The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦The Italians.♦

But whatever we make of the Etruscans, the rest of Italy in the older sense was held by various branches of an Aryan race nearly allied to the Greeks, whom we may call the Italians. Of this race there were two great branches. One of them, under various names, seems to have held all the southern part of the western coast of Italy, and to have spread into Sicily. Some of the tribes of this branch seem to have been almost as nearly akin to the Greeks as the Epeirots and other kindred nations on the east side of the Hadriatic. ♦Latins.♦ Of this branch of the Italian race, the most famous people were the Latins; and it was the greatest Latin city, the border city of the Latins against the Etruscans, the city of Rome on the Tiber, which became, step by step, the mistress of Latium, of Italy, and of the Mediterranean world. ♦Opicans.♦ The other branch, which held a much larger part of the peninsula, taking in the Sabines, Æquians, Volscians, Samnites, Lucanians, and other people who play a great part in the Roman history, may perhaps be classed together as Opicans or Oscans, in distinction from the Latins, and the other tribes allied to them. These tribes seem to have pressed from the eastern, the Hadriatic, coast of Italy, down upon the nations to the south-west of them, and to have largely extended their borders at their expense.

But part of ancient Italy, and a still larger part of Italy in the modern sense, was inhabited by nations other than the Italians. ♦Iapygians.♦ In the heel of the boot were the Iapygians, a people of uncertain origin, but who seem in any case to have had a great gift of receiving the Greek language and manners. ♦Gauls.♦ And in the northern part, in the lands which were not then counted as part of Italy, were the Gauls, a Celtic people, akin to the Gauls beyond the Alps, and whose country was therefore called Cisalpine Gaul or Gaul on this side of the Alps. They were found on both sides of the Po, and on the Hadriatic coast they seem to have stretched in early times almost as far south as Ancona. ♦Veneti.♦ In the north-east corner of Italy were yet another people, the Veneti, perhaps of Illyrian origin, whose name long after was taken by the city of Venice. But during the whole time with which we have to do, there was no city so called, and the name of Venetia is always the name of a country.

♦Greek colonies in Italy.♦

All these nations we may look on as the original inhabitants of Italy; that is, all were there before anything like contemporary history begins.[5] But besides these original nations, there were in one part of Italy many Greek colonies, and also in the island of Sicily. Some cities of Italy claimed to be Greek colonies, without any clear proof that they were so. But there seems no reason to doubt that Kymê or Cumæ on the western coast of Italy, and Ankôn or Ancona on the Hadriatic, were solitary Greek colonies far away from any other Greek settlements. Cumæ, though so far off, is said to have been the earliest Greek colony in Italy. But where the Greeks mainly settled was in the two lesser peninsulas, the heel and the toe of the boot, into which the great peninsula of Italy divides at its southern end. Here, as was before said, there is a nearer approach to the kind of coast to which the Greeks were used at home. Here then arose a number of Greek cities, stretching from the extreme south almost up to Cumæ. As in the case of the Greek cities in Asia, the time of greatness of the Italian Greeks came earlier than that of the Greeks in Greece itself. In the sixth century B.C. some of these Greek colonies in Italy, as Taras or Tarentum, Krotôn or Crotona, Sybaris, and others, were among the greatest cities of the Greek name. But, as the Italian nations grew stronger, the Greek cities lost their power, and many of them, Cumæ among them, fell into the hands of Italian conquerors, and lost their Greek character more or less thoroughly. Others remained Greek till they became subject to Rome, and the Greek speech and manners did not quite die out of southern Italy till ages after the Christian æra.

♦Inhabitants of Sicily.♦

The geography and history of the great island of Sicily, which lies so near to the toe of the boot, cannot be kept apart from those of Italy. The mainland and the island were, to a great extent, inhabited by the same nations. The Sikanians in the western part of the island may not unlikely have been akin to the Ligurians and Basques; but the Sikels, who gave their name to the island, and who are the people with whom the Greeks had most to do, were clearly of the Italian stock, and were nearly allied to the Latins. ♦Phœnician and Greek colonies.♦ The Phœnicians of Carthage planted some colonies in the western and northern parts of the island, the chief of which was the city which the Greeks called Panormos, the modern capital Palermo. But the western and southern sides of the triangle were full of Greek cities, which are said to have been founded from the eighth century B.C. to the sixth. Several of these, especially Syracuse and Akragas or Agrigentum, were among the chief of Greek cities; and from them the Greek speech and manners gradually spread themselves over the natives, till in the end Sicily was reckoned as wholly a Greek land. But for some centuries Sicilian history is chiefly made up of struggles for the mastery between Carthage and the Greek cities. This was in truth a struggle between the Aryan and the Semitic race, and we shall see that, many ages after, the same battle was again fought on the same ground.

§ 2. Growth of the Roman power in Italy.

♦Gradual conquest of Italy.♦

The history of ancient Italy, as far as we know it, is the history of the gradual conquest of the whole land by one of its own cities; and the changes in its political geography are mainly the changes which followed the gradual bringing of the whole peninsula under the Roman dominion. But the form which the conquests of Rome took hindered those conquests from having so great an effect on the map as they otherwise might have had. The cities and districts of Italy, as they were one by one conquered by Rome, were commonly left as separate states, in the relation of dependent alliance, from which most of them were step by step promoted to the rights of Roman citizenship. ♦Different positions of the Italian cities.♦ An Italian city might be a dependent ally of Rome; it might be a Roman colony with the full franchise or a colony holding the inferior Latin franchise; or it might have been actually made part of a Roman tribe. All these were very important political differences; but they do not make much difference in the look of things on the map. The most important of the changes which can be called strictly geographical belong to the early days of Rome, when there were important national movements among the various races of Italy. ♦Origin of Rome.♦ Rome arose at the point of union of the three races, Latin, Oscan, and Etruscan, and it arose from an union between the Latin and Oscan races. ♦Rome a Latin city.♦ Two Latin and one Sabine settlements seem to have joined together to form the city of Rome; but the Sabine element must have been thoroughly Latinized, and Rome must be counted as a Latin city, the greatest, though very likely the youngest, among the cities of Latium.