A History of the Roman World (5 page)

Such in brief is the picture drawn by the archaeologist. But there are other strands of evidence, both literary and linguistic. The names of the various peoples which are recorded in written history are almost numerous enough to give the racial map of pre-Roman Italy the appearance of a mosaic, while remains of numerous dialects and varying alphabets exist. These three strands of evidence, however, cannot always be woven into as neat a pattern as might be desired. For instance, the pre-Etruscan inhabitants of Etruria were called Ombrikoi, but it must not necessarily be assumed that they spoke the dialect known as Umbrian or that they are to be equated with the southern Villanovans of the archaeologists. Archaeology sometimes supplements linguistics by
providing inscriptions, but not, unfortunately, for the beginning of the Iron Age, when the peoples of Italy were illiterate and therefore left no inscriptions. What languages they spoke can only be inferred by arguing backwards from the later known tongues of Italy.

Within the widespread variety of Indo-European languages philologists used to distinguish an Italic-Celtic group, and concluded that the ancestors of the Italic peoples and of the Celts of historical times had once lived together in immediate contact for a long period, but this view is now regarded as improbable. In any case the Celts did not try to press into Italy until the fifth century, while the Italic dialects, wherever they originated, had been spoken in Italy for many centuries before that. Here two main groups of Italic speakers appeared, differing in dialect and fortune, but alike in temperament, social organization, and religious outlook: the Latins and the Umbro-Sabellians (the term ‘Italic dialects’ is strictly applied only to the latter, but it is convenient to include the kindred Latin and indeed all Indo-European languages of the peninsula).
¹⁴
The Latins were a relatively small group who were gradually driven into the coastal plain of Latium to the east and south of the Tiber and were hemmed around by other peoples; they remained essentially a lowland race, soon outstripping their kinsmen in the less fertile hills thanks to their geographical position which favoured the growth of city life and common action. One branch, the Falisci, thrust themselves like a wedge into southern Etruria. To the south and east of Latium proper was a group of tribes, the Marsi, Aequi and Hernici, who used the Latinian tongue, although the Marsi and Aequi probably originally spoke dialects of the Osco-Umbrian group. Further south the indigenous population of Campania, the Ausones (or Aurunci), seem to have used, before the spread of Latin, a dialect similar to that of the Volsci (Osco-Umbrian group ?); they also appear originally to have been called Opici or Osci, before they were overwhelmed in the mid-fifth century by the Sabellian highlanders of Samnium and Lucania (see pp. 98f.) whose language in turn (confusingly) became known as Oscan.

The Umbro-Sabellian speaking peoples, who lived east of the Latins, occupied the mountains and evolved a lower type of political organization. Separated by valleys and hills, they only united in face of common danger, and had no towns comparable with the cities of the plains, which were organized into federal leagues for self-protection. But the various tribes were at least united by a common tongue, Safine or Osco-Umbrian, which divided them sharply from the Latins: thus Oscan
pod
contrasts with Latin
quod
(cf. the Brythonic Celts who used
p
where the Goidelic used
q
) and whereas the Latin for fire was
ignis
Umbrian used
pur
(cf. the Greek for fire). From this speech derivative dialects are known, Volscian and Umbrian, the latter being represented by the Iguvine Tables, the liturgy of a sacred brotherhood.
¹⁵
The names
of these tribes usually had the suffix-
ni
(thus Vestini, Sabini, Marrucini, Paeligni, Frentani, Safineis) (as the Samnites called themselves), Hirpini and Lucani). This is in contrast with the older and rarer suffix -
ci
or -
tes
(as in Osci). The process of domination is seen in the transformation of the Marruci and Ardeates into the Marrucini and Ardeatini. From their mountain fastnesses the Samnites and Lucani later descended to harass and supplant the cities of Campania and the toe of Italy. Naturally the distribution of these peoples and dialects was not accomplished in a short period, but it was accelerated by a custom called the Sacred Spring (
ver sacrum
), by which all living creatures born in a given year were vowed to a deity; all the boys and girls thus dedicated were obliged, when grown up, to leave their homes and seek fresh territory.
¹⁶

