The Peoples of Ancient Italy

Gary D. Farney, Guy Bradley, Gary D. Farney, Guy Bradley

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781501500145
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Although there are many studies of certain individual ancient Italic groups (e.g. the Etruscans, Gauls and Latins), there is no work that takes a comprehensive view of each of them—the famous and the less well-known—that existed in Iron Age and Roman Italy. Moreover, many previous studies have focused only on the material evidence for these groups or on what the literary sources have to say about them.

This handbook is conceived of as a resource for archaeologists, historians, philologists and other scholars interested in finding out more about Italic groups from the earliest period they are detectable (early Iron Age, in most instances), down to the time when they begin to assimilate into the Roman state (in the late Republican or early Imperial period). As such, it will endeavor to include both archaeological and historical perspectives on each group, with contributions from the best-known or up-and-coming archaeologists and historians for these peoples and topics. The language of the volume is English, but scholars from around the world have contributed to it. This volume covers the ancient peoples of Italy more comprehensively in individual chapters, and it is also distinct because it has a thematic section.

The Peoples of Ancient Italy

Loredana Cappelletti

The Bruttii

Loredana Cappelletti: FWF-Project No. P 30279–G25, Department of Roman Law and Ancient Legal History, University of Vienna, Austria. E-Mail: [email protected]

The Italic ethnos of Oscan stock, which the Romans called the Bruttii and the Greeks Βρέττιοι, was settled, from the middle of the fourth century BC, in the mountainous regions of present-day Calabria. The northern boundary of the territory was marked by the Thurii-Laos isthmus while to the south it stretched, across the high plain of the Sila, as far as the hinterland of Locri and Rhegium (Fig. 1). By that period the region had already been inhabited for some time: from the eighth century BC by the Greeks, who had founded their colonies there along the coasts; even earlier by the pre-Samnite indigenous peoples of the Oenotri and Coni; and from the fifth century BC also by the Lucani, who on the Ionian side had their “capital” Petelia (mod. Strongoli) a little to the north of Croton (Pesando 2005; Lazzarini and Poccetti 2001; Guzzo 1989).

As appears from the literary sources, the Bruttii were for almost two centuries among the principal protagonists of the history of ancient Italy. Politically and militarily organized, they formed alliances and fought wars with Italiotes, Siceliotes, Greeks, Italians and Romans. At the end of the third century BC they finally lost their independence at the hands of the Romans. The political existence of the ethnos ended simultaneously, and it disappears from Latin and Greek historical narratives and from the history of the peninsula. From this time on we find in the ancient authors only allusions to the history of the territory, Bruttium or Βρεττία.

While we are reasonably well-informed of the political history of this people, it is much more difficult to arrive at a description of their way of life and the particular characteristics of their identity. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence, which could permit a description of those aspects, is actually rather sparse. This may perhaps be due to the brief life-span of this people, during which they were continually involved in the activities of war, with the results of human loss and the endless devastation of districts and settlements. But it is more probable that the scarcity of information is due to the slowness with which archaeological investigations of this area have taken place, becoming more frequent only in the last decades. From their partial results, however, fundamental data have come to light. First of all, it becomes evident how the characteristics of the land notably conditioned the socio-economic existence of the Bruttii and their modes of settlement: a primarily mountainous land, difficult to cultivate, which for many centuries was given over almost exclusively to the activities of sheep-rearing and exploitation of forest resources; an environment, moreover, which prevented or delayed an evolution in terms of urban planning of specifically Bruttian forms of building and organization. On the other hand, the position of the Bruttii, near the poleis of Magna Graecia and in direct political and commercial contact with them, in some cases even living with them, produced a profound and widespread Hellenization of this people, manifest above all in their language and religion. This evidence contrasts with the image of the Bruttii drawn from the literary tradition, especially the Greek, which portrays them as a people of slavish shepherds, rough and aggressive brigands/fighters, prone to be traitors, completely foreign to Hellenic civilization as well as to Roman ethics (Lombardo 1989, 251‒259; Dench 1995, 44‒80).

Fig. 1. Map with places mentioned in the text.

IHistorical events, mid-fourth to the end of the third century BC

The Bruttii made their entry into history in 356 BC. Diodorus (16.15.1‒2) says that in that year individuals assembled in Lucania, of various origins but largely fugitive slaves, experts in brigandage and the affairs of war. After having defeated the Lucani and a number of Italiot centres, they set up a shared government and called themselves Brettioi, a word which in the local language meant precisely “fugitive slaves.” In Justin (23.1.4‒14) we find that the people formed itself when fifty youths from the Lucani united with the shepherds who lived in the region’s forests and began to sack the surrounding Italiot centres. The Italiotes sought help from Dionysius II of Syracuse who sent mercenaries. The castellum occupied by the mercenaries was then overcome thanks to a woman named Bruttia. The shepherds who were gathered there decided to unite into a common civitas and to call themselves Bruttii from the woman’s name. The Bruttii fought above all against the Lucani, their progenitors; the conflict was concluded with a pax aequo iure (a peace on equal terms) and then by recognition of their independence (i.e. of the Bruttii) on the part of the Lucani, who most probably had to give up from that time a part of their territory including Petelia (Cappelletti 2002, 27‒38). For Strabo also (6.1.4) the Bruttii were in origin slave-shepherds of the Lucani and came into being as an ethnos when they freed themselves from their inferior condition, separating themselves from the Lucani, who called them Brettioi, which in their language meant “rebels.” The three narratives are substantially in agreement; in Justin, however, the decisive role in the process of the formation of the people is played by a mulier named Bruttia. It is important to emphasize that other women of Bruttian origin are at the centre of historical events of the third century BC, and this literary tradition seems to reflect the existence of a position of prominence invested in the woman of Bruttian society, confirmed, as we shall see, by the architecture and rich grave goods in female tombs (Cappelletti 2005).

