Aurunci

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the mountain range, see
Monti Aurunci
.
Map showing the territory of the Aurunci.

The Aurunci were an Italic tribe that lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC.[1]

Identity

Aurunci is the name given by Roman writers to an ancient race or nation of Italy. It appears that "Aurunci" was the appellation the Romans gave to the people called "

rhotacism (corruption of sound "s" in "r")[2] (Ausoni > Auroni > Auronici > Aurunci).[3]

The identity of the two is distinctly asserted by

Volscians and the Campanians. In like manner, Festus makes the mythical hero Auson the founder of the city of Aurunea.[6][7] Servius terms the Aurunci one of the most ancient nations of Italy.[8] They appear to have been much more powerful and widely spread at an early period than we subsequently find them, but it does not appear that the name was ever employed by the Romans in the vague and extended sense in which "Ausones" was used by the Greeks.[3]

At a later period, in the fourth century BC, the two names of Aurunci and Ausones had assumed a distinct signification, and came to be applied to two petty nations, evidently mere subdivisions of the same great race, both dwelling on the frontiers of

Teanum and the people of Cales, who, according to Livy,[9] were also of Ausonian race, but were politically distinct from the Auruncans. Virgil evidently regards these hills as the original abode of the Auruncan,[10]
and speaks of them as merely a petty people.

In contrast, in 495 BC, Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to them as being a warlike people of great strength and fierceness, who occupied the fairest plains of Campania; so that it seems certain the name is here used as including the people to whom the name of Ausones (in its more limited sense) is afterwards applied.[3]

History

The first occasion in which they appear in Roman history exhibits them as a warlike and powerful nation who had extended their conquests to the borders of Latium.[3]

Livy tells us that in 503 and 502 BC, the Latin cities of

Publius Servilius Priscus Structus.[13]

From this time, the name of the Aurunci does not again occur until 344 BC, when it is evident that Livy is speaking only of the people who inhabited the mountain of Rocca Monfina, who were defeated and reduced to submission without difficulty.[14] A few years later (337 BC), they were compelled by the attacks of their neighbours, the Sidicini, to apply to Rome for aid, and meanwhile abandoned their stronghold on the mountain and established themselves in their new city of Suessa.[15]

No mention of their name is found in the subsequent Roman wars in this part of Italy. In 313 BC, a Roman colony was established at Suessa;[16] their national existence must have been thenceforth at an end. Their territory was subsequently included in Campania.[3][17]

Legacy

The

Aurunci mountains and the modern town of Sessa Aurunca
bears the Aurunci's name.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-4381-2918-1
    .
  2. Latin: Rhotacism
  3. ^ a b c d e Bunbury 1854, p. 343.
  4. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Servius ad Aen. vii. 727.
  5. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Cassius Dio Fr. 2.
  6. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Festus, s. v. Ausonia
  7. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343
  8. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Servius ad Aen. vii. 206.
  9. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy, viii. 16.
  10. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Virgil, Aen. vii. 727.
  11. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy, ii. 16, 17.
  12. ^ Liv. 2.16.8.2 http://latin.packhum.org/loc/914/1/76/1446-1453
  13. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy, ii. 26; Dionys vi. 32.
  14. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy vii. 28.
  15. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy, viii. 15.
  16. ^ Bunbury 1854, p. 343 cites Livy, ix. 28.
  17. ^ William Smith (1869). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. James Walton. pp. 343–.
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