Italy Before the Romans

David Randall-MacIver

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787208421
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

First published in 1928, this book by archaeologist and author David Randall-MacIver provides a detailed description of Italy and its chief peoples before it was conquered by the Romans in 509 B.C. Randall-MacIver constructs his study through reference to the "great mass of Archaeological discoveries made in Italy during the last seventy years" (i.e. 1860's-1920's).A wonderful addition to your ancient history collection.Richly illustrated throughout."Historians have deliberately kept silence as to all Italian peoples except the Roman. But it is obvious that the view which they give is incomplete. The Romans were not a highly civilized people in the early days of the Republic. Italy was completely civilized before its conquest by Rome. Archaeology can give a picture of the life of Italian peoples scarcely known to history."—Introduction

 

CHAPTER 1—The Neolithic Age

Race-elements in south and east of Italy the same now as in the Neolithic Age.—Effects of invasion in changing population of north and west.—Geographic conditions in Neolithic times.—Original settlement by the Mediterranean Race.—Routes by which this race entered Italy.—Permanence of the Mediterranean Race as an element.—Contrast between eastern and western halves of the Mediterranean world about 2500 B.C.—General picture of life in Italy at this date.—Neolithic dwellings.—Pottery making.—Stone implements.

 

ITALY did not begin to enter into the full current of European life, and to share the activities and commerce of the awakening western world, until about 1600 B.C. This is the time when the Bronze Age is in full swing, and a general level of uniform culture has spread over all Europe, from the Danube to the Baltic and from Spain to the British Isles. From that date onwards the early history of Italy becomes a chapter in the general history of Europe. But we must go back fully a thousand years before this to study the original conditions which differentiated the Italians from their neighbours, and invested them with a special and peculiar individuality.

The main outlines in the distribution of the population were determined as early as the Neolithic Age, and over a great part of the country they have never been changed since that time. Essentially the same race inhabits the entire south and most of the east of Italy today which settled there several thousand years before Christ. But the north and west have been profoundly affected by a series of immigrations and invasions, which began with the very dawn of the Bronze Age. These invasions brought with them the seeds of new development, and were a principal factor in the evolution of the country. Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that they were indispensable for its progress; the introduction of new races was rather a geographical incident than a biological necessity. The Mediterranean stock always possessed unlimited potentialities, and could perfectly have worked out its own salvation without calling in other peoples. The history of the Aegean affords ample proof of this.

In considering the earliest settlement of the peninsula we may leave out of account the hard-living hunters of the Old Stone Age, who picked up a precarious living in the immeasurably distant lifetime of the elephant and cave-bear. These formed only a very tiny proportion of the eventual population, and had almost no effect on its progress and development. In their day the continent of Europe was still attached to Africa; two great land-bridges united Spain with Morocco on the one side, and Tunis with Sicily and Calabria on the other. The Mediterranean was not a sea but only an inland lake. But all this had changed before Neolithic times; the land-masses and the seas had everywhere assumed the general contour which they show today; and the conditions of climate had settled down to very much the same that they are in our own time. It is possible to think of the Neolithic world in terms of modern thought, without exercising our retrospective fancy in the realm of palaeontology. Neolithic man, in whatever part of Europe he may be studied, had everywhere arrived at a stage of life which is perfectly intelligible to the modern mind. Already he lived in artificially constructed dwellings, grouped in communities which presuppose a high degree of social organization. Nomadism had been abandoned, the huntingman of the older Stone Age had either vanished or been converted to new ways. Agriculture, the farming of stock, and the exercise of simple industries like pottery-making and weaving, produce the impression of an existence which may be called primitive but is by no means squalid. The general level is that of the happy savage, who has existed in unspoiled parts of the world like the Pacific down to the memory of many who are still living.

In Italy it is the Neolithic men who may be considered for all practical purposes as the aborigines. Their predecessors of Palaeolithic times doubtless left a certain number of descendants, whose survival can be traced here and there in the subsequent period. But these were comparatively few and unimportant. The first permanent and universal settlement of the peninsula was made some thousands of years before Christ, by a variety of that species which has been named the Mediterranean Race, because it is found distributed all round the borders of the Mediterranean from Spain to the Levant. It is a large species with many varieties, which had become differentiated, during the Quaternary period in some part of Africa north of the tropical belt. The need for expansion forced it outwards in all directions until it occupied all the shores of the Mediterranean on both sides, as well as the larger islands.

