Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/463

 GEOCUtAPHY.] I T A L Y 445 sime remark applied to three other tribes which were con- ! tiguous to them, and always appear in the Roman history in close political union with them : the Marsi, who held j the basin of the Lake Fucino and the surrounding mountains, and the Yestini and Marrucini, who extended from the confines of the Marsi and Peligni down to the Adriatic, each people occupying but a narrow strip on the north and south sides respectively of the Aternus. (3) The Latins, who were destined in the end to become the rulers of all Italy, were in the first instance a compara tively insignificant people, surrounded on all sides by more powerful nations. When we first become acquainted with their history they occupied only the tract extending from the Tiber on the north to the Yolscian mountains and the Pontine Marshes on the south, and from the sea to the underfalls of the Apennines about Tibur (Tivoli) and Pra3neste (Palestrina). It was not till a much later period that the name of Latium was extended so as to include the land of the Volscians and the Aurunci to the borders of Campania. The ethnical relations of the Latins have been peculiarly confused by the conflicting statements of ancient authors, who endeavoured to connect them on the one hand with the vast floating mass of Greek traditions, and on the other to add dignity to their origin by tracing them back to indigenous heroes or deities. Of their real origin as a people, or of the period when they first settled in the fertile district where we find them established at the dawn of historical record, we have no trustworthy information. But from the manifold traditions preserved to us by Dionysius and other authors we may perhaps gather two facts. The statement that the Latins w T ere derived (in part at least) from a people who dwelt originally in the lofty mountains of the central Apennines, from whence they descended into the compara tively fertile region between the mountains and the sea, probably represents in a general way correctly the course of their immigration ; while the idea involved in several of these traditions, that the population of ancient Latium was in part derived from a Pelasgic origin, is confirmed by philological investigation of the Latin language, which may be considered as establishing the conclusion that it con tained a considerable Pelasgic or old Greek element, together with another portion which was common to the languages of the adjacent nations of Central Italy, the Umbrians, Oscans, &c., whom we are now considering. The co -existence of these two diverse elements in Latin was long ago pointed out by Niebuhr, who attributed it to the conquest of one race by another at a period anterior to all historical record. It may perhaps be more safely ascribed to the branching off of the Latin race from the parent stock at an earlier period than the other languages of Central Italy, while the differences that separated them from those of the early inhabitants of Greece were less marked than they afterwards became. (4) The Volscians, who ultimately became merged in the more progressive Latin race, are undoubtedly represented to us in the early Roman history as a distinct people, not only politically separate from the Latin league, but having a distinct language of their own, which was neither Latin nor Oscan. The very scanty remains of it that have been preserved to us by inscriptions, while they confirm this statement, show at the same time remarkable analogies with the Umbrian, and thus tend to prove that the Yolscians had occupied from a very early period the rugged mountain district where we find them established in his torical times, and had retained their dialect with less change than their Sabellian and Oscan neighbours. Of the sEquiaiis, who held a mountainous district adjoining that of the Volscians, we cannot be said to know anything beyond the fact that the two nations appear constantly in Roman history in alliance against the rising republic, from which, however, we are hardly entitled to argue their common descent. But it is certain that both the yEquians and the petty tribe of the Hernicans are in early ages uniformly represented as distinct from the Latins, though their territory was included in Latium, in the more extended sense of the term, while the native population had in the days of Livy almost wholly dis appeared. (5) The Oscans, or as the Greeks wrote the name Opicans (the native form was Opscans), were the possessors of the greater part of Central Italy, as well as the southern part of the peninsula, at the time that the Romans were carrying on their long protracted struggle for its dominion. At the same time it must be observed that it was never used in ancient times as a proper ethnic appellation. No tribe or nation of the name appears among those with which Rome was engaged in hostilities; and, though the term Oscan is frequently used by ancient writers as applied to the language of Campania, there is no proof that it was ever employed by them in the more general sense adopted by modern scholars. It is, however, as a matter of convenience, a useful term to designate the nation or group of tribes composed of the Samnites, together with their descendants or offshoots, the Campanians, Lucanians, and L ruttians. The name Sabellians, used by the Roman poets, has been employed by some modern writers in much the same signification. Of the nations comprised under this general appellation, much the most powerful were the Samnites, who occupied, not merely the small mountain district known in modern days as Sannio, but the whole region of the central Apennines from the upper valley of the Sagrus (Sangro) on the north to that of the Aufidus on the south, while towards the west they held the valleys of the Vulturnus and its various tributaries down to the point where they emerged into the fertile plain of Campania. The territory thus defined was, like that of the Sabines, a wholly inland district, but the Samnites were not long content with these narrow limits, and at an early period we find them carrying their arms and extending their settlements to the sea on both sides. The Frentani, who separated them from the Adriatic to the north, are distinctly termed by Strabo a Samnite people, and distinguished by him as such from the adjoining tribes of the Vestini and Marrucini. A more important extension was that towards the west, where they conquered the whole of the rich province of Campania, with the exception of the districts on the coast still retained by the Greek colonies. This conquest appears to have taken place as late at the 5th century B.C., but the same causes continued in operation, and during the course of the next half century the Samnites spread themselves through the whole of Lucania, and even carried their arms to the extremity of the southern peninsula. The Lucanians therefore, when they first became known to the Romans, were a Samnite people, though possessing a separate political organization. They at this time ruled over the whole country called by the Greeks (Enotria, down to the Sicilian Strait, and had reduced the previous inhabitants to a state of serfdom. Hence not long afterwards there arose in the southernmost part of the peninsula (the modern Calabria) an insurrection, represented as a mere casual outbreak of outlaws and fugitive slaves, but probably in reality a revolt of the native population who, under the name of Lruttians, established their independence, and retained possession of the whole of this wild and mountain ous country, till they passed, together with the Lucanians, under the all-absorbing dominion of Rome. It is more difficult to determine to what extent the Apulians had received an admixture of the Samnite