Volume 2 — ITALY. (continued 4)

In ancient times, the bay of Naples was encircled by a wreath of towns, extending all over the coast from Naples to Sorrentum and the promontory of Minerva; but I cannot trace them here, and must now proceed to the interior of Italy.

The Sabellians, Sabines, Samnites.

I am now going to speak of the great Sabellian nation; I shall treat of it according to its tribes beginning with the Sabines, who formed the original stock.

The names Sabini and Sabelli are the same, just as Hispani and Hispalli, Graeci and Graeculi. The form Sabelli is either a diminutive or changed by a pleonasm, Sabinulus, and, with a change of vowel, Sabellus.⁠[46] This nation occupies a large extent of country in history; but we should be mistaken, if we were to suppose, that all the tribes included under the name were pure Sabines and that they alone inhabited the countries governed by them; for they did not by any means extirpate the ancient inhabitants when they conquered a country. According to a tradition admitted by Cato himself, which contains some truth, but disfigured, the Sabines had originally come from Amiternum, the highest district of the Abruzzi, or as we may call them, the real Apennine Alps. We must not, indeed, understand this, as if the Sabines had been autochthons there, as has sometimes been asserted; but the meaning is, that the tribe from which the different Sabellian cantons issued, came down from those mountains. The ancients say no more than this, but later writers have converted it into a genealogical connection.

We cannot decide how far the Sabellians constituted one race with the Opicans and Auruncans, whether they were akin in a degree like that subsisting between the upper and lower Germans, the Suabians and Saxons, or the Germans and Scandinavians, or whether they were as foreign to each other as the Romans were to the Etruscans. That they differed from each other, is expressly attested. But the ancients are too inaccurate in these matters to allow a careful modern inquirer to accept their statement without hesitation; and although Varro attests that the Sabines and Oscans spoke different languages, still we cannot ascertain, whether he meant only different dialects, or entirely different languages. In like manner, the extension of the Sabellians in southern Italy from the Apennines can be traced only very indefinitely. This much, e.g., is attested, that the neighbourhood of Beneventum was previously occupied by Oscans, without their being the original natives of it; they must have extended even farther upwards into the country of the Marsians, and must have been expelled by the Sabines. The name Maluentum shows, that originally a people of Tyrrhenian origin dwelt between the Apennines and the valley of the Calore. Before the Sabines conquered that district, they probably had their abode in the eastern Apennines. The real and unmixed Sabines occupied a considerable extent of country; in the narrowest sense, they did not touch the sea on either side, either the Adriatic or the Lower Sea, but they extended so far, as to be separated from the latter only by a narrow strip of land, from Amiternum to the vicinity of Rome. But they sent forth branches of their nation which established themselves in other parts and became great nations.

The Sabellian people had this peculiarity, that they formed both distinct tribes and different confederations. Some of them accordingly, such as the Picentians, were without any federal relations, while the four tribes dwelling in the Abruzzi, the Marsians, Marrucinians, Pelignians, and Vestinians, were on many occasions inseparably united, and evidently formed a confederation with isopolity, similar to that subsisting between the Romans and Latins; it was, no doubt, at the same time, at least a defensive, if not an offensive, alliance. The supremacy must have belonged to one of these tribes by rotation, so that each of them may conveniently be called a canton. They stand completely by themselves, and without any connection with the mother people, the Picentians, Samnites, etc. This isolation of the Sabellian tribes was their misfortune. The Marsians and their allies never assisted the Samnites, but allowed themselves to be captivated by the Romans, by favourable terms, first to remain neutral, and afterwards to become their allies. Nor can the Samnites be regarded as a compact nation in their struggles against Rome; if this had been the case, they would unquestionably have offered a very different resistance, for they had a large population and an extensive territory. The Samnites, like the northern tribes, formed a confederation, but their bond of union was scarcely closer than that among their neighbours: they formed perfectly distinct states, which joined one another for a common purpose. The Hirpinians, Caudines, and Pentrians certainly formed a confederation; but the Frentanians did not, strictly speaking, belong to this union; they separated at an early time. To these we must add a fifth Samnite state, to which Nuceria Alfaterna belonged; its name is unknown, though it was perhaps called Alfaterna, and extended from Surrentum to the Silarus. Scylax of Caryanda clearly proves, that this district, from Surrentum to the Silarus, before it was occupied by Greeks, was inhabited by Samnites, and the same is manifest from Livy’s account. When the Romans penetrated there, Nuceria was a Samnite town, and they conquered it as such. In this manner we have, exclusive of the Frentanians, who took no great part in the second Samnite war, four Samnite cantons, which were very populous. In no map are the Caudines mentioned as a tribe, but that they were one is clear from Strabo and Velleius; manuals of geography and maps mention Caudium only as a town.

The Lucanians proceeded from the Samnites, but became quite independent of them. The connection with the mother-country was extremely loose with all these people; their migrations are quite different from those of other nations: they are conquests of emigrating bands of men, who for this reason lose their language and national character, and adopt those of the old inhabitants. According to a tradition, the Lucanians emigrated from Samnium as a ver sacrum. This phenomenon occurs among all the Italian nations: a people made a vow, that all boys born within a certain year should, after the lapse of twenty years, emigrate and seek a new home for themselves. Thus the Lucanians emigrated, and spread from the frontiers of Samnium as far as Rhegium on the straits of Messina. The ancient inhabitants were subdued, and thus three strata of different nations were mixed together: the ancient Oenotrians were conquered by the Oscans, and the Oscans by the Samnites. But these subjects afterwards rose against their rulers, and formed an independent state under the name of Bruttium. The Bruttians, therefore, did not belong to the Sabellians; they must be regarded as a mixture of Oenotrians and Greeks, and were Greek rather than Italian, whence they were treated by the Romans as Greeks. The Greek language was so firmly established there, that in Terra di Lecce, about Otranto, documents were composed in the Greek language as late as the fifteenth century; specimens of it occur in the Biblioteca Barberini. In the town of Rossano in Calabria, Greek was spoken as late as the sixteenth century,⁠[47] and in Sicily Greek poetry was written in the twelfth; when the Arabs were expelled the remaining population consisted of Greeks, and it was not till a later period that they became Italians. The praetor of Messina was, ever since the Greek times, called Stratigo, until in 1672⁠[48] the people revolted against Spain, when the constitution and the office were abolished. The laws of king Roger and of Frederic II. were written in Greek.

In this manner, the component parts of the Sabellian nation, from the Picentians down to the Lucanians, presented different shades of their national character. The Sabine blood in some of them was probably not of more importance than the Frankish blood is among the modern French; for the 20,000 Franks of king Clovis were easily lost among the millions of Gauls. In our neighbourhood on the Rhine, however, the population is almost entirely Frankish, as the Franks settled here in great multitudes. The population here on both sides of the Rhine, and as far as the low German dialect is spoken, that is, as far as Andernach, is descended from the Ripuarian Franks. In the Netherlands also, there are Franks, but strongly mixed with Gauls, Batavian and Frisian tribes; still, however, the population is more Frankish than in France, and in northern France it is more so than in the south; from the Loire to Gascony only the lords of the land are Franks. In Languedoc, there was only a French garrison, and the remaining population, for centuries, remained Gothic. Although, therefore, the Franks extended even beyond the Pyrenees, their race, from the Main to Spain, presented very great differences. The country now called Franconia, scarcely contains any Franks at all. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the fact that in antiquity the Lucanians and the Sabines of Reate did not understand one another.

The constitution of the Sabellian nations seems to have been essentially democratic, so that in the course of time the subjects acquired the full right of free country people. This nation, then, in point of manners and character, was extremely respectable, and this is the special glory of the ancient Sabines, Marsians, and of the Samnites with their confederates; the Picentians and Lucanians are less deserving of this praise. The Latin poets, from Virgil to Juvenal, always set forth the former, when they want to describe the frugal Italian mode of living. If the nation had but formed one compact state, it would not have been too weak at all. The Samnites had as many free citizens as the Romans and Latins, but although their forces were numerically equal to those of the Romans, still there was this difference, that they did not form one body. There can be no question that the different cantons had the supreme command by rotation, and this constituted their great weakness in the conflict with Rome, for in courage and perseverance the Samnites were assuredly not wanting. Even when in one year they gained great advantages they were useless, as in the next year the command belonged to another nation. C. Pontius was the only man among the Samnites capable of governing a state: he might have saved his country, if it had trusted him unconditionally—the Romans would, no doubt, have raised him to the consulship year after year. But it would seem that he had the supreme command only in one town—he was probably a Caudine—while in the next year the Pentrians had the management of affairs. Other men did much, sacrificed everything, and dreaded nothing, but he alone had the power of saving his country. To what extent their country was ravaged, may be seen from the newly discovered fragments of Polybius, in which Pyrrhus, on entering Samnium, is described as terrified at the devastation of the country: the Romans had ravaged it in such a manner, that all traces of human habitations had disappeared: it was just what Peloponnesus is at present,⁠[49] consisting of heaps of ruins and ashes, the villages were destroyed, trees were torn up, and not a trace of agriculture or the plough was left. All this the Samnites bore with inflexible determination; their desperate courage several times brought matters to a turning point, but they lacked the greatest of all things, the courage to sacrifice their prejudices and to change their constitution in such a manner as to adapt it to the circumstances of the time. Their descendants, in the Marsian or Social War, discovered their mistake, and adopted a new constitution; from the little we know of it, we must infer, that it was extremely well devised: it seems to have resembled that of the United States of America, concentrating the nation in regard to foreign enemies, but leaving the municipal sovereignty untouched. It is a pity that we do not know more about it; still, however, many things can be conjectured.

