Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/491

 CALABRIA. qoallly. Bxit the excessive heats of summer rendered it necessary at that season to drive the flocks into the mountains and upland vallies of Lucania. (Strab. vi. p. 281 ; Varr. R. R. ii. 2. § 18, 3. § 11 ; Colum. vii. 2. § 3, xi. 3. § 15, xii. 51. § 3; Hor. Cwrm, i. 31. 5, ju. 16, 33, Epod. i. 27, EpisL i. 7. 14.) Virgil also notices that it was infested by serpents of a more formidable character than were found in other parts of Italy. {Georg. iii. 425.) Another source of wealth to the Calabrians was their excellent breed of horses, from whence the Tarentines supplied the cavahry for which they were long celebrated. £ven as late as the third century B. c. Polybius tells us that the Apulians and Mes- sapians together could bring into the field not less than 16,000 cavaliy, of which probably the greater part was fumislied by the latter nation. (Pol. ii. 24.) At the present day the Terra di Otrani^ is still one of the most fertile and thickly-peopled provinces of the kingdom of Naples. The population of the Calabrian peninsula con- sisted, as already mentioned, of two different tribes or nations; the Messapians or Calabrians proper, and the Salleutines. But there seems no reason to sup- pose that these races were originally or essentially distinct. We have indeed two different accounts of Uie origin of the Messapians : the one representing them as a cognate people with the Daunians and Peucetians, and conducted to Italy together with them by the sons of Lycaon, lapyx, Daunius, and Teucetius. (Antonin. Liberal. 31.) The other made lapyx a son of Daedalus, and the leader of a Cretan colony (Antioch. ap. Strab. vL p. 279) : which is evidently only another version of the legend pre- served by Herodotus, according to which the Cretans who had formed the army of Minos, on their return from Sicily, were cast upon the coast of lapygia, and established themselves in the interior of the penin- sula, where they founded the city of Hyria, and assumed the name of Messapians. (Her. viL l70.) The Sallentines are also represented as Cretans, asso- ciated with Locrians and lllyrians; but their emigra- tion is placed as late as the time of Idomcneus, after the Trojan War. (Strab. p. 281 ; Viig. Aen. iii. 400; Varro ap, Prob. ad Virg. Eel vi. 31 ; Festus 9. 9, Salentini, p. 329.) Without attaching any his- torical value to these testimonies, they may be con- sidered as representing the fact that the population of this peninsula was closely connected with that of the opposite shores of the Ionian Sea, and belonged to the same family with those pre-Hellenic races, who are commonly comprised under the name of Pelasgic The legend recorded by Antiochus (JL c.) which connected them with the Bottiaeans of Mace- donia, appears to point to the same origin. This conclusion derives a great confirmation from the recent researches of Mommsen into the remnants of the language spoken by the native tribes in this part of Italy, which have completely established the fact that the dialect of the Messapians or lapygians bore but a very distant analogy to those of the Oscan or Ausonian races, and was much more nearly akin to Greek, to which, indeed, it appcant to have borne much the same relation with the native dialects of Macedonia or Crete. The Alexandrian grammarian Seleucns (who flomiihed about 100 b. c.) apj^ears to have preserved some words of this language, and Strabo (p. 282) refers to the Mcssapian tongue as one still spoken in his time: the numerous sepul- chral inscriptions still existing nuiy be referred for tlic roost part to the latter ^gcs of the Bomon Be- CALABRIA. 473 public. (Mommsen, IHa UtUer-Italiachen Dialecftj pp. 43 — 98.) This near relationship with the Hel- lenic races will explain the facility with which the Messapians appear to have adopted the manners and arts of the Greek settlers, while their national di- versity was still such as to lead the Greek colonists to regard them as barbarians. (See Thuc. vii. 33 ; Pans. Phoc. x. 10. § 6.) A question has, however, been raised whether the Cauiuui were originally of the same stock with the other inhabitants of the peninsula, and Niebuhr inclines to regard them as intruders of an Oscan race (vol. i. p. 149; Vortrage uber Lander «. Volktr, p. 499). But the researches above alluded to seem to negative this conjecture, and establish the fact that the Calabrians and Mes- sapians were the same tribe. The name of the Calabri (KoAogpo/) is foimd for the first time in Polybius (x. 1) ; but it is remarkable that the Boman Fasti, in recording tlmir subjection, employ the Greek name, and record the triumph of the consuls of the ycAT 487 "de Sallentinis Messa^ jjiisque." (Fast. Triumph, ap. Gruter. p. 297.) All the information we possess concerning the early history of these tribes is naturally connected with that of the Gi-eek colonies established in this part of Italy, especially Tarentum. The ac- counts transmitted to us concur in representing the Mes^pians or lapygians as having already atbiined to a certain degree of culture, and possessing the cities of Hyria and Brundusium at the period when the colony of Tarentum was founded, about 708 B. c. The new settlers were soon engaged in hos- tilities with the natives, which are said to have commenced even during the lifetime of Phalanlhus. It is probable that the Tarentines were generally successful, and various offerings at Delphi and elsewhere attested their repeated victories over the lapygians, Messapians, and Peucetians. It was during one of these wars that they captured and destroyed the city of Carbina with circumstances of the most revolting cruelty. But at a later period the Messapians had their revenge, for in b. c. 473 they defeated the Tarentines in a great battle, with such slaughter as no Greek army had suf- fei-ed down to that day. (Pans. x. 10. § 6, 13. § 10 ; Clearch. ap. Athen, xii. p. 522; Her. vii. 170; Diod. xi. 62; Strab. vi. p. 282.) Notwithstanding this defeat the Tarentines gnuiually regained the as- cendancy, and the Peucetians and Daunians are mentioned as joining their alliance against the Messapians: but the latter found powerful auxiliaries in the Lucanians, and it was to oppose theu- com- bined arms that the Tarentines successively invoked the assistance of the Spartan Arehidamus and Alexander king of Epeirus, the former of whom fell in battle against the Messapians near the town of Manduria, b. c. 338. (Strab. vi. p. 281.) But while the inhabitants of the inland districts and the frontiers of Lucania thus retained their warlike habits, those on the coast appear to have adopted the refinements of their Greek neighbours, and had become almost as luxurious and effeminate in their habits as the Tarentines themselves. (Athen. xii. p. 523.) Hence we find them offering but little resistance to the Boman anns; and though the common danger from that power united the Mes- sapians and Lucanians with their fonner eneniies the Tarentines, under the command of Pyrrhus, after the defeat of that monarch and the submis- sion of Tarentum, a single campaign sufHccd to complete the subjection of the lapygian peninsula.