book 6, chapter 1.

ARVERNI, The.

See ÆDUI; also, GAULS, and ALLOBROGES.

ARX, The.

See CAPITOLINE HILL; also GENS, ROMAN.

ARXAMUS, Battle of.

One of the defeats sustained by the Romans in their wars with the Persians. Battle fought A. D. 603.

_G. Rawlinson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, chapter 24._

ARYANS.--ARYAS.

"This family (which is sometimes called Japhetic, or descendants of Japhet) includes the Hindus and Persians among Asiatic nations, and almost all the peoples of Europe. It may seem strange that we English should be related not only to the Germans and Dutch and Scandinavians, but to the Russians, French, Spanish, Romans and Greeks as well; stranger still that we can claim kinship with such distant peoples as the Persians and Hindus. ... What seems actually to have been the case is this: In distant ages, somewhere about the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, and on the north of that mountainous range called the Hindoo-Koosh, dwelt the ancestors of all the nations we have enumerated, forming at this time a single and united people, simple and primitive in their way of life, but yet having enough of a common national life to preserve a common language. They called themselves Aryas or Aryans, a word which, in its very earliest sense, seems to have meant those who move upwards, or straight; and hence, probably, came to stand for the noble race as compared with other races on whom, of course, they would look down. ... As their numbers increased, the space wherein they dwelt became too small for them who had out of one formed many different peoples. Then began a series of migrations, in which the collection of tribes who spoke one language and formed one people started off to seek their fortune in new lands. ... First among them, in all probability, started the Kelts or Celts, who, travelling perhaps to the South of the Caspian and the North of the Black Sea, found their way to Europe and spread far on to the extreme West. ... Another of the great families who left the Aryan home was the Pelasgic or the Græco-Italic. These, journeying along first Southwards and then to the West, passed through Asia Minor, on to the countries of Greece and Italy, and in time separated into those two great peoples, the Greeks (or Hellenes, as they came to call themselves), and the Romans. ... Next we come to two other great families of nations who seem to have taken the same route at first, and perhaps began their travels together as the Greeks and Romans did. These are the Teutons and the Slaves. ... The word Slave comes from Slowan, which in old Slavonian meant to speak, and was given by the Slavonians to themselves as the people who could speak in opposition to other nations whom, as they were not able to understand them, they were pleased to consider as dumb. The Greek word barbaroi (whence our barbarians) arose in obedience to a like prejudice, only from an imitation of babbling such as is made by saying 'bar-bar-bar.'"

_C. F. Keary, Dawn of History, chapter 4._

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The above passage sets forth the older theory of an Aryan family of nations as well as of languages in its unqualified form. Its later modifications are indicated in the following: "The discovery of Sanscrit and the further discovery to which it led, that the languages now variously known as Aryan, Aryanic, Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Indo-Celtic and Japhetic are closely akin to one another, spread a spell over the world of thought which cannot be said to have yet wholly passed away. It was hastily argued from the kinship of their languages to the kinship of the nations that spoke them. ... The question then arises as to the home of the 'holethnos,' or parent tribe, before its dispersion and during the proethnic period, at a time when as yet there was neither Greek nor Hindoo, neither Celt nor Teuton, but only an undifferentiated Aryan. Of course, the answer at first was--where could it have been but in the East. And at length the glottologist found it necessary to shift the cradle of the Aryan race to the neighbourhood of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, so as to place it somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Himalayas. Then Doctor Latham boldly raised his voice against the Asiatic theory altogether, and stated that he regarded the attempt to deduce the Aryans from Asia as resembling an attempt to derive the reptiles of this country from those of Ireland. Afterwards Benfey argued, from the presence in the vocabulary common to the Aryan languages of words for bear and wolf, for birch and beech, and the absence of certain others, such as those for lion, tiger and palm, that the original home of the Aryans must have been within the temperate zone in Europe. ... As might be expected in the case of such a difficult question, those who are inclined to believe in the European origin of the Aryans are by no means agreed among themselves as to the spot to be fixed upon. Latham placed it east, or south-east of Lithuania, in Podolia, or Volhynia; Benfey had in view a district above the Black Sea and not far from the Caspian; Peschel fixed on the slopes of the Caucasus; Cuno on the great plain of Central Europe; Fligier on the southern part of Russia; Pösche on the tract between the Niemen and the Dnieper; L. Geiger on central and western Germany; and Penka on Scandinavia."

_J. Rhys, Race Theories (in New Princeton Review, January, 1888)._

"Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language, and nothing but language; and, if we speak of Aryan race at all, we should know that it means no more than X + Aryan speech. ... I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slaves. ... In that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians. ... If an answer must be given as to the place where our Aryan ancestors dwelt before their separation, whether in large swarms of millions, or in a few scattered tents and huts, I should still say, as I said forty years ago, 'Somewhere in Asia,' and no more."

_F. Max Müller, Biog. of Words and Home of the Aryas,