Ancient civilizations-2

Populations of central northern Italy and of the Alps

The ethnography of the Po and Alpine regions is complex and obscure because of the early spread of Etruscan culture and colonization. The ancients record two major ethnic groups (aside from the Etruscans and the Veneti): the Euganei, inhabiting the plain and the Alpine foothills, and the Raeti, in the valleys of the Trentino and the Alto Adige. Minor peoples in the region belonged to one or the other of these stocks or to Ligurian stocks; with regard to many of these peoples, the sources speak of an Illyrian or an Etruscan origin.

Late inscriptions discovered in the Adige River valley and on the plain have a dialect showing some affinities to Etruscan. Some scholars see in this a blending of local and Etruscan elements, while others speak of an indigenous pre-Indo-European language with Indo-European influences. Primitive toponomastics confirm the existence of a linguistic stratum that could be defined as Raetian or Raeto-Euganean but distinguish it sharply from the Venetic and probably also from the Ligurian. Other inscriptions from the Val Camonica and the Garda district attest to a more noticeable Indo-European dialect, due perhaps to Celtic and Latin influences. To the west are the so-called Lepontian inscriptions.

Thus in the central Alpine and sub-Alpine area, there were original populations, different from the Veneti and the Etruscans, whose kinship with the Ligurians remains uncertain. The distinction between Euganean and Raetic tribes can be based only upon an approximate geographic criterion. To this original ethnic stratum may have belonged the most ancient inhabitants of the region, who settled there before the immigration of the Illyrian Veneti and the Etruscan conquest; certain cremation sepulchres of the Verona and Mantua regions may be attributed to them. Perhaps the existence of a Venetian goddess Reitia, recorded by Strabo and mentioned in inscriptions from Este, is some proof of a Raeto-Euganean cultural persistence in the territory occupied by the Veneti. Nancy Thomson de Grummond

Citation Information

Article Title: Ancient Italic people

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 12 November 2015

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ancient-Italic-people

Access Date: August 20, 2019

Additional Reading

The basic guide is Popoli e civilità dell’Italia antica, 7 vol. (1974–78). Outdated but still useful are Joshua Whatmough, The Foundations of Roman Italy (1937, reprinted 1971); and David Randall-MacIver, Italy Before the Romans (1928, reprinted 1972). On the Etruscans there are three essential books in English that guide the reader through the bewildering maze of recent discoveries and research: Massimo Pallottino, The Etruscans, rev. and enlarged ed. edited by David Ridgway (1975; originally published in Italian, 6th ed., rev. and enlarged, 1975); David Ridgway and Francesca R. Ridgway (eds.), Italy Before the Romans: The Iron Age, Orientalizing, and Etruscan Periods (1979); and Larissa Bonfante (ed.), Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (1986), which lists the many catalogs of exhibitions and other publications that came out as a result of “The Year of the Etruscans” in Italy in 1985. Among recent interpretations of Etruscan culture and history, the best in English are Mauro Cristofani, The Etruscans: A New Investigation (1979; originally published in Italian, 1978); and Michael Grant, The Etruscans (1980). Giuliano Bonfante and Larissa Bonfante, The Etruscan Language (1983), is a helpful introduction. Works on other individual Italic peoples, civilizations, and languages include the Ridgways’ book, cited earlier; Luigi Bernabò Brea, Sicily Before the Greeks, rev. ed. (1966); Renato Peroni, Archeologia della Puglia preistorica (1967); A. Alföldi, Early Rome and the Latins (1963); Gabriella Giacomelli, La lingua falisca (1963); Giacomo Devoto, Gli antichi Italici, 3rd ed. rev. (1967); E.T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (1967); G.A. Mansuelli and R. Scarani, L’emilia prima dei Romani (1961); G.B. Pellegrini and A.L. Prosdocimi, La lingua venetica, 2 vol. (1967); and on Italic inscriptions, Oronzo Parlangeli, Studi messapici (1960); and Allessandro Morandi, Epigrafia italica (1982). Nancy Thomson de Grummond