Whether the settlements on the coast north of the Tiber were the remnants of an expelled people, or perhaps mere colonies, can no longer now be ascertained; yet there appear in the middle of Italy, besides those people which were akin to the Greeks, some of a different kind by whom the former indeed were crushed. It seems that those migrations of the different races came about in the same manner as those in modern history. The people which directly precipitates itself upon the Siculians in Latium, and the Italians in Southern Italy proper, partly expelling, and partly absorbing and assimilating them, are the Opicans (Opici), a mixed race, which in fact as Opicans exists only in a few places, but is again absorbed by another people, and produces new tribes. They are the same whom we meet with under the name of Apulians; for the terminations, -icus and -ulus are equivalent. The Italian population therefore ends in Apulia; though it reaches in appearance as far as into Messapia, where part only of the Italians maintained themselves in an isolated settlement. Moreover they were in Samnium, Campania, and on the borders of Latium as Volscians and Æquians.
These Opicans were in their turn pushed forward by the Sabines (Sabellians), who called themselves aborigines, and traced their source from the highest Alps of Abruzzo near Majella and Gran Sasso d’Italia. Cato in a somewhat extraordinary manner makes them come from Little Amiternum. Whether the Sabellians and Opicans were about as distinct from each other as the Gauls and Ligurians; or in a less degree, like the Celts and Cymri; or whether they belonged to the same stock, and were only politically separated; are questions which we cannot solve. The ancients knew not, nor did they care much about it. When we want to see at any rate where no historical light is to be had, the mind’s eye is dimmed like that of the body when it is violently strained in the dark. Varro indeed distinguishes the Sabine from the Oscan language; but as he was very little of a judge of the earlier languages, in the sense in which we should apply the term to W. von Humboldt, we have also very little reason to rely upon any of his statements concerning the relationship of languages. From a general analogy, I conceive that the tide of emigration must have set in in several streams, and that thus the Sabines also may have been carried down from the higher north by its first rush. Yet this is mere conjecture.
The Umbrians may have belonged to the same stock as the Opicans. I would not lay too great a stress on the resemblance of names; the races which are nearest akin to each other have very often the most dissimilar names, and those which are the most remote quite similar ones. Thus the Getæ and the Goths were for a long time mistaken for the same people. Fifty years ago, it was the general belief in Ireland and Scotland that the Fir-Bolgs[45] were the old Belgians; yet this is false, and they are a Danish colony, as a very well-informed Englishman wrote to me. If I had no other reasons but the names, I should hesitate to pronounce for the identity of the Opicans and Umbrians. But Philistus called the people which overcame the Siculians in Latium, Ombricans, and the affinity of the languages may also be clearly made out from what remains of them.
These changes of the population, in which the earlier inhabitants are dislodged by another tribe, and the latter by some other one in its turn, make the history of the old Italian nations so indescribably obscure and difficult for us. At a time which we cannot fix with chronological certainty, in what was afterwards called Latium, which, however, perhaps bore this name from the earliest times, there existed a population of Siculians. The memory of it was preserved at Tibur, where according to Cato part of the town was called Siculio.[46] There are also elsewhere very many allusions in ancient authors, which place it beyond doubt that this people once existed there. Under the same name we find it in Southern Italy, and in the island which is to this day still called after them. According to one tradition, Sicelus came from Latium to the Œnotrians; according to another, the Siculians under different names were driven from their old abodes by the Opicans or Ombricans, and removed to that island. This migration is merely indicative of the combinations of those who tried to explain the contemporary existence of the same people in Latium and in Sicily. Possible it is, but it is also possible that it took quite a different direction. It is certain that in Homer’s time there were Siculians in Southern Italy; to prove which fact there exists a passage from Mnaseas, a pupil of Aristarchus, a learned grammarian and historian, whom the scholiast of the Odyssey quotes. He also says, that Echetus in Epirus was prince of the Siculians, so that he likewise acknowledged this name in those parts. From his explanation, we see that the poet of the Odyssey, when speaking of Siculians, does not mean the inhabitants of Sicily, a country concerning which he was in the dark; but those of Southern Italy, or the Pelasgians of Epirus.