Of all the towns in the country of the Sabines proper, Cures is most renowned in tradition. The country of the Sabines, beginning at the Anio, extends beyond Amiternum, and consists of several divisions. The portion between the Nera and Anio is a hilly country; it is most adapted to the cultivation of olives, which, if well taken care of, would produce there excellent oil; corn, too, can be grown there, but it is unfavourable to the cultivation of the vine, whence Sabine wine was considered bad by the ancients, and is so still. In the angle descending towards Rome, the ancients mention no important towns; but farther up, we come to Reate and Interamna. Reate is said to have been a very ancient place of the Aborigines, that is, the Prisci, and to have been taken from them by the Sabines. Near Reate the olive-growing district rises tolerably high into the Apennines. Lake Velinus is situated there in a very wide hollow; it is said formerly to have been several miles in circumference, like lake Fucinus. When Curius Dentatus conquered that district for the Romans (463), he executed one of the most magnificent works in the world. He drew off the water from the lake in such a manner as to gain thereby several square miles of the most beautiful land; and at the same time the beautiful waterfall of Terni was formed. The crater of the lake is shut up on one side by the lofty Apennines, and on the other by a ridge of rock, which confined the river. Curius, therefore, according to a statement in one of Cicero’s letters, cut through the ridge which separated the river from the Nera. The level of this canal was from 130 to 140 feet above the river, and this gave rise to the matchless cascade, of course without any intention on the part of Curius, for it was not his object to create beautiful scenery. A person who has seen that waterfall, can no longer take any pleasure in that of the Rhine, near Schaffhausen. Every one knows the canal through the rock, for thousands of travellers visit the falls of Terni, and generally drive about a mile further to lake Lugo for the purpose of hearing the beautiful echo. I visited it accompanied by my friend Brandis; I knew what is generally known in Italy, though not so generally in Germany, that there is a cutting through the rock, and I said to our guide that I wanted to go up the canal as far as the lake. The man made difficulties, saying that it was not a road for gentlemen, but fit only for rustics. But I insisted on carrying out my plan, and we thus came to the canal which is cut through the rock at an immense depth. When the man observed that we were interested in it, he said, I will take you to see another curiosity, which no one goes to see, if the road is not too difficult for you. It was a Roman bridge, the existence of which was then altogether unknown: it consists of a single arch, and is a splendid work constructed of large blocks without any cement—a work like the cloacae; there can be no doubt that this bridge also is a work of Curius. It is not mentioned in any book of travel. The same guide told us that the people of Reate and Terni once had a law-suit about an aqueduct, and that the former applied to Cicero, and the latter to an advocate of the last century:⁠[50] a remarkable instance of the manner in which legends arise.

The frontier of the Sabines proper extends from the Anio to the Apennines, and the people in that part are called simply the Sabines. Here we have to take into consideration the tradition, that they did not originally inhabit the country south of Reate, but that they overpowered the ancient inhabitants of the Ausonian race. In the early history of Rome, these Sabines are of great importance; they are one of the constituent elements of Rome, and the Sabine settlements on two of the Roman hills formed part of ancient Rome. Afterwards too they act a prominent part, for during the first sixty years after the expulsion of the kings Sabine wars are frequently mentioned. It is true, that history contains much that is apocryphal, but the fact that there were wars with the Sabines is certain, only we must not imagine that all the Sabines took part in them. We cannot suppose that the Sabines of Amiternum sent their troops to the Tiber, any more than we can assume that, during the Volscian wars, the more distant towns of the Volscian nation took part in them. After the time of the decemvirate, and perhaps even before, the Romans had established with them the same relation of isopolity, which had already existed in the third century, but had been broken up. It was then restored, perhaps even survived the Gallic calamity, and continued until 463, when M’ Curius conquered the Sabines. After this subjugation, we read in our meagre accounts Sabinis civitas data est, which is the civitas sine suffragio. At the end of the first Punic war, the Sabines were constituted as two tribes, whose names, Quirina and Velina, alone clearly show that they consisted of Sabines. From this it is generally inferred, that the whole nation then obtained the full franchise; but this supposition is inconsistent with what we read in Livy (xxviii. 45) about the preparations of Scipio. This passage is one of the most suggestive in regard to Roman affairs: I have often referred to it, and shall often have to return to it; it clearly shows, which towns had the Roman franchise, and which were only federate towns. Reate and Amiternum are there mentioned in the same relation as the Umbrians, Etruscans, Marsians, and Pelignians; they supported Scipio in his undertaking by voluntary contributions and by recruiting for him, which would not have been possible, if they had had the franchise. Napoleon treated dependent nations far more severely than the French themselves, but the Romans were nobler in this respect, and as they were the rulers, they also considered themselves bound to make exertions which they did not expect from their subjects. In many respects it was far more advantageous to be a Roman ally than to be a Roman citizen. There were towns on which no demands were made until the end of a campaign, because it would have been contrary to their privilege; and the coloniae maritimae often became really impertinent in insisting upon their privileges.

I have little to say about the towns in the country of the Sabines proper. The most important among them are Reate and Amiternum, neither of which has a history of any consequence. It is said that there still exist considerable ruins of Amiternum, but I have not seen them. It was the birth-place of the historian Sallust. The fact that, during the seventh and eighth centuries, Roman authors arose in this as in the Oscan districts, is a proof how easy the transition from their language into the Latin must have been; not one Roman author arose in Etruria.

The other parts of the Sabine country are high and mountainous; they have a true Alpine character, with all the peculiar vegetation of the Alps; even Icelandic moss grows there. As to the constitution of the Sabines and their union into one state, nothing is known.

Picenum.

The north of the country of the Sabines was occupied by the Sabellian tribe of the Picentians in the Marca Ancona, between Abruzzo, the frontier of the Sabines and Marrucinians, and the Aesis. Their country begins at the heights on the other side of the Apennines, and slopes down to the Adriatic, being one of the most beautiful hilly countries; but it has already something of the character of northern Italy, and the air is not southern; olives, however, still grow there, though not of the same beauty, and they are of a different type. The air and atmosphere are nearly the same as in Lombardy. Picenum forms the boundary between Central and Northern Italy.

According to tradition, this country was originally inhabited by Pelasgians, and was taken possession of by the Sabellians at a later period, through a ver sacrum. Such emigrations took place in consequence of a vow made either in times of distress, or during the calamities of war; but sometimes also they were the consequence of over-population. The emigrants were always guided by divine signs, concerning which there existed special legends. The Cumaeans related that their ancestors had been guided by a dove flying before their ships; others were led by a bull (as Cadmus to Thebes), the Hirpinians by a wolf (hirpus), and the Picentians by a woodpecker (pica) which flew before them. Traces of a longer continuance of the earlier population in the country may still be distinctly recognised. In other respects those districts are obscure to us, because the history of the times in which they acted a part is so obscure, or rather is entirely lost to us. This is the case, e.g., with the Picentian war, which was related in the thirteenth book of Livy, and with the expeditions of Cn. Pompeius Strabo during the Social War.

Asculum, the capital of the Picentians, was a very large place, as, according to report, may still be seen from its ruins. The historical importance of this town belongs to the Social War, which broke out there; it was here that the first act of hostility against Rome was committed in a tumult which broke out in the theatre, and in which the Romans were murdered. The new fragments from Diodorus, discovered by A. Mai, throw some light upon these events. The town was taken, and we may easily imagine what was the fate of a place whose inhabitants had imbrued their hands with the blood of the commissioners of the senate who were sent to reprimand them. Asculum was not destroyed, but its fate was probably like that of Capua. After that time a class of towns in Picenum are mentioned under the name of praefecturae agri Piceni, from which we may recognise that Cn. Pompeius Strabo deprived the Picentians of their municipal institutions, and constituted them in this new form. This also shows that the Italians did not gain the franchise as simply as we generally imagine.

The Picentians are said to have been a very populous nation. At the time of their subjugation, after the war with Pyrrhus, their number is stated to have been 360,000, which evidently comprises not those alone who were capable of bearing arms.

The most important town in that whole country is Ancona, which is the Latin form of the name, the Greek being Ἀγκών. It is one of the latest Greek settlements, a truly Greek town, founded by Dionysius in the 100th Olympiad; but we do not know whether the colonists were Syracusan exiles, or colonists sent out by Dionysius according to a definite plan. I am inclined to believe that Dionysius himself established the colony. The latter period of the elder Dionysius and the first of the younger are obscure to us on account of the absence of a regular plan in the work of Diodorus: he sometimes becomes tired in following up a history which he has carried through a series of years with the greatest minuteness; he then passes away from it, and leaves it out altogether. There does not exist a more thoughtless writer than this Diodorus of Sicily. Ancona remained a Greek town for a long time, and continued at a very late period to be connected with Constantinople, whence in the twelfth century it placed itself under the protection of Manuel Comnenus against the emperor Frederic I. Ancona is one of the very few ports on that coast of Italy, and Trajan increased this advantage by building the molo which still exists.

