PART
5 –
Ch.XXXII.5
The
Pelasgians or proto – Latins (Arimii)
(The
southern Pelasgians)
XXXII.
5. Pelasgians in Italy
In the beginning, Italy, which left as
inheritance to the world an everlasting civilization and political direction,
had been Pelasgian.
Even thousands of
years before the fall of Troy, a large part of the Pelasgians from the
Carpathians and the Lower Danube, from the Hem peninsula, as well as from the
western regions of Asia Minor, had passed, some over the Alps, others across
the sea, to Italy, some driven by the necessities of pastoral life, others by
the inherent instinct of expansion of the Pelasgian nation, and finally others
by being persecuted and driven away from the lands in which they had once dwelt
and ruled.
The settling of the
Pelasgian tribes in Italy had taken place in
various epochs.
Historical
traditions of the Greeks, as well as of the Romans, mention a long series of
Pelasgian migrations to Italy, some from the
eastern parts of Europa, others from the littoral of Asia Minor: that of the Oenotri, Peuceti and Iapygi, led
by Oenotriu, Peucetiu (Pherecydis,
fragm. 85 in Fragm Hist. graec. I. 92; Apollodorus,
Bibl. lib. III. 8. 1; Strabo, lib.
VI. I. 4) and Iapyx (Anton. Lib.
XXXI, at Pauly, R. E.), all three
grandsons of Pelasg; that of Tursen,
who had crossed from Lydia to Italy with numerous groups of Pelasgian Turseni
and had settled on the territory of ancient Etruria (Herodotus, lib. I. 94; Hellanicus,
fragm. 1 in Fragm. Hist. graec. I. 45; Strabo,
lib. V. 2. 2); that of Ianus, who
had emigrated to Italy in unknown circumstances from the country of the
Hyperboreans; that of Saturn, who
after a 10 years struggle had been dethroned and driven away from the empire by
his sons; that of the powerful Typhon
from the country of the Arimi,
defeated in a formidable battle by Jove, the new master of the ancient world (Pherecydis, fragm. 14); that of Hercules, who after taking the fine
cattle herds from Geryon, had passed into Italy at the head of a numerous army,
and had founded there several agricultural colonies (Dionysios Halik. Lib. I. 39-42); that of Evandrus, who had settled with part of the Pelasgians of Arcadia on
the banks of the Tiber; that of the Istri,
who had formed a new country near the gulf of the Adriatic Sea after chasing the Argonauts, and finally that
of Aeneas, who had settled in Latium
with part of the Trojan nobility.
The most ancient
among all these Pelasgian nations which formed the first historical colonies of
the Italic peninsula, seem to have been the Ligurii. Pliny calls
them “antiqua stirpe” (lib.III
21.1). Their primitive country, before having settled on the territory of Italy, had been near the
Carpathians and the Lower Danube.
Hesiodus mentions Ligurii who dwelt close to the
Hypomolgian Scythians (fragm. CXXXII).The archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonika in his commentaries on the geography of
Dionysius tells us that there were Liguri in the land of the Colchi (Dionys.
Perieg. v. 76). Aristotle talks In
the 3rd century about a population called Ligyrei on the territory of ancient Thrace (Macrobius, Sat. I. 18), and finally, a
part of the emigrated Liguri lived in Asia Minor near the Cappadoci
(Herodotus, lib. VII. 72).
As for the Ligurii
from the western parts of the Alps, one of the more
bellicose tribes of theirs had been the so-called Deciates (Pliny, lib.
III. 7. 1), a Greek form of the name which corresponds to the rustic Latin form
of Deciani [1].
[1. Ravennas calls them Dicei.
But a locality from Hispania Tarraconensis, near the Pyrenees, where Ligurii had also spread, has the name Deciana (Rav. Cosm. P. 339-341). Dacia under the form of Dicia
also appears in a manuscript of Ulpian
(C. I. L. vol. III. P. 169)].
These Deciati
occupied an entire region of the maritime Alps (Pliny, lib. III. 5. 5: “Regio
Deciatium”, in the parts of today Nice,
in Roman times Nicaea). One of their
principal cities was Antipolis (Ptolemy, lib. II. 10. 5), to which the
Romans gave the right of Latin citizenship (Pliny, lib. III. 5. 5).
Other tribes of
Liguri settled in the Alps appear under the
name Montani (Pliny, lib. III. 24. 2), Stoeni
(C. I. L. vol. I. p. 460. These were close to the Eugani), Belaci (see Ch.XXVI.6), Comati or Capilati. To these the emperor Nero had also conferred the
privilege of Latin citizenship (Pliny,
lib. III. 24. 2).
These Liguri,
before their migration towards the western parts of Europe, had formed a part
of the extended and warlike population of the Arimi from the Carpathians and the Lower Danube.
An ancient city
founded by Liguri, at the time when they dwelt at the center of Italy, still
had during the Roman epoch the name of Ariminium
(today Arimini).
The ancient rustic
population from the territory of Liguria bears the name of Arimani in the laws of the Longobardi (Du Cange, Gloss. med. et inf. lat. v. Herimanni, arimani).
We have here a name
whose historical origin is archaic. As Strabo
tells us, the various Ligurian nations from the Pad Valley still had, along
with their particular ethnic names, the common name of Romani (‘Romaioi), but in reality Arimani,
as it definitely results from the monuments of the Middle Age. Finally, a
locality on the territory of these Liguri from the Alps appears in the
Roman epoch with the name of Rama (Itin. Hierosolym. 269).
