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Bruttians

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The Bruttians (alternative spelling, Brettii) (Template:Lang-la) were an ancient Italic people. They inhabited the southern extremity of Italy, from the frontiers of Lucania to the Sicilian Straits and the promontory of Leucopetra.[1] This roughly corresponds to the modern region of Calabria.

Occupying originally the mountains and hills of modern Calabria, they were the southernmost branch of the Osco-Umbrian Italic tribes, and were ultimately descended from the Samnites through the process of ver sacrum.

They are remembered as pillagers and conquerors of the ancient Greek poleis in Magna Graecia and brave rebels of the Romans.

Etymology

Bronze coin of the Bruttii (ΒΡΕΤΤΙΩΝ), 208-205 BC

The name Bruttii must have been ancient since Diodorus[2] speaks of the Bruttians as having expelled the remainder of the Sybarites, who had settled Sybaris on the Traeis after the destruction of their own city. Stephanus of Byzantium cites Antiochus of Syracuse, as using the name of Brettia for this part of Italy.[3]

The first archaeological evidence for the existence of Bruttii is an inscription "Bruties esum" (I am of Brutius) on pottery in southern Campania from the mid 6th century BC.[4]

The name is Indo-European. It is similar to Illyrian ethnonym Brentii from *brentos (deer).[5] A close variant is attested in the name of the Bruttii in ancient Greek (Template:Lang-grc) and the name of the community on its coinage (ΒΡΕΤΤΙΩΝ, "of the Brettioi").[6] Polybius, in more than one passage, calls it ἡ Βρεττιανὴ Χώρα, likely corresponding to the natives' name for their land, "Brettiōn".[7]

After 356 BC when the Bruttii became independent, the name of the Bruttii became synonyms with "rebels" and "fugitive slaves" for the Lucanians and the ancient sources of the period.[4]

Geography

The land of the Bruttii was bounded on the north by Lucania, from which it was separated by a line drawn from the river Laus near the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Crathis near the Gulf of Tarentum. On the west it was washed by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and on the south and east by that known in ancient times as the Sicilian Sea, including under that appellation the Gulf of Tarentum. This corresponds approximately to modern Calabria, which was named as such only during Byzantine times.

Livy uses the term Bruttii provincia.[8]

It was included by Augustus in the Third Region (Regio III), together with Lucania; and the two provinces appear to have continued united for most administrative purposes until the fall of the Roman Empire, and were governed conjointly by a magistrate termed a Corrector. The Liber Coloniarum however treats the Provincia Bruttiorum as distinct from that of Lucania.[9]

History

Southern Italy in antiquity.

Origins

The land occupied by the Bruttii was inhabited in the earliest times by the Oenotrians, a native Italic tribe whose name refers to winemaking, of which the Conii and Morgetes appear to have been subordinate divisions.[citation needed] It was while the Oenotrians were still masters of the land that the first Greek trading outposts were founded; and the beauty of the climate and country, as well as the rapid prosperity attained by these first settlements, proved so attractive that within a few years many Greek colonies appeared.[citation needed]

Such appears to have been the state of things at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC); but in the course of the following century a great change took place. The Lucanians (an Oscan people), who had been gradually extending their conquests towards the south, and had already made themselves masters of the northern parts of Oenotria, now pressed forwards into the Bruttian peninsula, and established their dominion over the interior of that country and many of the Greek outposts.[citation needed] This probably took place after their great victory over the Thurii, near Laüs, in 390 BC.

The rise of the Bruttii is dated to approximately 356 BC[10] at the time of the expedition of Dion against Dionysius the Younger. The wars of the latter as well as of his father, with the Greek cities in southern Italy, and the state of confusion and weakness to which these were reduced in consequence, probably contributed in a great degree to pave the way for the rise of the Bruttian power.

The Bruttii are represented by some ancient authors as a congregation of rebellious natives;[11] Justin describes them as headed by 500 youths of Lucanian origin who joined the shepherds living in the forests together with other predecessor Italic tribes from the area, not just the Oenotrians, but also the Ausones, Mamertines, Italy, and Sicels.[12] These groups are described as mostly fugitive slaves by Diodorus and as "experts in affairs of war". In these stories because of their social conditions the name of the Bruttii acquired the meaning of "rebels" or "fugitive slaves".[13]

The Bruttii spoke a variant of Oscan and Illyrian settlement in older periods provided considerable Illyrian elements.[14]

Development

The progress of the Bruttii after their first appearance in history was rapid. They quickly became numerous and powerful enough to defy the arms of the Lucanians, and not only maintained their independence in the mountain districts of the interior, but attacked and made themselves masters of the Greek cities of Hipponium, Terina, and Thurii.[15] Their independence seems to have been readily acknowledged by the Lucanians; and less than 30 years after their first revolt, the two nations united their arms as allies against their Greek neighbours. The latter applied for assistance to Alexander, king of Epirus, who crossed over into Italy with an army, and carried on the war for several successive campaigns, during which he reduced Heraclea, Consentia (modern Cosenza), and Terina; but finally perished in a battle against the combined forces of the Lucanians and Bruttii, near Pandosia, 326 BC.[16]

