84

are

LASGI.

ITALIA.

which formed the original population of Greece, as
well as that of Epirus and Macedonia, and of a part
at least of Thrace and Asia Minor. The statements
and arguments upon which this inference is based
more fully discussed under the article PE-
It may here suffice to say that the general
fact is put forward prominently by Dionysius and
Strabo, and has been generally adopted by modern
writers from Niebuhr downwards. The Pelasgian
population of Italy appears in historical times prin-
cipally, and in its unmixed form solely, in the
southern part of the peninsula. But it is not im-
probable that it had, as was reported by traditions
still current in the days of the earliest historians,
at one time extended much more widely, and that
the Pelasgian tribes had been gradually pressed
towards the south by the successively advancing
At
waves of population, which appear under the name of
the Oscans or Ausonians, and the Sabellians.
the time when the first Greek colonies were esta-
blished in Southern Italy, the whole of the country
subsequently known as Lucania and Bruttium was
occupied by a people whom the Greeks called OENO-
TRIANS (OivaTpot), and who are generally repre-
Indeed we learn that the
sented as a Pelasgic race.
colonists themselves continued to call this people,
whom they had reduced to a state of serfdom, Pe-
lasgi. (Steph. B. s. v. Xios.) We find, however,
traces of the tradition that this part of Italy was at
one time peopled by a tribe called SICULI, who are
represented as passing over from thence into the
island to which they gave the name of Sicily, and
where alone they are found in historical times.
[SICILIA.] The name of these Siculi is found also
in connection with the earliest population of Latium
[LATIUM]: both there and in Oenotria they are
represented by some authorities as a branch of the
Pelasgic race, while others regard them as a distinct
people. In the latter case we have no clue whatever
to their origin or national affinities.

by

Next to the Oenotrians come the Messapians or
Iapygians, who are represented by the Greek legends
and traditions as of Pelasgic or Greek descent: and
there seem reasonable grounds for assuming that the
conclusion was correct, though no value can be at-
tached to the mythical legends connected with
the logographers and early Greek historians. The
tribes to whom a Pelasgic origin is thus assigned
are, the Messapians and Salentines, in the Iapygian
peninsula; and the Peucetians and Daunians, in the
country called by the Romans Apulia. A strong
confirmation of the inference derived in this case from
other authorities is found in the traces still re-
maining of the Messapian dialect, which appears to
have borne a close affinity to Greek, and to have
differed from it only in much the same degree as the
Macedonian and other cognate dialects. (Mommsen,
Unter Italische Dialekten, pp. 41-98.)

very name of Tyrrhenians, universally given by the
Greeks to the inhabitants of Etruria, appears indis
solubly connected with that of Pelasgians; and the
evidence of language affords some curious and in-
teresting facts in corroboration of the same view.
(Donaldson, Varronianus, 2d edit. pp. 166–170 ;
If the Pelasgic element was thus prevalent in
Lepsius, Tyrrhen. Pelasger, pp. 40-43.)
Southern Etruria, it might naturally be expected
that its existence would be traceable in Latium also;
and accordingly we find abundant evidence that one
of the component ingredients in the population of
Latium was of Pelasgic extraction, though this di
not subsist within the historical period in a separat e
form, but was already indissolubly blended with the
other elements of the Latin nationality. [LATIUM.]
The evidence of the Latin language, as pointed out
a Greek or Pelasgic race with one of a different
by Niebuhr, in itself indicates the combination of
we find predominant in Central Italy, the Umbrians,
origin, and closely akin to the other nations which
Oscans, and Sabines.

There seems to be also sufficient proof that a Pelasgic or Tyrrhenian population was at an early period settled along the coasts of Campania, and was probably at one time conterminous and connected with that of Lucania, or Oenotria; but the notices of these Tyrrhenian settlements are rendered obscure and confused by the circumstance that the Greeks applied the same name of Tyrrhenians to the Etruscans, who subsequently made themselves masters for some time of the whole of this country. [CAMPANIA.]

