Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/885

 SABINI. Gef),!;rapliers attempt to iilentify S:ibbatlia with Ma- riaba (Mai-eb), but the proofs of their identity are unsatisfactoiy ; and it may even be questioned whether Sabbatha be not an elongated form of Saba, a common appellation for cities in Arabia Felix. The KaSdravuv of Strabo (xvi. p. 768) is sup- posed by his translator Groskurd (vol. iii. p. 2S7) to be an error for SaSctraj'oj', and the latter to be a form of Sabbatha. [See Mauiaha, Vol. II. p. 274.] [W. B. D.] SABI'NI (2,a.€7voi), a people of Central Italy, wlio inhabited the rugged mountain country on the W. of the central chain of the Apennines, from the sources of the Nar and Velinus to the neighbourhood of Reate, and from thence southwards as far as the Tiber and the Anio. They were bounded on the N. and W. by the Unibrians and Etruscans, on the NE. by Picemim, from which they were sejiarated by the main ridge of the Apennines; on the E. by the Veslini, the Marsi and Aequiculi, and on the S. by Latium. Their country thus formed a narrow strip, extending abcuit 85 miles in length from the lofty group of the Apennines above Nursia, in which the Nar takes its rise (now called the Munti delta SihiUa), to the jimction of the Tiber and Anio, within a few miles of Rome. The southern limit of the Sabines had, however, undergone many changes; in Pliny's time it was fixed as above stated, the Anio being generally received as the boundary between them and Latium; hence Pliny reckons Fidenae and No- mentum Sabine cities, though there is good ground for assigning them both in earlier times to the Latins, and Ptolemy again includes them both in Latium. Strabo, on the other hand, describes the Sabine territory as extending as far as Nomentum, by which he probably means to include the latter city; while Eretum, which was only about 3 miles N. of Nomentum, seems to have been universally considered as a Sabine city. (Strab. v. p. 228; Plin. iii. 5. s. 9, 12. s. 17; Ptol. iii. 1. § 62.) In like manner Pliny includes the important city of Tibur among the Sabines, though it was certainly com- monly reckoned a Latin city, and never appears in the early history of Rome in connection with the Sabines. The fact appears to be, that the frontier between the Sabines and Latins was in early times constantly fluctuating, as the Sabines on the one hand were pressing down from the N., and on the other were driven back in their turn by the arms of the Romans and Latins. But on the division of Italy into regions by Augustus, the Anio was esta- blished as the boundary of the First Region, and for this reason was considered by Pliny as the limit also between the Latins and Sabines. (Plin. I. c.) It is remarkable that no name fur the country is found in ancient writers, standing in the same re- lation to that of the people which Samnium does to Samnites, Latium to Latini, &c. : it is called only " the land of the Sabines " (Sabinorum ager, or Sa- binus ager, Liv. i. 36, ii. 16, &c.; Tac. Hist. iii. 78), and Roman writers would say " in Sabinis versari, in Sabinos proficisci," &c. The Greeks indeed used 7] SagiVTj for the name of the country (Strab. v. pp. 2 1 9, 228, &c.; Steph. Byz. s. v.), which is called to the present 'hiy by the Roman peasantry La Sabina, but we do not find any corresponding form in Latin authors. All ancient authors agree in representing the Sabines as one of the most ancient races of Italy, and as constituting one of the elements of the Roman people, at the same time that they were the pro- genitors of the far more numerous races which had VOL. II. SABINL 8C.5 spread themselves to the E. and S., under the n.ames of Picentes, Peligni, and Samnites, the last of whom had in their turn become the parents of the Frentani, the Lucanians, A]iulians and Bruttians. The minor tribes of the JIarsi, JIarrucini and Vcstini, were also in all probability of Sabine origin, though we have no distinct testimony to this eft'ect [Marsi]. These various races :ire often compreliended by modern writers under the general name of Sabellian, which is convenient as an ethnic designation; but there is no ancient authority for this use of the word, which was first introduced by Niebnhr (vol. i. p. 91). Pliny indeed in one passage says that the Samnites were also called Salielli (Plin. iii. 12. s. 17). arid this is confirmed by Strabo (v. p. 250). Sabcllus is found also in Livy and other Latin, writers, as an adjective form for Samnite, though never for the name of the nation (Liv. viii. 1, x. 19); but it is frequently also used, especially by the poets, simply as an equivalent for the adjective Sabine. (Virg. C ii. 167, .(4en. vii. G65; Hor. Carm. iii. 6. 37; Juv. iii. 169.) But notwithstanding the important position of the Sabines in regard to the early history and ethno- graphy of Italy, we have very little information as to their own origin or affinities. Strabo calls them a very ancient race and autochthons (v. p. 228), which may be understood as meaning that there was no account of their immigration or origin which he considered worthy of credit. He distinctly rejects as a fiction the notion that they or their Samnite descendants were of Laconian origin {lb. p. 250); an idea which was very probably suggested only by fancied resemblances in their manners and institu- tions to those of Sparta (Dionys. ii. 49). But this notion, though nut countenanced by any historian of authority, was taken up by the Roman poets, who frequently allude to the Lacedaemonian descent of the Sabines (Ovid. Fast. i. 260, iii. 230; Sil. Ital. ii. 8, viii. 412, cvc), and adopted also by some prose writers (Plut. Jiom. 16; Hygin. ajj. Serv. ad Aen. viii. 638). A much more imjiortant statement is that pjreserved to us by Dionysius on the authority of Zenodotus of Troezen, which represents the Sabines as an offshoot of the Umbrian race (Dionys. ii. 49). The authority of Zenodotus is indeed in itself not worth much, and his statement as reported to us is soniewliat confused; but many analogies would lead us to the same conclusion, that the Sabines and Umbrians were closely cognate races, and branches of the same original stock. We learn from tiie Eugubine tables that Sancus, the tutelary divinity of the Sabine nation, was an object of especial wonshij) with the Umbrians also; the same documents prove that various other points of the Sabine religion, which are spoken of as peculiar to that nation, were in fact common to the Umbrians also (Kleiize, Philol. Abhandl p. 80). Unfortunately the Sabine language, which would have tlirown much light ujion the subject, is totally lost; not a single inscriiitiou has been preserved to us; but even the few words recorded by ancient writers, though many of them, as wouhl naturally be the case in such a selection, words peculiar to the Sabines, yet are abundantly sufficient to show that there could be no essential difference between the 1,'mguage of the Sabines ar.d their neighbours, the Unibrians on the one side, and the Oscans on the other (Klenze, /. c. Donaldson, Varronianus, p. 8). The general similarity between their dialect and that of the Oscan wiis jirobably tho cause that they adopted with facility in the more southern regions of Italy, which they had conquered, 3 K