The immigration into Italy followed two distinct routes, corresponding to the old land-bridges, though these no longer existed. One large body, destined to form the aboriginal population of all North and Central Italy, crossed by the Straits of Gibraltar and passed up the east coast of Spain and along the Riviera. Their path can be traced by the products and remains of their graves and habitations, which are so precisely similar as to make it certain that they belong to a single movement. Archaeologists have agreed to call this people the Ibero-Ligurians, which is a very appropriate name as it recalls their ethnical origin and affinities. The second route was along the line of the old eastern land-bridge, at this time broken down into a chain of headlands and islands, leading by way of Sicily into the modern Calabria. Inasmuch as the Neolithic civilization of Southern Italy shows many minor points of difference from that of the north it has been generally agreed to give a separate name to its representatives, though it must not be supposed that they are anything but a sub-variety, differing very little in essential character from the Ibero-Ligurians. In view of their close connexion with Sicily we may term them Siculans.

The Neolithic race which entered the country from both ends at this remote period has remained undisturbed in many regions down to the present day, and has always constituted a numerical majority of the whole Italian people. It may be remarked in passing that it was one of the three elements which combined to form Rome itself, and was probably the most durable of the three. On the east of the Apennines the descendants of the Ibero-Ligurians successfully resisted all attempts at invasion during the Bronze and Early Iron Ages; and under the Roman domination continued in exclusive possession of half the Adriatic coast, as well as of a large part of the mountainous interior. Their most powerful and important representatives in later times are the Picenes and Samnites of the historians.

In North Italy and on the west of the Apennines the Neolithic race was subdued during the second millennium B.C. by invaders of wholly different origin, but though dominated and overshadowed it remained a by no means negligible element. South of Naples, on the other hand, the Mediterranean Race has always been not only the principal but the only factor in the population, except for such alien elements as may have come in with the Greek colonies. It was possibly reinforced from time to time by overflows from Sicily, but there is evidence to show that these must have ceased before 1000 B.C. Even before the Bronze Age Sicily and Italy had become two wholly distinct provinces, each deriving its inspiration from a perfectly different source.

We may now attempt to construct a general picture of Italian life as it appeared about 2500 B.C., when the settlement of the country had been completed, probably two or three thousand years after it had begun, though it is not possible to state this with accuracy.

The contrast between the eastern and western halves of the Mediterranean world at this date is very striking. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, and Anatolia have reached almost the zenith of their civilization. In Egypt is the time of the Old Empire, with its magnificent buildings, unequalled sculpture, beautiful painting, and exquisite minor arts. In Crete the Early Minoan is entering on its third phase; the period of the great palaces has not quite begun, but the existence of well-planned cities and powerful navies shows a highly organized state with all the complexity and the implied refinement of a most sophisticated life. In comparison with these eastern countries Europe seems to be peopled by savages. Between an Egyptian noble and a tribal chief in France or Italy of this period there must have been as much difference as between Sir Walter Raleigh and an American Indian of the sixteenth century. Yet if we turn our eyes away from the dazzling picture of Oriental empires, and measure Neolithic Europe by less exacting standards, it will appear that the Europeans have really made immense advances and have placed their feet some way up on the ladder of progress. If the Europeans are fully a thousand years behind the natives of the Near East, this is not due to any inherent incapacity but only to geographical conditions, and the comparative isolation which these had entailed. Once communications are opened up the development will be rapid, and before the middle of the second millennium B.C. an era of remarkable progress will begin; this will be the theme of my second chapter.

About 2500 B.C., then, we find that Italy is sufficiently, though not densely, populated from end to end with a people of Eur-African origin belonging to the Mediterranean Race. Though distantly related to such remarkable stocks as the Cretan and the Minoan Greeks, the Italians are very imperfectly developed in regard to material culture. They have been settled for many centuries in the peninsula, but still retain many characteristics which recall their origin and their wanderings from Africa through Spain and Sicily. Their habits of life at this time were principally pastoral. Hunting, however, was not neglected, and was the more necessary because agriculture was only in its infancy, even if it had begun at all, which is doubtful. Bones of wild animals found in their dwellings show that this people hunted the stag, bear, fox, wolf, wild-boar, and hare. This is a list which may give some idea of the character of the countryside, evidently densely forested, probably in the main with oak and chestnut.

