contemporaneously with that of Greece is shown by various facts. One of these is that Dionysius of Phocaea settled in Sicily after the Ionian revolt (in which his native city took part) had been quelled by Darius, and thence harried the Etruscans (Herod. vi. 17). Their power is also shown by the fact that they made an alliance with the Carthaginians, with the result that they obtained control of Corsica (Herod. i. 166), and this union continued for many generations.[6] That this treaty was no exceptional one is shown by Aristotle (Pol. iii. 96, Op. ii. 261), who says that there were numerous treatises, concerning their alliances and mutual rights, between the two peoples. That the Greeks held the Etruscans in considerable dread is suggested by the fact that Hesiod (Theog. 1011 foll.) names one of their leaders Agrios, “the Wild Man,” and by the fear they had of the straits of Messina, where they imagined Scylla and Charybdis, which, unless the whirlpools were of very different character then than now, were as likely to be the pirate bands of Carthaginians and Etruscans who guarded the channel. And this explanation is strengthened by Euripides (Med. 1342, 1359), whose Medea compares herself to “Scylla, who dwells on the Tyrrhenian shore.” The wealth that was the source of this power of the Etruscans must in the main have been drawn from agriculture and forestry. The rich land with its many streams could scarcely be surpassed for the raising of crops and cattle, and the hills were heavily timbered. That it was such material as this, which leaves no trace with the passing of time, that they sold cannot be doubted, for there is plenty of evidence that their country was visited by foreign traders of many lands, and that they bought largely of them, especially of metals. Metals also suggest that another source of their wealth was that of the middleman. Their towns were the centres of exchange, where the north and west met the south and east. They had no mines of gold or tin, but the carriers of tin, iron or amber[7] from the north met in the markets of Etruria the Phoenician and Greek merchants bringing gold and ivory and the other luxuries of the East. The quantities of gold, silver and bronze found in Etruscan tombs prove this clearly. Of these metals the only one found in unworked form, in what are practically pigs, is bronze. This in the form of aes rude has frequently been found in considerable quantities, and the larger and better formed bits of metals known as aes signatum are not rare. Both forms are usually spoken of as the earliest forms of money, but as the aes rude generally bears no marks of valuation or of any mint, and as the aes signatum is far too large and heavy for ordinary circulation, it is probable that these shapes of metal are not to be considered strictly or alone as coins, but as forms given to the alloy of tin and copper made and sold by the Etruscans to the foreigners for purposes of manufacture. This of course does not exclude their use as money. Where the copper for this bronze came from is not certain, but probably a great part was from the mines at Volaterrae. Still another proof that what the Etruscans sold was the product of their fields or crude metals imported from the north, is the fact that though in the museum at Carthage and elsewhere there are a few vases and other objects which probably come from Etruria, still such objects are extremely uncommon. On the other hand, articles obviously imported from the East are by no means uncommon in Etruria. Such are the ostrich shells from Volci,[8] the Phoenician cups from Palestrina,[9] the Egyptian glazed vases and scarabs found on more than one site.[10] All this goes to show that the Etruscans lacked in their earlier days skilful workers in the arts and crafts.
Habits and Customs.—The lack of literary remains of the Etruscans does not cramp our knowledge of their habits as much as might be supposed, owing to the numerous paintings that are left. These paintings are on the walls of the tombs at Veii, Corneto, Chiusi (Clusium), and elsewhere,[11] and give a varied picture of the dress, utensils and habits of the people. The evidence of many ancient authors cannot be questioned that as a race the Etruscans in historic times were much given to luxurious living. So much so in fact that Virgil (Georg. ii. 193) speaks of the pinguis Tyrrhenus (a trumpeter at the altar) and Catullus (xxxix. 11) of the obesus Etruscus. Diodorus (v. 40) gives a succinct account in which he says that “their country was so fertile they derived therefrom not only sufficient for their needs but enough to supply them with luxuries. Twice a day they partook of elaborate repasts at which the tables were decked with embroidered cloths and vessels of gold and silver. The servants were numerous and noticeable for the richness of their attire. The houses, too, were large and commodious. In fact, giving themselves up to sensuous enjoyments they had naturally lost the glorious reputation their ancestors had won in war.” This last remark shows that Diodorus recognized the important difference between the early Etruscans who built up the country and the later ones who merely enjoyed it. Naturally courtesans flourished in such a community. Timaeus and Theopompus tell how the women lived and ate and even exercised with the men (Athen. xii. 14; cf. iv. 38), habits which of course gave the Roman satirists many openings for attack (Plaut. Cist. ii. 3. 563; cf. Herod, i. 98; Strabo xi. 14). In dress they differed but little from the Romans, both wearing the toga and the tunic. Hats too, often of pointed form, were common (Serv. ad Aen. ii. 683), as the paintings show, but it was their shoes for which they were particularly famous. One author (Lydus, de Magistr. i. 17. 36) suggests that Romulus borrowed from Etruria the type of shoe he gave the senators, and this may well be true, though the form mentioned, the kampagus, is of late origin. At any rate σανδάλια Τυρρηνικά are frequently mentioned. From the pictures and remains we know that they had wooden soles strengthened with bronze, and that the uppers were of leather and bound with thongs.
Their occupations of trade and agriculture have been already mentioned. For their leisure hours they had athletic games including gladiatorial shows (Athen. iv. 153; cf. Livy ix. 40. 7; Strabo v. 250), hunting, music and dancing. All these are shown in the tomb pictures, and all, with the exception of the hunting, developed first as a part of religious service, and their importance is shown by the strictness of the rules that governed them (Cicero, De harusp. resp. ii. 23). Did a dancer lose step, or an attendant lift his hand from the chariot, the games lost their value as a religious service. An idea of the splendour of the triumphs that accompanied victorious generals and of the parades at the games is given by Appian (De reb. Punic. viii. 66) and Dionysius (vii. 92). The music that was an accompaniment of all their occupations, even of hunting (Aelian, De natur. anim. xii. 46), was mainly produced by the single or double flute, the mastery of which by the Etruscans was known to all the world. They also had small harps and trumpets.
For the regularization of all these duties and pleasures there was a calendar and time-division for the day. It is noteworthy that the beginning of the day was for them the moment when the sun was at the zenith (Serv. ad Aen. v. 738). In this they differed from the Greeks, who began their day with the sunset, and the Romans, who reckoned theirs from midnight. The weeks were of eight days, the first being market day and the day when the people could appeal to the king, and the months were lunar. The years were kept numbered by the annual driving of a nail into the walls of the temple of Nortia at Volsinii (Livy vii. 3. 7), a custom later adopted by the Romans, who used the Capitoline temple for the same purpose. In Rome this rite was performed on the Ides of September, and it is likely that it took place in Etruria on the same date, the natural end of the year among an agricultural folk. A still longer measure of time was the saeculum, which was supposed to be the length of the longest life of all those born in the year in which the preceding oldest inhabitant died (Censorinus, De die natali, 17. 5; cf. Zosimus ii. 1). According to later writers[12] the Etruscan race was to last ten saecula, and the emperor Augustus in his memoirs (Serv. ad. Bucol. ix. 47) says that the comet of the year 44 B.C. was said by the priests to betoken the beginning of the tenth saeculum. The earliest saecula had been, according to Varro, 100 years long. The later ones varied in length from 105 to 123 years. The round number 100 is obviously an ex post facto approximation, and the accuracy of the others is probably more apparent than real, but if we reckon back some 900 years from the date given by Augustus we arrive at just about the time when the archaeological evidence leads us to believe that the Etruscans in Italy were beginning to recognize their individuality.
Religion.—To retrace the religious development of the Etruscans from its mystic beginnings is beyond our power, and it is unlikely that any future discoveries will help us much. We are, however, able to draw a clear, if not a detailed, picture of the worship paid to the various divinities, partly from the direct information we have concerning them and partly from the analogies which may safely be drawn between them and the Romans.
The frequency of sacrifice among them and their belief in the short duration of the race[13] show clearly their belief in a good and a bad principle, and the latter seems to have been predominant in their minds. Storms, earthquakes, the birth of deformities, all gave evidence of evil powers, which could be appeased sometimes only by human sacrifice. We miss here the Greek joy in human life and the beauties of earth. The gods (aesar) were divided into two main groups, the Dii Consentes and a vaguer set of powers, the Dii Involuti (Seneca, Quaest. Nat. ii. 41), to whom even Jupiter bowed. They all dwelt in various parts of the heavens (Martianus Capella, De nupt. Phil. i. 41 ff.). Of the Dii Consentes the most important group consisted of Jupiter (Tinia), Juno (Uni) and Minerva (Menrva). In some towns, such as Veii and Falerii, Juno was the chief deity, and at Perusia she was worshipped like the Greek Aphrodite in conjunction with Vulcan (the Greek Hephaestus). This shows that though in exterior form the Etruscan gods were influenced by the Greeks, still their character and powers betoken different beliefs. An interesting point to note about Minerva (Menrva) is that she was the goddess of the music of flutes and horns. The myth of Athena and Marsyas probably originated in Asia Minor, and a Pelasgian Tyrrhenian founded in Argos the temple of Athena Salpinx (Paus. ii. 21. 3). The evident connexion between Asia Minor and Etruria in these facts cannot be overlooked. Besides these deities there were Venus (Turan), Bacchus (Fufluns), Mercury (Turms), Vulcan (Sethlans). Of these, Sethlans is in a way the most important, for he shows a connexion in prehistoric times between Etruria and the East.[14] Other deities of Greek origin there were—Ares, Apollo, Heracles, the Dioscuri; in fact, as the centuries passed, the Greek divinities were adopted almost without exception. Besides these there were also many gods of Latin or Sabine origin, of whom little is known but their names; these may often be local appellations for the same god. Among these were Voltumna at Volsinii and Vertumnus at Rome, Janus, Nortia, goddess of Fortuna, Fēronia, whose temple was at a town of the same name at the foot of Soracte,[15] Mantus, Pales, Vejovis, Eileithyia and Ceres. Such were the leading gods; in addition there was the world of spirits whom we know in Rome as the Manes, Lares and Penates. The latter were of four classes, pertaining to Jove, Neptune, the gods of the lower world, and to men.[16] The Lares too were of various sorts (familiares, compitales, viales), and with them the souls of the dead, after the performance of due expiatory rites, took their place as dii animales (Serv. ad Aen. iii. 168 and 302). The Manes are the vaguest group of all and were confined almost wholly to the lower world (Festus, s.v. “Mundus”; Apuleius, De deo Socratis). Over all these ruled Mantus and Mania, the counterparts of Pluto and Persephone in Greece. As a result of this complete hierarchy of divine powers the priesthood of Etruria was large, powerful, and of such fame that Etruscan haruspices were sent for from distant places to interpret the sacrifices and the oracles (Livy v. i. 6, xxvii. 37. 6).
Art.—The evidence drawn from tradition and custom which we have so far considered in relation to the origin and beliefs of the Etruscans has taken us into the prehistoric times much earlier than those when the handicrafts developed into true fine arts. The contents of the earliest graves[17] show but few traces of any feeling for art either in architecture or in the lesser forms of household and personal decoration. Gradually, however, as one comes down towards the more fixed historic periods, certain objects, obviously imported from the eastern Mediterranean, occur, and these are the first signs of an interest in the beauty or curiosity of things, an interest that local workmen could not yet satisfy, but which stirred them to endeavour. It was probably during the 9th century that this began, not long after the period when foreign trade began to flourish.
The history of Etruscan art has usually been wrongly estimated owing to the widespread delusion that objects found in Etruria were in the true sense products of native artists and indicative of native-grown culture. It is only recently, and not even yet completely, that the term “Etruscan” has been given up as the name for the terra-cotta vases (which were found in the 19th century by the earlier archaeologists of the modern scientific school in great quantities in the Etruscan tombs); these are now known to have been made by Greek potters. There are few books on the subject of Etruscan art. The best known is Jules Martha’s L’Art étrusque (2nd ed., 1889), a book which, though full of accurate data, shows absolute lack of discrimination between those works that are of Etruscan fabric and those that were brought from other lands, particularly Greece and the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia and Sicily. These latter are too generally forgotten in the study both of Greek and of Etruscan art, and all works which show the Greek spirit are vaguely supposed to have been produced on the Greek mainland. As much of the following must be to some extent controversial in character, a concrete illustration may serve to prevent misconception as to this important distinction. The beautiful throne in the Ludovisi collection representing the birth of Aphrodite is commonly spoken of as though made by some sculptor in Greece. It seems at least as likely that it comes from Sicily. Not only is the character of the modelling similar to what we find on Sicilian sculptures and coins, and not quite so sharp as on most works from Greece, but there is a lyrical feeling for nature in the pose of the figures and in the pebbled soil on which the main group stands, which seems to answer to the Sicilian feeling as we know it in poetry rather than to the Greek.
The houses of the earliest times were, to judge by the burial urns known from their shape as hut-urns, small single-room constructions of rectangular plan similar to certain types of the capanne used by the shepherds to-day. Architecture. Probably the walls were wattled and the roofs were certainly thatched, for the urns show plainly the long beams fastened together at the top and hanging from the ridge down each side. Tombs cut in the rock offer other and later models of house construction, but give no suggestion that the Etruscans had any artistic sense in architecture. Such tombs are mostly later than the 5th century B.C., and show the most simple form of wood construction. Posts or columns hold up the walls and the sloping roofs, the latter made of beams with boards laid lengthwise, covered by others from ridge to eave, the intervening space forming a coffer, sometimes decorated. Though the walls of such tombs are often covered with paintings, the relation of the various parts (and, let it be remembered, these tombs represent the houses of the living) shows but the coarsest sense of proportion. The elements of the decoration, such as capitals, mouldings, rosettes, patterns, are borrowed from Greece, Egypt or elsewhere, and are used redundantly and with no refinement.[18]
The temples did not differ from those in Greece in any essential principal of construction except that they were generally square, from the desire to make them answer to the templum or quadripartite division of the heavens elaborated by the priests. In Roman times, “Etruscan style” was the term used for colonnades with wide intercolumniations, and this shows how the early builders used wood with its possibility of long architrave beams rather than stone as in Greece. The interior arrangements of the temple also varied from the Grecian models, for owing to the fact that the gods of Etruria were often worshipped in groups of three the cella was divided into three chambers. The decoration—metopes, friezes, acroteria, &c.—was of terra-cotta fastened by nails to the wooden walls.
