Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1346

 1322 VOLSCI. there is little doubt that these two nations were kin- dred races, though always distinguished from each another as two separate peoples. We have no state- ment in any ancient writer as to the ethnic origin or affinities of the Volscians, and are left almost wholly to conjecture on the subject. But the remains of the language, few and scanty as they are, afford neverthe- less the safest foundation onwliich to rest our theories; and these lead us to regard the Volscians as a branch of the same family with theUmbrians and Oscans, who formed the aboriginal population of the mountain tracts of Central Italy. It would appear, indeed, as if they were more closely connected with the Um- brians than either the Sabines and their Sabellian oifshoots, or the Oscans properly so called ; it is probable, therefore, that the Volscians had separated at a still earlier period from the main stock of the Unibrian race. (Mommsen, Uiiter-Ital. Dialelct. pp. 319 — 326 ; Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. vol. i. p. 178.) Tlie only notice of their language that occurs in Eoman authors, also points to it distinctly as different from Oscan (Titinius, ap. Fest. v. Ohscnm, p. 189), though the difference was undoubtedly that of two cognate dialects, not of two radically distinct lan- guages. When the Volscians first appear in Roman history, it is as a powerful and warlike nation, who were already established in the possession of the greater part at least of the territory which they subsequently occupied. Tiieir exact limits are not, indeed, to be determined with accuracy; and it is probable that they underwent considerable fluctuations during their long wars with the Latins and Romans. But there seems no doubt that from a very early period they held the whole of the detached mountain group S. of the Tolerus (Sacco), termed by modern geo- graphers the Monti Lepini, together with the valley of the Liris, and the mountain disti-ict of Arpinum, Sora, and Atina. Besides this they were certainly masters at one time of the plains extending from the Volscian Apennines to the sea, including the Pomp- tine Marshes and the fertile tract that borders on them. This tract they had, according to Cato, wrested from the Aborigines, who were its earliest possessors (Cato ap. Pnscian. v. p. 668). The first mention of the Volscians in Roman his- tory is in the reign of the second Tarquin, when they appear as a numerous and warlike people. It is clear that it was the great extension of the Roman power under its last king (which must undoubtedly be admitted as a historical fact), and the supremacy ■which he had assumed over the Latin League, that first brought him into collision with the Volscians. According to the received history be marched into their country and took their capital city, Suessa Po- metia, by assault. (Liv. i. 53 ; Dionys. iv. .50 ; Cic. de Rep. ii. 24.) The tradition that it was the spoils there obtained which enabled him to build the Capitol at Rome, sufficiently proves the belief in the great posver and wealth of the Volscians at this early period ; and the foundation of the two colonies of Circeii and Signia, both of which are expressly ascribed to Tarquin, was doubtless intended to secure his recent conquests, and to impose a perma- nent check on the extension of the Volscian power. It is evident, moreover, from the first treaty with Carthage, preserved to us by Polybius (iii. 22), that the important cities of Antium and Tarracina, as well as Circeii, were at this time subject to Tarquin, and could not, therefore, have been in the hands of the Volscians. VOLSCL Bnt the dissolution of the power of Tarquin, and the loss of the supremacy of Rome over the Latins, seem to have allowed the Volscians to regain their former superiority ; and though the chronology of the earliest years of the Republic is hopelessly con- fused, we seem to discern clearly that it was the in- creasing pressure of the Volscians and their allies the Aequians upon the Latins that caused the latter people to conclude the celebrated treaty with Rome under Sp. Cassius, b. c. 493, which became the foun- dation of the permanent relation between the two states. (Liv. ii. 33 ; Dionys. vi. 95.) According to the received annals, the wars with the Volscians had already recommenced prior to this period; but almost immediately afterwards occurs the great and sudden development of their power which is repre- sented in a legendary form in the history of Corio- lanus. Whatever may have been the origin of that legend, and however impossible it is to receive it as historically true, there is no doubt that it has a his- torical foundation in the fact that many of tlie Latin cities at this period fell successively into the power of the Volscians and their allies the Aequians ; and the two lines of advance, so singularly mixed up in the received narrative of the war, which represents all these conquests as made in a single campaign, appear to represent distinctly the two separate series of con- quests by which the two nations would respectively press on towards Rome. (Niebuhr, vol. ii. pp. 9.5, 259 ; Schwegler, Rmi. Gesch. vol. ii. pp. 274, 275.)* It is impossible here to give more than a very brief outline of the long series of wars with the Volscians which occupy so prominent a place in the early his- tory of Rome for a period of nearly two centuries. Little historical value can be attached to the details of those wars as they were preserved by the annalists who were copied by Livy and Dionysius ; and it belongs to the historian of Rome to endeavour to dis- pel their confusion and reconcile their discrepancies. But in a general point of view they may be divided (as remarked by Niebuhr), into four periods. The first of these would comprise the wars down to b. c. 459, a few years preceding the Decemvirate, in- cluding the conquests ascribed to Coriolanus, and would seem to have been the period when the Vol- scians were at the height of their power. The second extends from b. c. 459 to 431, when the dictator A. Postumius Tubertus is represented as gaining a vic- tory over the allied forces of the Volscians and Ae- quians (Liv. iv. 26 — 29), which appears to have been really an important success, and proved in a manner the turning point in the long struggle between the two nations. From this time till the capture of Rome by the Gauls (b. c. 390) the wars with the Vol- scians and Aequians assume a new character ; the tide had turned, and we find the Romans and their allies recovering one after another the towns which had fallen into the hands of their enemies. Thus La- bicum and Bola were regained in b. c. 418 and 414, and Ferentinum, a Hernican city, but which had been taken by the Volscians, was again wrested from them in b. c. 413. (Liv. iv. 47, 49, 51.) The frontier fortresses of Verrugo and Carventum were indeed taken and retaken ; but the capture of Ansur or Tarracina in B.C. 399, which from that period I the commencement of the Republic appears as a Latin city, or at least as subject to the supremacy of Rome, is found at the very outbreak of these wars already in the hands of the Volscians.
 * It is worthy of notice that Antium, which at