We are left with
very few traces from the ancient national language of the Ligurii settled
between the Alps and the Apennines; but even these
remains are sufficient to form the conviction that the idiom of these Liguri
belonged to the eastern branch of the Pelasgians, and particularly to that from
the Lower Danube.
The Greek
geographer Metrodorus Scepsius said
that the river Padus was called Bodincus
in the language of the Liguri, a word the meaning of which in Latin language
was “fundo carens” (Pliny, lib. III. 20. 8). We have here a
term almost synonymous in form and meaning with the Romanian “adanc” or “afund” (profundus, TN – deep). As Pliny tells us (lib. XI. 97. 1), Liguria sent to Rome the cheese called
“ciobanesc” (coebanum caseum - TN – shepherd’s cheese), made especially from
sheep milk.
An ancient city of
the Liguri was called Luna (Frontinus, Stratag. III. 21). Two other
cities were called Alba, and the
ancient name of the Alps, according to Strabo, had been Albia
(lib. IV. 6. 1). We also find on the territory of the ancient Liguri a Vadum Sabatium and a mountain called Mancelus, or Manncelus, the Romanian muncel
(C. I. L. vol. V. nr.7749).
Ligurii were very
tenacious in their national customs. Some of them wore long hair and tresses
even in the time of Augustus, for which they were called Comati and Capillati.
Diodorus Siculus, speaking about the customs of the Liguri
from the Alps and Apennines, writes: “They inhabit
a tough and sterile soil. Always busy with work and always having to support
the hardship of public works, they lead a hard life and full of troubles. This
region is covered with trees. Some of them cut wood all day, with strong and
heavy axes; and those who practice agriculture have to struggle more with the
breaking of the stones. The land here is so wild, that they can not turn it
into one good field, as all is only stone … Their women share their burden, as
they are used to work as hard as their husbands” (lib. V. 39).
Although the Liguri
were leading such a tough, exhausting and laborious life on this poor soil, the
literate Nigidius Figulus, contemporary of Cicero, attributes them
the epithet “fallaces”, cheaters (Micali, L’Italia avanti il dominio dei
Romani, 1826, I, p.89). We have here certainly only a satirical allusion to the
name Belaci of some of these Liguri
(see Ch.XXVI.6).
We still find a
trace of the name of Liguri on the territory of the Carpathians in medieval
documents of Hungary. A village, today
vanished, from the county of Caras, situated close to
the Danube, was called Ligoroci (lygoroch) around 1421 (Pesky, Krasso varmegye, III. p. 296). Two other localities on the territory of Hungary are called: one Ligyr, around 1311 and the other Igor and Igol around 1193 (Knauz,
Monum. Eccl. Strig. II. 1311, p. 651, 142, 145).
In regard to the
ancient native inhabitants of Italy, they had formed
the same people as the Latins. But
according to other authors, they might have been colonies of the Ligurii (Dionysius
Halic. Lib. I. 9-10).
Also from the
regions belonging to the Carpathians had migrated to Italy the so-called Umbri, an ancient and famous Pelasgian
tribe (Pliny, lib. III. 19. 1). Ptolemy mentions a population from
European Sarmatia called Ombrones
(lib. III. 19. 1), who had their dwellings between the sources of Vistula and the mountain
Carpathos (Tatra). We have here without doubt only remains from the ancient
family of the Umbri which had migrated towards Italy. From the point of
view of ethnic genealogy, Scymnus
placed Latinus as proto-father of the
Umbri (Orb. Descr. v. 225), and the historian Zenodotus said that Umbri could have been the ancient name of the Sabini (Dionysius Halic. lib. II. 49)[2].
[2. The most important document
about the Umbric language are the
copper Tables so-called eugubine (Tabulae Iguvinae), discovered in 1444 in a subterranean location of
the city Gubbio (Iguvium). Although these Tables do not represent the folk
idiom of the Umbri, but an urban corrupt language from around 400bc, they show
us though that Umbrii had the same origin as the Latins (Bertrand et Reinach,
Les Celtes dans les vallees du Po et du Danube, p. 7. Cf. Breal,
Les Tables eugubines, 1875, I. p. XXVIII)].
So, the Pelasgians
had successively occupied, under various names, and during several thousand
years, all the regions of Italy, from the Alps to the southern
extremities of the peninsula: Istria, Liguria, Venetia, Umbria, Etruria, the Sabine
territory, Latium, Campania, Apulia, Iapygia, Lucania,
Brutiu and the neighboring islands Corsica, Sardinia and Sicilia.
All these
populations who founded the first political life on the soil of Italy, some of
them tougher, more warlike and famous, others more peaceful and laborious, like
the natives, Ligurii, Istrii, Venetii, Umbrii, Tursenii (Etruscans), Sabinii,
Latinii, Ramnii, Oenotrii, Peucetii, Iapygii, Siculii, Sicanii, belonged,
according to the most ancient traditions of the Greeks and Romans, to the great
family of the Pelasgian race.
The Italic
peninsula presented in those remote times, apart from its ethnographic unity,
also a unity of civilization, language and religion (Helbig, at Bertrand, Les Celtes, p. 70). So, Duruy is wrong when, talking about the primitive times of Italy, asserts: “Among
all the places of Europe, Italy was the one where
the most foreign races had met”. TN – translated from French).