In this virgin forest the aborigines were making clearings, in which they built wattle huts and reared their domestic animals. For already the sheep, the goat, the horse, the ox, ass, and pig had been domesticated. The dog does not seem to have been tamed as yet, and it is only some centuries later that he becomes a partner in the daily life. Grinding-stones have been found, but it must not be assumed that they were used for any kind of cultivated grain. Neolithic man in Italy had probably to be content with flour made from acorns and chestnuts, and with the pounded seeds of wild plants.

His dwellings were very primitive. In some parts of the country caves were the principal if not the only habitations, but in others have been found the remains of wattle-and-daub huts, which may be considered as more genuinely characteristic of the period. The general form of these huts may be inferred from pottery models—actually 1,500 years later—found in the Alban hills, in the Forum at Rome, and on many Tuscan sites (see Frontispiece). If slightly improved they preserve the old style and tradition, being round or elliptical in shape, constructed of clay-daubed wattle and posts and roofed with rough-hewn beams. They were generally grouped into hamlets or small villages, large enough to contain several families but hardly more.

Dwellings of this kind can be remarkably comfortable if they are well kept. I have seldom been better housed on any exploring expedition than in a series of wattle huts set up to form a country hotel in a newly settled part of South Africa. But, of course, the huts of these primitive aborigines were not well kept. Neolithic man was very untidy in his habits, and his wife had scarcely learned the modern technique of housekeeping. This is fortunate for the student, as otherwise we should have known very little of the life of the time. For almost all our information is actually derived from the rubbish, and the more or less accidental deposits of weapons and implements, which were buried or lost in the refuse that covered the floor.

The huts were hollowed out inside to a depth of two feet or three feet below the ground-level. And thus, as Professor Peet says, ‘what is actually found by the excavator is a hole filled with refuse and indistinguishable from the surrounding soil except by the colour of its contents. These holes are called fondi di capanne or foundations of huts. They are usually circular or elliptical, varying in diameter from two to seven or eight metres’. In the centre of this hole stood the hearth, probably built of clay, and round the hearth the excavator finds not only ashes and the burned bones of the meal, but also implements and pottery. These vary considerably in different regions; which shows that, though the industries are generically alike all over the peninsula, there is a great deal of local individuality and original inventiveness. This is generally found to be the case anywhere in the world where people are living in small village communities, especially when the villages are isolated at considerable distances from one another.

Pottery, which is one of the most distinctive inventions of the Neolithic peoples everywhere, affords a good criterion of the artistic development of any particular branch of these peoples. Palaeolithic man had not learned to make pottery, but quite early in the New Stone Age this craft had been completely mastered. The potter’s wheel was still unknown, but this was no disadvantage, for a broad survey of pottery made in various countries will show that the wheel, though a clever device, marks a step towards commercialization rather than an advance in art. Actually the handsomest and finest earthenware pottery, as distinct, of course, from faience or porcelain, has generally been made without the wheel. The most striking example of this fact, which is really a fact and not a paradox, is to be found in ancient Egypt, where the handmade pottery of pre-dynastic times was never equalled in later days. In Italy at this period the pottery is of a fairly high class, but it does not attain the extraordinary excellence of the contemporary products of Sicily. The most widely spread type of ware is a monochrome brown or black, coloured by the smoke of the open fire in which it was burned, and decorated with applied strips and ridges, or pitted with the finger or a pointed stick. Slip coatings were sometimes used to give a smoother surface to the half-purified clay; and the firing, though done without a kiln, was generally quite skilfully performed. In one district of the south, viz. near Matera, a very different ware has been found. This is incised with patterns in a style which somewhat recalls the Sicilian pottery of the same period, and may be related to it in some indirect fashion as a result either of trade or of immigration.