The notices of any Pelasgic population in the interior of Central Italy are so few and vague as to be scarcely worthy of investigation; but the traditions collected by Dionysius from the early Greek hisone time settled in Northern Italy, and especially torians distinctly represent them as having been at point to Spina on the Adriatic as a Pelasgic city. (Dionys. i. 17-21; Strab. v. p. 214.) Nevertheless it hardly appears probable that this Pelasgic race formed a permanent part of the population of those regions. The traditions in question are more fully some evidence also, though very vague and ininvestigated under the article PELASGI. There is definite, of the existence of a Pelasgic population on the coast of the Adriatic, especially on the shores of Picenum. (These notices are collected by Niebuhr, vol. i. pp. 49, 50, and are discussed under PICENUM.)

2. OSCANS. - At a very early period, and cera considerable portion of Central Italy appears to tainly before the commencement of historical record, have been in the possession of a people who were called by the Greeks Opicans, and by the Latins the Ausonians [AUSONES] of the Greeks, and the From them was Oscans, and whom we are led to identify also with It is far more difficult to trace with any security Auruncans of Roman writers. the Pelasgic population of Central Italy, where it derived the name of Opicia or Opica, which appears appears to have been very early blended with other to have been the usual appellation, in the days both national elements, and did not anywhere subsist in of Thucydides and Aristotle, for the central portion an unmingled form within the period of historical of the peninsula, or the country north of what was record. But various as have been the theories and then called Italy. (Thuc. vi. 4; Arist. Pol. vii. 10.) suggestions with regard to the population of Etruria, All the earliest authorities concur in representing there seems to be good ground for assuming that the Opicans as the earliest inhabitants of Campania, one important element, both of the people and lan- and they were still in possession of that fertile disguage, was Pelasgic, and that this element was pre-trict when the Greek colonies were planted there. dominant in the southern part of Etruria, while it was more feeble, and had been comparatively effaced in the more northern districts. [ETRURIA.] The

(Strab. v. p. 242.) We find also statements, which have every character of authenticity, that this same people then occupied the mountainous region after

3. The SABELLIANS.-This name, which is sometimes used by ancient writers as synonymous with that of the Sabines, sometimes to designate the Samnites in particular (Plin. iii. 12. s. 17; Virgil, Georg. ii. 167; Hor. Sat. i. 9. 29, ii. 1. 36; Heindorf. ad loc.), is commonly adopted by modern historians as a general appellation, including the Sabines and all those races or tribes which, according to the distinct tradition of antiquity, derived their origin from them. These traditions are of a very different character from most of those transmitted to us, and have apparently every claim to be received as historical. And though we have no means of fixing the date of the migrations to which they refer, it seems certain that these cannot be carried back to a very remote age; but that the Sabellian races had not very long been established in the extensive regions of Central Italy, where we find them in the historical period. Their extension still further to the S. belongs distinctly to the historical age, and did not take place till long after the establishment of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy.