They next had to contend against the arms of Agathocles, who ravaged their coasts with his fleets, took the city of Hipponium, which he converted into a strong fortress and naval station, and compelled the Bruttians to conclude a disadvantageous peace. But they soon broke this treaty; and recovered possession of Hipponium.[17] This appears to have been the period when the Bruttian nation had reached its highest pitch of power and prosperity; it was not long before they had to contend with a more formidable adversary, and as early as 282 BC they joined and the Lucanians and Samnites against the growing power of Rome.[18] A few years later they are mentioned as sending auxiliaries to the army of Pyrrhus; but after the defeat of that monarch, and his expulsion from Italy, they had to bear the full brunt of the war, and after repeated campaigns and successive triumphs of the Roman generals, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus and Lucius Papirius, they were finally reduced to submission, and compelled to purchase peace by the surrender of one-half of the great forest of Sila, so valuable for its pitch and timber.[19]

Second Punic War

Their submission however was still but imperfect; and though they remained tranquil throughout the First Punic War, the invasion of Hannibal in the Second proved difficult for the region, and some Bruttian cities supported the Carthaginian general after the Battle of Cannae.[20] Rhegium (modern Reggio Calabria remained firm, and was able to defy the Carthaginian arms throughout the war.[21] In 215 BC, Hanno, the lieutenant of Hannibal, after his defeat at Grumentum by Tiberius Gracchus, threw himself into Bruttium, where he was soon after joined by a body of fresh troops from Carthage under Bomilcar: and from this time he made that region his stronghold, from whence he repeatedly issued to oppose the Roman generals in Lucania and Samnium, while he constantly fell back upon it as a place of safety when defeated or hard pressed by the enemy. The physical character of the country rendered it necessarily a military position of the greatest strength: and after the defeat and death of Hasdrubal Hannibal himself put forces into some Bruttian territory, where he continued to maintain his ground against the Roman generals.[22] There is very little information concerning the operations of the four years during which Hannibal retained his positions in this province: he appears to have made his headquarters for the most part in the neighbourhood of Crotona, but the name of Castra Hannibalis retained by a small town on the Gulf of Squillace, points to his having occupied this also as a permanent station. Meanwhile, the Romans, though avoiding any decisive engagement, were continually gaining ground on him by the successive reduction of towns and fortresses, so that very few of these remained in the hands of the Carthaginian general when he was finally recalled from Italy.

Romanisation

The ravages of so many successive campaigns inflicted a severe blow upon the prosperity of Bruttium: the measures adopted by the Romans to punish them completed their romanization. They were deprived of a great part of their territory, It was however some time before they were altogether crushed: for several years after the close of the Second Punic War, one of the praetors was annually sent with an army to watch over the Bruttians: and it was evidently with the view of more fully securing their subjection that three colonies of Roman veteran soldiers and their families were established in their territory, two of Roman citizens at Tempsa and Crotona, and a third with Latin rights at Hipponium, to which the name of Vibo Valentia was now given. A fourth was at the same time settled at Thurii on their immediate frontier.[23] Among the settlers at the latter were some ancestors of the first Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus.

So complete was the romanisation of the region, that the Bruttians as a people were not mentioned separately except for a few exceptions. First, their country again became the theatre of war during the revolt of Spartacus, who after his first defeats by Crassus, took refuge in the southernmost portion of Bruttium (called by Plutarch the Rhegian peninsula), in which the Roman general sought to confine him by drawing lines of intrenchment across the isthmus from sea to sea. The insurgent leader however forced his way through, and again carried the war into the heart of Lucania.[24]

Next, during the Civil Wars the coasts of Bruttium were repeatedly laid waste by the fleets of Sextus Pompeius, and witnessed several conflicts between the latter and those of Octavian, who had established the headquarters both of his army and navy at Vibo.[25] Strabo speaks of the whole province as reduced in his time to a state of complete decay.[26]

Late Empire

The traditional view was that southern Italy including Bruttii was insignificant economically and declined further in the last centuries of the empire (see Crisis of the Third Century) as elsewhere.

