Pinnock's improved edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome - $b to which is prefixed an introduction to the study of Roman history, and a great variety of valuable information added throughout the work, on the manners, institutions, and antiquities of by Oliver Goldsmith
page 28 of 646 (04%)
page 28 of 646 (04%)
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reported to have built Tus'culum.
If then we deny the historical truth of a legend which seems to have been universally credited by the Romans, how are we to account for the origin of the tale? Was the tradition of native growth, or was it imported from Greece when the literature of that country was introduced into Latium? These are questions that can only be answered by guess; but perhaps the following theory may in some degree be found satisfactory. We have shown that tradition, from the earliest age, invariably asserted that Pelasgic colonies had formed settlements in central Italy; nothing is more notorious than the custom of the Pelasgic tribes to take the name of their general, or of some town in which they had taken up their temporary residence; now Æne'a and Æ'nus were common names of the Pelasgic towns; the city of Thessaloni'ca was erected on the site of the ancient Æne'a; there was an Æ'nus in Thrace,[A] another in Thessaly,[A] another among the Locrians, and another in Epi'rus:[1] hence it is not very improbable but that some of the Pelasgic tribes which entered Latium may have been called the Æne'adæ; and the name, as in a thousand instances, preserved after the cause was forgotten. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact, that temples traditionally said to have been erected by a people called the Æne'adæ, are found in the Macedonian peninsula of Pall'ene,[2] in the islands of De'los, Cythe'ra, Zacy'nthus, Leuca'dia, and Sicily, on the western coasts of Ambra'cia and Epi'rus, and on the southern coast of Sicily. The account of several Trojans, and especially Æne'as, having survived the destruction of the city, is as old as the earliest narrative of that famous siege; Homer distinctly asserts it when he makes Neptune declare, |
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