wards called Samnium, until they were expelled, or
rather subdued, by the Sabine colonists, who as-
sumed the name of Samnites. (Id. v. p. 250.)
[SAMNIUM.] Whether they were more widely ex-
tended we have no positive evidence; but there seems
a strong presumption that they had already spread
themselves through the neighbouring districts of
Italy. Thus the Hirpini, who are represented as a
Samnite or Sabellian colony, in all probability found
an Oscan population established in that country, as
did the Samnites proper in the more northern pro-
vince. There are also strong arguments for re-
garding the Volscians as of Oscan race, as well as
their neighbours and inseparable allies the Aequians.
(Niebuhr, vol. i. pp. 70-73; Donaldson, Varro-
Buznas, pp. 4, 5.) It was probably also an Oscan
tribe that was settled in the highlands of the Apen-
mines about Reate, and which from thence descended
into the plains of Latium, and constituted one im-
portant element of the Latin nation. [LATIUM.]
It is certain that, if that people was, as already
mentioned, in part of Pelasgic origin, it contained
also a very strong admixture of a non-Pelasgic
race; and the analogy of language leads us to derive
this latter element from the Oscan. (Donaldson, .c.)
Indeed the extant monuments of the Oscan lan-
guage are sufficient to prove that it bore a very close
relation to the oldest form of the Latin; and Niebuhr
justly remarks, that, had a single book in the Oscan
language been preserved, we should have had little
difficulty in deciphering it. (Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 68.)
It is difficult to determine the precise relation
which this primitive Oscan race bore to the Sabines
or Sabellians. The latter are represented as con-
querors, making themselves masters of the countries
previously occupied by the Oscans; but, both in
Samrium and Campania, we know that the language
spoken in historical times, and even long after the
Roman conquest, was still called Oscan; and we
even find the Samnites carrying the same language
with them, as they gradually extended their con-
quests, into the furthest recesses of Bruttium. (Fest.
8. v. Bilingues Brutates, p. 35.) There seems little
doubt that the Samnite conquerors were a com-
paratively small body of warriors, who readily adopted
the language of the people whom they subdued, like
the Normans in France, and the Lombards in
Northern Italy. (Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 67.) But, at
the same time, there are strong reasons for sup-
ping that the language of the Sabines themselves,
and therefore that of the conquering Sabellian race,
was not radically distinct from that of the Oscans,
but that they were in fact cognate dialects, and that
the two nations were members of the same family
or race. The questions concerning the Oscan lan-
guage, so far as it is known to us from existing monu-tral
ments, are more fully adverted to under the article
OsCr*; but it must be borne in mind that all such
monaments are of a comparatively late period, and
represent only the Sabello-Oscan, or the language
spoken by the combined people, long after the two
races had been blended into one; and that we are
almost wholly without the means of distinguishing
what portion was derived from the one source or the

ether.

See also Mommsen, Oskische Studien, 8vo. Berlin, 1845, and Nachträge, Berl. 1846, and his Unter Italischen Dialekte, Leipzig, 1850, pp. 99— 316: Klenze, Philologische Abhandlungen, 8vo. Berlin, 1839.

The Sabines, properly so called, had their original abodes, according to Cato (ap. Dionys. ii. 49), in the lofty ranges of the central Apennines and the upland valleys about Amiternum. It was from thence that, descending towards the western sea, they first began to press upon the Aborigines, an Oscan race, whom they expelled from the valleys about Reate, and thus gradually extended themselves into the country which they inhabited under the Romans, and which still preserves its ancient name of La Sabina. But, while the nation itself had thus shifted its quarters nearer to the Tyrrhenian Sea, it had sent out at different periods colonies or bodies of emigrants, which had established themselves to the E. and S. of their original abodes. Of these, the most powerful and celebrated were the Samnites (Zavvirai), a people who are universally represented by ancient historians as descended from the Sabines (Strah. v. p. 250; Fest. v. Samnites; Varr. L. L. vii. § 29); and this tradition, in itself sufficiently trustworthy, derives the strongest confirmation from the fact already noticed, that the Romans applied the name of Sabelli (obviously only another form of Sabini) to both nations indiscriminately. It is even probable that the Samnites called themselves Sabini, or Savini, for the Oscan name "Safinim" is found on coins struck during the Social War, which in all probability belong to the Samnites, and certainly not to the Sabines proper. Equally distinct and uniform are the testimonies to the Sabine origin of the Piceni or Picentes (Plin. iii. 13. s. 18; Strab. v. p. 240), who are found in historical times in possession of the fertile district of Picenum, extending from the cen

chain of the Apennines to the Adriatic. The Peligni also, as we learn from the evidence of their native poet (Ovid, Fast. iii. 95), claimed to be of Sabine descent; and the same may fairly be assumed with regard to the Vestini, a tribe whom we find in historical times occupying the very valleys which are represented as the original abodes of the Sabines. We know nothing historically of the origin of this people, any more than of their neighbours the Marrucini; but we find them both associated so frequently with the Peligni and the Marsi, that it is probable the four constituted a common league or confederation, and this in itself raises a presumption that they were kindred races. Cato already remarked, and without doubt correctly, that the name of the Marrucini was directly derived from that of

86

ITALIA.