How these various peoples were related to the Bronze Age Villanovan folk is uncertain: there is no unbroken bridge between the prehistoric and historical peoples, no firm interlocking between the archaeological and linguistic evidence. While it is generally agreed that the Italic dialects originated from a common source, which most would find more immediately in the Danube area, it is less clear how they reached Italy, whether by land or sea (though Venetic in the north and Messapic in the south were almost certainly brought by Illyrians from across the Adriatic). Their arrival may have involved the immigration of large numbers of people; or they may have spread mainly through the infiltration of small numbers. If they were the result of mass movements, the individual dialects may have arisen either before or after their speakers arrived in Italy. Such speculations have evoked varied answers. According to what was for long the generally accepted view, two waves of Indo-European speakers crossed the Alps into Italy; first the cremators who settled west of a line from Rimini to just south of Rome, and secondly the inhumers who settled east of this line. But since the inhuming Italici have left no traces in north Italy, this half of the theory must be abandoned (we will return to the other part below). Rather, the Osco-Sabellian dialects will have emerged in the old Bronze Age Apennine culture with the infiltration of a relatively small number of speakers, since there is no need to presuppose a mass immigration, from whatever precise direction they came.

The settlers west of the Rimini-Rome line, namely Terramaricoli, Villanovans and Latins, came probably from the north and spoke Indo-European. The view that the Urnfield culture reached Etruria by sea from the east rather than by land from the north is far less acceptable. Another theory is that the Villanovans did not come from anywhere but were autochthonous, and that their culture was a native growth, based on Apennine culture which absorbed Urnfield elements brought (perhaps by land and sea) by immigrants in such small numbers as to make no basic ethnic change; in that case the Indo-European dialects could have reached Italy in successive waves from
across the Adriatic, as has been suggested.
¹⁷
However, the idea of a northern origin still seems tenable, and ‘Villanovan’ is best used to denote a common culture rather than to suggest a somewhat rigid and unified racial and linguistic block.

In the merging of prehistory into history two other peoples played a major part in the mingling of the races in early Italy: Etruscans and Greeks. The contribution of the Phoenicians and Celts was more indirect and less significant, though of considerable importance in the wider setting of the western Mediterranean which Rome was later to dominate. The Etruscans, early Rome’s greatest rivals in Italy, are discussed in the next and following sections.

In the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greeks, as we have seen (p. 10), traded with southern Italy and Sicily and even appear to have maintained a permanent post at Tarentum. With the fall of Mycenaean civilization in the twelfth century this link was naturally almost severed, though perhaps not completely since some tenuous Greek influence appears to have lingered on in some of the smaller settlements near Tarentum.
¹⁸
But any large-scale trade was suspended for centuries, and before it was resumed the Phoenicians were extending their exploration of the western Mediterranean.

While Greece was in turmoil during its Dark Ages, groups of Phoenician merchants and colonists from Tyre, Sidon and other coastal towns of Palestine and Syria were adventuring in the western Mediterranean. The conditions of their native land had ever focused their attention on the sea rather than on the soil as a means of livelihood, while their expanding population had been harassed by the Philistines and by pressure from the Hebrews of the desert. Exploration and the establishing of small trading-posts must have preceded the founding of large settlements, but the dating of both is uncertain: several were founded traditionally as early as
c.
1100
BC
, but there is no archaeological evidence for Phoenician settlements in the west before the eighth century. However, the Phoenicians gradually established themselves at Utica, Carthage and other sites in North Africa, at Gades on the Atlantic coast of Spain, where they soon encountered the kingdom of Tartessus in Andalusia, rich in silver, and also on the Spanish Mediterranean coast at Malaca and Sexi. They also ventured into the Atlantic through the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) with settlements not only at Gades but also on the Moroccan coast at Lixus; from these they sailed down the African coast four hundred miles to the little island of Mogador, while northwards they tapped the tin route to Brittany and Cornwall.
¹⁹
But as Phoenicia from the seventh century was gradually oppressed by the great Oriental powers, the new settlement at Carthage took
the lead in the west and continued the colonizing movement as well as establishing friendly relations with the Etruscans (see pp. 142ff.).

