The ample lakes and lofty mountains, by which Italy is intersected, naturally divided its inhabitants into separate and independent nations. Of these by far the most celebrated were the Etruscans. The origin of this remarkable people, called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks, and Thusci, or Etrusci, by the Latins, has been a subject of endless controversy among antiquarians; and, indeed, had perplexed the ancients no less than it has puzzled the moderns. Herodotus, the earliest authentic historian whose works are now extant, represents them as a colony of Lydians, who were themselves a tribe of the vagrant Pelasgi. In the reign of Atys, son of Menes, the Lydian nation being driven to extremity by famine, the king divided it into two portions, one of which was destined to remain in Asia, and the other to emigrate under the conduct of his son Tyrrhenus. The inhabitants who composed the latter division leaving their country, repaired to Smyrna, where they built vessels, and removed in search of new abodes. After touching on various shores, they penetrated into the heart of Italy, and at length settled in Umbria. There they constructed dwellings, and called themselves Tyrrhenians, from the name of their leader(10). Some of the circumstances which Herodotus relates as having occurred previous to the emigration of the Lydian colony appear fabulous, as the invention of games, in order to appease the sensation of hunger, and the fasting every alternate day for a space of eighteen years; and it would, perhaps, be too much to assert, that before the Lydians, no other tribe had ever set foot in Umbria or Etruria. But the account of the departure of the colony is itself plausible, and its truth appears to be corroborated, if not confirmed, by certain resemblances in the language, religion, and pastimes of the Lydians, and of the ancient Etruscans(11). The manners, too, and customs of the Lydians, did not differ essentially from those of the Greeks; and the princes of Lydia, like the sovereigns of Persia, being accustomed to employ Phœnician or Egyptian sailors, the colony of Lydians, which settled in Italy, might thus contain a mixture of such people, and present those appearances which have led some antiquarians to consider the Etruscans as Phœnicians or Egyptians, while others have regarded them as Greeks. The writers of antiquity, though varying in particulars, have followed, in general, the tradition delivered by Herodotus concerning the descent of the Etruscans. Cicero, Strabo(12), Velleius Paterculus(13), Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch(14), and Servius, all affirm that they came from Lydia; and to these may be added Catullus, who calls the lake Benacus _Lydiæ lacus undæ_, obviously because he considered the ancient Etruscans, within whose extended territory it lay, as of Lydian origin. It is evident, too, that the Etruscans themselves believed that they had sprung from the Lydians, and that they inculcated this belief on others.