The Siculians are the same as those whom Cato calls Aborigines. This name is interpreted γενάρχαι, ancestors; or also, wanderers, aberrigines; and likewise those who are from the very beginning, ab origine. The nominative singular, according to the Latin idiom, must have been aboriginus. There was a tradition that Latium had originally been inhabited by Autochthones; but Cato and C. Sempronius[47] said, that the aborigines had emigrated from Achaia, by which was meant the whole of the Peloponnesus, then named by the Romans Achaia. Others called the different places which were formerly termed Siculian, Argive; and Cato had done that with regard to Tibur itself. Argos and Larissa are Pelasgian names, which we meet with wherever there are Pelasgians;—Argos probably meaning town, and Larissa borough. As long as the Peloponnesus was Pelasgian, it was called Argos; even so was Thessaly. In this meaning the Argives are Pelasgians, and the Ἀργεῖοι Πελασγοί are in the old tragedy always named in conjunction. The one was most likely the general, and the other the special appellation.
Hesiod says of Latinus, πᾶσι Τυῤῥηνοῖσιν ἀγακλειτοῖσιν ἀνάσσει. All that we know of the Latins is this, that they had a number of towns from Tibur to the river Tiber. How far they extended in the earliest time to the Liris is lost in obscurity. Cato (in Priscian) says, that the plain of the Volscians formerly belonged to the aborigines; certainly all the towns along the coast were at an early period Tyrrhenian, as Antium, Circeii, and many others. At that time, therefore, the name of Latium spread far, and so late as immediately after the Roman kings, even to Campania; it having been first limited in consequence of the great popular migrations soon after the expulsion of the kings. Hesiod of course refers to the earlier time. In the treaty of Rome with Carthage, the coast beyond Terracina, probably as far as Cumæ, was called Latium, and the inhabitants Latins.
By the Greeks the Pelasgian inhabitants of the whole western coast of Italy were called Tyrrhenians; by the Latins, Turini, Tusci, i. e. Tusici from Tusus, or Turus; for s in the ancient language stands for r, as in Fusius for Furius.
We must bear well in mind that the Pelasgians and Aborigines are one and the same people. If we look over the legends of nations, we repeatedly find the same stories told in different ways which are entirely opposed to each other. The story of a Jew who takes ruthless revenge upon a Christian, as we know it from Shakspeare, in a Roman novel shortly before his time, is found just reversed, so that the Christian wants to cut off the flesh from the Jew. The migrations of the Goths, according to some, proceed from Scandinavia to the south; according to others, from the south to Scandinavia. Wittikind says that the Saxons had come out of Britain into Germany; the usual account makes them out to have been invited thither from Germany. The Pelasgians near the Hymettus near Athens are represented to have come from Tyrrhenia to Athens, and from thence to Lemnos; in another tradition, the Tyrrhenians go from the Meonian coast to Italy. Thus Cyrene, according to one legend, is colonized from Thera; in another, Thera rises out of a clod of earth from Libya. In the earlier account, the Symplegades were in the Eastern Sea, and the Argo sails through them on her voyage out; in the later, they are in the Western Sea, and impede the progress of the Argo on her voyage home. This exchange of polarity is manifested also with regard to the aborigines. In spite of etymology, Dionysius so calls the people which, issuing from the interior of the country, conquered the ancient inhabitants. Varro did the same, and yet worse than Pliny. He had read an immense deal; but learned he ought not to be called on account of his confusedness.[48] Varro knows about the close alliance of two of the Latin nations, but he makes a jumble of every thing; the aborigines are for him the conquering, and the Siculians the conquered people. Then, following Hellanicus, he brings over the aborigines from Thessaly; yet they then migrate from the Upper Anio to the Upper Abruzzo, whither they are driven by the Sabines. This tradition has a local and plausible character; for there were many small towns to be found there: large cities, on the contrary, such as the Etruscans possessed, are always a proof of immigration, as the immigrating people rather settles in a few considerable places. Trent and several other cities are large Lombard colonies. Dionysius may be excused, as he relies on Varro’s authority; the latter alone is answerable for the mistake. Here also the designation of the people, the conquering and the conquered one, is confounded.