It is just possible that the Phoenician made some small settlements (as opposed to temporary landings for trade and barter) on the coast of Italy but if so, no remains of them have yet been found. However, Phoenician influences on the development of art during the orientalizing phase in Etruria and Latium were considerable: the princely tombs at Caere and Praeneste (pp. 36f.) contain precious objects which were either imports from Phoenicia or inspired by Phoenician artists. They recall the silver mixing-bowl described by Homer: ‘Sidonians, well skilled in handiwork, had wrought it, and men of the Phoenicians brought it over the misty deep’. An attempt has been made to show that the sanctuary of the Ara Maxima of Hercules in the Cattle Market (Forum Boarium) at Rome was preceded by a temple of the Phoenician god Melqart (= Hercules) dedicated by Phoenician merchants, but this is extremely doubtful; the presupposition of an early Tyrian settlement in this Forum is even more dubious.
²⁰
The Phoenicians, however, did give Rome one priceless gift, the alphabet. The legacy was mediated through the Greeks who took over this flexible instrument and adapted it to the needs of an Indo-European language. They then naturally took it with them to their colonies in Italy, whence both Etruscans and Romans received it. Thus it was that Italy became literate and written history eventually became possible.

The precise order in which Phoenicians and Greeks began to establish themselves in the west is still hotly debated by modern scholars, but there is no question as to their relative importance in Italy. From the second half of the eighth and during the seventh and sixth centuries the Greeks of the Aegean area established a series of colonies on the coast of Sicily, and others in western and southern Italy from the Bay of Naples round to Taranto, so that this latter area became known as Magna Graecia. The earliest and most northerly colony was settled in about 760
BC
by Eretrians and Chalcidians from Euboea on the island of Pithecusae (Ischia) just north of the Bay of Naples. The fact that the settlers pressed so far north up the coast when there was good agricultural land available in the south suggests that their motive (unlike that of many later Greek colonists) was not purely agricultural: they wanted to trade with the mainland and obtain copper and iron from Etruria and Elba.
²¹
Soon afterwards some of these colonists crossed over to the mainland and established themselves at Cumae and, supplanting the older Fossa culture settlement (p. 16), became a thriving community, whence both economic and cultural influences radiated outwards in Italy. The claim of Cumae to be the place from which the Greek alphabet spread to Etruria and Rome is illustrated by an inscription on a cup found at Pithecusae, written in the Chalcidian alphabet, which proclaimed that anyone who drank from it would be inflamed by Aphrodite and alleged that the cup was superior to that
of Nestor, while another inscription in the same form of lettering on an early seventh-century vase from Cumae states, ‘I am the vessel of Tataei; may anyone who steals me be struck blind’. It is significant that the owner of the first cup knew about Nestor’s cup in the
Iliad
(further, a scene on a locally made geometric vase showing a shipwreck could perhaps refer to Odysseus): the Greeks were bringing to Italy not only their alphabet but also the Homeric poems. In consequence, whereas at first the wanderings of Odysseus after the fall of Troy were located in the east in the regions of the Black Sea (Pontus), places mentioned in the
Odyssey
were later located in the west: Scylla and Charybdis were identified with the Straits of Messina, the home of Aeolus with Lipari, the rocks of the Sirens with some rocks off Positano; an entrance to the underworld was placed at Cumae, and the sorceress Circe was commemorated by the headland named Circeii in Latium. Cumae also became the home of a sibyl, the prophetess of Apollo, whose oracles were thought to contain the destinies of Rome.
²²

Another recent discovery which shows how Greek cultural influences began to penetrate into central Italy is a Greek sanctuary of
c.
580
BC
which was found, together with large quantities of Greek pottery, in the Etruscan town of Gravisca, the port of Tarquinii. This suggests a settlement of resident Greeks; early in the fifth century it was taken over and enlarged by the Etruscans. Among many inscriptions, which include dedications to Hera, Aphrodite and Demeter, is a sixth-century dedication to Apollo in the alphabet and dialect of Aegina: ‘I belong to Aeginetan Apollo; Sostratus son of … had me made’. This Sostratus is almost certainly the Aeginetan Sostratus, son of Laodamus, of whom Herodotus spoke: of all the Greek traders known to the historian he brought back the greatest wealth ‘and none could rival him’. He prospered even more than Colaeus the Samian master-mariner, who was the first Greek to reach Tartessus. It has often wrongly been assumed that Sostratus also made his profit from Tartessus, but Herodotus does not say this; the immensely rich source that Sostratus tapped now appears to have been Etruria.
²³
In fact, by this date Greek pottery had begun to flood central Italy; long before this another Greek trader, Demaratus, a noble of Corinth, migrated to Etruria when his native city fell into the hands of a tyrant (
c.
655
BC
). He took with him his workmen, potters and painters, and settled at Tarquinii where he married an Etruscan noblewoman: their son later moved to Rome, where he gained the throne and reigned as Tarquinius the elder. Sceptical historians have been all too ready to dismiss Demaratus as a legendary figure (though recent evidence from Gravisca may now give them some reason to pause). However, even if Demaratus himself was fictitious, his story reflects the historical developments of the years between 750 and 500
BC
, when Italy became one of the chief markets for the Greek export trade. Numerous traders arrived on the shores of Etruria, where they were perhaps allowed
greater freedom of movement inland in the seventh than in the sixth century. Others sailed from Tarentum up the Adriatic coast to Hadria (near the Po estuary) and advanced inland as far as the Apennines.
²⁴