Though we know that the Etruscans were famous for their games,[19] still there are no remains of circi, and so too, though the satyristae were well known,[20] no theatres are left. They were obviously a race of no literary taste or culture. The theatre at Fiesole which is often referred to as Etruscan unquestionably dates from Roman times.
Underground tombs have already been mentioned in their relation to house-architecture, but there are the tumuli such as that called la Cucumella at Volci, that of the Curiatii at Albano, or that of Porsena at Clusium, which Pliny describes as one of the wonders of Italy (H.N. xxxvi. 19). These great walled-in mounds with their complex of interior chambers are interesting as reminiscent of tombs in Lydia, but architecturally they are barbaric and show no developed skill.
There remains one monument which has always been supposed to show a real advance made by the Etruscans in the art of architecture—the cloaca maxima in Rome. This round-arched drain was supposed to have been built by Etruscans, and it was only in 1903 that Commendatore Boni in excavating the Forum proved that the drain was originally uncovered, and that the arch was built at the end of the Republic. Thus the honour, not of discovering the arch, for it was known to the East, but of popularizing its use, does not belong to the Etruscans, though they did use it at a comparatively late time for city gates, as at Volterra.[21] The false arch and dome of the Mycenaeans seems to have been familiar to them, though there are but few cases of its use on a large scale. The best-known instances are the Tullianum or Mamertine prison in Rome, the Regulini-Galassi tomb at Cervetri,[22] one at Sesto Fiorentino near Florence,[23] at Cortona,[24] at Chiusi, and also those in Latium.[25]
Although there was, therefore, but little development in the greater arts of literature and architecture among the Etruscans, it is evident enough that there was much desire to possess the products of the lesser arts, such as sculpture, jewelry and household ornaments. But here too the study has been made difficult by the failure to distinguish between native and imported products. Before studying the objects themselves it is well to recall the legendary character of Etruscan chronology as reckoned in saecula. Helbig[26] showed that we cannot consider any of the traditional dates as being accurate until about 644 B.C., the beginning, that is, of the fifth saeculum. This is probably about one hundred years after the introduction of the Chalcidian (Ionic) alphabet into the country. One of the earliest examples of the use of it is on a vase found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb. In considering the trade of the country it has been pointed out that its chief political connexions were with Carthage, but the artistic sense of Carthaginians or other Phoenicians was not more developed than that of the Etruscans. They were traders, and doubtless brought the Etruscans some of the Egyptian and Eastern objects which have been found in their tombs, articles that date from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. But beside the Phoenicians the Ionian Greeks from the 9th century had been trading and colonizing in Sicily and Italy. Herodotus (i. 163) tells how the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to take long voyages, and that they discovered the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas and Iberia. Thucydīdes (vi. 3. 1) says that it was Chalcidians from Euboea who first settled in Sicily. Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 12. 43) writes in the same sense, for he tells of Demaratus who came from Corinth with the artists Eucheir, Diopus, Eugrammus, about 650 B.C., and first started sculpture in Italy. These traditions of the coming of Ionian Greeks to Italy are completely borne out by the archaeological remains found in Ionian lands and in Etruria, and it is agreed that a great part of what has hitherto been considered Etruscan is no more Etruscan than the Moorish plates of the 15th century found in Italy are Florentine. The best works in most of the smaller arts are almost without exception Greek, the earlier Ionian, the later Attic; the remainder are made with the distinct intention of imitating Greek models, and so should be considered as Greek, inasmuch as they do not show a natural, original expression of feeling on the part of the Etruscan workman. The Etruscans were dull artists in all lines. They were skilful copyists, nothing more, as is absolutely proved by the simple fact that we know of no Etruscan artist by name. If one takes the articles which are of obviously local manufacture, such as the burial urns[27] or the ordinary bronze mirrors, or the pottery, it would be hard to find a similar quantity of work by any other race so lacking in originality of conception or high excellence of technique.
In the study of the monuments a division must be made distinguishing between the obviously Greek works, the works done with a desire to copy Greek models and the work of native artists. To separate the objects in the way suggested required a very considerable familiarity with Greek art, and though in many cases the result may be doubtful, still so much must be taken from the Etruscans that they are shown to have little more artistic feeling than the Romans. In the earlier centuries a strong eastern influence appears in the copying of sphinxes and similar eastern motives, but this soon gave way to the stronger Greek influence, as was natural, for the intercourse with the Phoenicians was spasmodic whereas that with the Greeks was constant. But even with the Greeks to kindle their imaginations, the Etruscans produced no school of art; no steady progression is traceable. In various towns there were various fashions of pottery or jewelry, but good, bad and indifferent constantly occur together in a way possible only among a people who possessed no natural artistic capacities and had no widespread standards of cultivated taste. The Ionians have been mentioned as having strongly affected the arts in Etruria, and, though in the later centuries Athens undoubtedly exported heavy consignments to Italy, the taste of the Etruscans seems generally to have preferred the rather heavy loose style of the Ionians, even when direct contact with them was lost and its place taken by direct relations with Athens and her colonies.
Pottery[28] practised enormously by the Etruscans shows as clearly as possible their essential strength and weakness as artists. Even the black ware called bucchero is now known to have been manufactured in other lands and not to be an Pottery. exclusively Etruscan style. In the earlier tombs this ware is present in greater numbers than any other, and the vases exhibit considerable dexterity of manufacture so far as form goes. But it is evident from comparisons with early Ionian vases that the better proportioned of the shapes are direct copies of the Ionian. The decoration of the bucchero is either engraved, in which case it is almost always extremely rude, or formed by figures modelled or pressed by a mould on to the body of the vase. In these two last cases the figures are often suggestive of the farther East (Egyptian and Mesopotamia), but still more frequently they are taken from Greek originals, and the natural tendency of the Etruscan artist to be a copyist is very marked. Whence the moulds for these vases came is not known, but analogy with other classes of work makes it practically certain that some were imported and some made by the imitating workmen. There are other classes of vases which at first sight look as though they were imported from Greece, but by the nature of their clay are recognized to be Etruscan imitations of Greek originals. The imitation is often very skilful, for the Etruscan artist rivalled his Grecian master in deftness of hand, if not in imagination. Such, for instance, are the large amphoras decorated with bands of animals in the Corinthian style. Besides these native Vases the tombs have yielded great quantities of others which used to be called Etruscan, but are now known to have been imported from Greece. Until the 6th century B.C. these vases are mostly Ionian, but at that time the trade of the Phocaeans was waning before that of Athens, and henceforward the Athenian ware is the commonest. Intercourse with Athens, however, came to an end about 480, when the Sicilian Greeks mastered the trade of the western Mediterranean, so that in the Etruscan tombs later than this date we find fewer and fewer imported vases, and more and more native imitations. It is generally taken for granted that these Attic vases were brought to Etruria by Greek traders, but considering how little the Greek historians, even Herodotus, knew of that country, this is unlikely. Then, too, the chief products Etruria had to give Greece were metals, so it is more likely that it was the Etruscan traders who, having carried metal to Greece (where Etruscan bronze was famous[29]), brought back the vases.
Though most collections make no distinction between Greek and Etruscan scarabs the differences, though slight, are quite certain, and consist in the greater elaboration of the borders, edges and backs of the Etruscan examples. Scarabs. The commonest material for these gems is red carnelian, and agate frequently occurs. The beetle shape is undoubtedly due to the Phoenicians, who familiarized the Etruscans with the Egyptian scarab and with its signification as an amulet; while in technique they are more Greek, in use they are more Egyptian, for they were used not only as seals but as ornaments—as in the decoration of necklaces.[30] What we learn from them merely serves to strengthen what we learn from the pottery—that the Etruscans depended on the Greek world for their artistic conceptions. Though many Phoenician gems (in fact, scarcely any other kind) have been found in Sardinia, these are comparatively rare in Etruria, where the earliest gems occur about 650 B.C. Some of these earliest show the Ionian influence, which is also shown in certain gold rings, but most of them represent the Attic style as seen on the black-figured vases of Athens. To understand them one has but to know Attic sculpture, the complete history of which is repeated in these small and beautifully worked stones. At first one finds the single figures, awkward in form and modelling, but full of life in composition—one finds the same mistakes in anatomy (i.e. the muscles of the stomach); and then come the figures beautifully worked and accurately observed, but with the slight hardness and rigidity that belongs to all pre-Raphaelite work; and finally one sees the figures carved with the easy assurance of the master, sometimes single, sometimes in groups, but always Attic in their unrivalled representation of the beauties of the human figure, and in the innumerable lovely scenes taken from everyday life. Not infrequently inscriptions are cut in the gem, but these are not as on Greek gems the name of the carver or the owner, but the name of the Greek hero represented. In regard to technique one point is specially noteworthy. Many of the gems are carved with the round drill, and the disks made by this are not modelled into any real semblance of a figure. This is not a sign of the antiquity of the gem, for there are examples in which together with this method will be seen a figure finished with the greatest care; it is thus evident that the gem-cutter left the marks of his round drill because of their decorative value. This they undoubtedly possess, and it is one of the few cases in which the Etruscans showed any art sense.
Bronze was used extensively. Weapons of course were fashioned of it, but these are simple in shape and decoration; no such examples as those from Mycenae occur. Objects of large size, as the bronze doors of Veii,[31] Bronze. the chariots of Perugia in the New York museum, or large tripods or shields, show that the artisans had large quantities of the material at their disposal. As with the vases or gems, so in these metal objects the distinction must be drawn between pure Etruscan work and the work that was done by Greek workmen or by artisans copying the Greek style. As Etruscan art has been wrongly estimated through forgetfulness of the Greek influence, so Greek bronzes have possibly received credit that does not belong to them. Etruscan candelabra and vases were famous among the Greeks (Ath. i. 28. 6; xv. 700 c). The chariots above mentioned and the tripods in the Harvard museum are plainly Greek; the round shields with ornament in bands are native. Antefixes of tombs were of bronze, and in some cases the eyes of the figures were inlaid with glass paste. The best-known articles of bronze are the mirrors,[32] which are very dependent on Greece for their models, though the poor style in which the scenes that decorate them are in most cases carved shows that these articles of common use were produced, as was natural, mainly by ordinary workmen. In rare cases the figures are not engraved but are given in low relief. These mirrors seem to have been mainly intended for women, and the scenes on them in large numbers of cases are of such a character as to bear out this idea; for instead of scenes of battle such as occur on the gems, scenes with satyrs and maenads are commoner, or the story of Helen or the labours of Hercules. So far as development goes they pass through the same stages as the gems, though owing to their larger surface they are more generally decorated with groups of figures.[33] Another well-known class of work is the cistae or cylindrical bronze boxes found mostly at Praeneste, where they seem to have been especially popular. The engraved figures on them are of the same character as those on the mirrors, and it is noteworthy that these figures are often better in style than the figures modelled in the round that serve as handles, or than the legs which also are modelled. This, taken together with the fact that the same figures are repeated in several cases on more than one gem or mirror, makes it probable that the workmen, like the later potters of Arezzo, had a stock of models brought from Greece, which they repeated and combined to suit their fancy.
The paintings and contents of the tombs have made it plain that the wealth of the Etruscans was very considerable, and that they spent much on jewelry, gold and silver.[34] Their extravagance in this regard was well known,[35] and the Gold and silver. rings, the necklaces, the diadems, the bracelets and the earrings show that there was a large class of well-to-do people. The eastern and Greek influences are clearly marked in the figures used in decoration, and in certain shapes of rings, but in one technical matter the Etruscans seem to have made a discovery: it was in the use of granulated ornament, that is, ornament made by soldering on to the gold object infinitely small globules of the same metal laid in various designs and patterns, each globule soldered by itself. Though this style of ornament occurs in Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes and Magna Graecia, nowhere is it accomplished with such extraordinary minuteness as in Etruria. That they should do this was natural. The difficulty of it seems to have pleased them, for it is commoner than the earlier filigree work made of wire soldered on to the gold base. Reference has been made to the scarabs set as ornament in the gold necklaces, and similarly we find amber used and, in the later work, precious stones and pearls.
As in Greece the Etruscans first carved their figures out of wood,[36] but what these figures were like we can only imagine. The earliest known figures in the round are even less successful than the contemporary Greek work. An Sculpture. early attempt at a female bust[37] is made not by casting but by riveting plates of bronze together. A half life size bust in the Tyszkiewicz collection[38] made probably about 600 B.C. is cast solid. Later they learned the art of hollow-casting, but their attempts to reproduce figures in the round are generally lacking in skill. One reason for this was the lack of good marble, the quarries at Carrara not having been used till Roman times. Terra-cotta was the material most commonly used, and their skill in modelling and colouring this was great. The earlier statues of large size have perished; but there are three famous sarcophagi which show the work of Ionian Etruscan artists;[39] one is in the British Museum, one in the Louvre and one in the Villa di Papa Giulio at Rome. The elaborate detail and careful work, the types of the figures and the style of their dress all point to the same Ionic origin as that of the bronze chariots already mentioned. The type of sarcophagus illustrated by these examples became very common, and in the figures that decorate the covers can be traced the various influences that affected the whole of Etruscan art. In an example from Volci[40] the later Attic influence is strongly marked. Such work shows little power of origination, but much of the interest taken by careful workmen by copying carefully, and the tendency that such workmen almost invariably display of overloading the subject with too much ornament and detail. The small ash-urns, either of stone or terra-cotta, are in certain ways more interesting than the more elaborate sarcophagi, for on these urns the heads of the figures reclining on one elbow which form the usual decoration of the covers are often obvious attempts at portraiture. Single busts[41] show this same desire for accurate likeness of the person represented, and in this one line of art the Etruscans showed a new feeling, one that found its finest expression in the hands of the later Roman portraitists. The main difference between such portraits and the Greek ones is that the Greek artist thought of his subject as illustrating character that showed itself in ways of repose and thought—the essential, lasting individuality. The Etruscan and Roman portraitist thought, on the other hand, of his subject as illustrating character in ways of action; hence pure Etruscan and Roman portraits are much more tense in line, and the expression of the eye is not dreamy but distinctly focussed. They are different, but, as art, one is as fine as the other. The scenes on the sides of these urns are, as in the case of the gems and mirrors, very frequently taken from Greek story, and often are scenes of battle.[42] Work in relief for the friezes and the other decorations of temples was very common, and shows remarkable skill in the mere processes of modelling and baking the slabs of terra-cotta that were fastened by nails to the beams. So far as the figures themselves are concerned, they seem to have but little meaning in connexion with the building they decorate. Satyrs and maenads, chariot-races and such scenes taken over from Greek models are perhaps the commonest. In none of the obviously native work is there any more instinctive feeling for the greater qualities of sculpture than in the gems. Little is original, almost everything dependent on earlier masters. There is no absorption of the artist by his work which produces great work, great because the beholder thinks rather of the work produced than of the artist who produces it. For this reason such figures as the bronze chimaera or the bronze Athena in the Florence museum are presumably not Etruscan but Greek.