ITALIA.

the Marsi (Cato, ap. Priscian. ix. 9); and there
can be no doubt that the same relation subsisted be-
tween the two nations: but we are wholly in the
dark as to the origin of the Marsi themselves.
Several circumstances, however, combine to render it
probable that they were closely connected with the
Sabines, but whether as a distinct offset from that
people, or that the two proceeded from one common
stock, we have no means of determining. [MARSI.]
The Frentani, on the other hand, are generally re-
presented as a Samnite race; indeed, both they and
the Hirpini were so closely connected with the Sam-
nites, that they are often considered as forming only
4. UMBRIANS. The general tradition of anti-
a part of that people, though at other times they
figure as independent and separate nations. But
the traditions with regard to the establishment of quity appears to have fixed upon the Umbrians as
the Hirpini and the origin of their name [HIRPINI], the most ancient of all the races inhabiting the
seem to indicate that they were the result of a sepa- Italian peninsula. (Plin. iii. 14. s. 19; Flor. i. 1
rate migration, subsequent to that of the body of Dionys. i. 19.) We are expressly told that at the
the Samnites. South of the Hirpini, again, the Lu- earliest period of which any memory was preserved,
them in historical times, but the greater part of
canians are universally described as a Samnite co- they occupied not only the district where we find
lony, or rather a branch of the Samnites, who ex-
tended their conquering arins over the greater part Etruria also; while, across the Apennines, they held
of the country called by the Greeks Oenotria, and the fertile plains (subsequently wrested from them
thus came into direct collision with the Greek colo- by the Etruscans and the Gauls) from the neigh-
nies on the southern coasts of Italy. [MAGNA bourhood of Ravenna to that of Ancona, and appa-
GRAECIA.] At the height of their power the Lu-rently a large part of Picenum also. Thus, at this
canians even made themselves masters of the Brut-
tian peninsula; and the subsequent revolt of the
Bruttii did not clear that country of these Sabellian
invaders, the Bruttian people being apparently a
mixed population, made up of the Lucanian con-
[BRUTTII]
querors and their Oenotrian serfs.
While the Samnites and their Lucanian progeny were
thus extending their power on the S. to the Sicilian
strait, they did not omit to make themselves masters
of the fertile plains of Campania, which, together
with the flourishing cities of Capua and Cumae, fell
into their hands between 440 and 420 B. C. [CAM-
PANIA.]

cient authors as being at once Sabine and Oscan; and
Varro (himself a native of Reate) bears distinct tes-
timony to a connection between the two. (Varr.
L. L. vii. § 28, ed. Müller.) On the other hand,
there are evidences that the Sabine language had
considerable affinity with the Umbrian (Donaldson,
Varron. p. 8); and this was probably the reason
why Zenodotus of Troezen (ap. Dionys. ii. 49) de-
fact, the Umbrian and Oscan languages were thein-
rived the Sabines from an Umbrian stock. But, in
selves by no means so distinct as to exclude the
supposition that the Sabine dialect may have been
intermediate between the two, and have partaken
largely of the characters of both.

time, the Umbrians extended from the Adriatic to
the Tyrrhenian sea, and from the mouths of the
or national affinities we learn but little from ancient
Padus nearly to those of the Tiber. Of their origin
authors; a notion appears to have arisen among the
Romans at a late period, though not alluded to by
any writer of authority, that they were a Celtic or
Gaulish race (Solin. 2. § 11; Serv. ad Aen. xii. 753;
Isidor. Orig. ix. 2), and this view has been adopted
by many modern authors. (Walckenaer, Géogr, des
Gaules, vol. i. p. 10; Thierry, Hist. des Gaulois,
guide in the still extant remains of the Umbrian
vol. i.) But, in this instance, we have a much safer

