they built cities, and became a prosperous people under
the name of Tyrseni, being thus called after their leader Tyrsenos.*

* Herodotus, whence all the information of other classical
writers is directly or indirectly taken. Most modern
historians reject this tradition. I see no reason for my own
part why they should do so, at least in the present state of
our knowledge. The Etrurians of the historical period were
the result of a fusion of several different elements, and
there is nothing against the view that the Tursha--one of
these elements--should have come from Asia Minor, as
Herodotus says. Properly understood, the tradition seems
well founded, and the details may have been added
afterwards, either by the Lydians themselves, or by the
Greek historians who collected the Lydian traditions.

The remaining portions of the nations who had taken part in the attack
on Egypt--of which several tribes had been planted by Ramses III. in
the Shephelah, from Gaza to Carmel--proceeded in a series of successive
detachments from Asia Minor and the AEgean Sea to the coasts of Italy
and of the large islands; the Tursha into that region which was known
afterwards as Etruria, the Shardana into Sardinia, the Zakkala into
Sicily, and along with the latter some Pulasati, whose memory is still
preserved on the northern slope of Etna. Fate thus brought the Phonician
emigrants once more into close contact with their traditional enemies,
and the hostility which they experienced in their new settlements from
the latter was among the influences which determined their further
migration from Italy proper, and from the region occupied by the
Ligurians between the Arno and the Ebro. They had already probably
reached Sardinia and Corsica, but the majority of their ships had sailed
to the southward, and having touched at Malta, Gozo, and the small
islands between Sicily and the Syrtes, had followed the coast-line of
Africa, until at length they reached the straits of Gribraltar and the
southern shores of Spain. No traces remain of their explorations, or of
their early establishments in the western Mediterranean, as the towns
which they are thought--with good reason in most instances--to have
founded there belong to a much later date. Every permanent settlement,
however, is preceded by a period of exploration and research, which may
last for only a few years or be prolonged to as many cen