This theory, whether deducing the Etruscans from the Celts of Gaul or from the Teutonic tribes of Germany, is too often supported by remote and fanciful etymologies; and, so far as depends on authority, it chiefly rests on an ambiguous passage of the ancient historian Boccus, (quoted by Solinus,) where it is said, _Gallorum veterum propaginem Umbros esse_, and taken in connection with this, the assertion of Pliny, _Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiæ existimatur_(35). ETRURIA. The most learned and correct writer on the subject of the Etruscans is Lanzi. In his elaborate work(36), (in which he has followed out and improved on a system first started by Ulivieri,) he does not pretend to investigate the origin of this celebrated race, though he seems to think that they were Lydians, augmented from time to time by tribes of the Pelasgi. But he has tried to prove that whatever may have been their descent, the religion, learning, language, and arts of the Etruscans must be referred to a Greek origin, and he refutes Gori and Caylus, who, deceived by a few imperfect analogies, ascribed them to the Egyptians. The period of Etruscan perfection in the arts, and formation of those vases and urns which we still admire, was posterior, he maintains, to the subjugation of Etruria by the Romans, and at a time when an intercourse with Greece had rendered the Etruscans familiar with models of Grecian perfection. As to the language, he does not indeed deny that all languages came originally from the east, and that many Greek words sprung from Hebrew roots; but there are in the Etruscan tongue, he asserts, such clear traces of Hellenism, particularly in the names of gods and heroes, that it is impossible to ascribe its origin to any other source. In particular, he attempts to show from the inscriptions on the Eugubian tables, that the Etruscan language was the Æolic Greek, since it has neither the monosyllables characteristic of northern tongues, nor the affixes and suffixes peculiar to oriental dialects(37).