A people mentioned under the name of Praetutii bordered on Picenum; there is great uncertainty about them, and it is not clear, whether they were Sabines, or whether they belonged to the ancient Tyrrhenian population. The town of Hadria, from which the sea derives its name, was situated there.

The Upper Confederation of the Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians.

The four Sabine tribes of the upper confederation occupied the country from the hills, which form the watershed between the Liris and the Vulturnus, to the Adriatic. They formed together one confederate state, and their connection is repeatedly alluded to in our authorities, as, for example, in Polybius, where he enumerates the Italian contingents levied against the Cisalpine Gauls; and in Ennius where we read Marsa manus, Peligna cohors, Vestina virum vis. At the time when the Vestinians declared for the Samnites, and the Romans wished to overcome them by a sudden attack, Livy remarks that the Romans ought to have considered that, by attacking the Vestinians, they would also make the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians their enemies. They were united as a confederation, in the same manner as the Romans were united with the Latins and Hernicans. In regard to origin, they were the same as the far ruling Samnites, but in their political system they were entirely different from them. Once only, in the second Samnite war, they hesitated as to whether they should not join the Samnites against the Romans; but the latter succeeded in preventing it. It was the consequence of the fatality by which the Romans were destined to become the rulers of Italy, that the Marsians began to move during the interval between the second and third Samnite war: it was then a piece of folly on their part, which they had reason bitterly to repent; they ought to have done so before, and to have joined the Samnites. They were subdued and had to submit to hard terms, though afterwards the Romans again placed them in an honorable position, in which they remained until the outbreak of the great Marsian or Social War. There existed various causes, why they separated themselves from the Samnites, so that the latter did not obtain the support which, had the others not been infatuated, ought to have been given to them. It has often been observed, that people of quite different religions do not hate one another as much as those belonging to different sects of the same religion, even though their differences should be slight, nay the more trifling the differences are, the bitterer is their hatred. Thus, e.g., in France the Jansenists and Jesuits, as they are called, are more embittered against each other, than either of them is against the Calvinists; the united and non-united Armenians are enraged against each other, though their difference is only a formal one not affecting their dogmas. The Samnites and the other tribes were one nation, but the Samnites had become great, and hence the unfortunate envy and jealousy of their less powerful kinsmen. This is the chief reason, why they formed friendship with the Romans. They had, however, another reason besides, which afforded them a specious pretext, and draws a veil over the odiousness of their conduct. They were mountaineers and a pastoral people, who, during winter, required pastures for their sheep which they sent down into the plains of Apulia. Now, the Romans had succeeded in attaching the Apulians to their interests and in establishing themselves in their country. Hence the nations that were not on friendly terms with Rome, were excluded from the winter pasture in Apulia. If the Marsians and their confederates had entertained different sentiments, they would have resolved, in conjunction with the Samnites, to expel the Romans from Apulia, which might have been a matter of no great difficulty.

I have shown in the first volume of my Roman History, that these four tribes belonged to the Sabine race: in regard to the Pelignians it is clear from Ovid, and the scholiast on the Aeneid proves it in regard to the Marsians. Each of these four tribes was in its own territory sovereign and independent; each also may have been subdivided, but in their relation to foreign countries they formed one state. In speaking of their separation from the Samnites, I was obliged to mention their disgraceful faithlessness, but this does not detract from their worth in other respects. It is acknowledged on all hands, that on account of their extraordinary and antique simplicity and frugality, they belonged to the most respectable nations of Italy; these virtues were preserved there at a time when the other Italians had long sunk into degeneracy, and when the Romans had completely abandoned the severe manners of their ancestors. This is the praise bestowed upon them by Virgil and even by Juvenal; the latter may in his expressions be alluding to earlier poets, but he could not possibly have written in the manner in which he has done, unless at least a shadow of the ancient manners had been preserved there. They were at the same time extremely industrious; their country was for the most part mountainous; agriculture was indeed carried on in the valleys, but it was not very productive, and the greater part of the country was pasture land. They had no wealth; but their strength lay in their contentment. Their valour was not less celebrated than the simplicity of their manners, and this feature too procured them the greatest respect among all the Italian nations; thus Ovid boasts of the miles Pelignus, his countryman. The Romans had a proverb saying, that they never triumphed over them and never without them. The former part of this saying may be an exaggeration, for there can be no doubt that they were conquered in the third Samnite war; it is possible, however, that no triumph over them was celebrated; Livy does not mention it, and the Triumphal Fasti of that period are lost.

The Marsians dwelt about lake Fucinus (Lago di Celano), which is as clear as crystal, and is formed by the confluence of small brooks and subterraneous springs; Virgil calls it vitrea unda, and elsewhere it is described as pellucidus lacus. There is no visible outlet of its waters; they rise at intervals of several years, and decrease again. It must discharge its waters somewhere by subterraneous passages, which, we do not know how, sometimes close and then open again. When these passages are closed, the lake rises, overflows its banks, and covers large and beautiful tracts of country. In order to prevent such devastations, the emperor Claudius attempted to construct an immense canal to the Liris. The first attempt, however, failed on account of the great distance; a second succeeded for a time, but the canal then became obstructed. Before the time of the French revolution, renewed efforts were made to restore it, as the lake was greatly increasing; but while I was in Italy it decreased, and afterwards continued to do so still more; more than a Roman mile of land has thus been left dry, whence we must infer that new outlets have been opened. Many interesting antiquities have been found there.

Marruvium was the capital of the Marsians, who themselves were sometimes called after it Marruii or Marruvii. It was taken by the Romans and changed by them into a Roman colony; it is remarkable for being the northernmost town in those parts that has Cyclopean walls. Petit-Radel has inferred from this, that the Pelasgian race extended to those districts, but I cannot decide as to whether he is right or wrong. He has very confused ideas about the ancient nations, and is, therefore, little qualified to pronounce judgment; still, however, it is possible that he may be right.

The Pelignians, the second tribe in the northern Sabellian confederation, are mentioned with the same praise as the Marsians. If we had Livy’s work complete, we should know more of their valour than what is related about the Pelignian cohort in the second Samnite war. As it is, their greatest glory consists in having produced Ovid, not to acknowledge whose merits as a poet would be a sign of narrowmindedness or prejudice. He was a native of Sulmo, which he calls Peligni pars tertia ruris. It would, therefore, seem that, as elsewhere in Italy the towns of the same tribe formed one community, so each country contained a number of places, representing a similar division. The country of the Pelignians accordingly was divided into three parts. The second town was Corfinium, which, in the Marsian war, became the capital of the Italicans under the name of Italica. It has now disappeared, but Sulmo still exists under the name of Sulmona.

The capital of the Marrucinians was Teate, which is at present only a small insignificant place; in ancient times it was great, as we must infer partly from statements in ancient authors, and partly from its ruins. The Teatine monks derive their name from the circumstance that their monastery was at Teate. We have a tolerable number of coins of this town. The family of the Asinii, especially Asinius Pollio, the most celebrated of them, were Marrucinians.

The Vestinians had no towns of any name, and seem to have been the weakest among the four tribes; it is either for this reason that they are least spoken of, or because they were inferior to the others in character and moral worth.

The Samnites.

The real name of this nation in Oscan was Sauini or Savini. On the denarii which were coined during the Social War, we read on the one side Safinim, a genitive plural, and on the other C. Papi Mutil, the name of the celebrated Samnite commander. The Papii were as important a Samnite gens as the Cornelii among the Romans. I will not decide whether the name Safinim applies to the Samnites alone or to the whole Sabellian race, as all the Sabellian tribes took part in the insurrection of the Social War. In Greek they are called Σαυνῖται, and their country Σαύνιον, formed from the same root as the Oscan name. Scylax of Caryanda, who, as you remember, lived at the time of Philip of Macedonia, says of the Samnites: διήκουσιν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης εἰς θάλασσαν, that is, from the upper to the lower sea. On the upper sea we find the Frentanians whom Strabo reckons among the Samnites; Samnites also were the ruling people in the country about Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the cape of Minerva as far as the frontiers of Lucania. If we follow the traces which occur in Livy, the country of the Samnites is more extensive also in the north and south than we find it in our maps, even those of D’Anville. It here becomes very manifest how insufficient a single map is to form correct boundary lines. Thus Samnium, in the map of D’Anville, whom I name here only honoris causa, is quite unsatisfactory; there ought to be a whole series of Maps to show the different boundaries at different times. The geography of towns, however, may be studied from a single map. It is utterly impossible for a man attentively studying ancient history with D’Anville’s map before him, to form a clear notion of Samnium. Its extent in that map does not refer to any particular time at all, though it answers most to the Augustan region of that name, but it does not it exactly represent either. According to Livy, the Apulians, when pressed by the Samnites, threw themselves into the arms of the Romans; the Samnites had captured Luceria and conquered several places in the Apulian high lands, nay, they had extended their possessions as far as Venusia and Acheruntia, but were repelled by the victorious Romans. In the west, too, we meet with Samnites; Fregellae had been taken by them from the Volscians, but was afterwards likewise taken possession of by the Romans. In like manner we find Sora, and even Casinum, in the hands of the Samnites. The case of the latter town is mentioned by an author in whose work we should hardly look for it, and yet it is a statement which ought not to escape the notice of an historian. The historical inquirer must also examine the grammarians whose works contain facts of the greatest historical importance in fragments and accidental quotations. Such is the case, e.g., in the commentary of Servius and the scholiast on Juvenal;⁠[51] it is, however, not only in writers of this class and in Festus that we may expect historical statements, but we find them in the authors of real grammars, such as Nonius, Diomedes, and Priscian; they contain much that is of value and ought not to be despised. Such also is the case here, for it is Varro who, in his work “De Lingua Latina,”⁠[52] states, that Casinum was inhabited by Samnites. Hence we see that they extended as far as the neighbourhood of Arpinum and Monte Cassino, and that they had subdued the whole district between the upper Vulturnus and the upper Liris. It was, therefore, for the purpose of extending their dominion in that part, that they undertook the war against the Sidicines.

