Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/888

 868 SABIXI. Eoners were sold as slaves; the remaining citizens were admitted to the Roman franchise, but without the ripht of suffrage, and their principal towns were reduced to the subordinate condition of Praefecturae. (Veil. Pat. i. 14 ; Festus, s. v. Praefecturae; SeiT. ad Aen. vii. 709, whose statement can only refer to this period, though erroneously transferred by him to a nmch earlier one.) The right of suffrage was, however, granted to them about 20 years later (B.C. 268); and from this time the Sabines en- .joved the full rights of Roman citizens, and were included in the Sergian tribe. (Veil. Pat. I. c; Cic. pro Bulb. 13, in Vatin. 15.) This circumstance at once separated them from the cause of the other nations of Italy, including their own kinsmen the Samnites, Picentes, and Peligni, during the great contest of the Social War. On that occasion the Sabines, as well as th.e Latins and Campanians, were arrayed on behalf of Rome. The last occasion on which the name of the Sabines as a people is found in history is during the Second Punic War, when they came forward in a body to furnish volunteers to the army of Scipio. (Liv. xxviii. 4.5.) After their incorpora- tion with the Roman state, we scarcely meet with any separate notice of them, though they conthmed to be regarded as among the bravest and hardiest of the subjects of Rome. Hence Cicero calls them " florem Italiae ac robur rei publicae." {Pro Ligar. 11.) Under the Empire their name did not even con- tinue to be used as a territorial designation. Their territory was included in the Fourth Region by Augustus. (Phn. iii. 12. s. 17.) It was sub- sequently reckoned a part of the province of Valeria, and is included with the rest of that province under the appellation of Picenum in the Liber Coloniaru:n. (Lti. Col. pp. 25.3. 257, &c.; P. Diac. Hist. Lang. ii. 20; Mommsen, ad Lib. Col. p. 212.) But though the nam.e of the Sabines thus disappeared from olficial usage, it still continued in current popular use. Indeed it was not likely that a people so attached to ancient usages, and so primitive in their habits, would readily lose or abandon their old appellation. Hence it is almost the only in- stance in which the ancient name of a district or region of Italy has been transmitted without alter- ation to the present day : the province of La Sabina still forms one of the twelve into which the States of the Church are divided, and is comprised within very nearly the same limits as it was in the days of Strabo. (Rampoldi, Diz. Corog. dltalia, s. r.) The country of the Sabines was, as already men- tioned, for the most part of a rugged and mountain- ous character ; even at the jirescnt day it is cal- culated that above two-thirds of it are incapable of anv kind of cultivation. But the valleys are fertile, and even luxuriant ; and the sides of the hills, and lower slopes of the mountains, are well adapted for the growth both of vines and olives. The northern- most tract of their territory, including the upper valleys of the Nar and Velinus, especially the neighbourhood of Nursia, was indeed a cold and bleak highland country, shut in on all sides by some of the highest ranges of the Apennines; and the whole broad tr.act which extends from the group of the Monte Velino, SE. of Reate, to the front of the mountain ranges that border the Campagna of Rome, is little more than a mass of broken and rugged mountains, of inferior elevation to the more SABINL central ranges of the Apennines, but still far from inconsiderable. The Monte Gennaro (the Mons Lucretilis of Hoi-ace), which rises directly from the plain of the Campagna, attains to an elevation of 4285 English feet above the sea. But the isolated mountain called Monte Terminillo near Leonessa, NE. of Rieti, which forms a conspicuous object in the view from Rome, rises to a height of above 7000 feet, while the Monte Velino, SE. of Rieti, on the confines of the Sabines and the Vestini, is not less than 8180 feet in height. The whole of the ridge, also, which separates the Sabines from Picenum is one of the most elevated of the Ai)pn- nines. The Monti della Sibilla, in which the Nar takes its rise, attain the height of 7200 feet, while the Monte Vettore and Pizzo di Sevo, which form the continuation of the same chain towards the Gran Sasso, ri.se to a still greater elevation. There can be no doubt that these lofty and rugged groups of mountains are those designated by the ancients as the Mons Fiscellus, Tetrica (" Tetricae hor- rentes rupes," Virg. Aen. vii. 713), and SKTiRus; but we are unable to identify with any certainty the particular mountains to which these names were applied. The more westerly part of the Sabine territoiy slopes gradually from the lofty ranges of these central Apennines towards the valley of the Tiber, and though always hilly is still a fertile and productive country, similar to the part of Umbria, which it adjoins. The lower valley of the Velinus about Reate was also celebrated for its fertility, and even at the present day is deseiTedly reckoned one of the most beautiful districts in Italy. The physical character of the land of the Sabines evidently exercised a strong influence upon the cha- racter and manners of the people. Highlanders and mountaineers are generally brave, hardy, and frugal; and the Sabines seem to have possessed all these qualities in so high a degree that they became, as it were, the types of them among the Romans. Cicero calls them '" severissimi homines Sabini," and Livy speaks of the '' disciplina tetrica ac tristis veternm Sabinorum." (Cic. in Vatin. 15, pro Ligar. 11; Liv. i. 18.) Caro also described the severe and frugal mode of life of the early Romans as inherited from the Sabines {ap. Serv. ad Aen. viii. 638). Their frugal manners and moral purity continued indeed, even under the Roman government, to be an object of admiration, and are often introduced by the poets of the Empire as a contrast to the luxury and dissoluteness of the capital. (Hor. Carm. iii. 6. 38 — 44, Epod. 2. 41, Lpist. ii. 1. 25; Propert. iii. 24. 47; Juv. iii. 169.) With these qualities were combined, as is not unfrequently found among secluded mountaineers, an earnest j)iety and strong religious feeling, together with a strenuous attach- ment to the religious usages and forms of worship which had been transmitted to them by their an- cestors. The religion of the Sabines does not appear to have differed essentially from that of the other neighbouring nations of Italy; but they had several peculiar divinities, or at least divinities unknown to the Latins or Etruscans, though some of them seem to have been common to the Umbrians also. At the head of these stood Sancus, called also Semo Sanctis, who was the tutelary divinity of the nation, and the reputed father of their mythical progenitor, or eponymotis hern Sabu.s. He was considered as the peculiar guardian of oaths, and was thence generally identified by the Romans with Dius Fidius ; while others, for less obvious reasons, identified him with