The Peoples of Ancient Italy

787 Pages·2018·28.78 MB·English

by  Guy Jolyon Bradley

De Gruyter Reference
The Peoples of Ancient Italy

The Peoples
of Ancient Italy
Edited by
Gary D. Farney and Guy Bradley
ISBN 978-1-61451-520-3
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-61451-300-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0014-5
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A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin
Cover image: Hut-Urn from Campo Reatino (RI), Italy. Museo Civico di Rieti,
Museum Inv. No. MCR_0052_AR.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
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Contents
Gary D. Farney and Guy Bradley
Introduction 1
Themes in the Study of the Ancient Italian Peoples
Dominique Briquel
How to Fit Italy into Greek Myth? 11
Duane W. Roller
Strabo and Italian Ethnic Groups 27
Helle W. Horsnæs
Ancient Italian Numismatics 35
Daniele F. Maras
Epigraphy and Nomenclature 63
Enrico Benelli
Problems in Identifying Central Italic Ethnic Groups 89
Rafael Scopacasa
Ethnicity 105
Nicholas Zair
Languages of Ancient Italy 127
Massimiliano Di Fazio
Religions of Ancient Italy 149
Saskia T. Roselaar
Economy and Demography of Italy 173
Guy Bradley and Joshua Hall
The Roman Conquest of Italy 191
Michael P. Fronda
The Italians in the Second Punic War 215
VI Contents
Federico Santangelo
The Social War 231
Patrick Alan Kent
The Italians in Roman armies 255
Tesse D. Stek
The impact of Roman expansion and colonization on ancient Italyin the
Republican period. From diffusionism to networks of opportunity 269
Roman Roth
Beyond Romanisation: settlement, networks and material culture in Italy, c. 400‒
90 BC 295
The Peoples of Ancient Italy
Loredana Cappelletti
The Bruttii 321
Douwe Yntema
The Pre-Roman Peoples of Apulia (1000‒100 BC) 337
John W. Wonder
The Lucanians 369
Francesca Mermati
The Campanians 385
Gianluca Tagliamonte
The Samnites 419
Christopher J. Smith
The Aurunci and Sidicini 447
Marijke Gnade
The Volscians and Hernicians 461
Francesca Fulminante
The Latins 473
Enrico Benelli
The Aequi 499
Contents VII
Cesare Letta
The Marsi 509
Oliva Menozzi and Valeria Acconcia
The Vestini 519
Gary D. Farney and Giulia Masci
The Sabines 543
Jacopo Tabolli and Sara Neri
The Faliscans and the Capenates 559
Oliva Menozzi and Alessandra Ciarico
The Picentes / Piceni 579
Dorica Manconi
The Umbri 603
Jean MacIntosh Turfa
The Etruscans 637
Silvia Paltineri
The Ligurians 673
Kathryn Lomas
The Veneti 701
Ralph Haeussler
The Galli 719
Contributors 755