Eugubinae [IGUVIUM]; and the researches of mo-
dern philologers, which have been of late years espe-
cially directed to that interesting monument, have
with the Celtic as to lead us to derive the Umbrians
sufficiently proved that it has no such close affinity
from a Gaulish stock. On the other hand, these
inquiries have fully established the existence of a
and oldest Latin languages; a resemblance not con-
general resemblance between the Umbrian, Oscan,
fined to particular words, but extending to the gram-
matical forms, and the whole structure of the lan-
guage. Hence we are fairly warranted in concluding
that the Umbrians, Oscans, and Latins (one im-
portant element of the nation at least), as well as
the Sabines and their descendants, were only branches
of one race, belonging, not merely to the same great
family of the Indo-Teutonic nations, but to the same
subdivision of that family. The Umbrian may very
probably have been, as believed by the Romans, the
most ancient branch of these kindred tribes; and
its language would thus bear much the same rela-
tion to Latin and the later Oscan dialects that
Moeso-Gothic does to the several Teutonic tongues.
(Donaldson, Varron. pp. 78, 104, 105; Schwegler,
Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 176.)

The dominion of the Sabellian race was thus esta-language, preserved to us in the celebrated Tabulae blished from the neighbourhood of Ancona to the southern extremity of Bruttium: but it must not be supposed that throughout this wide extent the population was become essentially, or even mainly, Sabellian. That people appears rather to have been a race of conquering warriors; but the rapidity with which they became blended with the Oscan populations that they found previously established in some parts at least of the countries they subdued, seems to point to the conclusion that there was no very Even in Samnium wide difference between the two. itself (which probably formed their stronghold, and where they were doubtless more numerous in proportion) we know that they adopted the Oscan language; and that, while the Romans speak of the people and their territory as Sabellian, they designate their speech as Oscan. (Liv. viii. 1, x. 19, 20.) In like manner, we know that the Lucanian invaders carried with them the same language into the wilds of Bruttium; where the double origin of the people was shown at a late period by their continuing to speak both Greek and Oscan. (Fest. p. 35.) The relations between these Sabellian conquerors and the Oscan inhabitants of Central Italy render it, on the 5. ETRUSCANS.-While there is good reason to whole probable, that the two nations were only branches from one common stock (Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 104), related to one another very much like the suppose a general and even close affinity between the Of the language of nations of Central Italy which have just been reNormans, Danes, and Saxons. the Sabines themselves we have unfortunately scarcely viewed, there are equally strong grounds for reany remains; but there are some words quoted by an-garding the Etruscans as a people of wholly dif

were a distinct race from the Gauls (Strab. ii. p. 128), and there seems no doubt that they were established

At a

ferent race and origin from those by which they were surrounded. This strongly marked distinctness from the other Italian races appears to have been recog-in Northern Italy long before the Gallic invasion. nised both by Roman and Greek writers. Dionysius Nor were they by any means confined to the part of even affirms that the Etruscans did not resemble, Italy which ultimately retained their name. either in language or manners, any other people very early period we learn that they occupied the whatsoever (Dionys. i. 30); and, however we may whole coast of the Mediterranean, from the foot of question the generality of this assertion, the fact in the Pyrenees to the frontiers of Etruria, and the regard to their language seems to be borne out by Greek writers uniformly speak of the people who the still existing remains of it. The various theories occupied the neighbourhood of Massilia, or the modern that have been proposed concerning their origin, and Provence, as Ligurians, and not Gauls. (Strab. iv. the views of modern philologers in regard to their p. 203.) At the same period, it is probable that language, are more fully discussed under the article they were more widely spread also in the basin of ETRURIA. It may suffice here to state that two the Po than we find them when they appear in points may be considered as fairly established: - Roman history. At that time the Taurini, at the 1. That a considerable part of the population of foot of the Cottian Alps, were the most northern of Etruria, and especially of the more southern portions the Ligurian tribes; while S. of the Padus they exof that country, was (as already mentioned) of Pe- tended probably as far as the Trebia. Along the lasgic extraction, and continued to speak a dialect shores of the Mediterranean they possessed in the closely akin to the Greek. 2. That, besides this, time of Polybius the whole country as far as Pisae there existed in Etruria a people (probably a con- and the mouths of the Arnus, while they held the quering race) of wholly different origin, who were fastnesses of the Apennines as far to the E. as the the proper Etruscans or Tuscans, but who called frontiers of the Arretine territory. (Pol. ii. 16.) themselves Rasena; and that this race was wholly It was not till a later period that the Macra became distinct from the other nations of Central Italy. the established boundary between the Roman proAs to the ethnical affinities of this pure Etruscan vince of Liguria and that of Etruria. race, we are almost as much in the dark as was Dionysius; but recent philological inquiries appear to have established the fact that it may be referred to the same great family of the Indo-Teutonic nations, though widely separated from all the other branches of that family which we find settled in Italy. There are not wanting, indeed, evidences of many points of contact and similarity, with the Umbrians on the one hand and the Pelasgians on the other; but it is probable that these are no more than would naturally result from their close juxta position, and that mixture of the different races which had certainly taken place to a large extent before the period from which all our extant monu-bably a Celtic race [CARNI]. ments are derived. It may, indeed, reasonably be assumed, that the Umbrians, who appear to have been at one time in possession of the greater part, if not the whole, of Etruria, would never be altogether expelled, and that there must always have remained, especially in the N. and E., a subject population of Umbrian race, as there was in the more southern districts of Pelasgian.

