Tyrrhenians (

Attic Greek Attic Greek is the Greek language, Greek dialect of the regions of ancient Greece, ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of classical Athens, Athens. Often called Classical Greek, it was the prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige diale ...

: ''Turrhēnoi'') or Tyrsenians ( Ionic: ''Tursēnoi''; Doric: ''Tursānoi'') was the name used by the

ancient Greeks Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically re ...

authors to refer, in a generic sense, to non-Greek people, in particular pirates. While ancient sources have been interpreted in a variety of ways, the Greeks always called the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization ( ) was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in List of ancient peoples of Italy, ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. Af ...

Tyrsenoi, although not all Tyrsenians were Etruscans. Furthermore the languages of Etruscan,

Rhaetian The Rhaetian is the latest age (geology), age of the Triassic period (geology), Period (in geochronology) or the uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Triassic system (stratigraphy), System (in chronostratigraphy). It was preceded by the N ...

and Lemnian cultures have been grouped together as the

Tyrsenian languages Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the Tyrrhenians (Ancient Greek, Ionic: ''Tyrsenoi''), is an extinct family of closely related ancient languages put forward by linguist Helmut Rix in 1998, which consists of the Etrus ...

, based on their strong similarities. Tyrsenian languages

Earliest references

The names are believed to be

exonyms An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

, only known to have been used by authors of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, though their origin is uncertain and apparently not Greek. They have been connected to τύρσις (''túrsis''), also a "Mediterranean" loan into Greek, meaning "

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

". Direct connections with '' Tuscī'', the Latin exonym for the

, from *''Turs-ci'', have also been attempted. The French linguist Françoise Bader has alternatively hypothesized that ''Tyrsenoi''–'' Tyrrhenoi'' derives from the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

root '' *trh₂-'' meaning "to cross". The first Greek author to mention the Tyrrhenians is the 8th-century BC Greek poet

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

, in his work, the

Theogony The ''Theogony'' () is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogy, genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Homeric Greek, epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one ...

. He merely described them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins. The

Homeric hymn The ''Homeric Hymns'' () are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods ...

to Dionysus has Tyrsenian pirates seizing Dionysus: After Herodotus' Histories a party of Lydians, wretched by a persistent famine, decided to migrate. Led by Tyrsenos, son of Atys, king of Lydia, they sailed to the west coast of central Italy where they settled in the region of the

Umbri The Umbri were an Italic peoples, Italic people of ancient Italy. A region called Umbria still exists and is now occupied by Italian speakers. It is somewhat smaller than the Regio VI Umbria, ancient Umbria. Most ancient Umbrian cities were sett ...

Late references

The Tyrrhenians are referred to as pirates by Ephorus of Cyme as reported by

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

. The pirating actions of the Tyrrhenians would not have allowed the Greeks to found their colonies in

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

before the 8th century BC. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the name referred specifically to the

for whom the

Tyrrhenian Sea The Tyrrhenian Sea (, ; or ) , , , , is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. It is named for the Tyrrhenians, Tyrrhenian people identified with the Etruscans of Italy. Geography The sea is bounded by the islands of C ...

is named, according to

. In

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

, the ''Tyrsenoi'' appear allied with the

Carthaginians The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people, Semitic people who Phoenician settlement of North Africa, migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Iron ...

as a threat to

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...

: The name is also attested in a fragment by

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

. The name becomes increasingly associated with the generic

Pelasgians The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all ...

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

places them in Crestonia in

Thrace Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...

, as neighbours of the

Pelasgian The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greece, Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the Greeks#Origins, emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" h ...

s. Similarly,

Thucydides Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...

mentions them together with the Pelasgians and associates them with Lemnian pirates and with the

pre-Greek The pre-Greek substrate (or substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Greek language or languages (either Pre-Indo-European or other Indo-European languages) spoken in prehistoric Greece prior to the emergence of the Proto-Greek language in the r ...

population of

Attica Attica (, ''Attikḗ'' (Ancient Greek) or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital city, capital of Greece and the core cit ...

. Lemnos remained relatively free of Greek influence until Hellenistic times, and the Lemnos stele of the 6th century BC was inscribed with a language very similar to

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

, which has led to the postulation of a Tyrrhenian language family of Etruscan, Lemnian and Raetic. There is thus evidence that there was indeed at least a linguistic relationship between the Lemnians and the Etruscans. The circumstances of this are disputed; most scholars would ascribe Aegean Tyrrhenians to the Etruscan expansion from the 8th to the 6th centuries, putting the homeland of the Etruscans in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and the

Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...

, particularly because of their relation to the Alpine

population. Another hypothesis connecting the Tyrrhenians and the Etruscans posits that the Etruscans derive at least partially from a 12th century BC invasion from the Aegean and

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

imposing itself over the

Villanovan culture The Villanovan culture (–700 BCE), regarded as the earliest phase of the Etruscan civilization, was the earliest Iron Age culture of Italy. It directly followed the Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture which branched off from the Urnfield cult ...

, with some scholars claiming a relationship or at least evidence of close contact between the

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...

and the Etruscan language and adherents of the latter school of thought point to the legend of Lydian origin of the Etruscans referred to by Herodotus and

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...

's statement that the Rhaetians were Etruscans driven into the mountains by the invading

Gauls The Gauls (; , ''Galátai'') were a group of Celts, Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age Europe, Iron Age and the Roman Gaul, Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (''Gallia''). Th ...

. Critics of the theory point to the very scanty evidence of a linguistic relationship of Etruscan with Anatolian and to

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus (, ; – after 7 BC) was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style was ''atticistic'' – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime. ...

, who decidedly argues against an Etruscan-Lydian relationship. Furthermore, there is no archaeological evidence from material culture of such a cultural shift and of an eastern origins of the Etruscans, in modern times, all the evidence gathered so far by etruscologists points to an indigenous origin of the Etruscans. Just as the archaeological evidence is against the idea that the Rhaetians are descended from the Etruscans who fled from northern Italy because of the Gallic invasions, as the Rhaetians are archaeologically attested in their Alpine sites long before.

states that "there was a time when the Latins, the Umbrians, the Ausonians and many others were all called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks, the remoteness of the countries inhabited by these nations making their exact distinctions obscure to those who lived at a distance."Roman antiquities, 1.29.2

Possible connection with Sea Peoples

It has been hypothesised that the ''Teresh'', who appear among other

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

in a number of

Ancient Egyptian Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

inscriptions from 1200 to 1150 BC, may be the same people as the Tyrsenians.

Earliest references

Late references

Possible connection with Sea Peoples

See also

Footnotes

References

Further reading