How far the population which I consider to have been allied to the Ligurian on the one side and the Helvetian on the other, may have extended eastwards, is difficult to say; but the Tyrol was the centre of a new stock. This stock was the Etruscan. It is needless to say that we have now before us one of the _vexatœ quœstiones_ of ethnology. The account of Herodotus is as follows:-- “The Lydians state amongst other things that they colonized Tyrsenia; saying thus concerning it. In the days of Atys, the son of Manes, their king, there was a severe famine over the whole of Lydia. For a while the Lydians bore up; but, afterwards, when it would not cease, they sought for a remedy. One invented one thing, one another; and then were found out dice, _astragali_, the top, and all other kind of games; chess alone being excepted. But when the evil would not abate, but, on the contrary, pressed all the more, the king having divided the whole body of Lydians into two parts, allotted to the one of them to stay at home, and to the other a departure from the country. With the one that had to stay at home, the king himself remained at the head; with the other his son Tyrsenus. They then went to Smyrna, and having contrived a ship and put therein all that was needful for their voyage, they sailed away in search of a living, until, having passed by many nations, they came to the Ombriki, where they settled cities, and where they remain to this day. Instead of Lydians, they changed their name to that of the king’s son, who led them, and, taking this, were called Tyrseni.”--I. 94. Few passages of antiquity are better known than this, and the criticism which has been bestowed upon it is proportionate to the difficulty of the question upon which it bears. Niebuhr objected to it on negative grounds; or rather, he affirmed the opinion of Dionysius of Halicarnassus who had done so before him; as Xanthus, a native Lydian, and an historian as well, had said nothing about this Tyrsenian migration. And this objection may be strengthened. The statement that the Etruscans of Tuscany called themselves _Tyrseni_ is inaccurate. The native name was _Rasena_; and _Tyrseni_ was only what their neighbours called them. Yet, according to the Herodotean account, if one name ought to be more national than another, that name was the one derived from their princely leader--Tyrsenus. The stoppage, too, of the expedition at Smyrna, brings the date of the migration inconveniently low.