A Report upon the Herculaneum Manuscripts

“The time in which the Pelasgian people began to suffer harm occurred almost a generation before the Trojan War.” It must strike our attention, somewhat forcibly, in support of a claim to remote antiquity, that the inscription must be read, like Eastern languages, from the right hand to the left.

The political state of Herculaneum, whether it were a settlement of Phoenicians or of other Asiatics, cannot be traced with any exactness or conclusive deduction from facts and circumstances at any period earlier than that of the Roman dominion. It can only be argued presumptively from Strabo that it might have been one of the twelve cities which formed the dynasty of the Tuscans in Campania. The opposition it made to the victorious legions of Rome, and the municipal rights which it enjoyed after its subjugation, clearly indicate some prosperity and some importance in the estimation of the conqueror.