There is no evidence that the Etruscans had easel-paintings like the Greeks, but their skill in painting is well illustrated by the pictures with which they frequently covered the inner walls of their tombs. The wall was prepared Painting. with a coating of fine white stucco on which the figures were painted with a large variety of tints. The best of them have been found at Tarquinii, Chiusi, Volci, Caere, Veii.[43] The paintings exhibit the usual Greek influences. They show a certain ponderous realism, but as works of art they are of little value. As pictures of the life and customs of the people they are of great importance.
As works of art their coins[44] are the worst efforts of the Etruscans. Gold, silver and bronze were used, but no examples can be dated earlier than the beginning of the 5th century B.C. The coins are struck according to four Coins. different standards of weight, due perhaps to different trade-connexions. The bronze coinage shows a distinct scale of reduction in weight due to the increasing use of the precious metals. Many examples show a design only on one side. The designs of the majority of the types are taken from Greek models, but strangely enough the die-cutters show no such skill as that of the makers of gems.
Arms and Armour.—In the early periods the chief weapons (besides bows and arrows which bore flint or bronze heads) were few and simple, and were of bronze. Iron ones have been found, and their rarity is doubtless partly due to their having rusted away. Spears of very various weights were common and also swords and daggers. These latter had straight two-edged blades with the handle either of the same piece or of some other material fastened on with rivets. The blades of the daggers are generally engraved with lines and zigzags. Shields were of circular and oval shape. These two were of bronze, the round ones decorated in Homeric fashion with concentric circles of ornament, the motives being geometric patterns or an animal repeated endlessly. Breastplates with overlapping shoulder-straps and belts, broader in front than behind, with decoration of the same kind as the bucchero vases, are not uncommon. Greaves and helmets completed their equipment. The former seem to have been less ornate than those the Greeks wore; the latter were of various shapes, the commonest being round caps with a knob on the top, or a deeper shape with a crest from front to back. Some are shown with side-pieces raised like wings, but these are perhaps merely cheek-pieces raised on hinges. In later times they had trumpets and axes, and their arms became practically the same as the Roman, as one sees from the representations in the tombs.
(R. N.)
Language
1. By “Etruscan” is meant the language spoken by the people called Etrusci (more commonly Tusci) by the Romans, Turskum numen (i.e. Tuscum nomen) by their neighbours the Umbrians of Iguvium (q.v.), and Τυρσηνοί (later, e.g. in Strabo’s time, Τυρρηνοί) by the Greeks. Their own name for themselves was Rasénna (or Raséna), according to Dionysius Halic. (i. 30), but it seems now to be fairly probable that this was no more than the name of a leading house (represented later on in Pisa and elsewhere) dominant at some fairly early date in some one locality (see below). Niebuhr attempted on slender grounds (Rom. Hist., ed. 3 [Eng. trans.], i. p. 41) to distinguish between the Τυρρηνοί and the Tusci in order to accept the strongly supported tradition of a Lydian origin for the “Tyrrhenes” (see below), while rejecting it for the “Tuscans,” but no one has since attempted to maintain the distinction (Dittenberger, Hermes, 1906, p. 85, footnote, regards the form -ηνοί as a “Graecized form of a local name” equivalent to Tusci), and we now know enough of the morphology of Etruscan names to recognize Tur-s-co- and Tur-s-ēno- as closely parallel Etrusco-Latin stems, cf. Venu-c-ius: Venu-senus both from Etr. venu (Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, p. 405) and Ras-ena: Ras-c-anius (ibid. p. 92); or Voluscus, Volscus: Volusēnus (where the formative suffixes in each word are Etrusco-Latin whether the root be the same or not). But the analysis of the names cannot be entirely satisfactory until the first syllable of Etrusci—in Greek writers sometimes Ἕτρουσκοι, e.g. in Strabo—ed. Meineke—has been explained.
2. The extent of territory over which this language was spoken varied considerably at different epochs, but we have only a few fixed points of chronology. From two separate sources, both traditional and probably sound (Dion. Hal. i. 26, and Plutarch, Sulla, 7; cf. Varro, quoted by Censorinus c. 17. 6), we should ascribe the first appearance of the Etruscans in Italy to the 12th century B.C. The intimate connexion in form between the names Roma, Romulus and the Etruscan gentes rumate, rumulna (Romatia, Romilia, &c.), and the fact that many of the early names in Rome (e.g. Ratumenna, Capena, Tities, Luceres, Ramnes) are characteristically Etruscan, justifies the conclusion that the foundation of the city, in the sense at least of its earliest fortification, was due to Etruscans (Schulze, p. 580). The most likely interpretation of Cato’s date for the Etruscan “foundation” of Capua is 598 B.C. (Conway, Italic Dialects, pp. 99 and 83). In 524 B.C. (Dion. Hal. vii. 2) the Etruscans were defeated by Aristodemus of Cumae, and in 474 by Hiero of Syracuse in a great naval battle off Cumae. Between 445 and 425 (It. Dial. l.c.) they were driven out of Capua by the Samnites, but they lingered in parts of Campania (as far south as Salernum) till at least the next century, as inscriptions show (ib. pp. 94 ff., 53), as at Praeneste and Tusculum (ib. p. 310 ff.) till the 3rd century or later. In Etruria itself the oldest inscriptions (on the stelae of Faesulae and Volaterrae) can hardly be later than the 6th century B.C. (C. Pauli, Altital. Forsch. ii. part 2, 24 ff.); the Romans had become dominant early in the 3rd century (C.I.L. xi. 1 passim), but the bulk of the Etruscan inscriptions show later forms than those found in the old town of Volsinii destroyed by the Romans in 280 B.C. (C. Pauli, ib. i. 127). In the north of Italy we find Etruscan written in two alphabets (of Sondrio and Bozen) between 300 and 150 B.C. (id. ib. pp. 63 and 126). The evidence of an Etruscan linen book wrapped round a mummy (see below) seems to suggest that there was some Etruscan colony at Alexandria in the period of the Ptolemies. At least one Etruscan suffix has passed into the Romance languages, -iθa or -ita in Etr. lautniθa (from lautni “familiaris,” or “libertus”), and Etr.-Lat. Iulitta, which became Ital. -etta, Fr.-Eng. -ette.
3. Finally must be mentioned the remarkable pre-Hellenic epitaph discovered on the island of Lemnos in 1885 (Pauli, Altital. Forsch. ii. 1 and 2), the language of which offers remarkable resemblances to Etruscan, especially in the phrase śialχveiz aviz (? = “fifty years old”); cf. Etr. cealχus avils (? “twenty years old”); and the pair of endings -ezi, -ale in consecutive words; cf. Etr. larθiale hulχniesi; the style of the sculptural figure has also parallels in the oldest type of Etruscan monuments. The alphabet of this inscription is identical (Kirchhoff, Stud. Griech. Alphab., 4th ed., p. 54) with that of the older group of Phrygian inscriptions, which mention King Midas and are therefore older than 620 B.C. With this should be combined the fact that a marked peculiarity of the South-Etruscan alphabet (↑ = f, but earlier = the Greek digamma) has demonstrably arisen out of
= q on Phrygian soil, see Class. Rev. xii., 1898, p. 462. Despite the reasonable but not unanswerable difficulty of Kretschmer (Einleitung in d. Geschichte d. griech. Sprache, 1896, p. 240), the weight of the evidence appears to be distinctly in favour of the Etruscan character of the language, and Pauli’s view is now generally accepted by students of Etruscan; hence the inclusion of the inscription in the Corpus Inscc. Etruscarum.
4. The first attempt to interpret Etruscan inscriptions was made by Phil. Buonarroti (Explic. et conject. ad monum. &c., Florence, 1726), who, as was almost inevitable at that epoch, tried to explain the language as a dialect of Latin. But no real study was possible before the determination of the alphabet by Lepsius (Inscc. Umbr. et Oscae, Leipzig, 1841), and his discovery that five of the Tables of Iguvium (q.v.), though written in Etruscan alphabet, contained a language akin to Latin but totally different from Etruscan, though some of the non-Italic peculiarities of Etruscan had been already pointed out by Ottfried Müller (Die Etrusker, Breslau, 1828). The earliest inscriptions, e.g. the terra-cotta stele of Capua of the 5th century B.C., are written in “serpentine boustrophedon,” but in its common form of the 3rd century B.C. the alphabet is retrograde, and has the following nineteen letters:—
On older monuments
= k occurs as an archaic form of c;
= q;
, a sibilant of some kind; and
, this last mostly in foreign words. In the earlier monuments the cross-bars of e and v and h have a more decidedly oblique inclination, and s is often angular (
). The mediae b, g, d, though they often occur in words handed down by writers as Etruscan, are never found in the Etruscan inscriptions, though the presence of the mediae in the Umbrian and Oscan alphabets and in the abecedaria shows that they existed in the earliest form of the Etruscan alphabet, O is very rare. The form ↑ (earlier
↑) = f in south Etruscan and Faliscan inscriptions should also be mentioned. Its combination with
h shows that it had once served to denote the sound of digamma just as Latin F. The varieties of the alphabet in use between the Apennines and the Alps were first examined by Mommsen (Inschriften nord-etruskischen Alphabets, 1853), and have since been discussed by Pauli (Altitalische Forschungen, 1885-1894, esp. vol. iii., Die Veneter, p. 218, where other references will be found, see also [Veneti]).
5. The determination of the alphabet was followed by a large number of different attempts to explain the Etruscan forms from words in some other language to which it was supposed that Etruscan might be akin; Scandinavian and Basque and Semitic have been tried among the rest. These attempts, however ingenious, have all proved fruitless; even the latest and least fanciful (Remarques sur le parenté de la langue étrusque, Copenhagen, 1899; Bulletin de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Lettres de Danemark, 1899, p. 373), in which features of some living dialects of the Caucasus are cautiously compared by Prof. V. Thomsen (as independently by Pauli, see § 12), is at the best premature, and as to the numerals probably misleading. Worst of all was the effort of W. Corssen (Die Sprache der Etrusker, 1875), in whom learning and enthusiasm were combined with loose methods of both epigraphy and grammar, to revive the view of Buonarroti. The only solid achievement in the period of Corssen’s influence (1860-1880) was the description of the works of art (tombs, vases, mirrors and the like) from the different centres of Etruscan population; Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (1st ed., 1848; 2nd, 1878) contributes something even to the study of the language, because many of the figures in the scenes sculptured or engraved bear names in Etruscan form (e.g. usils, “sun”; or “of the sun,” on the templum of Placentia; fuflunś;, “Bacchus”; tuχulχa, a demon or fury; see Dennis, Cities, 2nd ed., frontispiece, and p. 354).
6. The reaction against Corssen’s method was led first by W. Deecke, Corssen und die Sprache der Etrusker (1876), Etruskische Forschungen (1875-1880), and continued by Carl Pauli at first jointly with Deecke and afterwards singly with greater power (Etruskische Studien, 1873), Etr. Forschungen u. Studien (Göttingen-Stuttgart, 1881-1884), Altitalische Studien (Hanover, 1883-1887); Altitalische Forschungen (Leipzig, 1885-1894). Of the work achieved during the last generation by him and the few but distinguished scholars associated with him (Danielsson, Schaefer, Skutsch and Torp) it may perhaps be said that, though the positive knowledge yet reaped is scanty, so much has been done in other ways that the prospect is full of promise. In the first place, the only sound method of dealing with an unknown language, that of interpreting the records of the language by their own internal evidence in the first instance (not by the use of imaginary parallels in better known languages whose kinship with the problematic language is merely assumed), has been finally established and is now followed even by scholars like Elia Lattes, who still retain some affection for the older point of view. By this means enough certainty has been obtained on many characteristic features of the language to bring about a general recognition of the fact that Etruscan, if we put aside its borrowings from the neighbouring dialects of Italy, is in no sense an Indo-European language. In the second place, the great undertaking of the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, founded by Carl Pauli, with the support of the Berlin Academy, conducted by him from 1893 till his death in 1901, and continued by Danielsson, Herbig and Torp, for the first time provided a sound basis for the study in a text of the inscriptions, edited with care and arranged according to their provenance. The first volume contains over four thousand inscriptions from the northern half of Etruria. Thirdly, the discoveries of recent years have richly increased the available material, especially by two documents each of some length. (1) The 5th-century stele of terra-cotta from S. Maria di Capua already cited, published by Buecheler in Rhein. Museum, (lv., 1900, p. 1) and now in the Royal Museum at Berlin, is the longest Etruscan inscription yet found. Its best preserved part contains some two hundred words of continuous text, and is divided into paragraphs, of which the third may be cited in the reading approved by Danielsson and Torp, and with the division of words adopted by Torp (in his Bemerkungen zur etrusk. Inschr. von S. Maria di Capua, Christiania, 1905), to which the student may be referred. “iśvei tule ilucve, an priś laruns ilucuθuχ, nun: tiθuaial χues χaθc(e) anulis mulu rizile, ziz riin puiian acasri, ti-m an tule, leθam sul; ilucu-per priś an ti, ar vus; ta aius, nunθeri.” (2) The linen wrappings of an Egyptian mummy (of the Ptolemaic period) preserved in the Agram museum were observed to show on their inner surface some writing, which proved to be Etruscan and to contain more than a thousand words of largely continuous text (Krall, “Die etruskischen Mumienbinden des Agramer. Museums,” Denkschr. d. k. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, 41, Vienna, 1892). The writing has probably nothing to do with the mummy as it is on the inner surface of the bands, and these are torn fragments of the original book. The alphabet is of about the 3rd century B.C.