The further spread of Greek colonization belongs to the history of the Greek rather than of the Roman world, but we may note some stages. Control of the Straits of Messina, which formed a sea link with Greece, was vital to trade and expansion, so some settlers from Cumae and Chalcis colonized Zancle-Messene (modern Messina) and these in turn, reinforced by some Messenians from the Peloponnese, founded Rhegium across the Strait on the toe of Italy. Sybaris was colonized by Achaeans traditionally in 721, to be followed by Locri, Croton, Metapontum, Caulonia and others; Taras (Tarentum) was also occupied (this district had enjoyed links with Mycenaean Greece centuries before). Sybaris, whose growing wealth gained her a reputation for luxury, was cut off from the Straits by the rival Chalcidians, so she established a land route across the toe of Italy, with colonies at Laos and Scidros and subsequently at the much more important Poseidonia (Paestum). She could thus act as a middle-man and send to the Tyrrhenian Sea and Etruria the woollens, carpets and other valuable goods of Miletus which her Chalcidian trading rivals excluded from the Straits. All these Greek cities shared in a marvellous flowering of architecture, town-planning, art, sculpture, the plastic arts, coinage, literature, science and philosophy, as is apparent, for example, in the temples of Paestum, the terracottas of Locri, the bronzes of Tarentum, the philosophers of Elia, the Pythagoreans at Croton. In some ways they remained a group of closed communities, cut off from the rest of Italy, often quarrelling among themselves or suffering civil war within a city. Thus they lacked the power or the will to try to extend the area of their dominance, and their bickerings would not have encouraged other Italic peoples to imitate their more advanced institutions. However, through commerce and other contacts many aspects of their culture began to reach central Italy; thus Greek religious ideas and deities spread outwards, so that Apollo, Heracles, and Castor and Polydeukes became known in Latium and Rome and were ‘Italicized’, together with many of the figures of Greek mythology; while Etruscan art, though maintaining its own flavour, owed an infinite debt to the Greeks.

The Celts did not play an important role in Rome’s history until the beginning of the fourth century when they sacked the city, but since they formed an influential part of the early western European ‘barbarian’ scene, they require brief mention here. As we have seen, by 1000
BC
bearers of the Urnfield culture had spread widely across central Europe, from the Upper Danube to the Rhine, the Rhône, the Seine and the Low Countries. Their identification with the Celts is maintained by some, and qualified by other, scholars; probably this culture (as at Hallstatt, a typical site in Austria) resulted
from gradual infiltrations rather than from a massive invasion. In France it increasingly became marked by the practice of inhumation in mounds; from
c.
650
BC
chieftains, laid on a wagon with its wheels beside it and accompanied by iron spears and swords, were buried in wooden chambers under great tumuli: iron, inhumation and wagon-burial reinforced older Urnfield practices. Whether the impetus came from foreign settlers or only from foreign influences remains uncertain, but from these wagon-buriers developed the people we call the Celts. From
c.
550 they began to import Greek pottery: imports into France came from the Greek city of Massilia (Marseilles) and along the Rhône and Saône valleys. The most famous tomb is at Vix in Burgundy where a princess was buried on a wagon surrounded by Greek and Etruscan ornaments, including the famous bronze
crater
nearly five and a half feet high. Gradually this Celtic culture merged into that of La Tène (a typical site near Lake Neuchâtel) which imported fewer Greek and more Etruscan goods. Further contacts between Celt and Etruscan and the advance of some Celtic tribes over the Alps into the northern plain of Italy are discussed below.
²⁵