The implements are always of stone, for the use of metal was a discovery of the Orient which had not yet penetrated Europe. As with the pottery so with the stone implements and weapons, there is considerable diversity in the styles of manufacture. In some parts of the country the old Palaeolithic technique still survived, though enriched by some new and improved forms. In many other parts, however, there have been found finely polished axes and adzes, made of such rare and handsome materials as jadeite and nephrite. These remind us of the beautiful greenstone weapons of the New Zealand Maoris; and the accidental resemblance suggests the reflection that perhaps the life of the Maoris may provide a rather apt illustration of the grade of culture attained by the Italian aborigines. If that parallel is admissible it must be agreed that the grade is by no means low.

There is a considerable amount of evidence to suggest that the Neolithic Italians entertained far wider trade relations with the outside world than might have been expected. The use of obsidian both in Liguria and in Tuscany proves intercourse between the north and the Bay of Naples or the Lipari Islands. Some of the incised pottery of Matera and Molfetta is like enough to the contemporary Sicilian to suggest that it came from that island, unless it belonged to a tradition inherited from common ancestors. Certain painted pottery, also from Matera, so closely resembles Thessalian wares that it was probably imported from across the Adriatic. And, finally, the types of some peculiar weapons, such as the disk-shaped mace which is found in Saxony and Denmark, or the hammer-headed axe which was apparently invented near the site of Troy, justify the view that some connexion had already begun with the Danube and regions lying beyond the Alps.

CHAPTER 2—The Introduction of Metals

Metals came into use much later in Italy than in the Eastern Mediterranean.—Dates for the first use of copper and bronze in Egypt, Spain, Hungary, Central Europe.—The lake-dwellers and their connexions.—Cemeteries of the Chalcolithic Age.—Review of the weapons and implements found in these cemeteries.—Complete absence of connexion with Sicily.—The full Bronze Age begins with the Terremare.—Characteristics of the Terremare and their inhabitants.—Importance of these new arrivals as metallurgists and agriculturists.—Commercial connexions, especially with the Danube.—No Mycenaean influence whatsoever.—Rapid development of local metal-working and resultant exportation.—Uniformity of Bronze Age culture in Italy.—Review of improvements in standard of life since Neolithic time.

THE general adoption of the use of metals implies an immense advance in civilization owing to the mastery thereby acquired over every kind of material. This great step had been taken in the Eastern Mediterranean at a time when all Europe was still at the Neolithic stage. Copper was already known and used in Egypt even before the First Dynasty, and by the time of the great pyramid-builders it had become quite common. Early in the history of the Old Kingdom, moreover, the expedient had been adopted of alloying copper with tin, so as to lower the melting-point and also to produce a more durable substance. Accordingly, bronze implements came into use in Egypt at a date which, by any reckoning, is at least as early as the middle of the third millennium B.C. The Egyptians obtained their copper chiefly from the peninsula of Sinai, while Cyprus naturally became the principal source of supply for Crete and the Levant. But the great demand for the new metals induced prospectors from Crete and from Anatolia to explore westwards by sea and by land. This process led to the opening up of Europe and the complete transformation of all European life.

In one direction the immediate effect of this exploring activity was to develop the copper mines in Spain; in another it led to the discovery of the mineral wealth of Hungary and Bohemia. From the close similarity of certain types found both in Spain and in Crete it is possible to obtain an approximate dating for the opening of the Spanish copper mines, which shows them to have been active at a time equivalent to the Egyptian Fourth Dynasty. The Danubian Copper Age in Hungary and Central Europe is probably a little later; but comparisons with the second city of Troy suggest that it had begun by the second half of the third millennium B.C.

The effect of all this activity upon Italy was for some time only indirect; for there is no evidence t...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1-The Neolithic Age
• CHAPTER 2-The Introduction of Metals
• CHAPTER 3-The Partition of the Country in 1000 B.C.
• CHAPTER 4-The Northern Villanovans
• CHAPTER 5-The Southern Villanovans
• CHAPTER 6-Bologna in the Arnoaldi Period
• CHAPTER 7-Este and the Atestines
• CHAPTER 8-Golasecca and the Comacines
• CHAPTER 9-The Picenes of the East Coast
• CHAPTER 10-Apulia. Greeks, Daunians, and others
• CHAPTER 11-Cumae and Campania
• CHAPTER 12-Calabria and the Calabro-Siculans
• CHAPTER 13-Sicily. A General Review
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER