In the first place I shall attempt to form an idea of the subdivision of Italy, between the different nations who occupied its various provinces, while yet independent of Rome. Paragraph 2.-Subdivision of the Italian nations. The ancient nations of Italy, excluding the Ligures and Veneti, who may be considered rather as bordering tribes than as forming part of the Italian population, may be divided on the most general survey into three departments.* 1. The Umbrians, who may perhaps be termed the original or the earliest known inhabitants of Northern Italy, that is of nearly all Italy lying between the Alps and the river Tiber. 2. The Etruscans, who at a remote period dispossessed the Umbrians of a great part of their territory. 3. The inhabitants of Lower Italy, southward of the Tiber, who consisted of several nations, termed Siculi, Oenotrians, Aborigines, Latins, Sabines, Opici or Ausones. SECTION II. Of the Umbrians. The Umbri, by the Greeks termed "Oμ¤poi, and 'Oμbρikoi or "Оμρioкоι,† are represented as the most ancient and, in early times, the most extensively spread nation of Northern Italy.‡ During the ages of Roman warfare for the subjugation of Italy, Umbria had become much contracted, and the country known by that name contained only some districts between the Apennines and the Adriatic, with the cities of Ravenna and Ariminum. The coast of Umbria, which in earlier times had reached from the mouth of the Po to the Picentine, or as Niebuhr supposes, as far southward as Mount Garganus or Drion, had been overrun and in great part occupied by the Senones, the latest of the Gallic colonies in the Cisalpine. By these encroachments the Umbri were driven from the * The Cisalpine Gauls are excluded, as well as the Greek colonists, as being manifestly foreigners. + Polybius terms them "Oubpo; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "Oμ¤ρɩøкoi; Strabo, Ομβρικοί. Dionysius Halicarn. lib. i. cap. 19. § Strabo, lib. v. Τὸ δὲ ̓Αρίμινον Ομβρικῶν ἐστὶ κατοικία καθάπερ καὶ ἡ Ραουέννα. maritime region on the Adriatic. There is some reason to suppose that in a more remote period the country of the Umbri had reached even to the coast of the Lower Sea or the Tyrrhene, for Herodotus declares that the Lydian colony from whom he supposed the Etruscans to have descended, landed in the country of the Umbri;* and a similar account is given by Scymnus Chius, who, as Professor Otfried Müller remarks, derived his information from Ephorus and Timæus.+ After a long-continued struggle, as it should seem, the Etruscans succeeded in dispossessing the Umbrians of a great part of their territory in the West, as did the Gauls in a subsequent age in Northern Italy. Pliny says that the Tuscans conquered three hundred of the Umbrian towns. "Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiæ existimatur, ut quos Ombrios a Græcis putent dictos, quod inundationi terrarum imbribus superfuissent. Trecenta eorum oppida Thusci debellasse reperiuntur."‡ Müller has observed that sufficient confirmations may be found, by local researches, of the tradition which ascribes an Umbrian origin to many places afterwards possessed by the Etruscans. "The river Umbro, which divides Etruria in the midst, evidently receives its name from the Umbrians; there was also a region called Umbria situated upon it. Cortona must formerly have been Umbrian. The ancient name of Clusium, Camers or Camars, proves that the Umbrian race of the Camertes dwelt there. It may be still shown that the Umbrian nation of the Sarsinates once possessed also Perusia. The Castellum Amerinum, situated on the Vadimonian Lake, proves that the inhabitants of the ancient Umbrian city Ameria, dwelt on this side of the Tiber, in Proper Etruria. It is plain that at least the eastern and southern parts of Etruria were formerly Umbrian: the Umbrians may have partly driven away and partly subdued the Siculians, the original inhabitants of these parts." That this was the fact we learn from several coincidental notices. Pliny informs us that a mixed people of Siculi and Liburnians were expelled from the coast of the Adriatic by the Umbri. Dionysius even hints that the Oeno دو * Herod. lib. i. cap. 94. See also Florus, lib. i. cap. 17. trians on their arrival from Greece in the south of Italy, found the Umbrians then occupying some of the districts of which they afterwards possessed themselves.* It may be supposed that the era of the Umbrian settlements preceded by many ages the existence of written documents or records of any kind. Pliny has preserved a date assigned to the foundation of Ameria, the Umbrian capital, which according to Cato was built 964 years before the war of Perseus, i. e. 381 before the building of Rome. But this epoch falls in too nearly with the traditions of towns built by the heroes of Troy, to escape, as Müller has remarked, the suspicion of a poetical origin.† The Umbrians consisted of separate tribes, which are differently named by Pliny, Ptolemy, and other writers. Isombri are supposed to have been the people in whose territory the Insubres settled:‡ Vilombri and Sarsinates are distinguished as separate nations. The Camertes were the tribe first known to the Romans; and from the passage in which they are mentioned by Livy, it has been inferred, and the opinion has been maintained by Italian antiquarians, that the Umbrians spoke the same language as the Etruscans.§ This opinion has been proved to be erroneous. We shall have further occasion to consider the language and relations of the Umbrian race, after we have surveyed the nations of Lower Italy. SECTION III. Of the Siculians or Sikeli, and the Oenotrians. The Siculi, a people whose name is preserved in the island of Sicily, appear to have been one of the most widely spread nations of Italy, in the southern region of which they were * Dionys. Hal. lib. i. + Müller's Etrusker, Einl. 104. See Freret on the Primitive Nations of Italy: Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. § In relating the conquest of the northern parts of Italy by the Romans, the historian mentions that when it was found necessary to send a spy into the country of the Umbri, to the city of Camers, a person was selected for that purpose who was acquainted with the Etruscan language, and it is implied that he understood the Camertine Umbrians. Livy has given in this relation no hint of any difference of language between the Umbri and the Etruscans. |