The Samnites, as we have seen, did not form a compact nation, they were not united by one capital, they had no permanent government to keep the whole together, and they formed no civitas, but a populus, not a πόλις, but an ἔθνος. They consisted of four or five different tribes, which were not more closely united with one another than the Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, or even not more closely than the Romans, Latins, and Volscians of Ecetrae were at various times. Thus it happened that the Frentanians, though a Samnite people, concluded, during the second Samnite war, a separate peace with Rome and allowed her armies a passage through Abruzzo into Apulia. Velleius Paterculus states, that on one occasion the Romans were defeated by the Caudines alone, and in the Triumphal Fasti we read, that a general triumphed de Samnitibus omnibus praeter Pentros. So long as the Romans stood on a footing of equality with the Latins and Hernicans, the Samnites were able to keep them within due bounds; but when they themselves had assisted the Romans in reducing the Latins to the condition of subjects, the compactness of the Roman state was against them, and they were no longer equally matched. No wonder, therefore, that they succumbed to the Romans; but it is surprising to find that, after all, they were able to hold out in a struggle like the second Samnite war, which lasted twenty-four years and a half. And notwithstanding this, they rose again with the force of despair, which hopes for nothing and destroys its own existence.

We must conceive each Samnite tribe to have had its own senate, from which deputies were elected to deliberate on common affairs, as the Romans and Latins did at the Feriae Latinae. In this manner the Samnite praetors and imperators met, perhaps with deputies and the heads of the senate (decem primi).

Samnium, in this extended sense, is a country presenting very different aspects. The part extending on the coast from Herculaneum as far as the Silarus, belongs, according to its physical features, most decidedly to southern Italy; I will not say that it is essentially a Hellenic country, but it is like a Hellenic, it is a Tyrrhenian country. It had originally a Tyrrhenian population, though it was governed by Samnites, and at an earlier period probably by Oscans. In the interior, we have the Apennines, a very beautiful mountain country with some very fertile valleys, and on the whole such as we generally understand by a mountainous region. The hills nowhere rise to the height of the Abruzzi, and nowhere beyond the limits of vegetation; they are woody mountains, and the forests are for the most part still preserved. The country of the Frentanians is hilly, and in no way remarkable.

The Samnite tribes were distributed in the following manner:—The Frentanians dwelt on the other side of the Apennines as far as the Adriatic. The Pentrians were the northernmost tribe in the interior, between the country of the Pelignians and the neighbourhood of Beneventum; their capital was Bovianum. In the south of them we have the Caudines, who unquestionably possessed the whole district about the river Calor, a tributary of the Vulturnus, and Beneventum. The Hirpinians dwelt still farther south, between the Caudines, Lucanians, and Apulians. On the south-west of the Hirpinians the coast district extended from mount Vesuvius to the river Silarus; the Samnites of this last district, as I have already observed, are not known to us under any certain ethnic name, though it is probable that they may have been called Alfaterni or Alfaterini.

In maps you will find in that district where Salernum was situated, the name Picentia or Picentini; but this name does not belong to the early times. Strabo says that they were transplanted thither as an ἀποδασμὸς of the Picentini on the upper sea. This must have taken place before the Hannibalian war, for at that time the Picentians were among the nations which rose against Rome. This is not the place for entering into minute discussions, I will only state, as the result of my inquiries, that this happened after the Samnite wars. When the Romans conquered that district and found it greatly depopulated, they transplanted the Picentini thither for the purpose of preventing the communication of the Samnites with the lower sea; for they might obtain assistance from the Tarentines, with whom they were on terms of friendship. By the same means, the very enterprising Agathocles, who would have liked to gain a firm footing in southern Italy, was kept away from that coast. The communication with the Lucanians, who were allied with Rome during the second and third war, also was kept open in this manner; and it was of great importance to Rome to maintain this connection.

Among the Frentanians there is no town worth mentioning.

Among the Pentrians we have Bovianum, which appears in Roman history at first as a great place; but all Samnite towns of the interior had this feature in common, that they were, properly speaking, not fortified. This circumstance has led to a foolish assertion which occurs in the writings of some of the ancients, though men like Strabo did not believe it. The friendship subsisting between the Samnites and Tarentines gave rise to a wish among the former to be regarded as kinsmen of the Tarentines, and hence the fancy that the Samnites were a Lacedaemonian colony. This singular notion was then supported by accidental circumstances, as for example, by the fact that the Samnite towns were open places. There is in reality no trace of a truly fortified town in all Samnium; but the case of those towns which the Samnites conquered beyond their own frontiers is of course different. The Samnite towns were situated on hills, the sides of which were cut precipitously; and such a situation may at first have been sufficient; but it was of no avail against bold and daring enemies like the Romans, who attacked a place, cingebant corona, and then stormed it by means of ladders. The consequence was, that Bovianum and other towns, when the Romans were masters of the country around, offered no resistance, but were scaled and devastated. But they soon rose again, though with smaller houses and of less extent. During the Samnite wars, Bovianum was destroyed three or four times in the course of a few years; and hence we may form some idea as to the condition in which it must have been. But notwithstanding all this, we again find it as a respectable town at the period of the Hannibalian war; in that of Sulla it was entirely destroyed; and he sent a military colony into the place, because he wanted to punish it, but did not rebuild it on its ancient site; the new town he founded in the neighbourhood of the old one was called Bovianum Undecumanorum. In like manner, he did not restore Faesulae, but founded Florentia, at some distance on the river Arnus. At Arretium he followed the same system. At present, Bovianum is quite an insignificant place; it occupies the site of the Roman and not of the Samnite town. From this one example, you may infer the fate of all the Samnite towns: many of them, the conquest of which is mentioned by Livy in his ninth and tenth books, entirely disappear from the earth, so that they are not mentioned either by Pliny or by Ptolemy. The country is at present full of towns and villages, but very few of their names are indicative of their ancient origin. In all Samnium there is not a single ruin belonging to the period preceding the Roman dominion. I have not been there, but Count Zurlo, a Samnite by birth, who has examined his own country very carefully, has assured me that, with the exception of the few Samnite denarii and some copper coins, no antiquities older than the Roman dominion are found in all Samnium, from the extreme frontier of the Pentrians to that of the Hirpinians; nor are there any tombs which are of such frequent occurrence in Campania. But it could not have been otherwise, for the Romans systematically destroyed everything in that country; otherwise such an utter disappearance of everything would be unaccountable: both during the third Samnite war and in that of Sulla, the Romans attempted to extirpate the whole nation. Strabo says that only ἴχνη πόλεων ἀμαυρὰ were left; and as the nation so also its language disappeared. Such was the revenge Sulla took for the battle at the Colline gate! He not only butchered the prisoners of war, but after having become master of Italy, he rooted out the whole population.

In the country of the Pentrians, there are a few places, especially on the west of the Vulturnus, concerning which it is doubtful whether they were properly Samnite, that is, belonging to the Pentrians, or whether they were Oscan towns conquered by the Samnites. Places of this kind are Allifae and Aquinum⁠[53]⁠, a large town on the Via Latina and a praefectura Romana, that is, it had the Roman franchise before its being conferred upon all the Italians, but the administration was in the hands of a Roman praefectus. Aquinum was the birth-place of the great poet Juvenal. A third town was Aesernia, which, after the third Samnite war, became a Roman colony.

Previously to the second Samnite war, the dominion of the Samnites extended over the whole district between the upper Liris and the Vulturnus. They had occupied Casinum and Fregellae, and the second war broke out, because the Romans wanted to fortify Fregellae for the purpose of protecting their own frontier against the Samnites. The letter of the treaty in this instance was at variance with reason, for the Samnites in possession of Fregellae might have become dangerous to Rome herself.

Beneventum was the most important place in central Samnium, although there can be no doubt that Caudium gave its name to the people. The Romans changed the name of the town because of its ominous meaning; for it is said to have formerly been called Maleventum. But Maleventum or Maluentum is not a Latin word at all, but has its origin in the Greek Μαλοῦς, Μαλόεις, Apple-town. This name too, therefore, shows that Itali (Siculi) dwelt there before the Oscans. Salmasius, in his “Exercitationes Plinianae” (a book of which we may well say, φάρμακα πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά), first drew attention to the etymology of Maleventum. The whole plan of that book is beneath criticism; it is a real chaos, and we cannot help being vexed at the careless haste with which he has put together the most erroneous opinions. But it contains much information culled from writers which are otherwise not often read. Salmasius is unfortunate in his emendations, in mythology and grammar he is bad, though sometimes he makes a very good remark, as e.g., on the subject now under our consideration. In the history of the Samnite wars, Beneventum is but rarely mentioned, whence it would seem that it was then still an insignificant place. But the Romans conquered it, and after the third Samnite war established a colony there, as they generally did in locis opportunis; and by means of this colony they in reality broke the power of Samnium. After this time Beneventum maintained itself by the side of the sinking Samnite towns, and was of great importance to the Romans in the Social War. Under the empire it was a very considerable provincial town, whence there are few places of which such splendid ruins are extant; among others we there have a triumphal arch of Trajan.