7. From the recurrence of a number of particular formulae with frequent numerals at intervals, the book seems to be a liturgical document. Torp has pointed out that the two documents have some forty words in common, and, with Lattes (“Primi Apprenti sulla grande iscriz. Etrusca,” &c., in Rendic. d. Reale Inst. Lomb., serie ii. vol. xxxviii., 1900, p. 345 ff.), has shown that both contain lists of offerings made to certain gods (among them Suri, Leθam, and Calu); and Skutsch (Rhein. Mus. 56, 1901, p. 639) has added a plausible conjecture as to the occasions of the offerings, based on the phrase “flerχva neθunsl” “Neptuni statua” (or “statuae pars”); Torp has made it very probable that the words vacl (or vacil) and nun, which recur at regular intervals in both, mean “address,” “recite,” “pray,” or the like, preceding or following spoken parts of the ritual.
8. Along with the growth of the material, some positive increase in knowledge of the language has been attained. Independently of the work done upon particular inscriptions, such as that which has just been described, a considerable addition has come from the elaborate study of Latin proper names already mentioned by Prof. W. Schulze of Berlin (Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen, Berlin, 1904), which has incidentally embodied and somewhat extended the points of Etruscan nomenclature previously observed. The chief results for our purpose may be briefly stated. It will be convenient to use the following terms:—
(1) praenomen = personal name of the individual.
e.g. Vel or Lar of a man, Larθi or θana of a woman.
(2) nomen = family name.
e.g. Tite or Vipi or Tetna, of men.
Titi or Vipinei or Tetinei, of women.
(3) cognomen = additional family name.
e.g. Faru or Petru of men, Farui, Vetui of women.
(4) agnomen = special cognomen derived from the cognomen of the father.
e.g. Hanusa (in Latin spelling Hannossa) or Pultusa (also Pultus) of a man; Hanunia of a woman.
All these are commonly in the “nominative” (as the examples just quoted from Schulze, pp. 316-327) in sepulchral inscriptions.
Besides these, we have certain other descriptions used in forms which may be called a “genitive-dative” case, or a “derivative possessive” Adjective. These may be entitled:—
(5) paternum (a) = praenomen of father, used generally after the nomen of son or daughter.
e.g. arnθal “of Arnθ.” more commonly simply ar, so ls for Laris-al, to which clan “son,” often abbreviated c, and seχ or sec (abbrev. s) “daughter,” are sometimes added.
paternum (b) = nomen of father, used only after the praenomen of a daughter (e.g. θana velθurnas, “Thana daughter of Velthurna”), to which seχ “daughter,” often abbreviated s, is sometimes added.
(6) maternum (a) = nomen of mother.
e.g. pumpunial, “of Pumpuni” (in Lat. form Pomponia); alfnal “of Alfnei” (Lat. Alfia); hetarias, “of Hetaria.”
maternum (b) = cognomen of mother.
e.g. vetnal, “of Vetui,” or “of Vetonia,” hesual, “of Hesui.”
maternum (c) = agnomen of mother.
e.g. cumeruniaś, “of Cumerunia,” i.e. “of a daughter of the cumeru-family.”
(7) maritale—(i.) nomen, or (ii.) cognomen, or (iii.) agnomen of husband, used directly after the nomen of the wife, the word puia, “wife,” being often added.
e.g. (i.) larθi cencui larcnasa, “Larthia Cenconia, wife of a Largena”; (ii.) larθia pulfnei spaspusa, “Larthia Pulfennia, wife of a Spaspo”; this form being the same as that used for the agnomen of a man (see above)—(iii.) hastia cainei leusla, “Hastia Caia, wife of a son of a Leo”; and with a longer and possibly not synonymous form of suffix, θania titi latinial śec hanuslisa, “Thania Titia, daughter of Latinia, wife of a Hanusa”—these secondary derivatives in -sla, &c., being an example of what is called genetivus genetivi, a characteristic Etruscan formation, not confined to this feminine use.
These examples will probably enable the reader to interpret the great mass of the names on Etruscan tombs. It should be added (1) that no clear distinction can be drawn between the use of the cognomina and the nomina, though it is probable that in origin the cognomen came from some family connected with the gens by marriage; and (2) that the praenomen generally comes first, but sometimes second (especially when both nomen and praenomen are added in the genitive to the name of a son or daughter).
9. The examples given illustrate also the few principles of inflexion and word-formation that are reasonably certain, for example, the various “genitival” endings. Those in -ś and -l are also found in dedications where in Latin a dative would be used:—e.g. (mi) θuplθaś alpan turce “(hoc) deae Thupelthae donum dedit,” where turce shows the only verbal inflection yet certainly known; cf. amce, “was,” arce, “made,” zilacnuce, “held the office of a Zilaχ,” lupuce, “passed away.” More important are the formative principles which the proper names display. Endings -a, -u, -e and -na are common in the “Nominative”—and in Etruscan there appears to be no distinction between this case and the Accusative—of men’s names; the endings -i, -ei, -nei, -nia and -unia are among the commonest for women’s names. But no trace of gender has yet been observed in common nouns or adjectives. Nor is it always easy to distinguish a “Case” from a noun-stem. The women’s names corresponding to the men’s names in -u are sometimes -ui, sometimes -nei, sometimes longer forms (ves-acnei, beside ves-u, hanunia from hanu). And the so-called Genitives can themselves be inflected, as we have seen. The form neθunsl “of Neptune,” may even have swallowed up the nominatival -s of the Italic Neptunus.
10. In view of the protracted discussion as to the numerals and the dice on which the first six are written, it should be added that only the following points are certain: (1) that maχ = one; (2) that the next five numbers are somehow represented by ci, θu, huθ, sa and zal; (3) and the next three somehow by cezp-, semφ- and muv; (4) that the suffix -alχ- denotes the tens, or some of them, e.g. cealχ- beside ci (? 50 and 5); (5) that the suffix -z or -s is multiplicative (es(a)ls from zal). It is almost certain that zal must mean either 2 or 6, and of these a stronger case can, perhaps, be made for the latter meaning. Zathrum appears to be the corresponding ten (? 60). Skutsch’s article in Indogerm. Forschungen, v. p. 256, remains the best account.
In close connexion with the numerals on sepulchral inscriptions appear the words ril, “old, aged,” avils, “annorum,” or “aetatis,” and tivr, “month” (from tiv, “moon”).
11. Schulze has shown (e.g., p. 410) that a large number of familiar endings (e.g. those which when Latinized become -acius, -alius, -annius, -arius, -asius, -atius, -avus, -avius, -ax, and a similar series with -o-, -ocius, &c.), and further those with the elements, -lno-, -lino-, -enna, -eno-, -tern-, -turn-, -tric-, &c., exhibit different methods by which nomina were built up from praenomina in Etruscan. Finally it is of considerable historical importance to observe that a great mass of the praenomina used for this purpose are clearly of Italic origin, e.g. Helva, Barba, Vespa, Nero, Pedo, from all of which (and many more) there are derivatives which at one stage or other were certainly or probably Etruscan. It is this incorporation of Italic elements into the Etruscan nomenclature—itself a familiar and inevitable feature of the pirate-type of conquest and settlement, under which many women who bear and nurse and first name the children belong to the conquered race—that has entrapped so many scholars into the delusion that the language itself was Indo-European.
12. So far the language has been discussed without any reference to ethnology. But the facts stated above in regard to the extension of the language in space and time are clearly adverse to the hypothesis that it came into Italy from the north, and fully bear out Livy’s account (v. 33. 11) that the Etruscans of the Alpine valleys had been driven into that isolation by the invasion of the Gauls (beginning about 400 B.C.). And the accumulating evidence of a connexion with Asia Minor (see e.g. above § 3) justifies confidence in the unbroken testimony of every Roman writer, which cannot but represent the traditions of the Etruscans themselves, and the evidence of similar traditions from the Asiatic side given by Herodotus (i. 97) to the effect that they came to Italy by sea from Lydia. Against this there has never been anything to set but the silence of “the Lydian historian Xanthus” (Dion. Hal. i. 28; cf. 30) who may have had many excellent reasons for it other than a disbelief of the tradition, and of whom in any case we know nothing save the vague commendation of Dionysius. And it is not merely the miscellanies of Athenaeus (e.g. xii. 519) but the unimpeachable testimony of the Umbrian Plautus (Cistellaria, 2. 3. 19), singularly neglected since Dennis’s day, that convicts the Etruscans of an institution practised by the Lydians and other non-Indo-European peoples of Asia Minor, but totally repugnant to all the peoples among whom the Etruscans moved in their western settlement. The reader may be referred to Dennis’s introductory chapter for a very serviceable collection of the other ancient testimony as to their origin. In the present state of our knowledge of the language it is best to disregard its apparent or alleged resemblances to various features of various Caucasian dialects pointed out by Thomsen (see above) and Pauli (Altit. Forsch. ii. 2, p. 147 ff.), and to acquiesce in Kretschmer’s (op. cit. p. 408) non liquet as to the particular people of Asia Minor from whom the Etruscans sprang. But meanwhile it is clear that such evidence as has been obtained by epigraphic and linguistic research is not in any sense hostile but distinctly favourable to the tradition of their origin which they themselves must have maintained.
Authorities.—Beside those mentioned in the text, see Professor F. Skutsch’s article “Etruskisch,” in the new current (1908) edition of Pauly-Wissowa’s Encyclopaedia; A. Torp’s Etruskische Beiträge, and other shorter writings; E. Lattes’s Correzioni, giunte, postille al C. I. Etrusc. (Florence, 1904), and his most valuable Iscriz. paleolatine di provenienza Etrusca (1895); Schaefer’s articles in Pauli’s Altitalische Studien (see above), and, with caution, Deecke’s revision of Müller’s Etrusker (Stuttgart, 1877). Some account of the relations of Etruscans with different Italic communities will be found in the relevant chapters of R.S. Conway’s edition of the remains of The Italic Dialects (1897). Newly discovered Etruscan inscriptions are regularly published in the Notizie degli scavi di antichità, the official Italian journal of excavations (published by the Reale Accad. dei Lincei, but procurable separately). Fabretti’s Corpus Inscc. Italicarum with its supplements was formerly useful, but in any doubtful reading its authority is worth little, and its commentary and glossary represent the epoch of Corssen. The regular contributions of Prof. Skutsch (under the general heading “Lateinische Sprache”) to Vollmer’s Jahresbericht f. d. Fortschritte der romanischen Sprachwissenschaft; and of Prof. Herbig to Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der classischen Altertumswissenschaft will both be of service. The present writer is indebted to both Professor Skutsch and Professor Torp for valuable guidance and instruction.
(R. S. C.)
[1] For Barnabei’s excavations see Fausto Benedetti, Gli Scavi di Narce ed il Museo di Villa Giulia (1900).
[2] For a further discussion see ad fin., section Language.
[3] See Pauli, Altitalische Forschungen, vol. i.; also sect. Language (below).
[4] Cf. the contents of the graves found by Boni in the Roman Forum (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 1903, 1905) with the objects represented in the plates of Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Italie, pt. i. For the cemeteries at Novilara cf. Brizio, Monumenti antichi, vol. v.
[5] τήν τε Ῥωμην αὐτὴν τῶν συγγραφἐων Τυρρηνίδα πόλιν εἶναι ὑπέλαβον, Dion. Hal. i. 29; but see sect. Language for meaning of Τυρρηνία.
[6] For the wars of the Greeks against the Carthaginians and the Etruscans see Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, ii. 218 ff.
[7] Pliny (H.N. xxxvii. 11). He says that amber was brought by the Germans down the valley of the Po. Thence the trade-route crossed the Apennines to Pisa (Scylax in Geographi minores, ed. Didot, i. p. 25). In the consideration of problems suggested by amber it is too often forgotten that a very beautiful dark amber is found in Sicily.
[8] Montelius, Civilization primitive en Italie, ii. pl. 265; cf. Petrie. Naukratis, i. pl. 20, fig. 15, and Perrot-Chipiez, Histoire de l’art, iii.
[9] Monumenti dell’ Inst. Arch. Rom. x. pl. 31; Museo Etrusco Vaticano, i. pl. 63-69; cf. Annali dell’ Inst. Arch., 1896, p. 199 ff.
[10] Vase with hieroglyphs found at Santa Marinella, Bollettino dell’ Inst. Arch., 1841, p. 111; Mon. antichi, viii. p. 88.
[11] G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria.
[12] Varro ap. Serv. ad Aen. viii. 526; see Helbig, Bull. dell’ Inst. Arch. (1876), 227.
[13] Censorinus, De Die Nat. 17.
[14] See Preller, Röm. Myth. s.v. “Volcanus.” Opposed to this see Wissowa, Religion u. Kultus der Römer, who seems to misinterpret the evidence.
[15] Strabo v. 2. 39; cf. Livy i. 30; Dion. Hal. iii. 32.
[16] Nigidius Figulus ap. Arnob. adv. Nat. iii. 40; cf. Nig. Fig. reliquiae, ed. Ant. Swoboda (1888), p. 83.
[17] Montelius, Civ. Prim. en Italie.
[18] For an illustration of the Corneto tomb see [Architecture], vol. ii. p. 559.
[19] Appian viii. 66; Tertullian, De spect. 5; Plutarch, Qu. Rom. 107.
[20] Dion. Hal. vii. 72.
[21] Montelius, Civ. Prim. ii. pl. 172.
[22] Ib. pl. 333; cf. 343.
[23] Ib. pl. 166.
[24] Ib. pl. 173.
[25] Monum. Ant. xv. p. 151; Bull. d. Com. Arch. di Roma, 1898, p. 111.
[26] Annali dell’ Inst. Arch., 1876, 230.
[27] Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel; Körte, Rilievi delle urne Etrusche.
[28] See Pottier, Catalogue des vases antiques, II. L’École Ionienne, Boehlau, Aus ionischen und italischen Nekropolen; Karo, De arte vascularia antiquissima; Endt, Ionische Vasenmalerei. See further [Ceramics], § Etruscan.
[29] Athen. i. 28.
[30] Martha, L’Art étrusque, pl. I, 4; Bull. dell’ Inst. (1837) p. 46.
[31] Plutarch, Camillus, 12.
[32] Gerhard, Etr. Spiegel (continued by Klugmann and Körte).