However, the wealth of the Roman Villa Palazzi di Casignana in the 4th century, one of many examples in the region that have been discovered in the last 20 years,[27] shows that the area enjoyed a long period of relative tranquility and security during the 3rd and also over the next century.[28] Indeed, the territory experienced an economic boom and significant growth in the rural population, with the numerous villas, farms, villages, churches and rural dioceses identified by surface reconnaissance and aerial photography. Nearby there were similar luxurious villas at Marina di Gioiosa Ionica (1st c. BC- 4th c. AD), Naniglio in Gioiosa Ionica, Ardore (3rd-4th c.) and at Quote San Francesco (5th- 6th c.).[29]

Between the 2nd and 3rd centuries many smaller villa-farms, which had lower productivity and could not compete with the larger ones (especially latifundia), often failed and were forced to sell them to the wealthy or more successful land owners who were able to invest in land and multiply their productivity and wealth.[30] They were then able to expand their luxurious villas with greater opulence and monumental style. In Bruttii for these reasons, more than 60% of the villas from the Republican and early imperial period disappeared in this period, and this effect continued in the 4-5th centuries in particular the coastal areas of the region.[31]

The fortunate central position of this area in the Mediterranean and the good land and sea network were decisive factors for the investment by the rich Roman senatorial aristocracy and local notables in the 4th and 5th centuries, and for the holding of the imperial property which was significant in this area. Southern Italy was one of the last enclaves, between the 5th and 6th centuries, of great estates and of economic development linked to agriculture, livestock farming, craftsmanship and trade, while elsewhere in Italy the system was crumbling.[32] The coastal area, however, was abandoned in the 5th century due to proobably to Arab incursions which led to development of centres in the safest hills in the interior, such as Gerace.

By the fifth century decline of the Western Empire, the region of Brettiōn was recorded as requesting help from the Roman Emperor from pirate raids on the coast, something that for years was recorded in error as occurring in Britain as the Groans of the Britons, due to similarity of the names.[33]

See also

References

  1. ^ Bruttii https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=bruttii-geo
  2. ^ xii. 22.
  3. ^ Comp. Dionys. i. 12. It is more remarkable that, according to the same authority, the name of Brettian as an adjective (μελαίνη γλώσσα Βρεττία) was used by Aristophanes, at least 30 years before the date assigned for the rise of the nation.
  4. ^ a b Cappelletti 2017, p. 324
  5. ^ Szemerényi 1987, p. 912.
  6. ^ Pol. ix. 7, 25, xi. 7; Strabo vi. p. 255.
  7. ^ i. 56, ix. 27.
  8. ^ Treb. Poll. Tetricks, 24; Notit. Dign. ii. pp. 10, 120.
  9. ^ Plin. iii. 5. s. 10; Not. Dign. ii. 18. p. 64; Orell. Inscr. 1074, 1187; Lib. Colon. p. 209.
  10. ^ Diodorus xvi. 15
  11. ^ Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 98
  12. ^ Strabo, Geography VI, 1
  13. ^ Strabo, Geography VI, 1
  14. ^ Palmer 1988, p. 39.
  15. ^ Diod. xvi. 15; Strab. vi. p. 255.
  16. ^ Livy viii. 24; Justin. xii. 2, xxiii. 1; Strab. v. p. 256.
  17. ^ Diod. xxi. 3, 8; Justin. xxiii. 1.
  18. ^ Liv. Epit. xii.; Fast. Capit.
  19. ^ Dionys. xx. Fr. Mai and Didot; Fast. Capit.; Zonar. viii. 6.
  20. ^ Liv. xxii. 61.
  21. ^ Id. xxiii. 20, 30, xxiv. 1-3.
  22. ^ Id. xxvii. 51.
  23. ^ Liv. xxxiv. 45, xxxv. 40.
  24. ^ Plut. Crass. 10, 11; Flor. iii. 20.
  25. ^ Appian, B.C. iv. 86, v. 19, 91, 103, etc.
  26. ^ vi. p. 253.
  27. ^ A.B. Sangineto, Per la ricostruzione del paesaggio agrario della Calabria romana, in Settis 1994, 558-593
  28. ^ G. Volpe, Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali dell’Apulia tardoantica e altomedievale, in: Volpe – Turchiano 2005, 299–314.
  29. ^ Maria Gabriella Bruni, The Monumental Villa at Palazzi di Casignana and the Roman Elite in Calabria (Italy) during the Fourth Century AD. Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Archaeology University of California, Berkeley, 2009 p 143
  30. ^ A. Carandini, Il latifondo in epoca romana, fra Italia e province, in Du Latifundium au latifondo, Un héritage de Rome, une creation médiévale ou modèrne, Actes de la table ronde (Bordeaux 1992), Paris, 31-36.
  31. ^ A.B. Sangineto, Per la ricostruzione del paesaggio agrario della Calabria romana, in Settis 1994, p 584
  32. ^ G. Volpe – M. Turchiano, The last enclave. Rural settlement in the 5th century in Southern Italy: the case of Apulia, in: P. Delogu – S. Gasparri (ed.), Le tras-formazioni del V secolo. L’Italia, i barbari e l’occidente romano (Turnhout 2010) 531–577
  33. ^ "Ελληνική Ιστορία και Προϊστορία - Greek History and Prehistory: The Byzantine Ambrosius Aurelianus (King Arthur) and his victorious battle of Mons Badonicus in Britain against Anglo-Saxons".

Sources

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