Caudium, on the road from Capua to Beneventum, must once have been a considerable town, because it gave its name to the people. As a town, however, it is scarcely mentioned, and only Horace in his journey to Brundusium speaks of Caudi cauponae. This is one of the instances which we have seen before in the case of Gabii, Fidenae, and others: on the site of destroyed places afterwards new ones arose out of inns which were built at stations on the high-roads. Several Samnite places, which are mentioned in Livy, but of which the sites cannot be ascertained, may have been situated there. We can scarcely form conjectures about them.

The third Samnite tribe, or, including the Frentanians, the fourth, are the Hirpinians, in the district of the modern Avellino, inhabiting one of the most beautiful hilly countries, between Beneventum, Lucania, and Salernum. It possesses extraordinary advantages over the northern part of the territory of Naples in regard to climate, for it is a perfectly southern country, although its heights are not inconsiderable: its capital was Compsa, about which I have nothing particular to relate; it was one of the towns that joined Hannibal, and after having already suffered greatly during a previous conquest, it was completely razed to the ground somewhere between the seventh and tenth year of the war. But as it was afterwards rebuilt, the Romans nevertheless restored its independence. During the Social War it made common cause with the Samnite nation.

The really Greek portion of the Samnite territory is about the cape of Minerva from Surrentum to Salernum. On the ridge of this part, between mount Vesuvius and Salernum, we have Nuceria, a very large and flourishing town, the wealth and character of which are attested by its extremely beautiful silver coins, which are in no way inferior to those of Greece.

I have already mentioned Pompeii and Herculaneum in speaking of Campania. Surrentum is well known as one of the most enchanting places on the whole face of the earth. Although the ancients were not as enthusiastic in their admiration of beautiful scenery as the moderns, still even among them it was celebrated as a place of indescribable charms.

The coast on the bay of Salernum was occupied by the Picentini, whom I have already mentioned, and whom the Romans had transplanted thither from Picenum after the Samnite wars. In the earliest times, a great number of Tyrrhenian places existed on that bay, from which it is evident that there was in that part a considerable Pelasgian population, which, though subdued, maintained itself for a long time.

Salernum was not a place of great importance in antiquity, but in the history of the middle ages it is celebrated as the place of residence of the Lombard kings. Until the Hannibalian war, Salernum and the surrounding country belonged to the Campanians, for the Romans appeased their allies of those places on which they had conferred the franchise without the suffrage, by ceding domain lands to them. Afterwards Salernum became a Roman colony. The river Silarus formed the boundary between that part of Samnium and Lucania.

On the coast of the most southern part of Samnium, Amalfi arose as a flourishing republic at an early period of the middle ages, during the time of the Lombards. The local belief is, that Amalfi was a Roman colony of the imperial period. For reasons which we can easily imagine, the opinion became established, that Constantine had led a Roman colony to Constantinople; and at Amalfi a tradition sprang up, that a fleet with Roman colonists, destined for Byzantium, was wrecked on that coast, or compelled by adverse winds to land, and that the colonists then established themselves there. This whole story is neither more nor less credible than so many others about colonies which were said to have been founded by the heroes returning from Troy. Amalfi is never before mentioned, and became important at the time when the Lombards conquered the interior of the country, and pushed the inhabitants towards the coast; the people naturally called themselves Romans as opposed to Lombards and barbarians. The town, like Naples, was under the direct protection of Constantinople, and was altogether non-barbarian; it belonged to the class of free cities, which had preserved a free Roman municipal constitution, and was very different from the free cities which arose under German laws.

Apulia.

The name Apulia, no doubt, signifies the country of the Apuli. Apulus is of the same formation as Romulus, the same as Romanus, just as Graeculus is the same as Graecus, etc. Accordingly, Apulus, Apus, and Apicus, and with a change of vowel, Opicus, are identical. The Oscan language has the letter p where the Latin has qu (pronounced as k), and just as in the Greek dialects π and κ are interchangeable. Apulus, therefore, is in no way different from Aequi, Aequuli, Aequani. If we attentively trace the dialects, there is scarcely any nation which admits such great changes in them as the Oscan. It is a very correct and ancient law of logic, “principia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda,” and in the history of ancient nations, too, it ought not to be lost sight of. It certainly is true, that sometimes we recognise the existence of many quite different nations living close to one another—in the Caucasus and in America, there are districts of not many square miles, in which great numbers of languages are spoken, that do not bear the slightest resemblance to one another; and in like manner essentially different nations dwell side by side in a portion of Africa—but we, nevertheless, cannot adopt such lists of nations as are given by the ancients, for they are not rationally arranged, and are often without any meaning at all. The ancients had no interest in forming accurate notions on such points; when they dwelt upon inquiries of this kind, matters became almost worse: they then wrote thoughtlessly, putting down things as essentially different, which seemed to present ever so slight a difference, and treating as identical those which were really different. There does not exist a more singular mass of confusion than in Pliny’s account of the different nations. I know from experience, how many stages a man has to pass through before he arrives at positive certainty upon such questions. Garve very truly says, “the second is the beginning.” A person assuming that in Italy everything was originally different, feels as if a wheel were spinning round in his head; and he soon arrives at the conviction that his supposition has no meaning, and gives up the whole matter in despair. I have experienced this same thing, but did not rest until I arrived at a definite result. The subject does not suffer from its being confused: many things are treated with scorn, merely because they are abused; if things were not represented in a false light, there would be no danger of things deserving attention ever being scorned. But it does happen, when things are erroneously conceived, and are defended with obstinacy, when they cannot be defended at all. It is the sad but natural consequence of such a defence of what is opposed to reason and truth, that many men despise even that which is deserving of consideration. Hence so many follies. A fancy of this kind during the period of my youth, was the belief in perfectibility, when people imagined that in every respect they were far above their ancestors. But it is an equally great folly unconditionally to praise our ancestors, and to forget that there is an endless number of points in which we move sometimes forward and sometimes backward. The question whether an entire period is superior or inferior to another, is of a very different nature, and one which it is difficult to answer, if it is put in a rational way. I should least of all wish to exchange the present time for the middle ages, which fools only praise as the happiest era in history. There can be no doubt that in the middle ages life was more intense, sympathies were stronger, and activity was more vigorous; but our age has other advantages, and our progress in science especially is immense. When I compare the moral condition of our age with what it was a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago, I cannot hesitate for a moment, with a full knowledge of all the facts, to say that our age, not only in Germany, but even in France, is infinitely better.

He, therefore, is the true friend of antiquity who disentangles it from its confusion and places it in its true light. The ancients knew but little about the nations of Italy, and later writers, especially Pliny, knew no more, so that we cannot even discern how far Cato saw clearly in this matter, and how far not. He still recognised that the Aborigines of Latium belonged to a race akin to the Greeks, a fact which Varro no longer understood. From Fabius down to Cato and Pliny, the knowledge of the early history of Italy decreased more and more.

As all names of countries are derived from those of nations, as Italia from Itali, Graecia from Graeci, so Apulia is formed from Apuli. Pliny says that there were tria genera Apulorum: 1. Apuli Teani; 2. Daunii; and 3. Apuli Lucani. From Strabo, we see that the real Apulians dwelt in the north-west of Apulia as far as the river Cerbalus: these are the Oscans. But the Daunians were Itali, dwelling at Arpi (Argyrippa), a Greek town, and at Canusium. They are put in connection with the Tyrrhenians, Turnus (the same as Turinus) being called a son of Daunus. The Daunians in Apulia, therefore, are the ancient Tyrrheno-Pelasgian inhabitants of that country, akin to the Peucetians, who were likewise regarded by the Greeks as Pelasgians. The Oscans, who did not maintain themselves in their conquests in Samnium, rose to power in Apulia, and the Daunians remained in the country as the subject people. The Apuli Lucani are, doubtless, nothing else than portions of Apulia, which were peopled either by Lucanians or by Samnites, and, therefore, at all events, by a Sabellian race; in these parts, the ancient Itali were governed by them, so that a Samnite-Oscan population was the ruling people, whose subjects originally consisted, for the most part, of Itali, with whom, however, some Oscans also may have been mixed. Whether these Lucanians had proceeded from the already constituted nation of the Lucanians, or directly from Samnium, is a question which can no longer be answered. The chaos is, I hope, cleared up by this explanation. Apulia furnishes rich materials for ethnography, and far more than Samnium which is otherwise a much more splendid country.

Apulia has the form of a theatre (Greek geographers would call it θεατροειδές). The Greeks called it Iapygia, though this name embraces a greater extent of country, all Messapia and Calabria being included, so that Tarentum also belonged to Iapygia. The name Iapyx again is only a dialectic variety of Apulus. The Latin termination icus is in Oscan ix, as we see in Meddix Tutix, the title of the highest magistrate, which the Romans changed into Maddix Tuticus: hence Iapicus = Apicus = Opicus. When I repeatedly direct your attention to view this point rightly, I do not do so from distrust, but because I know, from my own experience, how difficult it is to make up one’s mind to believe that Iapygia and Apulia are the same name. I myself have long been mistaken about this, and did not see the truth until I became familiar with the remains of the Oscan language, and was thus enabled to establish the etymology.