[33] Mirrors of Greek style, Gerhard, 111, 112, 116, 240, 305, 352; Klugmann-Körte, 107, 131, 160.
[34] See plates in Martha and in Monumenti dell’ Inst., also Mon. Ant. iv. and Milani’s Studie materiali.
[35] Juvenal v. 164; Ovid, Am. iii. 13. 25 ff.
[36] Pliny, H.N. xiv. 9; xvi. 216.
[37] From the Polledrara tomb at Vulci, Martha fig. 335.
[38] Coll. Tyszkiewicz, pl. 13.
[39] Mon. dell’ Inst. vi. pl. 59, cf. Annali (1861), p. 402; Mon. Ant. viii. pl. xiii.-xiv.
[40] Mon. dell’ Inst. viii. pl. 20; Martha p. 347.
[41] Martha pp. 333, 348.
[42] See Körte, Rilievi delle urne Etrusche.
[43] See Mon. dell’ Inst. i. pl. 32-33, v. 16, 17, 33, 34, vi. 30-32, 79, viii. 36, ix. 13-15; Micali, Mon. Ined. pl. 58. Cf. Helbig, Annali (1863) p. 336, (1870) pp. 5-74; Brunn, ib. (1866), p. 442.
[44] Mommsen, Röm. Münzwesen; G.F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins; Deecke, Etruskische Forschungen; also article [Numismatics].
ETTENHEIM, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, pleasantly situated on the Ettenbach, under the western slope of the Black Forest, 7 m. E. from the Rhine by rail. Pop. (1900) 3106. It has a handsome Roman Catholic church, with ceiling frescoes, and containing the tomb of Cardinal Rohan, the last prince bishop of Strassburg, who resided here from 1790 till 1803; a Protestant church and a medieval town-hall. Its industries include the manufacture of tobacco, soap and leather, and there is a considerable trade in wine and agricultural produce. Founded in the 8th century by Eddo, bishop of Strassburg, Ettenheim remained attached to that see until 1802, when it passed to Baden. Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duke of Enghien (1772-1804), who had taken refuge here in 1801, was arrested in Ettenheim on the 15th of March 1804 and conveyed to Paris, where he was shot on the 20th of March following. The Benedictine abbey of Ettenheimmünster, which was founded in the 8th century and which was dissolved in 1803, occupied a site south of the town.
ETTINGSHAUSEN, CONSTANTIN, Baron von (1826-1897), Austrian geologist and botanist, was born in Vienna on the 16th of June 1826. He graduated as a doctor of medicine in Vienna, and became in 1854 professor of botany and natural history at the medical and surgical military academy in that city. In 1871 he was chosen professor of botany at Graz, a position which he occupied until the close of his life. He was distinguished for his researches on the Tertiary floras of various parts of Europe, and on the fossil floras of Australia and New Zealand. He died at Graz on the 1st of February 1897.
Publications.—Die Farnkräuter der Jetztwelt zur Untersuchung und Bestimmung der in den Formationen der Erdrinde eingeschlossenen Überreste von vorweltlichen Arten dieser Ordnung nach dem Flächen-Skelet bearbeitet (1865); Physiographie der Medicinal-Pflanzen (1862); A Monograph of the British Eocene Flora (with J. Starkie Gardner), Palaeontograph. Soc. vol. i. (Filices, 1879-1882).
ETTLINGEN, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Baden, on the Alb, and the railway Mannheim-Basel, 4½ m. S. of Karlsruhe. Pop. (1905) 8040. It is still surrounded by old walls and ditches, and presents a medieval and picturesque appearance. Among its more striking edifices are an old princely residence, with extensive grounds, an Evangelical and two Roman Catholic churches, and the buildings of a former monastery. There are also many Roman remains, notable among them the “Neptune” sculpture, now embedded in the wall of the town-hall. Its chief manufactures are paper-making, spinning, weaving and machine building. The cultivation of wine and fruit is also largely carried on, and in these products considerable trade is done.
The first notice of Ettlingen dates from the 8th century. It became a town in 1227 and was presented by the emperor Frederick II. to the margrave of Baden. In 1689 it was pillaged by the French, and near the town Moreau defeated the archduke Charles on the 9th and 10th of July 1796.
See Schwarz, Geschichte der Stadt Ettlingen (Carlsruhe, 1900).
ETTMÜLLER, ERNST MORITZ LUDWIG (1802-1877), German philologist, was born at Gersdorf near Löbau, in Saxony, on the 5th of October 1802. He was privately educated by his father, the Protestant pastor of the village, entered the gymnasium at Zittau in 1816 and studied from 1823 to 1826 at the university of Leipzig. After a period of about two years during which he was partly abroad and partly at Gersdorf, he proceeded to Jena, where in 1830 he delivered, under the auspices of the university, a course of lectures on the old Norse poets. Three years later he was called to occupy the mastership of German language and literature at the Zürich gymnasium; and in 1863 he left the gymnasium for the university, with which he had been partially connected twenty years before. He died at Zürich in April 1877. To the study of English Ettmüller contributed by an alliterative translation of Beowulf (1840), an Anglo-Saxon chrestomathy entitled Engla and Seaxna scopas and boceras (1850), and a well-known Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum (1851), in which the explanations and comments are given in Latin, but the words unfortunately are arranged according to their etymological affinity, and the letters according to phonetic relations. He edited a large number of High and Low German texts, and to the study of the Scandinavian literatures he contributed an edition of the Völuspa (1831), a translation of the Lieder der Edda von den Nibelungen (1837) and an old Norse reading book and vocabulary. He was also the author of a Handbuch der deutschen Literaturgeschichte (1847), which includes the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon, the Old Scandinavian, and the Low German branches; and he popularized a great deal of literary information in his Herbstabende und Winternächte: Gespräche über Dichtungen und Dichter (1865-1867). The alliterative versification which he admired in the old German poems he himself employed in his Deutsche Stammkönige (1844) and Das verhängnissvolle Zahnweh, oder Karl der Grosse und der Heilige Goar (1852).
ETTMÜLLER, MICHAEL (1644-1683), German physician, was born at Leipzig on the 26th of May 1644, studied at his native place and at Wittenberg, and after travelling in Italy, France and England was recalled in 1668 to Leipzig, where he was admitted a member of the faculty of medicine in 1676. About the same time the university confided to him the chair of botany, and appointed him extraordinary professor of surgery and anatomy. He died on the 9th of March 1683, at Leipzig. He enjoyed a great reputation as a lecturer, and wrote many tracts on medical and chemical subjects. His collected works were published in 1708 by his son, Michael Ernst Ettmüller (1673-1732), who was successively professor of medicine (1702), anatomy and surgery (1706), physiology (1719) and pathology (1724) at Leipzig.
ETTRICK, a river and parish of Selkirkshire, Scotland. The river rises in Capel Fell (2223 ft.), a hill in the extreme S.W. of the shire, and flows in a north-easterly direction for 32 m. to its junction with the Tweed, its principal affluent being the Yarrow. In the parish of Ettrick were born James Hogg, the “Ettrick shepherd” (the site of the cottage being marked by a monument erected in 1898), Tibbie (Elizabeth) Shiel (1782-1878), keeper of the famous inn at the head of St Mary’s Loch, both of whom are buried in the churchyard, and Thomas Boston (1713-1767), one of the founders of the Relief church. About 2 m. below Ettrick church is Thirlestane Castle, the seat of Lord Napier and Ettrick, a descendant of the Napiers of Merchiston, and beside it is the ruin of the stronghold that belonged to John Scott of Thirlestane, to whom, in reward for his loyalty, James V. granted a sheaf of spears as a crest, and the motto, “Ready, aye ready.” Two miles up Rankle Burn, a right-hand tributary, lies the site of Buccleuch, another stronghold of the Scotts, which gave them the titles of earl (1619) and duke (1663). Only the merest fragment remains of Tushielaw tower, occupying high ground opposite the confluence of the Rankle and the Ettrick, the home of Adam Scott, “King of the Border,” who was executed for his misdeeds in 1530. Lower down the dale is Deloraine, recalling one of the leading characters in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. If the name come from the Gaelic dail Orain, “Oran’s field,” the district was probably a scene of the labours of St Oran (d. 548), an Irish saint and friend of Columba. It seems that Sir Walter Scott’s rhythm has caused the accent wrongly to be laid on the last, instead of the penultimate syllable. Carterhaugh, a corruption of Carelhaugh, occupying the land where Ettrick and Yarrow meet, was the scene of the ballad of “Young Tamlane,” and of the historic football match in 1815, under the auspices of the duke of Buccleuch, between the burghers of Selkirk, championed by Walter Scott, sheriff of the Forest (not yet a baronet), and the men of Yarrow vale, championed by the Ettrick shepherd.
ETTY, WILLIAM (1787-1849), British painter, was born at York, on the 10th of March 1787. His father had been in early life a miller, but had finally established himself in the city of York as a baker of spice-bread. After some scanty instruction of the most elementary kind, the future painter, at the age of eleven and a half, left the paternal roof, and was bound apprentice in the printing-office of the Hull Packet. Amid many trials and discouragements he completed his term of seven years’ servitude, and having in that period come by practice, at first surreptitious, though afterwards allowed by his master “in lawful hours,” to know his own powers, he removed to London.
The kindness of an elder brother and a wealthy uncle, William Etty, himself an artist, stood him in good stead. He commenced his training by copying without instruction from nature, models, prints, &c.—his first academy, as he himself says, being a plaster-cast shop in Cock Lane, Smithfield. Here he made a copy from an ancient cast of Cupid and Psyche, which was shown to Opie, and led to his being enrolled in 1807 as student of the Academy, whose schools were at that time conducted in Somerset House. Among his fellow scholars at this period of his career were some who in after years rose to eminence in their art, such as Wilkie, Haydon, Collins, Constable. His uncle generously paid the necessary fee of one hundred guineas, and in the summer of 1807 he was admitted to be a private pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was at the very acme of his fame. Etty himself always looked on this privilege as one of incalculable value, and till his latest day regarded Lawrence as one of the chief ornaments of British art. For some years after he quitted Sir Thomas’s studio, even as late as 1816, the influence of his preceptor was traceable in the mannerism of his works. Though he had by this time made great progress in his art, his career was still one of almost continual failure, hardly cheered by even a passing ray of success. In 1811, after repeated rejections, he had the satisfaction of seeing his “Telemachus rescuing Antiope” on the walls of the Academy. It was badly hung, however, and attracted little notice. For the next five years he persevered with quiet and constant energy in overcoming the disadvantages of his early training with yearly growing success, and he was even beginning to establish something like a name when in 1816 he resolved to improve his knowledge of art by a journey to Italy. After an absence of three months, however, he was compelled to return home without having penetrated farther south than Florence. Struggles and vexations still continued to harass him, but he bore up against them with patient endurance and force of will. In 1820 his “Coral-finders,” exhibited at the Royal Academy, attracted much attention, and its success was more than equalled by that of “Cleopatra’s arrival in Cilicia,” shown in the following year. In 1822 he again set out on a tour to Italy, taking Paris on his way, and astonishing his fellow-students at the Louvre by the rapidity and fidelity with which he copied from the old masters in that gallery. On arriving at Rome he immediately resumed his studies of the old masters, and elicited many expressions of wonder from his Italian fellow-artists for the same qualities which had gained the admiration of the French. Though Etty was duly impressed by the grand chefs-d’œuvre of Raphael and Michelangelo at Rome, he was not sorry to exchange that city for Venice, which he always regarded as the true home of art in Italy. His own style as a colourist held much more of the Venetian than of any other Italian school, and he admired his prototypes with a zeal and exclusiveness that sometimes bordered on extravagance.
Early in 1824 he returned home to find that honours long unjustly withheld were awaiting him. In that year he was made an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1828 he was promoted to the full dignity of an Academician. In the interval between these dates he had produced the “Combat (Woman interceding for the Vanquished),” and the first of the series of three pictures on the subject of Judith, both of which ultimately came into the possession of the Scottish Academy. Etty’s career was from this time one of slow but uninterrupted success. In 1830 he again crossed the channel with the view to another art tour through the continent; but he was overtaken in Paris by the insurrection of the Three Days, and was so much shocked by the sights he was compelled to witness in that time that he returned home with all convenient speed. During the next ten years of his life the zeal and unabated assiduity of his studies were not at all diminished. He was a constant attendant at the Academy Life School, where he used to work regularly along with the students, notwithstanding the remonstrances of some of his fellow-Academicians, who thought the practice undignified. The course of his studies was only interrupted by occasional visits to his native city, and to Scotland, where he was welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm, and fêted with the most gratifying heartiness by his brother-artists at Edinburgh. On the occasion of one of these visits he gave the finishing touches to his trio of Judiths. In 1840, and again in 1841, Etty undertook a pilgrimage to the Netherlands, to seek and examine for himself the masterpieces of Rubens in the churches and public galleries there. Two years later he once more visited France with a view to collecting materials for what he called “his last epic,” his famous picture of “Joan of Arc.” This subject, which would have tasked to the full even his great powers in the prime and vigour of manhood, proved almost too serious an undertaking for him in his old age. It exhibits, at least, amid great excellences, undeniable proofs of decay on the part of the painter; yet it brought a higher price than any of his earlier and more perfect works, £2500. In 1848, after completing this work, he retired to York, having realized a comfortable independence. One wish alone remained for him now to gratify; he desired to see a “gathering” of his pictures. With much difficulty and exertion he was enabled to assemble the great majority of them from various parts of the British Islands; and so numerous were they that the walls of the large hall he engaged in London for their exhibition were nearly covered. This took place in the summer of 1849; on the 13th of November of that same year he died. He received the honours of a public funeral in his native city.
Etty holds a secure place among English artists. His drawing was frequently incorrect, but in feeling and skill as a colourist he has few equals. His most conspicuous defects as a painter were the result of insufficient general culture and narrowness of sympathy.
See Etty’s autobiography, published in the Art Journal for 1849, and the Life of William Etty, R.A., by Gilchrist (2 vols., 1855).