Gary D. Farney and Guy Bradley
Introduction
AlthoughtherearemanystudiesofspecificancientItaliangroups,wenoticedatthe
beginningofthisprojectthattherewasnoworkthattakesacomprehensiveviewof
each of the ancient groups – the famous and the less well-known – that existed in
Iron Age and Roman Italy. Italian scholars, of course, have been prominent in the
studiesoftheindividualpeoples,althoughsignificantworkshavealsobeenwritten
in English, e.g. Salmon 1967, Harris 1971, Dench 1995, Smith 1996, Bradley 2000,
Isayev 2007, Farney 2007, Fulminante 2014. Other recent works that have treated
more than one Italian group have only dealt with some of them, and they have
not had as their purpose to address thematic topics of importance for most, if not,
all groups, e.g. Pesando 2005, Bradley, Isayev and Riva 2007, and Aberson, Biella
and Di Fazio 2014. In order to discover basic information about some of the less
well-knownItalicpeoples,modernscholarsoftenhavehadtoresorttotheshort,in-
adequateentriesthatexistformany(butnotall)ofthesegroupsintheOxfordClas-
sical Dictionary, the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, or Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Ency-
clopädie, or even one of the Laterza archaeological guides. For detail, one had to
trackdown periodic archaeological sitereports,of whichtherehasbeen averitable
explosion in recent years, particularly in central and southern Italy. In addition,
many important articles about some groups are only found in local Italian presses,
of which there were only a few copies ever made. Moreover, some studies have fo-
cused on the material evidence for these groups,while others on what the literary
sourcessayabouttheminparticularinmore“historic”periodswhentheyareinter-
acting with Rome.
Nevertheless, many wonderful resources are now available, and help to make
this book possible. Most notable, Fasti Online has been a great resource for finding
up-to-date excavation notices and information,coupled with the Italian Ministry of
Culture’s new push to put all of the publications of the various soprintendenze on-
line. It is also hard to overstate the importance of Crawford 2011,which makes in-
scriptions in a variety of early Italian languages readily accessible. As one will see
ineachchapter,thisworktouchesnearlyeverycornerofancientItaliangroupstud-
ies.
Atany rate,the currentvolumehasbeen conceived ofasaresourcefor archae-
ologists, historians, philologists and other scholars interested in finding out more
aboutanItalicgroup,orgroupsmoregenerally,fromtheearliestperiodtheyarede-
tectable(theearlyIronAge,inmostinstances),downtothetimewhentheybeginto
assimilate into the Roman state in the late Republican or early Imperial period. As
such, it endeavors to include both archaeological and historical perspectives on
each group, with contributions from the best-known or up-and-coming archaeolo-
gistsandhistoriansforthesepeoplesandtopics.Ofcourse,someunevennessofcon-
tentfromchaptertochapteristobeexpected,as,forexample,archaeologiststendto
DOI10.1515/9781614513001001
2 GaryD.FarneyandGuyBradley
talk more about material culture and historians about literary sources, and some
groups are only really known from material or literary sources. The language of
thevolumeisEnglish,butscholarsfromaroundtheworldhavecontributedtoit,dis-
tilling their incomparable knowledge from avariety of research materials (many,of
course, in Italian). An attempt has been made to make the information contained
inGreekandLatinwriters,aswellasinthevariousancientItalianlanguages,acces-
sible to non-specialists and beginners.
We have restricted our geographical limits to the Italian mainland south of the
Alps. It may appear arbitrary to exclude the islands. Sicily and Sardinia are part of
the modern state of Italy, and were closely linked to ancient Italy. For instance,
the indigenous peoples of Sicily, the Siculs, were thought to have had a presence
onthemainlandaswellasonSicilyinmythicalprehistory,whileSardiniawasclose-
lylinkedtocitiesontheTyrrhenianseaboardbeforetheRomanconquest.Neverthe-
less, from the third century BC onwards mainland Italy was conceived as a distinct
unitthatdidnotnormallyincludetheislands,andunderRometheislandsweregov-
erned separately as provinces. Our focus, therefore, has been on this idea of Italy,
Italia, in its more restricted ancient sense.
Whatdowemeanbythe“peoples”ofancientItaly?Somedebatehasgoneinto
theterminologyweuse.Wehavetitledthework‘peoples’aswebelievethisisause-
fulandrelativelyneutralterm,althoughthemodernconceptiontendstocarrywithit
muchgreaterimplications ofpoliticalunity (seeBourdin2012,173‒276for adiscus-
sion of ancient terminology).Chapters often discuss “ethnicgroups,” reflecting the
impactthatthirty yearsorsoofstudyoftheethnicityoftheancientItalian peoples
has had in undermining many previous certainties about the unity and strength of
collective identity. Older scholarship echoes the tendency in ancient sources to
talk of Italian peoples as clearly defined blocks, who migrate or are founded, or
are destroyed (Dionysius of Halicarnassus has a catalogue of these in the first
bookoftheRomanAntiquities).Morerarelydotheytalkofpeopleslosingtheiriden-
tityinagradualsense,orgaininganidentityinacontrastivesituation.Forunusual
examples, see Aristoxenus and Strabo on colonial Greekswho are no longer Greek,
orStraboonCampaniansandnorthernItalians,whodespitetheirdiverseroots,are
“all Romans” (Aristoxenus in Athenaeus, Deip. 14.632; Strabo 5.1.10; 5.4.7). Much
modern scholarship has tended to be suspicious of such “monolithic” pictures,
and suggested that identities were more malleable. These new perspectives have
been influenced by the work of anthropologists and sociologists such as Fedrik
BarthandAnthonySmith,demonstratingthatitisnotagivenattribute,andnotbio-
logical,that the strength of ethnic identitiesvaries, andthat interaction at bounda-
ries enlivens senses of ethnicity.
There are also,by necessity,chapters on elements,or themes, running through
theidentitiesandrealitiesofvariousethnicgroups–theirreligiousbeliefs,languag-
es,nomenclature,andsoforth.Criticalhistorical“moments”arealsoaddressed,like
theRomanconquestofItaly,theHannibalicWar,andtheSocialWar.Therehasbeen
someattempttoanalyzethepresenceofthesegroupsinliterature,i.e.inthemyth-