Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/92

 76 ITALIA. us, in B. c. 43, distinctly uses the plirase of quUting Italy, when he crosses the Alps. (Cic. ad Fani.sX. 20.) So also both Caesar and Cicero, in his Philippics, re- peatedly use the name of Italy in the wider and more general sense, though the necessity of distinguishing the province of Cisalpine Gaul, leads the latter fre- quently to observe the official distinction. (Caes. B. G. V. 1, vi. 44, vii. 1; Cic. Phil. iv. 4, v. ]2.) But, indeed, had not this use of the name been al- ready common, before it came to be officially adopted, that circumstance alone would scarcely have ren- dered it so familiar as we find it in the Latin writers of the Augustan age. Virgil, for instance, in cele- brating the praises of Italy, never thought of ex- cluding from that appellation the plains of Cisalpine Gaul, or the lakes at the foot of the Alps. From the time, indeed, when the rights of Koman citizens were extended to all the Cisalpine Gauls, no real distinction any longer subsisted between the difterent parts of Italy; but Cisalpine Gaul still formed a separate province under D. Brutus in B.C. 4-3 (Cic. Phil. iii. 4, 5, iv. 4, v. 9, &c.), and it is probable, that the union of that province with Italy took place in the following year. Dion Cassius speaks of it, in B.C. 41, as an already established arrangement. (Dion Cass, xlviii. 12 ; Savigny, Verm. Schr. iii. p. 318.) From the time of Augustus onwards, the name of Italia contimied to be applied in the same sen.se throughout the period of the Eoman empire, though with some slight modifications of its frontiers on the side of the Alps; but during the last ages of the Western empire, a singular change took place, by which the name of Italia came to be specially ap- plied (in official language at least) to the northern part of what we now call Italy, comprising the five provinces of Aemilia, Flanunia, Liguria, Venetia, and Istria, together with the Cottian and Rhaetian Alps, and thus excluding nearly the whole of what liad been included under the name in the days of Cicero. This usage probably arose from the division of the whole of Italy for administrative purposes into two great districts, the one of which was placed under an officer called the " Vicarius Urbis Romae," while the other, or northern portion, was subject to the " Vicarius Italiae." (^Not. Dig. ii. 18; Gothofr. ad Cod. Theod. xi. 1, leg. 6; Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 21.) The practice was confirmed for a time by the cir- cumstance that this part of Italy became the seat of the Lombard monarchy, which assumed the title of the kingdom of Italy (•' Eegnum Italiae ") ; but the ancient signification still prevailed, and the name of Italy was applied throughout the middle ages, as it still is at the present day, within the boundaries established by Augustus. The other names applied by ancient writers, espe- cially by the Latin and later Greek poets, to the Italian peninsula, may be very briefly disposed of. Dionysius tells us that in very remote ages Italy was called by the Greeks Hcsperia, or Ausonia, and by the natives Saturnia. (Dionys. i. 35.) Of these three names, Hesperia {'Ea-Kepia), or " the Land of the West," was evidently a mere vague appellation, employed in the infancy of geographical discovery, and which was sometimes limited to Italy, some- times used in a much wider sense as comprising the wdiole West of Europe, including Spain. [Hi-S- PANIA.] But there is no evidence of its having been employed in the more limited sense, at a very early period. The name is not found at all in Homer or Hesiod ; but, according to the Iliac Table, .Stesichorus represented Aeneas as departing from ITALIA. Troy Jvr Ilesperia, where in all probability Italy is meant ; though it is very uncertain whether the poet conducted Aeneas to Latium. (Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. vol. i. p. 298.) But even in the days of Stesichorus the appellation was probably one t'onfined to the poets and logographers. At a later period we can trace it as used by the Alexandrian poets, from whom in all probability it passed to the Ro- mans, and was adopted, as we know, by Ennius, as well as by Virgil and the WTiters of the Augustan age. (Agathyllus, ap. Dionys. i. 49 ; Apollon. Ilhod. iii. 311; Ennius, Ann. Fr. p. 12; Virg. Aen. i. 530, iii. 185, &c.) The name of AusoNiA, on the contrary, was one derived originally from one of the races which inha- bited the Italian peninsula, the Auninci of the Romans, who were known to the Greeks as the Au- sones. These Ausonians were a tribe of Opican or Oscan race, and it is probable that the name of Ausonia was at first applied much .as that of Opicia or Opica was by Thucydides and other writers of the fifth centmy e. c. But, as applied to the whole peninsula of Italy, the name is, so far as we know, purely poetical; nor can it be traced farther back than the Alexandrian writers Lycophron and Apollo- nius Rhodius, who employed it familiarly (as did the Latin poets in imitation of them) as a poetical equivalent for Italy. [Ausoxes.] As for the name of Saturnia, though it is found in a pretended Greek oracle cited by Dionysius (^CLTopviav alav, Dionys. i. 19), it may well be doubted whether it was ever an ancient appellation at all. Its obvious derivation from the name of the Latin god Saturnus proves it to have been of native Italian, and not of Greek, invention, and probably tills was the only authority that Dionysius had for saying it was the native name of Italy. But all the traditions of the Roman mythology connect Saturnus so closely with Latium, that it seems almost certain the name of Saturnia (if it was ever more than a poetical fabrication) originally belonged to Latium only, and was thence gradually extended by the Romans to the rest of Italy. Ennius seems to have used the phrase of '" Saturnia terra " only in reference to Latium ; whOe Virgil applies it to the whole of Italy. (Ennius, «/). Varr. L. L. v. 42; Virg. Georg. ii. 173.) It is never used in either sense by Latin prose writers, though several authors state, as Dio- nysius does, that it was the ancient name of Italy. (Festus, V. Saturnia, p. 322; Justin, xliii. 1.) II. Boundaries and Physical Geography. There are few countries of which the boundaries are more clearly marked out by nature than those of Italy. It is well described by one of its modern poets as the land " Ch' Apennin parte e '1 mar circonda e I'Alpe;" and this single line at once enumerates all the prin- cipal physical features that impart to the country its peculiar physiognomy. Italy consists of a great peninsula, projecting in a SE. dufection into the Mediterranean sea, and bounded on the W. by the portions of that sea commonly known as the Tyrrhe- nian and Sicilian seas, but comprised by the Romans under the name of Mare Inferum, or the Lower Sea; on the E. by the Adriatic, or the Upper Sea (Mare Superum), as it was commonly termed by the Ro- mans; while to the N. it spreads out into a broad expanse, forming, as it were, the base or root by which it adheres to the continent of Europe, and