ETYMOLOGY (Gr. ἔτυμος, true, and λόγος, account), that part or branch of the science of linguistics which deals with the origin or derivation of words. The Greek word ἔτυμος, in so far as it was applied to words, referred to the real underlying meaning rather than to the origin. It was the Stoics who asserted that the discovery of τὸ ἔτυμον would explain the essence of the things and ideas represented by words. Plato in the Cratylus makes a nearer approach to the modern view when he connects, e.g. γυνή, woman, with γονή, seed, while he jests at such etymological feats as the derivation of οὐρανός, heaven, ἀπὸ τοῦ ὁρᾶν τἃ ἄνω, from looking at things above, or ἄνθρωπος, man, from ὁ ἀναθρῶν ἃ ὄπωπεν, he who looks up at what he sees. Until the comparative study of philology and the development of the laws underlying phonetic changes, the derivation of words was a matter mostly of guess-work, sometimes right but more often wrong, based on superficial resemblances of form and the like. This popular etymology, to which the Germans have given the name Volksetymologie or folk-etymology, has had much influence in the form which words take (e.g. “crawfish” or “crayfish,” from the French crevis, modern écrevisse, or “sand-blind,” from samblind, i.e. semi-, half-blind), and has frequently been the occasion of homonyms. W.W. Skeat has embodied in certain canons or rules some well-known principles which should be observed in giving the etymology of a word; these may be usefully given here: “(1) Before attempting an etymology, ascertain the earliest form and use of the word, and observe chronology. (2) Observe history and geography; borrowings are due to actual contact. (3) Observe phonetic laws, especially those which regulate the mutual relation of consonants in the various Aryan languages, at the same time comparing the vowel sounds. (4) In comparing two words, A and B, belonging to the same language, of which A contains the lesser number of syllables, A must be taken to be the more original word, unless we have evidence of contraction or other corruption. (5) In comparing two words, A and B, belonging to the same language and consisting of the same number of syllables, the older form can usually be distinguished by observing the sound of the principal vowel. (6) Strong verbs, in the Teutonic languages, and the so-called “irregular verbs” in Latin, are commonly to be considered as primary, other related forms being taken from them. (7) The whole of a word, and not a portion only, ought to be reasonably accounted for; and, in tracing changes of form, any infringement of phonetic laws is to be regarded with suspicion. (8) Mere resemblances of form and apparent connexion in sense between languages which have different phonetic laws or no necessary connexion are commonly a delusion, and are not to be regarded. (9) When words in two different languages are more nearly alike than the ordinary phonetic laws would allow, there is a strong probability that one language has borrowed the word from the other. Truly cognate words ought not to be too much alike. (10) It is useless to offer an explanation of an English word which will not also explain all the cognate forms” (Introduction to Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1898).
An English word is either “the extant formal representative or direct phonetic descendant of an earlier (Teutonic) word; or it has been adopted or adapted from some foreign language,” adoption being a popular, and adaptation being a literary or learned process; finally, there is formation, i.e. the “combination of existing words (foreign or native) or parts of words with each other or with living formatives, i.e. syllables which no longer exist as separate words, but yet have an appreciable signification which they impart to the new product” (see Introduction to the Oxford New English Dictionary, p. xx). A further classification of words according to their origin is that into (1) naturals, i.e. purely native words, like “mother,” “father,” “house”; (2) those which become perfectly naturalized, though of foreign origin, like “cat,” “mutton,” “beef”; (3) denizens, words naturalized in usage but keeping the foreign pronunciation, spelling and inflections, e.g. “focus,” “camera”; (4) aliens, words for foreign things, institutions, offices, &c., for which there is no English equivalent, e.g., menu, table d’hôte, impi, lakh, mollah, tarbush; (5) casuals, e.g., bloc, Ausgleich, sabotage, differing only from “aliens” in their temporary use. The full etymology of a word should include the phonetic descent, the source of the word, whether from a native or from a foreign origin, and, if the latter, whether by adoption or adaptation, or, if a formed word, the origin of the parts which go to make it up. In the present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica such full etymologies, which would be necessary and in place in an etymological dictionary, have not been given in every instance, but brief etymological notes are appended, showing in outline the sources and history, and in many cases the development in meaning. (See also [Dictionary].)
EU, a town of north-western France, in the department of Seine-Inférieure, on the river Bresle, 64 m. N.N.E. of Rouen on the Western railway, and 2 m. E.S.E. of Le Tréport, at the mouth of the Bresle, which is canalized between the two towns. Pop. (1906) 4865. The extensive forest of Eu lies to the south-east of the town. Eu has three buildings of importance—the beautiful Gothic church of St Laurent (12th and 13th centuries) of which the exterior of the choir with its three tiers of ornamented buttressing and the double arches between the pillars of the nave are architecturally notable; the chapel of the Jesuit college (built about 1625), in which are the tombs of Henry, third duke of Guise, and his wife, Katherine of Cleves; and the château. The latter was begun by Henry of Guise in 1578, in place of an older château burnt by Louis XI. in 1475 to prevent its capture by the English. It was continued by Mademoiselle de Montpensier in the latter half of the 17th century, and restored by Louis Philippe who, in 1843 and 1845, received Queen Victoria within its walls. In 1902 the greater part of the building was destroyed by fire. The town has a tribunal of commerce and a communal college, flour-mills, manufactories of earthenware, biscuits, furniture, casks, and glass and brick works; the port has trade in grain, timber, hemp, flax, &c.
Eu (Augusta) was in existence under the Romans. The first line of its counts, supposed to be descended from the dukes of Normandy, had as heiress Alix (died 1227), who married Raoul (Ralph) de Lusignan, known as the Sire d’Issoudun from his lordship of that name. Through their grand-daughter Marie, the countship of Eu passed by marriage to the house of Brienne, two members of which, both named Raoul, were constables of France. King John confiscated the countship in 1350, and gave it to John of Artois (1352). His great-grandson, Charles, son of Philip of Artois, count of Eu, and Marie of Berry, played a conspicuous part in the Hundred Years’ War. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt (1415), and remained in England twenty-three years, in accordance with the dying injunctions of Henry V. that he was not to be let go until his son, Henry VI., was of age to govern his dominions. He accompanied Charles VII. on his campaigns in Normandy and Guyenne, and was made lieutenant-general of these two provinces. It was he who effected a reconciliation between the king and the dauphin after the revolt of the latter. He was created a peer of France in 1458, and made governor of Paris during the war of the League of the Public Weal (1465). He died on the 15th of July 1472 at the age of about seventy-eight, leaving no children. His sister’s son, John of Burgundy, count of Nevers, now received the countship, which passed through heiresses, in the 15th century, to the house of Cleves, and to that of Lorraine-Guise. In 1660 Henry II. of Lorraine, duke of Guise, sold it to “Mademoiselle,” Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (q.v.), who made it over (1682) to the duke of Maine, bastard son of Louis XIV., as part of the price of the release of her lover Lauzun. The second son of the duke of Maine, Louis Charles de Bourbon (1701-1775), bore the title of count of Eu. In 1755 he inherited from his elder brother, Louis Auguste de Bourbon (1700-1755), prince de Dombes, great estates, part of which he sold to the king. The remainder, which was still considerable, passed to his cousin the duke of Penthièvre. These estates were confiscated at the Revolution; but at the Restoration they were bestowed by Louis XVII. on the duchess-dowager of Orléans who, in 1821, bequeathed them to her son, afterwards King Louis Philippe. They were again confiscated in 1852, but were restored to the Orleans family by the National Assembly after the Franco-German War. The title of count of Eu was revived in the 19th century in favour of the eldest son of the duke of Nemours, second son of King Louis Philippe.
EUBOEA (pronounced Evvia in the modern language), Euripos, or Negropont, the largest island of the Grecian archipelago. It is separated from the mainland of Greece by the Euboic Sea. In general outline it is long and narrow; it is about 90 m. long, and varies in breadth from 30 m. to 4. Its general direction is from N.W. to S.E., and it is traversed throughout its length by a mountain range, which forms part of the chain that bounds Thessaly on the E., and is continued south of Euboea in the lofty islands of Andros, Tenos and Myconos. The principal peaks of this range are grouped in three knots which divide the island into three portions. Towards the north, opposite the Locrian territory, the highest peaks are Mts. Gaetsades (4436 ft.) and Xeron (3232 ft.). The former was famed in ancient times for its medicinal plants, and at its foot are the celebrated hot springs, near the town of Aedepsus (mod. Lipsos), called the Baths of Heracles, used, we are told, by the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla, and still frequented by the Greeks for the cure of gout, rheumatism and digestive disorders. These springs, strongly sulphurous, rise a short distance inland at several points, and at last pour steaming over the rocks, which they have yellowed with their deposit, into the Euboic Sea. Opposite the entrance of the Maliac Gulf is the promontory of Cenaeum, the highest point (2221 ft.) behind which is now called Lithada, a corruption of Lichades, the ancient name of the islands off the extremity of the headland. Here again we meet with the legends of Heracles, for this cape, together with the neighbouring coast of Trachis, was the scene of the events connected with the death of that hero, as described by Sophocles in the Trachiniae. Near the north-east extremity of the island, and almost facing the entrance of the Gulf of Pagasae, is the promontory of Artemisium, celebrated for the great naval victory gained by the Greeks over the Persians, 480 B.C. Towards the centre, to the N.E. of Chalcis, rises the highest of its mountains, Dirphys or Dirphe, now Mount Delphi (5725 ft.), the bare summit of which is not entirely free from snow till the end of May, while its sides are clothed with pines and firs, and lower down with chestnuts and planes. It is one of the most conspicuous summits of eastern Greece, and from its flanks the promontory of Chersonesus projects into the Aegean. At the southern extremity the highest mountain is Ocha, now called St Elias (4830 ft.). The south-western promontory was named Geraestus, the south-eastern Caphareus; the latter, an exposed point, attracts the storms, which rush between it and the neighbouring cliffs of Andros as through a funnel. The whole of the eastern coast is rocky and destitute of harbours, especially the part called Coela, or “the Hollows,” where part of the Persian fleet was wrecked. So greatly was this dreaded by sailors that the principal line of traffic from the north of the Aegean to Athens used to pass by Chalcis and the Euboic Sea.
Euboea was believed to have originally formed part of the mainland, and to have been separated from it by an earthquake. This is the less improbable because it lies in the neighbourhood of a line of earthquake movement, and both from Thucydides and from Strabo we hear of the northern part of the island being shaken at different periods, and the latter writer speaks of a fountain at Chalcis being dried up by a similar cause, and a mud volcano formed in the neighbouring plain. Evidences of volcanic action are also traceable in the legends connected with Heracles at Aedepsus and Cenaeum, which here, as at Lemnos and elsewhere in Greece, have that origin. Its northern extremity is separated from the Thessalian coast by a strait, which at one point is not more than a mile and a half in width. In the neighbourhood of Chalcis, both to the north and the south, the bays are so confined as readily to explain the story of Agamemnon’s fleet having been detained there by contrary winds. At Chalcis itself, where the strait is narrowest, it is called the Euripus, and here it is divided in the middle by a rock, on which formerly a castle stood. The channel towards Boeotia, which is now closed, is spanned by a stone bridge. The other, which is far the deeper of the two, is crossed by an iron swing-bridge, allowing for the passage of vessels. This bridge, which dates from 1896, replaced a smaller wooden swing-bridge erected in 1856. The extraordinary changes of tide which take place in this passage have been a subject of wonder from classical times. At one moment the current runs like a river in one direction, and shortly afterwards with equal velocity in the other. Strabo speaks of it as varying seven times in the day, but it is more accurate to say, with Livy, that it is irregular. A bridge was first constructed here in the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War, when Euboea revolted from Athens; and thus the Boeotians, whose work it was, contrived to make that country “an island to every one but themselves.” The Boeotians by this means secured a powerful weapon of offence against Athens, being able to impede their supplies of gold and corn from Thrace, of timber from Macedonia, and of horses from Thessaly. The name Euripus was corrupted during the middle ages into Evripo and Egripo, and in this latter form transferred to the whole island, whence the Venetians, when they occupied the district, altered it to Negroponte, referring to the bridge which connected it with the mainland.
The rivers of Euboea are few in number and scanty in volume. In the north-eastern portion the Budorus flows into the Aegean, being formed by two streams which unite their waters in a small plain, and were perhaps the Cereus and Neleus concerning which the story was told that sheep drinking the water of the one became white, of the other black. On the north coast, near Histiaea, is the Callas; and on the western side the Lelantus, near Chalcis, flowing through the plain of the same name. This plain, which intervenes between Chalcis and Eretria, and was a fruitful source of contention to those cities, is the most considerable of the few and small spaces of level ground in the island, and was fertile in corn. Aristotle, when speaking of the aristocratic character of the horse, as requiring fertile soil for its support, and consequently being associated with wealth, instances its use among the Chalcidians and Eretrians, and in the former of those two states we find a class of nobles called Hippobotae. This rich district was afterwards occupied by Athenian cleruchs. The next largest plain was that of Histiaea, and at the present day this and the neighbourhood of the Budorus (Aḥmet-Aga) are the two best cultivated parts of Euboea, owing to the exertions of foreign colonists. The mountains afford excellent pasturage for sheep and cattle, which were reared in great quantities in ancient times, and seem to have given the island its name; these pastures belonged to the state. The forests are extensive and fine, and are now superintended by government officials, called δασοφύλακες, in spite or with the connivance of whom the timber is being rapidly destroyed—partly from the merciless way in which it is cut by the proprietors, partly from its being burnt by the shepherds, for the sake of the rich grass that springs up after such conflagrations, and partly owing to the goats, whose bite kills all the young growths. In the mountains were several valuable mines of iron and copper; and from Karystos, at the south of the island, came the green and white marble, the modern Cipollino, which was in great request among the Romans of the imperial period for architectural purposes, and the quarries of which belonged to the emperor. The scenery of Euboea is perhaps the most beautiful in Greece, owing to the varied combinations of rock, wood and water; for from the uplands the sea is almost always in view, either the wide island-studded expanse of the Aegean, or the succession of lakes formed by the Euboic Sea, together with mountains of exquisite outline, while the valleys and maritime plains are clothed either with fruit trees or with plane trees of magnificent growth.
On the other hand, no part of Greece is so destitute of interesting remains of antiquity as Euboea. The only site which has attracted archaeologists is that of Eretria (q.v.), which was excavated by the American School of Athens in 1890-1895.
