Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/101

 ITALIA. 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 throusrh the neighbouring districts of Italy. Thus the Jlirpini, who are represented as a Saninite or Sabellian colony, in all probability found an Oscan population established in that country, as did the bamnites proper in the more northern jiro- vince. There are also strong arguments for re- garding the Volscians as of Oscan race, as well as their neighbours and inseparable aUies the Aequians. (Niebuhr, vol. i. pp. 70 — 73; Donaldson, Vca-ro- nianus, pp. 4, 5.) It was probably also an Oscan tribe that was settled in the highlands of the Apen- nines 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 Telasgic 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 ^^icbuhr 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 Samnium and Campania, we know that the language spoken in historical times, and even long after the Koman 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. s. V. Bilingues Brulates, 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. (Niebulir, vol. i. p. 67.) But, at the same time, there are strong reasons for sup- posing that the language of the Sabines themselves, and therefore that of the conquering Sabellian race, was not r;idii.ally 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- ments, are more fully adverted to under the article Osci*; but it must be borne in mind that all such monuments are of a comjiaratively 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 other. ITALIA. 8.5 Berlin, 1845, and Nachtriige, Berl. 1846, and his Unter ItalUchen Bialekte, Leipzig, 1850, pp. 99 — 316; KJenze, Philologische Ahhandlungen, 8vo. Berlin, 1839. 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 (I'lin. iii. 12. .s. 17; Virgil Georg. ii. 167 ; Hon Sat. i. 9. 29, ii. 1. 36 ; Hein- dorf. ad he.'), is commonly adopted by modern his- torians 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 veiy different character from most of those transmitted to us, and have apparently every claim to be received as histo- rical. 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. be- longs distinctly to the historical age, and did not take place till long after the establishment of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. The Sabines, properly so called, had their original abodes, according to Cato (a/). Dionys. ii. 49), in the lofty ranges of the central Apennines and the upland valleys about Aniiternum. It was from thence that, descending towards the western sea, they finst began to press upon the Aborigines, an Oscan race, whom they expelled from the valleys about Eeate, and thus gradually extended themselves into the countiy which they inhabited under the Romans, and which still preserves its ancient name of La Sabiiia. 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 Sanmites {^avviTai), a people who are universally represented by ancient historians as descended from the Sabines (Strab. v. p. 250 ; Fest. V. Samnites ; Varr. L. L. vii. § 29) ; and this tradition, in itbelf sufficiently trustworthy, derives the strongest confirmation from the foct already no- ticed, that the Romans apphed the name of Sabelli (obviously only another form of Sabini) to both na- tions indiscriminately. It is even probable that the Samnites called themselves Sabini, or Savini, for the Oscan name "Safinim" is found on coins stmck during the Social War, which in all prokibility be- long to the Samnites, and certainly not to the Sa- bines proper. Equally distinct and uniform are the testimonies to the Sabine origin of the Ficeni 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- tral 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 as- sumed 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 JIarrucini ; 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 re- marked, and without doubt correctly, that the name of the Marrucini was directly derived from that of
 * See also Jlommsen, Oskische Stiidien, 8vo.