The subjugation of Rhætia was delayed for more than a generation. To guard the empire against the Eastern hordes; against the mountain robbers of Graubünden and the Tyrol, who descended into the valleys of the Po, ravaging the country as far as Milan, and no doubt liberally paying back in their own coin, the Romans who had made from time to time such havoc in the Alpine homes—to guard against these, and the wild Vindelicians of Bavaria, Augustus sent the two imperial princes to reduce them to subjection. Drusus marched into the Tyrol, whilst Tiberius advanced on Lake Constance, where even the Rhætian women engaged in the conflict, and, in default of missiles, hurled their sucking children into the face of the conquerors, through sheer exasperation. Their savage courage availed them nothing, however; the incursions from the East were repressed; and once the Rhætians were overcome, they became the most useful of auxiliaries to the Roman army. Horace's ode to Drusus alludes to the Rhætian campaign.
The Rhæto-Roman inhabitants of Graubünden—for they still occupy the high valleys of the Engadine and of the Vorder-Rhine—present much interest in point of language and antiquities. The sturdy Rhætians belonged to the art-loving Etruscan race, whose proficiency in the amphora-technic we so highly value. An old legend calls their ancestor Rætus a Tuscan. And not without show of reason, says Mommsen, for the early dwellers of Graubünden and the Tyrol were Tuscans, and spoke a dialect agreeing with that of the district of Mantua, a Tuscan colony in the time of Livy. In Graubünden and Ticino were found, some thirty years ago, stones bearing inscriptions in that dialect. The Rhætians may have dropped behind in these Alpine regions on the immigration of Etruscans into the valleys of the Po; or, they may just as likely have fled there on the advent of the Celts, when that warlike race seized on the fertile plains of the river, and drove the Etruscans from their home southward and northward. Be that as it may, however, it is certain that the Rhætians, once blended with the Romans, have preserved the Latin tongue and customs to this day, for Romaunsh a corrupt Latin, with no doubt some admixture of Tuscan, is still spoken by more than one-third of the population of the Grisons.
HOUSE (FORMERLY CHAPLE) IN THE ROMAUNSH STYLE, AT SCHULS, LOWER ENGADINE, GRAUBÜNDEN. (After a Photograph by Guler.)
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Valais (German, Wallis) means valley, and is so called from its being a long narrow dale or vale hemmed in by lofty mountains.
[8] Mommsen, "Roman History," vol. ii. p. 166.
[9] "Story of Alexander's Empire," by Mahaffy, p. 79.
