Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/91

 ITALIA. I. Name. The name of Italy was very far from being ori- ginally apjilicd in the same extensive signification which it afterwards obtained. It was confined, in the first instance, to the extreme southern point of the Italian peninsula, not including even the whole of the modem Calabria, but only the southern peninsular portion of that country, bounded on the N. by the narrow isthmus which separates the Teri- naean and Scylletian gulfs. Such was the distinct statement of Antiochus of Syracuse {ap. Slrab. vi. p. 255); nor have we any reason to reject his testi- mony upon this point, though it is certain that this usage must have ceased long before the time of that historian, and is not found in any extant ancient author. At a subsequent period, but still in very early times, the appellation was extended to the whole tract along the shores of the Tarentine gulf, as far as Jletapontum, and from thence across to the gulf of Posidoiiia on the western sea; though, ac- cording to other statements, the river Laiis was its northern limit on this side. (Strab. v. p. 2U9, vi. p. 254; Antiochus, o;). i)wn^s. i. 73.) This appears to have been the established usage among the Greeks ill the fifth century b. c. Antiochus expressly ex- cluded the lapygian peninsula from Italy, and Thu- cydides clearly adopts the same distinction (vii. 33). The countries on the shores of the Tyrrhenian sea, north of the Posidonian gulf, were then known only by the names of Opica and Tyrrhenia; thus Thu- cydides calls Cumae a city in Opicia, and Aristotle spoke of Latium as a district of Upica. Even Theo- plirastus preserves the distinction, and speaks of the pine-trees of Italy, where those of the Brut- tian mountains only can be meant, as opposed to tiiose of Latium (Thuc. vi. 4; Ai-ist. a/). Dionys. i. 72; Theophr. /7. P. v. 8.) The name of Italia, as thus applied, seems to have been synonymous with that of Oenotria; for Antio- chus, in the same passage where he assigned the narrowest limits to tlie former appellation, confined that of Oenotria within the same boundaries, and spoke of the Oenotii and Itali as the same people {(ip. Strab. vi. p. 254; ap. Dionys. i. 12). This is in perfect accordance with the statements which re- present the Oenotrians as assuming the name of Italians (Itali) from a chief of the name of Italus (Dionys. i. 12, 35; Virg. Aen. i. 533; Arist. Pol. vii. 10), as well as with the mythical genealogy ac- cording to which Italus and Oenotrus were brothers. (Serv. ad Aen. I. c). Thucydides, who represents Italus as coming from Arcadia (vi. 2), probably adopted this last tradition, for the Oenotrians were generally represented as of Arcadian origin. Whe- ther the two names were originally applied to the same people, or (as is perhaps more probable) the Itali were merely a particular tribe of the Oenotrians, whose name gradually pre^•ailed till it was extended to the whole people, we have no means of determin- ing. But in this case, as in most others, it is clear that the name of the people was antecedent to that of the country, and that Italia, in its original signi- fication, meant merely the land of the Itali; though at a later period, by its gradual extension, it had altogether lost this national meaning. It is im- possible for us to trace with accuracy the suc- cessive steps of this extension, nor do we know at what time the Romans first adopted the name of Italia as that of the whole peninsula. It would be Still more interesting to know whether they received ITALIA. 75 this usage from the Greeks, or found it alread}' pre- valent among the nations of Italy; but it is difficult to believe that tribes of different races, origin, and language, as the Etruscans, Umbrians, Sabellians, and Oenotrians, would have concurred in calling the country they inhabited by one general appellation. If the Greek account already given, according to which the name was first given to the Oenotriau part of the peninsula, is worthy of confidence, it must have been a word of Pelasgic origin, and subsequently adopted by the Sabellian and Oscan races, as weU a,s by the Romans themselves. The etymology of the name is wholly uncertain. The current tradition among the Greeks and Romans, as already noticed, derived it from an Oenotrian or Pelasgic chief, Italus ; but this is evidently a mere fiction, like that of so many other eponymous heroes. A more learned, but scarcely more trustworthy, ety- mology derived the name from Italos or Itulos, which, in Tyrrhenian or old Greek, is said to have signified an ox; so that Italia would have meant " the land of cattle." (Timaeus, np. Cell. xi. 1 ; Varr. E. R. ii. 1. § 9.) The ancient form here cited is evidently connected with the Latin " vi- tulus ;" and it is probable that the name of the people was originally Vitulos, or Vitalos, in its Pe- la&sic forni; we find the same form retained by the Sabellian nations as late as the first centuiy B. c, when the Samnite denarii (struck during the Social War. B. c. 90 — 88) have the inscription " Vitelu " for Italia. It is probable that the rapid extension of the Roman power, and the successive subjugation of the different nations of Central and Southom Italy by its victorious arms, tended also to promote the ex- tension of the one common name to the whole; and there seems little doubt that as early as the time of Pyrrhus, this was already applied in nearly the same sense as afterwai-ds continued to be the usage, — as comprising the whole Italian peninsula to the fron- tiers of Cisalpine Gaul, but excluding the latter country, as well as Liguria. This continued to be the customary and official meaning of the name of Italy from this time till the close of the Republic ; and hence, even after the First Triumvirate, Gallia Cisalpina, as well as Transalpina, was allotted to Caesar as his province, a term which was never ap- plied but to countries out of Italy; but long before the close of this period, the name of Italy would seem to have been often employed in its more exten- sive, and what may be termed its geographical, meaning, as including the whole land from the foot of the Alps to the Sicilian straits. Polybius cer- tainly uses the term in this sense, for he speaks of the Romans as having subdued all Italy, except the land of the Gatils (Gallia Cisalpina), and repeatedly describes Hannibal as crossing the Alps into Italy, and designates the plains on the banks of the Padus as in Italy. (Pol. i. 6, ii. 14, iii. 39, 54.) The nattu-al limits of Italy are indeed so clearly marked and so obvious, that as soon as the name came to bo once received as the designation of the country in general, it was almost inevitable that it should ac- quire this extension ; hence, though the official dis- tinction between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul was re- tained by the Romans to the very end of the Republic, it is clear that the more extended use of the name w.as already familiar in common usage. Thus, al- ready in B. c. 76, Pompeius employs the expression " in cervicibus Italiae," of the passes of the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul (Sail. Hist. iii. 11): and Decimus Bru-