The conquerors were probably called Cascans. This name Servius has preserved from Saufeius, a grammarian who seems to belong to the first century of the Christian era. They are also met with under the name of Sacranians, and to this the expression in Dionysius refers, that it had been a ἱερὰ νεότης. Part of the people which under the name of Opicans and Oscans inhabited the interior of Italy, or was more likely pushed down from the north, and wedged in between the old Pelasgian places, settled in the Apennines round the lake Fusinus (at present called Celano), towards Reate. Their chief town was called Lista: they bordered on the Siculians, who inhabited the country as far as beyond Tibur. There was a legend concerning them, that in the war with the Sabines, who had already taken from them Reate, and were driving them before them further and further, they had made a vow of a ver sacrum. This custom of the Italian nations when evil times befel them, was kept up also among the Romans. It was vowed to consecrate to the gods all cattle, in short, all that should be produced in the ensuing spring; and to send out in colonies the male children born at that period, as soon as ever they were grown up: the produce was either to be offered up, or redeemed. Thus devoted, the Sacranians marched against Latium, and subjected to themselves the Siculians. In Latium they settled among the old inhabitants, and became united with them into one people, which received the name of Prisci Latini; for, the Cascans must also have been called Prisci. To take Prisci Latini in Livy for Old Latins would be an absurdity: he has borrowed the formula of the declaration of war by the Fetiales, in which the expression first occurs, from the ancient rituals; it goes back to the time of Ancus Marcius, whilst before that of Tarquin the Proud, there were certainly no Latin colonies which we may suppose to have been placed in opposition to the rest of the people. Prisci Latini stands for Prisci et Latini, as the Latin language always expresses two necessary contra-positions, or two notions inseparably combined, by an immediate juxtaposition of the two words. The earliest Romans made as little use of cement in their language, as in their buildings. Brissonius has very clearly shown this, and has thereby fixed the formula Populus Romanus Quirites; only that he goes too far when he asserts that Populus Romanus Quiritium had never been said, which has been justly controverted by J. F. Gronovius. In the same manner, patres conscripti, instead of qui patres, quique conscripti sunt; and in legal forms, locati conducti, emti venditi, &c. Priscus and Cascus mean in after times very old, quaint, as Gothic or old Franconian, do in German; hence we have casce loqui, vocabula casca.—These conquerors spoke Oscan; and from the fusion of their language with the Siculo-Pelasgian arose that extraordinary medley which we call Latin, in which the grammar in some measure, but still more the etymology, contains such a considerable Greek element; a subject on which O. Müller has made those fine enquiries in the first volume of his Etruscans. The ancient Oscan language still exists in some old monuments: in Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are a couple of inscriptions, and the tablet of Bantia (Oppido) may be fully interpreted. Of the two elements in Latin, that which is Greek and that which is not, the latter agrees with the Oscan language. All the words which refer to agriculture, domestic animals, fruits, &c., are either Greek or akin to Greek. We evidently see a conquered agricultural people, and a conquering one from the mountains which was not engaged in agriculture.
From henceforth the trace of the tradition is lost to us, being effaced by the account of the Trojan immigration. This legend has no authenticity whatever, and is merely a later figment to express the relationship between the Trojans and the Latins as Pelasgians. The story of a Trojan colony is found on so many points of Italy, that it is by mere chance that this legend has been more definitely fixed upon Latium; and it was fostered by the wide circulation of the Greek poems, which spread much farther than we generally think.