Like most of the Greek islands, Euboea was originally known under other names, such as Macris and Doliche from its shape, and Ellopia and Abantis from the tribes inhabiting it. The races by which it was occupied at an early period were different in the three districts, into which, as we have seen, it was naturally divided. In the northern portion we find the Histiaei and Ellopes, Thessalian races, which probably had passed over from the Pagasaean Gulf. In central Euboea were the Curetes and Abantes, who seem to have come from the neighbouring continent by way of the Euripus; of these the Abantes, after being reinforced by Ionians from Attica, rose to great power, and exercised a sort of supremacy over the whole island, so that in Homer the inhabitants generally are called by that name. The southern part was occupied by the Dryopes, part of which tribe, after having been expelled from their original seats in the south of Thessaly by the Dorians, migrated to this island, and established themselves in the three cities of Karystos, Dystos and Styra. The population of Euboea at the present day is made up of elements not less various, for many of the Greek inhabitants seem to have immigrated, partly from the mainland, and partly from other islands; and besides these, the southern portion is occupied by Albanians, who probably have come from Andros; and in the mountain districts nomad Vlach shepherds are found.
History.—The history of the island is for the most part that of its two principal cities, Chalcis and Eretria, the latter of which was situated about 15 m. S.E. of the former, and was also on the shore of the Euboic Sea. The neighbourhood of the fertile Lelantian or Lelantine plain, and their proximity to the place of passage to the mainland, were evidently the causes of the choice of site, as well as of their prosperity. Both cities were Ionian settlements from Attica, and their importance in early times is shown by their numerous colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, such as Cumae, Rhegium and Naxos, and on the coast of Macedonia, the projecting portion of which, with its three peninsulas, hence obtained the name of Chalcidice. In this way they opened new trade routes to the Greeks, and extended the field of civilization. How great their commerce was is shown by the fact that the Euboic scale of weights and measures was in use at Athens (until Solon, q.v.) and among the Ionic cities generally. They were rival cities, and at first appear to have been equally powerful; one of the earliest of the sea-fights mentioned in Greek history took place between them, and in this we are told that many of the other Greek states took part. It was in consequence of the aid which the people of Miletus lent to the Eretrians on this occasion that Eretria sent five ships to aid the Ionians in their revolt against the Persians (see [Ionia]); and owing to this, that city was the first place in Greece proper to be attacked by Datis and Artaphernes in 490 B.C. It was utterly ruined on that occasion, and its inhabitants were transported to Persia. Though it was restored after the battle of Marathon, on a site at a little distance from its original position, it never regained its former eminence, but it was still the second city in the island. From this time its neighbour Chalcis, which, though it suffered from a lack of good water, was, as Strabo says, the natural capital from its commanding the Euripus, held an undisputed supremacy. Already, however, this city had suffered from the growing power of Athens. In the year 506, when the Chalcidians joined with the Boeotians and the Spartan king Cleomenes in a league against that state, they were totally defeated by the Athenians, who established 4000 Attic settlers (see [Cleruchy]) on their lands, and seem to have reduced the whole island to a condition of dependence. Again, in 446, when Euboea endeavoured to throw off the yoke, it was once more reduced by Pericles, and a new body of settlers was planted at Histiaea in the north of the island, after the inhabitants of that town had been expelled. This event is referred to by Aristophanes in the Clouds (212), where the old farmer, on being shown Euboea on the map “lying outstretched in all its length,” remarks,—“I know; we laid it prostrate under Pericles.” The Athenians fully recognized its importance to them, as supplying them with corn and cattle, as securing their commerce, and as guaranteeing them against piracy, for its proximity to the coast of Attica rendered it extremely dangerous to them when in other hands, so that Demosthenes, in the De corona, speaks of a time when the pirates that made it their headquarters so infested the neighbouring sea as to prevent all navigation. But in the 21st year of the Peloponnesian war the island succeeded in regaining its independence. After this we find it taking sides with one or other of the leading states, until, after the battle of Chaeronea, it passed into the hands of Philip II. of Macedon, and finally into those of the Romans. By Philip V. of Macedon Chalcis was called one of the three fetters of Greece, Demetrias on the Gulf of Pagasae and Corinth being the other two.
In modern history Euboea or Negropont comes once more prominently into notice at the time of the fourth crusade. In the partition of the Eastern empire by the Latins which followed that event the island was divided into three fiefs, the occupants of which ere long found it expedient to place themselves under the protection of the Venetian republic, which thenceforward became the sovereign power in the country. For more than two centuries and a half during which the Venetians remained in possession, it was one of the most valuable of their dependencies, and the lion of St Mark may still be seen, both over the sea gate of Chalcis and in other parts of the town. At length in 1470, after a valiant defence, this well-fortified city was wrested from them by Mahommed II., and the whole island fell into the hands of the Turks. One desperate attempt to regain it was made by Francesco Morosini (d. 1694) in 1688, when the city was besieged by land and sea for three months; but owing to the strength of the place, and the disease which thinned their ranks, the assailants were forced to withdraw. At the conclusion of the Greek War of Independence, in 1830, the island was delivered from the Turkish sway, and constituted a part of the newly established Greek state. Euboea at the present time produces a large amount of grain, and its mineral wealth is also considerable, great quantities of magnesia and lignite being exported. In 1899 it was constituted a separate nome (pop. 1907, 116,903).
Bibliography.—H.N. Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland, vol. ii. (Berlin, 1863); C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1872); C. Neumann and J. Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland (Breslau, 1885); Baedeker’s Greece (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1905); for statistics see [Greece]: Topography.
(H. F. T.)
EUBULIDES, a native of Miletus, Greek philosopher and successor of Eucleides as head of the Megarian school. Nothing is known of the events of his life. Indirect evidence shows that he was a contemporary of Aristotle, whom he attacked with great bitterness. There was also a tradition that Demosthenes was one of his pupils. His name has been preserved chiefly by some celebrated, though false and captious, syllogisms of which he was the reputed author. Though mainly examples of verbal quibbling, they serve to show the difficulties of language and of explaining the relations of sense-given impressions. Eubulides wrote a treatise on Diogenes the Cynic and also a number of comedies. (See [Megarian School of Philosophy].)
EUBULUS, of Anaphlystus, Athenian demagogue during the time of Demosthenes. He was a persistent opponent of that statesman, and was chiefly instrumental in securing the acquittal of Aeschines (who had been his own clerk) when accused of treachery in connexion with the embassy to Philip of Macedon. Eubulus took little interest in military affairs, and was (at any rate at first) a strong advocate of peace at any price. He devoted himself to matters of administration, especially in the department of finance, and although he is said to have increased the revenues and to have done real service to his country, there is no doubt that he took advantage of his position to make use of the material forces of the state for his own aggrandizement. His proposal that any one who should move that the Theoric Fund should be applied to military purposes should be put to death may have gained him the goodwill of the people, but it was not in the true interest of the state. Later, Eubulus himself seems to have recognized this, and to have been desirous of modifying or repealing the regulation, but it was too late; Athens had lost all feelings of patriotism; cowardly and indolent, she rivalled even Tarentum in her luxury and extravagance (Theopompus in Athenaeus iv. p. 166). As one of the chief members of an embassy to Philip, Eubulus allowed himself to be won over, and henceforth did his utmost to promote the cause of the Macedonian. The indignant remonstrances of Demosthenes failed to weaken Eubulus’s hold on the popular favour, and after his death (before 330) he was distinguished with special honours, which were described by Hypereides in a speech (Περὶ τῶν Εὐβούλου δωρεῶν) now lost. Eubulus was no doubt a man of considerable talent and reputation as an orator, but none of his speeches has survived, nor is there any appreciation of them in ancient writers. Aristotle (Rhetoric, i. 15. 15) mentions a speech against Chares, and Theopompus (in his Philippica) had given an account of his life, extracts from which are preserved in Harpocration.
See Demosthenes, De corona, pp. 232, 235; De falsa legatione, pp. 434, 435, 438; Adversus Leptinem, p. 498; In Midiam, pp. 580, 581; Aeschines, De falsa legatione, ad fin.; Index to C.W. Müller’s Oratores Attici; A.D. Schäfer, Demosthenes und seine Zeit (1885).
EUBULUS, Athenian poet of the Middle comedy, flourished about 370 B.C. Fragments from about fifty of the 104 plays attributed to him are preserved in Athenaeus. They show that he took little interest in political affairs, but confined himself chiefly to mythological subjects, ridiculing, when opportunity offered, the bombastic style of the tragedians, especially Euripides. His language is pure, and his versification correct.
Fragments in T. Kock. Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, ii. (1884).
EUCALYPTUS, a large genus of trees of the natural order Myrtaceae, indigenous, with a few exceptions, to Australia and Tasmania. In Australia the Eucalypti are commonly called “gum-trees” or “stringy-bark trees,” from their gummy or resinous products, or fibrous bark. The genus, from the evidence of leaf-remains, appears to have been represented by several species in Eocene times. The leaves are leathery in texture, hang obliquely or vertically, and are studded with glands which contain a fragrant volatile oil. The petals cohere to form a cap[1] which is discarded when the flower expands. The fruit is surrounded by a woody cup-shaped receptacle and contains very numerous minute seeds. The Eucalypti are rapid in growth, and many species are of great height, E. amygdalina, the tallest known tree, attaining to as much as 480 ft., exceeding in height the Californian big-tree (Sequoia gigantea), with a diameter of 81 ft. E. globulus, so called from the rounded form of its cap-like corolla, is the blue gum tree of Victoria and Tasmania. The leaves of trees from three to five years of age are large, sessile and of a glaucous-white colour, and grow horizontally; those of older trees are ensiform, 6-12 in. long, and bluish-green in hue, and are directed downwards. The flowers are single or in clusters, and nearly sessile. This species is one of the largest trees in the world, and attains a height of 375 ft. Since 1854 it has been successfully introduced into the south of Europe, Algeria, Egypt, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Natal and India, and has been extensively planted in California, and, with the object of lessening liability to droughts, along the line of the Central Pacific railway. It would probably thrive in any situation having a mean annual temperature not below 60° F., but it will not endure a temperature of less than 27° F. Its supposed property of reducing the amount of malaria in marshy districts is attributable to the drainage effected by its roots, rather than to the antiseptic exhalations of its leaves. To the same cause also is ascribed the gradual disappearance of mosquitoes in the neighbourhood of plantations of this tree, as at Lake Fezara, in Algeria. Since about 1870, when the tree was planted in its cloisters, the monastery of St Paolo a la trè Fontana has become habitable throughout the year, although situated in one of the most fever-stricken districts of the Roman Campagna. An essential oil is obtained by aqueous distillation of the leaves of this and other species of Eucalyptus, which is a colourless or straw-coloured fluid when freshly prepared, with a characteristic odour and taste, of sp. gr. 0.910 to 0.930, and soluble in its own weight of alcohol. This consists of many different bodies, the most important of which is eucalyptol, a volatile oil, which constitutes about 70%. This is the portion of eucalyptus oil which passes over between 347° and 351° F., and crystallizes at 30° F. It consists chiefly of a terpene and cymene. Eucalyptus oil also contains, after exposure to the air, a crystallizable resin derived from eucalyptol. The dose of the oil is ½ to 3 minims. Eucalyptol may be given in similar doses, and is preferable for purposes of inhalation. The oil derived from E. amygdalina contains a large quantity of phellandrene, which forms a crystalline nitrate, and is very irritating when inhaled. The oils from different species of Eucalyptus vary widely in composition.
Eucalyptus oil is probably the most powerful antiseptic of its class, especially when it is old, as ozone is formed in it on exposure to air. Internally it has the typical actions of a volatile oil in marked degree. Like quinine, it arrests the normal amoeboid movements of the polymorphonuclear leucocytes, and has a definite antiperiodic action; but it is a very poor substitute for quinine in malaria. In large doses it acts as an irritant to the kidneys, by which it is largely excreted, and as a marked nervous depressant, abolishing the reflex functions of the spinal cord and ultimately arresting respiration by its action on the medullary centre. An emulsion, made by shaking up equal parts of the oil and powdered gum-arabic with water, has been used as a urethral injection, and has also been given internally in drachm doses in pulmonary tuberculosis and other microbic diseases of the lungs and bronchi. The oil has somehow acquired an extraordinary popular reputation in influenza, but there is no evidence to show that it has any marked influence upon this disease or that its use tends to lessen the chances of infection. It has been used as an antiseptic by surgeons, and is an ingredient of “catheter oil,” used for sterilizing and lubricating urethral catheters, now that carbolic oil, formerly employed, has been shown to be practically worthless as an antiseptic. Eucalyptus rostrata and other species yield eucalyptus or red gum, which must be distinguished from Botany Bay kino. Red gum is very powerfully astringent and is given internally, in doses of 2 to 5 grains, in cases of diarrhoea and pharyngeal inflammation. It is prepared by the pharmacist in the form of tinctures, insufflations, syrups, lozenges, &c. Red gum is official in Great Britain. E. globulus, E. resinifera, and other species, yield what is known as Botany Bay kino, an astringent dark-reddish amorphous resin, which is obtained in a semi-fluid state by making incisions in the trunks of the trees. The kino of E. gigantea contains a notable proportion of gum. J.H. Maiden enumerates more than thirty species as kino-yielding. From the leaves and young bark of E. mannifera and E. viminalis is procured Australian manna, a hard, opaque, sweet substance, containing melitose. On destructive distillation the leaves yield much gas, 10,000 cub. ft. being obtained from one ton. The wood is extensively used in Australia as fuel, and the timber is of remarkable size, strength and durability. Maiden enumerates nearly 70 species as timber-yielding trees including E. amygdalina, the wood of which splits with remarkable facility, E. botryoides, hard, tough and durable and one of the finest timbers for shipbuilding, E. diversicolor or “karri,” E. globulus, E. leucoxylon or ironbark, E. marginata or “jarrah” (see [Jarrah Wood]), E. obliqua, E. resinifera, E. siderophloia and others. The timber is often very hard, tough and durable, and useful for shipbuilding, building, fencing, planks, &c. The bark of different species of Eucalyptus has been used in paper-making and tanning, and in medicine as a febrifuge.
For further details see Baron von Müller’s monograph of the genus, Eucalyptographia (Melbourne, 1879-1884); J.H. Maiden, Useful Native Plants of Australia (1889).
[1] Whence the name (εὐκάλυπτος, well-covered) given by L’Héritier, 1788.