According, therefore, to Justin, Diodorus and Strabo, the Bruttian people came into being in 356 BC, acquiring an identity and a name following an earlier condition which was ethnically heterogeneous and indeterminate. But this only corresponds in part with other known evidence. The ethnic name of the Bruttii had actually already existed two centuries earlier. The Italic formula of possession Bruties esum “I am of Bruttius”, incised in the mid-sixth century BC on an oinochoe of bucchero from southern Campania (Imagines, Nuceria Alfaterna 3), indicates a personal name formed on the root brut‐ from the ethnic name of the Bruttii. In the fifth century BC, Antiochus (FGrH 555 F3c) uses the ethnicon to indicate a vast area of present-day Calabria, and Aristophanes (F638 Kassel–Austin) amused his Athenian public by describing the Bruttian language as horrible and obscure, with an implicit reference to the dark colour of pitch, the famous pix Bruttia produced in the Sila and much renowned in antiquity (Lombardo 1995; Zumbo 1995, 278‒280). It is highly probable, therefore, that in the fifth to sixth centuries BC the ethnic name referred to a population of Oscan stock in an inferior social position to the Lucani and it became, for the Lucani themselves and for the ancient sources, synonymous with “rebels” and “fugitive slaves” only from 356 BC, when the Bruttii won their ethnic and political independence.

With the first victorious war against the Lucani the process of the Bruttian nation’s growth and expansion began, which was achieved above all to the detriment of various Italiot cities: attacks against Thurii and Croton on the Ionian coast and the conquests of Terina, Temesa and Hipponium on the Tyrrhenian side. This was a process which found new vigour from the victory over Alexander the Molossian, who had come from Epirus to Italy in 333 BC to help the Tarentines against the Bruttii, Lucani and Messapii, and was killed at Pandosia in 331/330 BC (Cappelletti 2002, 27‒75). Not even their unexpected defeat at the hands of Agathocles of Syracuse in 294 BC succeeded in stopping the growth of the Bruttii; in the course of half a century they had become fortissimi, opulentissimi and one of the most powerful and feared states of the peninsula (Justin 23.1.3).

The clash with Rome was by now inevitable and took place in 282 BC when a coalition of Bruttii and Lucani attacked Thurii, who in turn called on the Romans for help. The victory of the consul C. Fabricius Luscinus over the two peoples was crushing, but not conclusive, because together with the Samnites, Messapii and Tarentines they allied themselves with Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, in 281 BC, and a year later under his leadership marched against Rome. In the summer of 279 BC Bruttian foot soldiers and cavalry fought alongside Pyrrhus in the Battle of Asculum (near mod. Ascoli Satriano) in Puglia; it was their last victory against Rome, and a bitter one because of the heavy losses suffered by Pyrrhus and his allies. It was followed by repeated defeats up to 272 BC, the worst being that of 275 BC, after which Pyrrhus, by now thoroughly discomfited, abandoned Italy. His Italiot and Italic allies had to suffer the repercussions of their anti-Roman conduct: according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 20.15) the Bruttii surrendered voluntarily to the Romans and were compelled to cede half of the Sila (Cappelletti 2002, 111‒128).

The Bruttii remained faithful socii of the Romans for half a century and fought with them against Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. But here the Romans were defeated and many peoples and cities of southern Italy passed to the Carthaginian general. The Bruttii were among the first to ally themselves with Hannibal and the last to abandon him in 204 BC. A number of their centres, such as Petelia and Cosenza, remained faithful to Rome and so were besieged by Hannibal and their own compatriots. The military commitment of the Bruttii to Hannibal was notable: for him they laid siege to and conquered Locri and Croton, and placed at his disposal troops and land for the duration of the war. In 211 BC, after Capua fell into Roman hands, individual Bruttian centres and groups started to abandon the alliance with Hannibal, who also began to harbour suspicion of the Bruttii that remained with him, taking cruel measures against them: imposition of many taxes, destruction of fortified cities, and trials and executions of many men in order to confiscate their property. By 207 BC the Carthaginian sphere of action was restricted to Bruttian territory alone; Hannibal had established his headquarters at Croton and from the port of Croton he left Italy in 203 BC, after the Bruttii had finally surrendered to the Romans in 204 BC (Cappelletti 2002, 128‒171).

IIPolitical/institutional and settlement structures

In 356 BC the Bruttii became an autonomous ethnos of the Lucani and at the same time formed a shared political organization, a league. Diodorus (16.15.1‒2) and Strabo (6.1.2) define it respectively as κοινὴ πολιτεία and σύστημα κοινόν, and both refer in technical terms to the existence of a government and of a citizenship shared by the whole population. Justin (23.1.11‒13) describes as a civitas the association created by the pastores Bruttii when they overcame the castellum occupied by the mercenaries from Syracuse, which became their nova urbs (Cappelletti 1997). It is probable that the castellum/nova urbs was Consentia, described by Strabo (6.1.5) as a μητρόπολις τῶν Βρεττίων, in other words the place of origin of the people and the political capital of the Bruttian League. There are a number of indications in favour of this identification: Consentia’s position on high ground and its fortified walls dating to the fourth century BC; the probable derivation of the place-name from an Oscan word analogous to Latin consensus, with a reference to the “agreements” made by the Bruttii during the meetings at their federal seat; and finally the symbol of the crab, found on town and federal coins, which could be an allusion to the river Carcinus, Greek καρκίνος, “crab,” the present-day Corace in the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Themes in the Study of the Ancient Italian Peoples
• The Peoples of Ancient Italy
• Contributors