Apulia is surrounded by a semicircle of not very high hills, beginning with mount Garganus on the Adriatic, continued by the chain of the Apennines, and then separating Apulia from Samnium and Lucania. Afterwards this range terminates in low hills towards Terra di Lecce. The inner part of the semicircle, containing the thymele, orchestra, and stage, is formed by the plain of Apulia, a chalk country, like Champagne or the kingdom of Leon in Spain. It is, however, not a perfect plain, but has small elevations (verrucae); it has very few rivers, the springs not being able to break through the ground. As the chalk lies in strata, the waters are drawn down towards a few rivers, which traverse the plains without being fed by tributaries, just like the Minho and Douro in the kingdom of Leon, and the Aisne, Marne, and Seine in Champagne. The Aufidus is a very powerful river, its bed is cut very deep; in summer its water is low, but during the winter every shower of rain swells it immensely. The plain through which it flows is a barren chalk-field; water is found there by boring very deep wells, so that the country requires much rain. After a good rain in the autumn, the land covers itself with excellent and extremely rich grass. In some parts where irrigation is possible, where the soil is a little mixed, and where it is carefully tilled by man, the country is excellent for growing corn, which ripens at an extremely early season. An intimate friend of mine at Naples was intendant of Apulia, and from him I learned that the harvest of wheat in Apulia takes place about the end of May, that is, three weeks earlier than at Athens, where the 20th of June is the harvest season, a fact which it is of importance to know in reading Thucydides, who often describes the season of the year by mentioning the harvest-time. About the foot of the hills, Apulia is altogether barren, at least at present, but I cannot say whether the same was the case in antiquity. The country is now for many miles covered with nothing but ferula and ferns.

Western Apulia, which Pliny calls by the name of Teani Apuli, the country of the real and genuine Apulians, is of very little importance in history. The towns of Apulia mentioned in history, belong to the Daunians. Apulia was not a politically united country, it presents even less of national unity than Samnium, for it contained several systems of towns which were quite independent of, and even hostile to, one another. Arpi and Canusium were the most important towns, and the others seem to have been grouped around them.

Arpi, in Greek, Ἀργυρίππα, shows by its name its Pelasgian origin; it is the same as Argos. Some indeed call it Ἄργος Ἵππιον, but this name occurs but rarely, and it is doubtful whether it is a genuine ancient name, or whether it arose from later etymological speculations. Arpi was the first place that joined the Romans. All the Apulian coins have Greek inscriptions; those of Arpi bear the inscription ΑΡΠΑΝΩΝ, but in point of artistic execution, they are not quite Greek, and those who have eyes for such things cannot fail to discover a peculiar character. Other works of art also have been dug out of the ground in Apulia, and those who have practised eyes do not find it difficult to distinguish bronzes of Apulia from those of Lucania. Those of Apulia are extremely beautiful in their way, but still have something strange about them. In the days of Strabo it was still possible to perceive, from the vast circumference of the walls, that Arpi had once been a large place, but it was deserted. You cannot conceive a greater contrast than that between Samnium and Apulia: in the latter country all the towns were fortified with walls and other works, while in Samnium they were protected by nature against hostile attacks. The fidelity of Arpi during the second Samnite war was rewarded by the Romans with large possessions, but in the Hannibalian war it received its fatal blow. At present it has entirely disappeared. Apulia has, on the whole, very few ruins, which is the consequence of the soft chalk-stone, of which all monuments were made, and which cannot stand against the influence of the weather.

We should not believe that Canusium was a town of such importance, were it not expressly attested by Strabo, that Apulia was divided between Arpi and Canusium. In Livy, it appears as an insignificant place. We may also infer from Strabo, that during the second Samnite war, it was at the head of the Apulian towns which had joined the Samnites, while Arpi sided with the Romans. After the battle of Cannae, the Romans, by an inconceivable carelessness on the part of Hannibal, were enabled almost under his very arrows to retreat to the walls of Canusium, where they rallied and then proceeded to Venusia. In the second Punic war, Canusium does not appear to have been hostile to Rome; in the Samnite war, as I have already observed, it supported the Samnites, but the whole country afterwards submitted to the Romans on terms which were by no means unfavourable. Still, however, they revolted during the war with Pyrrhus: it cannot be accurately traced what influence this step had on their fate. The town suffered severely in consequence of both its revolt from Rome and from the hostility of the Carthaginians, and the Apulian towns did not easily recover after being once destroyed. In the time of Strabo, it was a deserted place, large walls enclosing a number of decayed houses. In this light the town also appears in Horace’s journey to Brundusium. It is now called Canosa.

Sipontum and Salapia belonged to the territory of Arpi. The name Sipontum (Σιποῦς) betrays its Tyrrhenian origin. All these places suffered severely during the Hannibalian war. When the Romans punished Arpi for its revolt, they deprived it of the dominion over these towns, and sent a colony to Sipontum. The neighbourhood of Sipontum is a salt plain and therefore unhealthy.

Luceria was situated on the height between Arpi and Beneventum. It was an Apulian town, but was captured by the Samnites, as I have clearly ascertained, and was afterwards taken from them by the Romans, and changed into a Romano-Latin colony. The establishment of this colony in so distant a country is one of the bold measures of the Romans, whereby, after the long struggle, in which even the greatest exertions proved unsuccessful, they decided the final issue of their war against the Samnites.

Venusia was another great creation of the Romans; it is uncertain whether it belonged to Apulia or Lucania, but it was situated at the foot of mount Vultur, which is probably the Oscan word for mountain in general. It was likewise a Romano-Latin colony, founded after the third Samnite war by the Romans, who were then on friendly terms with the Lucanians and ruled over Apulia. By this colony they prepared their future undertaking against Tarentum, as by it they completely cut off the communication between the Samnites and that city. In a fragment of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the Excerpta of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Romans are said to have sent 20,000 colonists to Venusia, that is 20,000 families, or at least 20,000 men capable of bearing arms: this number is incredible, there must be a mistake here. By admitting the neighbouring Oscan and Lucanian people, Venusia must, in the course of time, have become much estranged from Home, for, during the Social War, it was the only colony which, according to a statement in Appian, rose against Rome. From the expressions of Horace it may be inferred, that afterwards it became one of the military colonies of Caesar.⁠[54] The town will ever be memorable as the birth-place of Horace.

Having thus gone through Apulia in the Roman sense, we shall proceed in a south-eastern direction to the people of the Poediculi or Peucetii. The name is a double derivative, as we often see in ethnic names, e.g., in Aequiculi; the simple form was no doubt Poedi, though it does not occur anywhere. The people themselves are not mentioned in Roman history; we find them in a state of subjection, but do not see when they fell into that condition; their name is not mentioned in the Triumphal Fasti; and the struggle with them cannot have been great. The name Poediculi appears to be very different from Peucetii, and yet the difference consists only in a transposition of the letters. It is attested and generally acknowledged, that the two names belong to the same people; they are called by the Greeks Pelasgians, and belonged to the same race as the Oenotrians, together with whom they are placed on a level with the Thesprotians, Epirots, and Arcadians. This is, in fact, quite natural, for as the Daunians were of this race, the Peucetians, living still nearer to Greece, certainly belonged to it.

Barium, the most important place among the Peucetii, occupies no prominent position in ancient history; but in the middle ages, it was the seat of the Byzantine governors (Capitani) of southern Italy: its present name is Bari. The physical nature of the country of the Peucetii is very remarkable; it is still the same chalk soil as in Apulia, but it has here the peculiarity of constantly forming saltpetre: there is no place in Europe that bears any resemblance to it. There are large holes in the ground in the shape of funnels, in which the saltpetre is collected: this phenomenon is extremely remarkable, showing the formative tendency of mineral nature. The country, though without water and dry, is not really barren, but still the want of water has its great disadvantages. The Terra d’Otranto (Terra di Lecce), or the Iapygian headland, however, which projects farther into the sea, is a much more fertile and favoured country; it has indeed the same physical conformation, but the upper stratum does not exclude the water; it is richer in springs, and accordingly more fertile. For the cultivation of olives, it is the most excellent country in the world, but it is not suited for first class wines. The olive-tree grows very well with less moisture, and even at this day it is very excellent there, although the art of cultivating it has sunk very low. It was in vain that I requested the papal government to add to the plants in the botanic garden which are cultivated for ordinary use, those also which are of interest to the scholar. At Naples something has been done for the cultivation of olives, and many things which have been handed down from antiquity may still be recognised. The Iapygian headland is a beautiful hilly country, covered all over with olive plantations. The olive is not a handsome tree, nearly resembling a willow; its varieties, however, like those of the vine, are very numerous; it spreads very rapidly, and is almost imperishable, as if Minerva had given it immortality. It is said that near Tivoli it lives a thousand years, though no one can prove it; but certain it is, that it can live several hundred years: it then becomes quite hollow, like a willow, and continues its life through its bark. At this stage its fruit is most perfect, but the root of the tree requires the greatest care, and to prevent the tree being thrown down by the winds, the root must be covered with a great quantity of soil. All agriculture in Italy is still the same as in antiquity, and as we find it described in the “Scriptores Rei Rusticae;” you may still see every point as described by Varro.

