Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1339

 UiMBRIA. From the moutli of the latter stream the frontier must have followed an irregular line extending to the cen- tral range of the Apennines, so as to include the upper valleys of the Sapis and Bedesis; thence it lejoined the line already traced from the soui'ces of the Tiber. All ancient authors agree in representing the Um- brians as the most ancient people of Italy (Plin. iii. 14. s. 19; Flor. i. 17; Dionys. i. 19), and the traditions generally received described them as ori- ginally spread over a much more extensive region than that which ultimately retained their name, and occupying the whole tract from sea to sea, including the territories subsequently wrested from them by the Etruscans. That people, indeed, was repre- sented as gaining possession of its new settlements step by step, and as having taken not less than 300 towns from the Umbrians. (Plin. I. c.) This num- ber is doubtless fabulous, but there seems to be good reason for regarding the fact of the conquest as his- torical. Herodotus, in relating the Lydian tradition concerning the emigration of the Tyrrhenians, repre- sents the land as occupied, at the time of their ar- rival, by the Umbrians. (Herod, i. 94.) The tra- ditions reported by Dionysius concerning the settle- ments of the Pelasgians in Italy, all point to the same result, and represent the Umbrians as extending at one period to the neighbourhood of Spina on the Adriatic, and to the mouths of the Padus. (Dionys. i. 16 — 20.) In accordance with this we learn in- cidentally from Pliny that Butrium, a town not far from Ravenna, was of Umbrian origin. (Plin. iii. 15. s. 20.) The name of the river Umbro (Om- hrone), on the coast of Etruria, was ulso in all pro- bability a reh'c of their dominion in that part of Italy, On the whole we may fairly assume as a historical fact, the existence of the Umbrians at a very early period as a great and powerful nation in the northern half of Central Ital}', whose dominion extended from sea to sea, and comprised the fertile districts on bath sides of the Apennines, as well as the mountains themselves. According to Zenodotus of Troezen {cip. Dionys. ii. 49), the powerful race of the Sabines itself was only a branch or offshoot of the Umbrians ; and this statement is to a great extent confirm.ed by the result of recent philolo- gical researches. [Sabini.] If the Umbrians are thus to be regarded as one of the most ancient of the races established in Italy, the question as to their ethnological affinities be- comes of pecuhar interest and importance. Unfortu- nately it is one which we can answer but very im- perfectly. The ancient authorities upon this point are of little value. Slost writers, indeed, content themselves with stating that they were the most ancient people of Italy, and apparently consider them as Aborigines. This was distinctly stated by Zeno- dotus of Troezen, who had written a special history of the Umbrian peo;>le (Dionys. ii. 49); and the same idea was probably conveyed by the fonciful Greek etymology that they were called Ombricans or Om- brians, because they had survived the deluge caused by floods of rain (o,agpoi; Plin. iii. 14. s. 19). Some writers, however, of wliom the earliest seems to have been one Bocchus, frequently quoted by So- linus, represented the Umbrians as of Gaulish origin (Sohn. 2. § 11 ; Serv. ad Aen. xii. 753 ; Isidor. Oriff. is. 2); and the same view has been maintained by several modern writers, as the result of j)liilolo- gical inquiries. Researches of this latter kind have indeed of late years thrown much light upon the affinities of the Umbrian language, of which we UMBRIA. ISl.-j possess an important monument in the celebrated tables of Iguvium. [lGu- uM.] They have clearly established, on the one hand its distinctne.ss from the language of the neighbouring Etruscans, on the other its close atfinity with the Oscan, as spoken by the Sabellian tribes, and with the old Latin, so that the three may fairly be considered as only dialects of one and the same family of languages. [Italia, p. 86.] The same researches tend to prove that the Umbrian is the most ancient of these connate dialects, thus confirming the assertions of ancient writers concerning the great antiquity of the nation. But, while they prove beyond a doubt that the Um- brian, as well as the nearly related Oscan and Latin, was a branch of the great Indo-Teuionic family, they show also that the three formed to a great ex- tent a distinct branch of that family or an independent group of languages, which cannot with propriety be assigned to the Celtic group, any more than to the Teutonic or Slavonic. The history of the Umbrians is very imperfectly known to us. The traditions of their power and greatness all point to a very early period ; and it is certain that after the occupation of Etruria as well as of the plains of the Padus by the Etruscans, the Umbrians shrunk up into a comparatively ob- scure mountain people. Their own descendants the Sabines also occupied the fertile districts about Reate and the valley of the Velinus, which, according to the traditions reported by Dionysius, had originally been held by the Umbrians, but had been wrested from them by the Pelasgians (Dionys. ii. 4V.) At a much later period, but still before the name of the Umbrians appears in Roman history, they had been expelled by the Senonian Gauls from the region on the shores of the Adriatic. Livy indeed represents them as having previously held also a part of the territory which was subsequently occupied by the Boians, and from which they were driven by the in- vasion of that people (Liv. v. 35). It was not till the Roiuans had carried their arms beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the city, and penetrated beyond the barrier of the Ciniinian forest, that they came into contact with the Um- brians. Their first relations were of a friendly nature. The consul Fabius having sent .secret en- voys through the land of the neighbouring Etruscans into Umbria, received from the tribe of the Camertes promises of support and assistance if he should reach their country. (Liv. ix. 36.) But the Umbrian people seem to have been divided into different tribes, which owned no connnon government and took differ- ent lines of policy. Some of the.se tribes made connnon cause with the Etruscans and shared in their dt-feat by Fabius. (76. 37.) Tliis disaster was followed by two other defeats, which were sustained by the Umbrians alone, and the second of these, in which their combined forces were overthrown by the consul Fabius near Mevania (b. c. 308), appears to havo been a decisive blow. It was followed, we are told, by the submission of all the Umbrian tribes, of whom the people of Ocriculuin were rcceivi-d into the Roman alliance on peculiarly favourable terms. (Liv. ix. 39, 41.) From this time we hear no more of hostilities with the Umbrians, with the exception of an expedition against a mere marauding tribe of mountaineers (Liv. x. 1), till B. c. 296, when the Sanmite leader Gellius Egnatius succeeded in organising a general confederacy against Rome, in which the Umbrians and Senonian Gauls took part, as well as the Etrus- 4f 2