A History of the Roman World

by Scullard, H. H.

  The largest settlement of the northern group was at Bologna, which held a strategic position astride the early trade routes. In return for the copper, and later the iron, that came from Tuscany, it exported manufactured metalwork as well as agricultural products: by the eighth century it had become ‘the Birmingham of early Italy’. Commerce increased, chiefly by land, though there was some shipping trade. Artistic skill and prosperity advanced hand in hand, while the womenfolk seem to have made increasing claims for personal adornments. Villages began to cluster together, forming larger communities which, although not yet to be regarded as towns (except possibly at Bologna), gave increased economic strength. The gens may now have begun to replace the family as the more important social unit. The arts of peace were cultivated; swords and spears have not been found in the tombs in such numbers as to suggest widespread warlike activity, although this may have increased somewhat later in the sixth century. No ‘warrior class’ apparently existed; at most there was a citizen militia. For long these Villanovans remained comparatively free from the orientalizing and Greek influences which were spreading among the southern group in Tuscany, but even when these increased in the later sixth century the northerners did not respond by developing into ‘Etruscans’ like the southerners. Indeed, when in about 500 BC the Etruscans advanced northwards over the Apennines to found Felsina on the site of modern Bologna, very near the existing Villanovan settlement, the two peoples remained curiously aloof from one another. The reason why the northern Villanovans were not transmuted into ‘Etruscans’ while the southerners in Tuscany were so changed is closely bound up with the question of Etruscan origins, which is discussed below. However, soon afterwards Villanovan culture declined and in the early fourth century the area fell to invading Celts.

  The southern Villanovans in early times shared essentials of culture with the northerners: agriculture was the basis of life for the village communities, while the developing metal industry led to greater economic growth. The huts in which they lived can be reconstructed from their clay replica cinerary urns, and the foundations of three huts have been found on the Palatine at Rome (see pp. 39f.). They were roughly rectangular in shape and cut into the tufa rock; the disposition of the post-holes indicates the arrangement of the wooden superstructure, which had walls of wattle and daub. Remains of charcoal and ash attest a hearth inside the hut, while fragments of cooking-stands, smoke-blackened household utensils and charred animal bones reveal the nature of family meals and life of the early Romans. Clusters of such huts formed village settlements, and recent excavations at Veii in Etruria, some twelve miles north of Rome, show how several such villages built around a strong-point on a hill later fused into a unified town settlement.11 This seems to show a greater instinct in the Villanovans for social development than was previously realized. Other changes occurred: while they retained their practice of putting their cremation urns at the bottom of a pit (pozzo), from about 750 BC inhumation began to appear beside cremation, the bodies being placed in trenches (a fossa). The objects in the graves became finer and included more imports, including Greek vases, now that the Greeks were beginning to establish colonies in southern Italy. In the seventh century inhumation became normal in Tuscany and the dead were placed in chamber-tombs cut into the rock. The grave-goods became even richer; Greek and Oriental imports including gold and silver work increased, as did the use of iron. This orientalizing phase in art was seen first in the settlements near the coast, and spread inland only very slowly. Villanovan culture was being transformed: villages were growing into wealthy cities and men were beginning to use the Etruscan language. Whether this was due merely to the influx of new cultural influences or to the arrival of the Etruscans from overseas is discussed below (pp. 23f.). It is very remarkable that whereas the northern Villanovans retained their own culture until they died out, those of the southern group who lived north of the Tiber became Etruscan.

  South of the Tiber the Villanovan settlements fall into two groups: one in Latium, the other around Salerno. The former, which is now sometimes distinguished as ‘Latial’, is found at Rome, on the Alban Hills and elsewhere. A substratum of Apennine culture was overlaid by incoming Villanovans, who in turn were later reinforced by some representatives of the Fossa culture; these developments are discussed below (pp. 33–4). Evidence for the still more southerly group has come to light only in recent years with the discovery of a series of Villanovan cemeteries: at Sala Consilana in the Valle di Diano (about a thousand graves), at Capodifiume near Paestum, at Pontecagnano south-east of Salerno and at Capua in two cemeteries of the eighth to seventh centuries. Although these settlements were gradually infiltrated by other elements and finally absorbed by the native population, their extent is surprising.12

