Tyrrhenians
Tyrrhenians (
While ancient sources have been interpreted in a variety of ways, the Greeks always called the
Earliest references
The names are believed to be
but this is unlikely given the variations and unclear derivation.The first Greek author to mention the Tyrrhenians is the 8th-century BC Greek poet Hesiod, in his work, the Theogony. He merely described them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins.
And Circe the daughter of Helios, Hyperion's son, loved steadfast Odysseus and bore Agrius and Latinus who was faultless and strong; also she brought forth Telegonus by the will of golden Aphrodite. And they ruled over the famous Tyrsenians, very far off in a recess of the holy islands.[6]
The
Presently there came swiftly over the sparkling sea
Tyrsenian pirates on a well-decked ship – a miserable doom led them on.[7]
After Herodotus' Histories a party of Lydians, wretched by a persistent famine, decided to migrate. Led by Tyrsenos, son of Atys, king of Lydia, they sailed to the west coast of central Italy where they settled in the region of the Umbri.[8]
They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king's son who had led them there.[9]
Late references
The Tyrrhenians are referred to as pirates by
According to Ephorus these were the earliest Greek cities to be founded in Sicily, that is, in the tenth generation after the Trojan war; for before that time men were so afraid of the bands of Tyrrhenian pirates and the savagery of the barbarians in this region that they would not so much as sail thither for trafficking.[10]
In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the name referred specifically to the
I entreat you, son of Cronus,
grant that the battle-shouts of the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians stay quietly at home,
now that they have seen their arrogance bring lamentation to their ships off Cumae.
The name is also attested in a fragment by Sophocles.[13]
The name becomes increasingly associated with the generic
Lemnos remained relatively free of Greek influence until Hellenistic times, and the
There is thus evidence that there was indeed at least a linguistic relationship between the Lemnians and the Etruscans. The circumstances of this are disputed; most scholars would ascribe Aegean Tyrrhenians to the Etruscan expansion from the 8th to the 6th centuries, putting the homeland of the Etruscans in
Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that "there was a time when the Latins, the Umbrians, the Ausonians and many others were all called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks, the remoteness of the countries inhabited by these nations making their exact distinctions obscure to those who lived at a distance."[20]
Possible connection with Sea Peoples
It has been hypothesised that the Teresh, who appear among other
See also
- Etruscans
Footnotes
- ^ "Already in the 1840s Egyptologists had debated the identity of the "northerners, coming from all lands," who assisted the Libyan King Meryre in his attack upon Merneptah. Some scholars believed that Meryre's auxiliaries were merely his neighbors on the Libyan coast, while others identified them as Indo-Europeans from north of the Caucasus.
It was one of Maspero's most illustrious predecessors, Emmanuel de Rougé, who proposed that the names reflected the lands of the northern Mediterranean: the Lukka, Ekwesh, Tursha, Shekelesh, and Shardana were men from Lydia, Achaea, Tyrsenia (western Italy), Sicily, and Sardinia." De Rougé and others regarded Meryre's auxiliaries – these "peoples de la mer Méditerranée" – as mercenary bands, since the Sardinians, at least, were known to have served as mercenaries already in the early years of Ramesses the Great. Thus the only "migration" that the Karnak Inscription seemed to suggest was an attempted encroachment by Libyans upon neighboring territory.[21]
References
- ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert. "Τυρσηνός". A Greek-English Lexicon. Tufts U.
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ignored (help) - ^ a b Abulafia (2014), p. 145-6.
- ^ Kluge, Sindy; Salomon, Corinna; Schumacher, Stefan (2013–2018). "Modern research on Raetic". Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
- ^ Heubeck, Alfred (1961). Praegraeca: sprachliche Untersuchungen zum vorgriechisch-indogermanischen Substrat. Erlangen. pp. 65ff.
- ^ Françoise Bader (2003), Une traversée menée à terme: noms de conquérant i.e. en étrusque (Pélasges, Tyrrhènes, Tusci, Etrusci, Tarkon, Tarquin), pp 33-49, in Linguistica è storia. Sprachwissenschaft ist Geschichte. Scritti in onore di Carlo De Simone. Festschrift fùr Carlo De Simone, a cura di Paolo Poccetti, Simona Marchesini, Pisa 2003.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony, 1015.
- ^ Homeric hymn, VII. To Dionysus, verse 6ff.
- ^ Abulafia (2014), p. 140-1.
- ^ a b Herodotus (1920). The Histories. Translated by A.D. Godley. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. 1.94.
- ^ Ephorus of Cyme in Strabo, Geography, VI, 2, 2
- ^ Strabo, 5.2.2.
- ^ Pindar, Pythian Odes, 1.72
- ^ Sophocles, Inachus, fr. 256
- ^ Herodotus, Histories, 1.57
- ^ Thucydides, 4.109
- ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5
- ISBN 978-1-61451-520-3.
- ISBN 9781444337341.
- ISBN 9781780238623.
- ^ Roman antiquities, 1.29.2
- ^ Drews, Robert (1995). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in warfare and the catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton University Press. p. 54.
- ISBN 978-0141969992.