Messapia

had a somewhat greater extent than the present Terra di Lecce. The ancient Greek name is ἀκτὴ Ἰαπυγία. It is a beautiful hilly country, but its geography is in a singular predicament. The name Messapii is only once mentioned by the Romans, and that in the Triumphal Fasti; but we know from Strabo, that Messapia was inhabited by two different nations, the Messapians and Calabrians; and from other authorities we learn that the inhabitants of Brundusium were Calabrians. In the course of time, the name Calabria became established among the Romans for the whole of Messapia. It is remarkable, however, to find, that in the middle ages the name was transferred to Lucania and Bruttium, whereas Calabria Proper ceased to have this name. The explanations given of this singular change are unsatisfactory.

The inhabitants of the western side of this Acte were the Sallentines, while the eastern coast, from the Iapygian promontory to Brundusium, was occupied by Calabrians. The strangest traditions are current about the origin of the Sallentines: they are sometimes called Bottiaeans and sometimes Cretans; in short, they share the character of the Tyrrheno-Pelasgian nations. But were the Calabrians of the same race? I believe not, and am rather inclined to think that they were immigrating and conquering Oscans; for the fact, that Ennius of Rudiae in Calabria calls Oscan and Greek his mother tongues, shows that, during the Roman period, Oscan was spoken there. All the towns in those parts were δίγλωσσοι, that is, they spoke Tyrrhenian and Oscan. In like manner, the Albanese spoke both Greek and Albanese, as had formerly been the case with the Albanese at Argos and in Hydra. So also every man in the towns of upper Silesia, who makes any pretence to education, and even in rural districts, speaks German, although the national language is Polish. At Ragusa, all respectable persons, both nobles and commoners, speak Italian and Slavonian. A priest of Ragusa, who was a dear friend of mine, told me, that the little children at school do not commence by learning Slavonian, but Latin and Italian, and that all books are written in Italian, which language is explained to the children while they learn. The educated classes in Corfu speak Italian quite perfectly, and as correctly as it is spoken in Tuscany.

As we know that Brundusium arose after the expulsion of the Pelasgian inhabitants, it seems beyond a doubt that the Calabrians formed the last train of the Oscan immigrants who came from the north through Apulia. The oracles which are said to refer to this country, have no authority whatever; they all belong to the period of Timaeus, or are but little older than his age.

There must have once been a town of the name of Σαλλοῦς or Sallentum, from which the name of the Sallentines is derived. The existence of such a town has, in fact, been assumed by many moderns, and those who have read “Telemachus” will remember that it is mentioned in that book. This is in reality correct, but the existence of the town cannot be historically proved: it must have perished at a very early period. In ancient times the Messapians were mortal enemies of the Tarentines, who had endeavoured to make them ἀνάστατοι; but the Messapians maintained their independence. When, centuries later, circumstances were changed, and the neighbours had come in closer contact, Messapia placed itself under the protection of Tarentum.

The towns in the country of the Messapians are unimportant; there still exist very beautiful ruins, especially a fine temple on the Iapygian headland; and in the neighbourhood of Manduria a complete wall still exists. The two most important towns were Hydruntum and Brundusium.

Hydruntum (Ὑδροῦς), now Otranto, had probably Tarentine epoeci, by whom it was hellenised. It was a place of great consequence, being the point from which people sailed across to Apollonia and Oricus, as now people sail from Calais to Dover. Hydruntum retained this character until the Norman period, and as long as southern Italy was connected with the eastern empire.

Brundusium was distinguished for its excellent harbour, which was valued the more because there was not a single good harbour between Brundusium and Ancona. It consisted of several branches, and could admit more ships than ever sailed in those seas. For this reason the Romans secured the possession of that town as early as possible, and established a Latin colony there. At present the harbour is partly filled up with mud.

Ancient Oenotria.

The Oenotrians in southern Italy are the real Itali. I shall speak of them first, and after having put them in their right light, I shall pass on to the Greek towns on the the coasts, which are commonly called Magna Graecia.

Oenotria is the same as Italia in the limited sense of the name. You remember the varying circumstances, according to which the name Italia was given to a larger or smaller extent of country, and that in its widest sense it embraced the country as far as the Tiber and mount Garganus. In consequence of the extension of other nations, the Itali were afterwards confined to the southern country, and thereby became so compact, that they were wholly governed by the Greek colonies on the coast, and hence when, e.g., a person went from Sybaris to Posidonia, or from Croton to Terina, he had to pass, if not through a country altogether peopled by Greeks, at least through one governed by Greek towns. Oenotria thus became Italy proper; but it cannot be said, on the other hand, that the name Italia was transferred from that small district to the whole of the peninsula. If we were confined to the Roman writers alone, and if we had no information from Greek authors, especially Dionysius and Strabo, we should be in utter ignorance about the Oenotrians, and we should scarcely have any idea of Italian archaeology. From this we may infer how much more information must be lost about more distant countries, which had no literature of their own. The Lucanians, whom we afterwards find spread over the whole of that country, occupied, at the period of the Persian wars, only the north-eastern portion of Lucania, while all the rest of the country afterwards called Lucania, and the whole of Bruttium, were inhabited by Oenotrians. On the coast, Greek colonies were established, which ruled over them as sovereigns, so that the greater part of the Oenotrians were reduced to a state of servitude, but another portion of them was never subdued. These Oenotrians were Pelasgians or Siceli of the same stock as the Epirots, as is stated by the scholiast on the Odyssey, on the authority of the Macedonian Mnaseas, the disciple of Aristarchus. Siceli and Itali are the same, as was recognised even by the ancients; the names are also etymologically identical, Italus being the same as Vitulus, the sibilant taking the place of the digamma. In a narrower sense, the name Siculi was applied to the Oenotrians, the inhabitants of the southernmost part of Italy. It is very strange to find that this very ancient mode of designation re-appears in the geography of the middle ages, for in the division of the Byzantine empire into provinces, the southernmost part of Italy was called Sikelia. This is generally referred to the vanity of the Byzantine court, which is said to have been desirous to have a province called Sicily, after the island had been taken from it by the Arabs. This indeed is not impossible; but I believe it to be a very arbitrary conjecture, and am rather inclined to believe that the country, in ordinary life, still continued to be called Sikelia, as the earliest Italians were called Siceli by Thucydides and Timaeus (in Polybius). In this manner, the name was probably propagated, and this also seems to have been the origin of the strange appellation of “the two Sicilies,” which at present is indeed quite absurd, but, in its origin, was probably quite intelligible.

Besides these Siceli, which, in some districts that can no longer be defined, were called Italietes and Morgetes, there existed in southern Italy yet another race of the Oenotrians, called Chaonians or Chonians. This name also re-appears in Epirus. The metropolis of the Chaonians was called Chone, and had been situated not far from Croton; it may have been destroyed by the Greeks.

In their state of dependence on the ancient Greek towns, these Oenotrians became completely hellenised. During the first century after the Greek settlements, they were not yet subdued, but they were reduced at the time when Sybaris and Croton had reached their highest prosperity. This is proved by the colonies of these two cities on the western coast, which oblige us to assume that the intermediate country was subject to them. Hence the almost fabulous accounts of the immense population of Sybaris and Croton, which must be understood to refer, not to the population of the cities alone, but also to comprise their subjects. The fall of Sybaris, in Olymp. 67, 3, was the death blow to the Greek dominion in southern Italy, and to the subjects who all lived in willing submission; for in the course of a long time a relation had arisen, in which the rule of Sybaris had become milder and milder, and in which the nations became more and more united with it. It was probably after the foundation of Thurii in the territory of Sybaris, that the Lucanians appeared in the northern part of the country, the modern Basilicata. They first attacked Posidonia and captured it; they next conquered the western part of the whole country, which derived from them the name of Lucania, and then advanced more and more against the Greek towns, as on the eastern coast against Thurii and Croton, which now dropped their former jealousy in order to defend themselves against the common enemy. But they were so far reduced as to be confined within their own walls. This extension of the Lucanians becomes manifest about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Strabo is not correct in saying, that the Lucanians expelled the Oenotrians and Chonians, for they only subdued them. The decisive battle of Laos between the population of Magna Graecia and the Lucanians, in which the latter gained the upper hand, belongs to the period of the conquest of Rome by the Gauls; and this battle prostrated the Greeks for ever. Lucania now became a great state, extending from the frontier of the Hirpinians to the gates of Rhegium. But it did not long maintain itself in this extent. The Sabellian Lucanians were not numerous enough to rule over so large a territory. The consequence of their victory over the Greek towns was, that the latter were broken, and that the ancient serfs of the Greeks in those parts, a portion of the Lucanians themselves, and the subjects of the Lucanians, constituted themselves as an independent state under the name of the Bruttii. Henceforth Lucania was reduced to about one half of its former territory; but it retained this extent until the last period of the Roman empire, and under its name a separate region of Italy was formed.