The statement of Livy, which represents the Rhaetians as of the same race with the Etruscans (v. 33), even if its accuracy be admitted, throws but little light on the national affinities of the latter; for we know, in fact, nothing of the Rhaetians, either as to their language or origin.

It only remains to advert briefly to the several branches of the population of Northern Italy. Of these, by far the most numerous and important were the Gauls, who gave to the whole basin of the Po the name of Gallia Cisalpina. They were universally admitted to be of the same race with the Gauls who inhabited the countries beyond the Alps, and their migration and settlement in Italy were referred by the Roman historians to a comparatively recent period. The history of these is fully given under GALLIA CISALPINA. Adjoining the Gauls on the SW., both slopes of the Apennines, as well as of the Maritime Alps and a part of the plain of the Po, were occupied by the LIGURIANS, a people as to whose national affinities we are almost wholly in the dark. [LIGURIA.] It is certain, however, from the positive testimony of ancient writers, that they

Bordering on the Gauls on the E., and separated from them by the river Athesis (Adige), were the VENETI, a people of whom we are distinctly told that their language was different from that of the Gauls (Pol. ii. 17), but of whom, as of the Ligurians, we know rather what they were not, than what they were. The most probable hypothesis is, that they were an Illyrian race (Zeuss, Die Deutschen, p. 251), and there is good reason for referring their neighbours the ISTRIANS to the same stock. On the other hand, the CARNI, a mountain tribe in the extreme NE. of Italy, who immediately bordered both on the Venetians and Istrians, were more pro

Another name which we meet with in this part of Italy is that of the EUGANEI, a people who had dwindled into insignificance in historical times, but whom Livy describes as once great and powerful, and occupying the whole tracts from the Alps to the sea. (Liv. i. 1.) Of their national affinities we know nothing. It is possible that where Livy speaks of other Alpine races besides the Rhaetians, as being of common origin with the Etruscans (v. 33), that he had the Euganeans in view; but this is mere conjecture. He certainly seems to have regarded them as distinct both from the Venetians and Gauls, and as a more ancient people in Italy than either of those races.

V. HISTORY.

The history of ancient Italy is for the most part inseparably connected with that of Rome, and cannot be considered apart from it. It is impossible here to attempt to give even an outline of that history; but it may be useful to the student to present at one view a brief sketch of the progress of the Roman arms, and the period at which the several nations of Italy successively fell under their yoke, as well as the measures by which they were gradually consolidated into one homogeneous whole, in the form that Italy assumed under the rule of Augustus. The few facts known to us concerning the history of the several nations, before their conquest by the Romans, will be found in their respective articles; that of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, and