  Beside the Villanovans two other main kindred groups who cremated their dead can be distinguished in North Italy from about 900 BC onwards: the Golasecca culture and the Atestine, the former around Lake Maggiore, in Piedmont and Lombardy, and around Lake Como, where regional differences occur; the latter around Este (ancient Ateste) in Venetia. The Golaseccans, unlike the Atestines and Villanovans of Bologna, had a warrior class, as is clear from the chariots and weapons found in the graves of some of their chieftains. In the fifth century trade increased with the Etruscan and Greek areas; Celtic penetration followed and then final absorption by Rome. While the Golaseccans may originally have entered Italy from over the Alps, the Atestines probably came from Illyria under the impulse of the movement of peoples which led to the Dorian invasion of Greece. Although they show fewer traces of a sharp distinction between rich and poor than do the Golaseccans, their metal work almost rivals that of the northern Villanovans. Their pictorially decorated bronze buckets (situlae) provide splendid scenes of everyday life, involving ploughmen, huntsmen, soldiers, charioteers, boxers and banqueters.13 Their language, which was written in an alphabet derived from the Etruscan, was Indo-European and closely related to Latin, as is shown by inscriptions which are found on offerings to Reitia, a goddess of healing. In the fourth century their culture became so Celticized that Polybius described the second-century Veneti as practically indistinguishable from the Celts except in language. Although they had by then come under Roman control, their language and customs survived into Christian times.

  There is still some doubt about the Ligurians, whom the classical writers placed in a wide area from southern France to the western part of the plain of the Po valley; archaeology has supplied no clear evidence for a single culture over such a great stretch of country after the Neolithic Age. Probably Neolithic man was pressed back into the mountains by invaders who spoke an Indo-European tongue, since this was the language in Liguria in classical times. From the beginning of the Iron Age, Urnfield elements are strong, and some settlements on the coast run parallel to the culture of Golasecca, Bologna and Este. These coastal people enjoyed a fairly rich culture, thanks to trade, while those who lived in the mountains (possibly descendants of the Neolithic people) remained wild and backward even into Roman times.

  Contrasted with these cremating peoples are various groups of Iron Age cultures in which inhumation was practised. (a) The Picenes of the Adriatic coast and Umbria (roughly the present-day region of the Marche). Recent excavations at Ancona illustrate their domestic life and supplement our knowledge derived from the famous cemeteries at Novilara near Pesaro. The Picenes were probably invaders from Illyria who mingled with the indigenous population; their language, as recorded later, was Indo-European and akin to Illyrian. They were a warrior race; their cemeteries contain an extraordinary number of weapons, and stelae of the sixth century depict their ships in battle, presumably protecting their trade in the Adriatic. By 500 BC this trade included the importing of many Greek works from Apulia and Tarentum and also of amber. A seventh-century rich woman’s grave at Novilara illustrates their wealth. (b) The Fossa Grave culture of Campania and Calabria, named from its trench graves, which first appeared during the final stages of the Late Bronze Age.
One such trench-grave cemetery of the tenth or ninth century was found at Cumae, at the foot of a hill. On this hill was an important settlement which traded as far north as Etruria and as far south as Calabria and Sicily; it imported Greek pottery probably of the ninth century, and also shows traces of Villanovan influence. Other Fossa culture settlements are known on the offshore islands of Ischia (Pithecusae) and Vivara, where they succeeded to Apennine villages. However, about the mid-eighth century, as we shall see (p. 20), the settlements at both Cumae and Ischia were superseded by the arrival of Greek colonists. The Fossa sites in Calabria are closely linked to others in Sicily: this accords with the Greek tradition, preserved by Hellanicus in the fifth century, that when Greek colonists reached eastern Sicily in the late eighth century they encountered a people named the Siculi who had recently come to Sicily from southern Italy. (c) The peoples of Apulia in the heel of Italy, who were later known to the Romans as Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians. Since Greek legend attributed an Illyrian origin to Daunus, Iapyx and Peucetius, and since Illyrian tribal and place names recur in Messapia, these tribes were probably of Illyrian origin. After the founding of Taras and other Greek colonies in south Italy they increasingly came under the influence of this superior culture, but continued to produce distinctive pottery: Daunian ware (c. 600–450) was fanciful and even grotesque.

  5. THE ITALIC PEOPLES

  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.

  6. GREEKS, PHOENICIANS AND CELTS

  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.