EUCHARIS, in botany, a genus of the natural order Amaryllidaceae, containing a few species, natives of Columbia. Eucharis amazonica or grandiflora is the best-known and most generally cultivated species. It is a bulbous plant with broad stalked leaves, and an erect scape 1½ to 2 ft. long, bearing an umbel of three to ten large white showy flowers. The flowers resemble the daffodil in having a prominent central cup or corona, which is sometimes tinged with green. It is propagated by removing the offsets, which may be done in spring, potting them singly in 6-in. pots. It requires good loamy soil, with sand enough to keep the compost open, and should have a good supply of water and a temperature of 65° to 70° during the night, with a rise of 8° or 10° in the day. During summer growth is to be encouraged by repotting, but the plants should afterwards be slightly rested by removal to a night temperature of about 60°, water being withheld for a time, though they must not go too long dry, the plant being an evergreen. By the turn of the year they may again have more heat and more water, and this will probably induce them to flower. After this is over they may be shifted and grown again as before; and, as they get large, either be divided to form new plants or allowed to develop into nobler specimens. With a stock of the smaller plants to start them in succession, they may be had in flower all the year round. A few years ago the bulbs of E. amazonica were badly inflicted with a disease known as the Eucharis mite, and all kinds of remedies were tried without avail, although steeping in Condy’s fluid appeared to give the best results. The disease appears to have died out again. Other species of Eucharis now met with in gardens are E. Bakeriana, E. Mastersii, E. Lowii and E. Sanderii. A remarkable hybrid was raised a few years ago between Eucharis and the allied genus Urceolina, to which the compound name Urceocharis was given.
EUCHARIST (Gr. εὐχαριστία, thanksgiving), in the Christian Church, one of the ancient names of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. The term εὐχαριστία was at first applied to the act of thanksgiving associated with the sacrament; later, so early as the 2nd century, to the objects, e.g. the sacramental bread and wine, for which thanks were given; and so to the whole celebration. The term Mass, which has the same connotation, is derived from the Lat. missa or missio, because the children and catechumens, or unbaptized believers, were dismissed before the eucharistic rite began. Other names express various aspects of the rite: Communion (Gr. κοινωνία), the fellowship between believers and union with Christ; Lord’s Supper, so called from the manner of its institution; Sacrament as a consecration of material elements; the Mystery (in Eastern churches) because only the initiated participated; the Sacrifice as a rehearsal of Christ’s passion. In this article the history of the rite is first traced up to A.D. 200 in documents taken in their chronological order; differences of early and later usage are then discussed; lastly, the meaning of the original rite is examined.
St Paul (1 Cor. xi. 17-34) attests that the faithful met regularly in church, i.e. in religious meetings, to eat the dominical or Lord’s Supper, but that this aim was frustrated by some who ate up their provisions before others, so that the poor were left hungry while the rich got drunk; and the meetings were animated less by a spirit of brotherhood and charity than of division and faction. He directs that, when they so meet, they shall wait for one another. Those who are too hungry to wait shall eat at home; and not put to shame those who have no houses (and presumably not enough food either), by bringing their viands to church and selfishly eating them apart.
It was therefore not the quantity or quality of the food eaten that constituted the meal a Lord’s Supper; nor even the circumstances that they ate it “in church,” as was assumed by those guilty of the practices here condemned; but only the pervading sense of brotherhood and love. The contrast lay between the Dominical Supper or food and drink shared unselfishly by all with all, and the private supper, the feast of Dives, shamelessly gorged under the eyes of timid and shrinking Lazarus. By way of enforcing this point Paul repeats the tradition he had received direct from the Lord, and already handed on to the Corinthians, of how “the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed” (not necessarily the night of Passover) “took bread and having given thanks brake it and said, This is my body, which is for your sake; this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant through my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” Paul adds that this rite commemorated the Lord’s death and was to be continued until he should come again, as in that age they expected him to do after no long interval: “As often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye do (or ye shall) proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.”
The same epistle (x. 17) attests that one loaf only was broken and distributed: “We who are many, are one loaf (or bread), one body; for we all partake of the one loaf (or bread).” As a single loaf could not satisfy the hunger of many, the rehearsal in these meals of Christ’s own action must have been a crowning episode, enhancing their sanctity. The Fractio Panis probably began, as the drinking of the cup certainly ended, the supper; the interval being occupied with the common consumption by the faithful of the provisions they brought. This much is implied by the words “after supper.” If, in any case, all present had eaten in their homes beforehand, the giving of the cup would immediately follow on the breaking and eating of the one loaf, but Paul’s words indicate that the common meal within the church was the norm. Those who ate at home marked themselves out as both greedy and lacking in charity. There is no demand that they should come fasting, or Paul could not recommend in (xi. 34) that those who were too hungry to wait until all the brethren were assembled in church, should eat at home and beforehand.
Mark xiv. 22-25, Matt. xxvi. 26-29, Luke xxii. 14-20, are, in order of time, our next accounts, Mark representing the oldest tradition. They all in substance repeat Paul’s account; but identify the night on which Jesus was betrayed with that of the Pascha. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus says of the bread “Take ye it, this is my body,” omitting the idea of sacrifice imported by Paul’s addition “which is for you”; but in them Jesus enunciates the same idea when he says of the cup: “This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many,” Matthew adding “for the remission of sins,” a phrase which savours of Heb. ix. 22: “apart from the shedding of blood there is no remission.” It is a later addition, and so may be the words “which is poured out for many.” But the words which follow have an antique ring: “Amen, I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” For here Jesus affirms his conviction, in view of his impending death, which unlike his disciples he foresaw, that, when the kingdom of God is instituted on earth, he will take his place in it. But this is the last time he will sit down upon earth with his disciples at the table of the millenarist hope. These sources do not hint that the Last Supper is to be repeated by Christ’s followers until the advent of the kingdom. Luke’s account is too much interpolated from Paul, and the texts of his oldest MSS. too discrepant, for us to rely on it except so far as it supports the other gospels. It emphasizes the fact that the Last Supper was the Pascha. “With desire have I desired to eat this Passover, before I suffer”; and places the bread after the wine, unless indeed the Pauline interpolation comprises the whole of verse 19.
The fourth gospel, written perhaps A.D. 90-100, sublimates the rite, in harmony with its general treatment of the life of Jesus: “I am the living bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die” (John vi. 51). As in 1 Cor. x. the flesh of Christ is contrasted with the manna which saved not the Jews from death, so here the latter ask: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” and Jesus answers: “Amen, Amen I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.... He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him.” In an earlier passage, again in reference to the manna, Jesus is called “the bread of God, which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” They ask: “Lord, ever more give us this bread,” and he answers: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” This writer’s thought is coloured by the older speculations of Philo, who in metaphor called the Logos the heavenly bread and food, the cupbearer and cup of God; and he seems even to protest against a literal interpretation of the words of institution, since he not only pointedly omits them in his account of the Last Supper, but in v. 63 of this chapter writes: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.”
In Acts ii. 46 we read that, “the faithful continued steadfastly with one accord in the temple”; at the same time “breaking bread at home they partook of food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God.” All such repasts must have been sacred, but we do not know if they included the Eucharistic rite. The care taken in the selecting and ordaining of the seven deacons argues a religious character for the common meals, which they were to serve. Their main duty was to look after the duty of the Hellenistic widows, but inasmuch as meats strangled or consecrated to idols were forbidden, it probably devolved on the deacons to take care that such were not introduced at these common meals. The Essenes, similarly, appointed houses all over Palestine where they could safely eat, and priests of their own to prepare their food. Some Christians escaped the difficulties of their position by eating no meat at all. “He that is weak,” says Paul (Rom. xiv. 1), “eateth herbs”; that is, becomes a vegetarian. Rather than scandalize weaker brethren, Paul was willing to eat herbs the rest of his life.
The travel-document in Acts often refers to the solemn breaking of bread. Thus Paul in xxvii. 35, having invited the ship’s company of 276 persons to partake of food, took bread, gave thanks to God in the presence of all, and brake it and began to eat. The rest on board then began to be of good cheer, and themselves also took food. Here it is not implied that Paul shared his food except with his co-believers, but he ate before them all. Whether he repeated the words of institution we cannot say.
In Acts xx. 7 the faithful of Troas gather together to break bread “on the first day of the week” after sunset. After a discourse Paul, who was leaving them the next morning, broke bread and ate. This was surely such a meeting as we read of in 1 Cor. x., and was held on Sunday by night; but long before dawn, since after it Paul “talked with them a long while, even till break of day.” In 1 Cor. xvi. 1 Paul bids the Corinthians, as he had bidden the churches of Galatia, lay up in store on the first of the week, each one of them, money for the poor saints of Jerusalem. This is the first notice of Sunday Eucharistic collections of alms for the poor.
Here seems to belong in the order of development the Cathar Eucharist (see [Cathars]). The Cathars used only the Lord’s prayer in consecrating the bread and used water for wine.
The next document in chronological order is the so-called Teaching of the Apostles (A.D. 90-110). This assigns prayers and rubrics for the celebration of the Eucharist:—
IX.
“1. Now with regard to the Thanksgiving, thus give ye thanks.
“2. First concerning the cup:—We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the holy vine[1] of David thy servant, which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant;[2] to thee be the glory for ever.
“3. And concerning the broken bread:—We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
“4. As this broken bread was (once) scattered on the face of the mountains and, gathered together, became one,[3] even so may thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.
“5. But let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving (Eucharist), but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this the Lord hath said. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.[4]
X.
“1. Then, after being filled, thus give ye thanks:—
“2. We give thanks to thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus Christ thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever.
“3. Thou Almighty Sovereign, didst create all things for thy name’s sake, and food and drink thou didst give to men for enjoyment, that they should give thanks unto thee; but to us thou didst of thy grace give spiritual food and drink and life eternal through thy servant.
“4. Before all things, we give thee thanks that thou art mighty; to thee be the glory for ever.
“5. Remember, Lord, thy church to deliver it from all evil, and to perfect it in thy love, and gather it together from the four winds,[5] the sanctified, unto thy kingdom, which thou hast prepared for it; for thine is the power and the glory for ever.
“6. Come grace, and pass this world away. Hosanna to the God of David! If any one is holy, let him come. If any one is not, let him repent. Maranatha.[6] Amen.
“But allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they will.”
From a subsequent section, ch. xiv. 1, we learn that the Eucharist was on Sunday:—“Now when ye are assembled together on the Lord’s day of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your transgressions, so that your sacrifice may be pure.”
The above, like the uninterpolated Lucan account, places the cup first and has no mention of the body and blood of Christ. But in this last and other respects it contrasts with the other synoptic and with the Pauline accounts. The cup is not the blood of Jesus, but the holy vine of David, revealed through Jesus; and the holy vine can but signify the spiritual Israel, the Ecclesia or church or Messianic Kingdom, into which the faithful are to be gathered.
The one loaf, as in Paul, symbolizes the unity of the ecclesia, but the cup and bread, given for enjoyment, are symbols at best of the spiritual food and drink of the life eternal given of grace by the Almighty Father through his servant (lit. boy) Jesus. The bread and wine are indeed an offering to God of what is his own, pure because offered in purity of heart; but they are not interpreted of the sacrifice of Jesus’ body broken on the cross, or of his blood shed for the remission of sin. It is not, as in Paul, a meal commemorative of Christ’s death, nor connected with the Passover, as in the Synoptics. Least of all is it a sacramental eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus, a perpetual renewal of kinship, physical and spiritual, with him. The teaching rather breathes the atmosphere of the fourth gospel, which sets the Last Supper before the feast of the Passover (xiii. 1), and pointedly omits Christ’s institution of the Eucharist, substituting for it the washing of his disciples’ feet. The blessing of the Bread and Cup, as an incident in a feast of Christian brotherhood, is all that the Didache has in common with Paul and the Synoptists. The use of the words “after being filled,” in x. 1, implies that the brethren ate heartily, and that the cup and bread formed no isolated episode. The Baptized alone are admitted to this Supper, and they only after confession of their sins. Every Sunday at least they are to celebrate it. A prophet can “in the Spirit appoint a table,” that is, order a Lord’s Supper to be eaten, whenever he is warned by the Spirit to do so. But he must not himself partake of it—a very practical rule. The prophets are to give thanks as they like at these “breakings of bread,” without being restricted to the prayers here set forth. In xv. 3 the overseers or bishops and deacons, though their functions are less spiritual than administrative and economic, are allowed to take the place of the prophets and teachers. The phrase used is λειτουγεῖν τὴν λειτουργίαν, “to liturgize the liturgy.” This word “liturgy” soon came to connote the Eucharist. The prophets who normally preside over the Suppers are called “your high-priests,” and receive from the faithful the first-fruits of the winepress and threshing-floor, of oxen and sheep, and of each batch of new-made bread, and of oil. Out of these they provide the Suppers held every Lord’s day, offering them as “a pure sacrifice.” Bishops and deacons hold a subordinate place in this document; but the contemporary Epistle of Clement of Rome attests that these bishops “had offered the gifts without blame and holily.” The word “liturgy” is also used by Clement.
Pliny’s Letter (Epist. 96), written A.D. 112 to the emperor Trajan, about the Christians of Bithynia, attests that on a fixed day, stato die (no doubt Sunday), they met before dawn and recited antiphonally a hymn “to Christ as to a god.” They then separated, but met again later to partake of a meal, which, however, was of an ordinary and innocent character. Pliny regarded their meal as identical in character with the common meals of hetairiae, i.e. the trade-gilds or secret societies, which were then, as now, often inimical to the government. Even benefit societies were feared and forbidden by the Roman autocrats, and the “dominical suppers” of the Christians were not likely to be spared. Pliny accordingly forbade them in Bithynia, and the renegade Christians to whom he owed his information gave them up. These suppers included an Eucharist; for it was because the faithful ate in the latter of the flesh and blood of the Son of God that the charge of devouring children was made against them. If, then, this afternoon meal did not include it, Pliny’s remark that their food was ordinary and innocent is unintelligible.
Ignatius, about A.D. 120, in his letter to the Ephesians, defines the one bread broken in the Eucharist as a “drug of immortality, and antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ.” He also rejects as invalid any Eucharist not held “under the bishop or one to whom he shall have committed it.” For the Christian prophet has disappeared, and with him the custom of holding Eucharists in private dwellings.