Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.

  • Karl Otfried Müller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    164/664
    EPISODE. ON GREEK AUT AMONG THE ITALIAN NATIONS BEFORE OLYMPIAD 158, 3 (A. C. 146, A. TJ. 606, ACCORDnsG TO THE CATON. ERA). 1. OEIGINAL GREEK RACE. 166. There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of Lower and Central Italy were on the whole more closely aUied to the Pelasgian Greeks than to any other Indo-Germanic race. Hence even the striking resemblance, not to be explained merely by external conditions of locality, of the old city-walls in the mountainous regions of Central Italy to those of an- cient Greece; perhaps too the same connexion of race and culture may account for many of the older architectural structures in Italy and the neighbouring islands, especially the circular buildings resembling the treasuries of the Greeks. 1. On this point Niebuhr's Roman History i. p. 26 sqq. (2d ed.) The author's Etrusker i. s. 10 flf. Further illumination on this subject de- pends entirely on the investigations into the Latin tongue and the re- mains of the Umbrian and Oscan languages. [Grotefend Rudim. i. TJmbriacse P. 1—8. 1836—39. 4to. Rud. i. Oscae 1839. 4to. Th. Momm- sen Oskische Studien B. 1845. Nachtrage 1846]. 2. The so-called Cyclopean walls are found chiefly crowded within the ancient country of the Aborigines or Cascans, which was afterwards occupied by the Sabines (here Varro already found the ruins of cities and ancient sepulchres very remarkable, Dionys. i. 14,) among the neighbour- ing Marsi, Hernici (Aern«, rocks), in Eastern and Southern Latium, like- wise in Saranium. So in Lista, Batia, Trebula Suffena, Tiora; Alba Fucentis, Atina; Alatrium, Anagnia, Signia, Praeneste; Sora, Norba, Cora Arpinum, Fundi, Circeii, Anxur, Bovianum, Calatia, ^serma; comp 5 168. Nearly all of limestone, therefore in the neighbourhood of the Apennines, but by no means however throughout Italy, only in the portion between the Arnus and Vulturnus. These structures clearly be- long to an older system, and can hardly be derived even in Sigma and No?ba from Roman colonies, although buUding with large polygonal masses was a practice maintained much longer in substructions, espe- cially of streets The walls are almost all in the second Cyclopean man- ner 46), the doors pyramidal with a huge stone as a lintel, or alto- gether converging to the top. Here and there are to be found traces of