Lucania was fearfully devasted during the several wars which were carried on there. The resistance of the Lucanians against the Romans was not so desperate as that of the Samnites, whence they did not suffer so much when at length they were obliged to succumb. But they committed the folly of throwing themselves into the arms of Hannibal; the consequence of which was that the Romans destroyed their towns one after another; some of them, however, which remained faithful to Rome, especially the capital, Petelia, were severely treated by Hannibal. After the war a great part of their territory became Roman domain land. Still, however, they recovered to some extent; they then took part in the Social War, but do not appear to have suffered much. The result was that they obtained the Roman franchise. But they again suffered severely during the servile war of Spartacus, whose real head-quarters were in Lucania and Bruttium; at that time the country was changed into a wilderness. From Cicero’s speech for Tullius, we see that at Thurii every thing was burnt down. Lucania is a woody mountainous country, and the Apennines in those parts are full of the most beautiful forests; during the latter period of the republic large estates were formed there; the free population was for the most part extirpated, and the large farms were managed by slaves, coloni being seldom employed, and wherever slaves put their feet, not a blade of grass remained. Hence, during the first centuries of the empire, the country was almost deserted, and was employed only as pasture land; the population had become completely uncivilised. From the edicts of the emperors during the fourth and fifth centuries, we see what terrible people those slaves were: the severest laws were enacted merely to establish some security; they were disarmed, and for ever forbidden the use of any weapons whatsoever.

Bruttium was in the same condition; it had been laid waste as early as the Hannibalian war. After the war of Pyrrhus, the Bruttians had obtained tolerable terms from the Romans, and their subsequent revolt was not provoked by any act on the part of the Romans. They suffered especially from the circumstance that Hannibal, during the latter years of his war established himself among them, recruited his armies there, and carried many of their young men capable of bearing arms with him to Africa. He was obliged, against his own inclination, to make heavy demands upon the country. The Romans, on the other hand, afterwards took fearful vengeance on them; although the events had been brought about less by the desire of the Bruttians than by unavoidable circumstances. The Romans deprived them of their political existence, and treated them as a people among whom only servi publici for all manner of services were levied. By this means, the Bruttians were reduced to a state of helotism. This is one of the reasons why they are not mentioned at all during the Social War; another circumstance contributing to the same result was that the Romans did not regard them as Italicans, but as Greeks.

I have not much to say respecting the towns in the interior of the country. Petelia, an ancient Pelasgian town, the origin of which was connected with Greek traditions, was the capital of Lucania. Crumentum was the most important town in the interior; the form of its name is like those of others with which we have become acquainted: the Pelasgian Κρυμόεις or Κρυμοῦς changes its termination into entum, and signifies “the cold,” or “frosty,” from its situation on a high hill.

In time of war, the Lucanians had a common magistrate, called βασιλεὺς by the Greeks, and imperator by the Romans, and a common constitution; but we know nothing about the political forms of the Bruttians. The inscriptions on Lucanian coins are Oscan, written in Greek characters; but the people, also, spoke Greek perfectly, so that the fact of the Pseudo-Pythagorean books being called Lucanian is not against probability. The Lucanian coins are far less beautiful than those of Bruttium, which have Greek inscriptions, and are like the most beautiful coins of Greek cities. Though, therefore, they destroyed Greek towns, still they learned and cultivated the arts of the Greeks. Consentia was the capital of the Bruttians, and the modern Cosenza is likewise a capital.

The great Sila forest, in the north of Bruttium, was of great importance to the Bruttians; it was very extensive, and such a large forest shows the desolation of the country from war. It furnished the Romans with excellent timber for ship-building, and also yielded a considerable revenue from the manufacture of tar.

Greek Towns on the Coast of Italy.

Callipolis (now Gallipoli), a colony of Tarentum, situated on the Iapygian promontory on the south-east of Tarentum, has no historical interest. But Tarentum itself is all the more important. This city is generally spoken of by the ancients, and especially by Livy, with great moral contempt. I am quite sure that no man is less disposed to put forth paradoxes than I: on the contrary, every paradox is repulsive to me, and calls forth in me a feeling of distrust. There are, however, many points in history on which we cannot help asserting the very opposite of the opinion generally current. People speak of the Tarentines as if they had been completely lost in luxuries and effeminacy, and as if they had really deserved the frightful fate they had to endure; they are spoken of with contempt, because, it is said, they embarked in great undertakings, but did not possess the strength to carry them out by themselves, and lived in a constant round of sensual pleasures. But it is especially the ὕβρις and βδελυρία which the Tarentines displayed towards the Roman ambassadors, that has made an indelible stain on their character. Now, although I am far from believing that the Tarentines were deserving of any unusual degree of moral respect, yet I must positively assert, that the things for which they are so generally condemned, are for the most part false, and in some points the allegations against them are no grounds for condemnation. It is impossible to despise a people which, while the other Greek towns succumbed to the Italians, rose to such greatness during that very period, and without being favoured by any outward circumstances. Such a thing cannot be done without skill, ability, and character; it is not a mere fortunate accident, especially in a republic, where a brilliant period cannot be brought about by a single great ruler, as in a monarchy. Moreover, Tarentum produced an Archytas, who was, perhaps, the greatest philosopher, mathematician, and statesman, in all antiquity, unless we may except Thucydides who, if he had wished it, might have become equally great in the sciences; but he took no interest in them. Such a man usually cannot expect the most favourable reception among his countrymen, the voice of envy and jealousy immediately rising against him. But Archytas was, notwithstanding all this, repeatedly placed at the head of the state as its strategus, and with such confidence, that the democratic Tarentines allowed themselves to be guided and directed entirely by him. This circumstance alone would convince me, that they do not deserve the harsh sentence which posterity has pronounced upon them: however much they may have degenerated fifty years later, at that time their prosperity was not undeserved.

Ancient Tarentum was a very extensive place; the modern town with its 18,000 or 20,000 inhabitants, though, it is true, they live very close together, does not occupy more space than the ancient acra, the original Laconian colony, around which the new town arose and extended. This immense new town has disappeared, though its circumference can still be recognised. It is well known, that the origin of Tarentum is connected with the history of Laconia; the story has indeed some historical foundation, but is evidently perverted; and the statement about Phalanthus and the Parthenii has no historical character at all. In very many states, in which no connubium existed between the different parts of the population, the persons sprung from unlawful marriages between members of the ruling and those of the subject people, endangered the government of the ruling class. Such were the Parthenii. For about two centuries and a half the Tarentines were powerful far and wide, but an attempt they made about the time of the Persian wars, to reduce the Messapians to the condition of helots, failed, and they suffered a defeat from which for a century they could not recover; the defeat, according to Herodotus, was the most bloody that had ever been sustained by a Greek nation. Still, however, Tarentum afterwards recovered, and that too at a period when we should least expect it, when Thurii, Croton, and other towns sank, and when in many parts the towns entirely disappeared. It may be, that Tarentum offered a place of refuge to the Greeks expelled from Caulon and other places; but the people must have made every effort to overcome their difficult circumstances, for their city became very powerful. It now assumed altogether a commercial and manufacturing character, and became the real emporium for southern Italy, and perhaps for Samnium also. Salt was a lucrative article of its commerce; it had excellent wool, cloth manufactories, and dyeing establishments; purple in particular was made there in the greatest perfection. Tarentum was in every respect an industrial place, with extensive navigation and fisheries. Such a population could not possibly feel inclined to serve in the army as a heavy-armed infantry, such as was then required; their cavalry was anything but contemptible; it was distinguished for peculiar tactics of its own. The fact that they enlisted foreign mercenaries, ought not to be made a subject of reproach to them, as they were a commercial people, and as it was the general practice of the Greeks at that time. That they took into their pay foreign princes with their whole armies, may have been imprudent; but in this respect too they did no more than what was done by England, which, during the eighteenth century, often took whole regiments of foreign countries into its service, a system which the United States of the Netherlands followed ever since the time of Maurice of Orange. It was the natural consequence of circumstances; and it is absurd to expect of such a wealthy commercial people, that it should be as great in war as an agricultural people. They, no doubt, did not conceal from themselves the fact that their military system was bad; but politics cannot always control all circumstances. The Tarentines certainly do not deserve the reproach of ingratitude towards Alexander of Epirus, for his intention was to set himself up as king of southern Italy, and he first acted as an enemy towards them. The fate of Tarentum in its contest with Rome is known from history: after the fall of Samnium, it threw itself into the arms of Pyrrhus, after whose death it was betrayed and sold. According to the Roman historians, Rome treated the city very generously, leaving it independent: this independence, however, may have been a mere name; the Romans for a longtime kept a garrison there, which, in the Hannibalian war defended the old town against the siege of Hannibal. The new town threw itself into the arms of the Carthaginian, but he could not maintain it, and the inhabitants were obliged to surrender to the Romans, who now took cruel vengeance and destroyed the place. In the time of C. Gracchus it became a Roman colony.

The Greek towns of Southern Italy are comprised under the general name of Magna Graecia; whether this name also included Tarentum, or whether it was limited to the coast of Oenotrian Italy, and whether it also embraced the interior, these are questions which, so far as I know, the ancients do not decide, though the name was in use at a very early period. If we possessed the work of Antiochus of Syracuse, a contemporary of Herodotus, it would perhaps furnish us information about it; from Ephorus and Eratosthenes we could hardly expect to learn anything on this point. It is possible also that the name ἡ μεγάλη Ἑλλάς may not have been confined to the Greek towns.