Listed 4 sub titles with search on: The inhabitants for wider area of: "AUSONIA Ancient country CAMPANIA" .
AUSONIA (Ancient country) CAMPANIA
An Ausonian people in the northwest of Campania and on the borders
of Samnium, who, being hard pressed by the Samnites, united themselves to the
Campanians. Their chief town was Teanum.
The Ausonians, a very ancient, perhaps Greek, name of the primitive inhabitants of Middle and Lower Italy
Ausones is the name given by Greek writers to one of the ancient nations
or races that inhabited Central Italy. The usage of ancient writers in regard
to all these national appellations is very vague and fluctuating, and perhaps
in no instance more so than in the case of the Ausones or Ausonians. But notwithstanding
this uncertainty, some points appear to be pretty clearly made out concerning
them.
1. The Ausonians were either identical with the Opicans or Oscans, or were at
least a part of the same race and family. Aristotle expressly tells us (Pol. vii.
10), that the part of Italy towards Tyrrhenia was inhabited by the Opicans, who
were called, both formerly and in his time, by the additional name of Ausones.
Antiochus of Syracuse also said, that Campania was at first occupied by the Opicans,
who were also called Ausonians. (Ant. ap. Strab. v. p. 242.) Polybius, on the
contrary, appears to have regarded the two nations as different, and spoke of
Campania as inhabited by the Ausonians and Opicans; but this does not necessarily
prove that they were really distinct, for we find in the same manner the Opicans
and Oscans mentioned by some writers as if they were two different nations (Strab.
l. c.), though there can be no doubt that these are merely forms of the same name.
Hecataeus also appears to have held the same view with Antiochus, as he called
Nola in Campania a city of the Ausones (ap. Steph. B. s. v. Nola).
2. The Ausones of the Greeks were the same people who were termed Aurunci by the
Romans: the proofs of the original identity of the two have been already given
under Aurunci But at a later period the two appellations were distinguished and
applied to two separate tribes or nations.
3. The name of Ausones, in this restricted and later sense of the term, is confined
to a petty nation on the borders of Latium and Campania. In one passage Livy speaks
of Cales as their chief city; but a little later he tells us that they had three
cities, Ausona, Minturnae, and Vescia, all of which appear to have been situated
in the plains bordering on the Liris, not far from its mouth. (Liv. viii. 16,
ix. 25.) At this period they were certainly an inconsiderable tribe, and were
able to offer but little resistance to the Roman arms. Their city of Cales was
captured, and soon after occupied by a Roman colony, B.C. 333; and though a few
years afterwards the success of the Samnites at Lautulae induced them to take
up arms again, their three remaining towns were easily reduced by the Roman consuls,
and their inhabitants put to the sword. On this occasion Livy tells us (ix. 25)
that the Ausonian nation was destroyed; it is certain that its name does not again
appear in history, and is only noticed by Pliny (iii. 5. s. 9) among the extinct
races which had formerly inhabited Latium.
But however inconsiderable the Ausonians appear at this time, it is
clear that at a much earlier period they were a powerful and widely extended nation.
For although it is probable that the Greeks frequently applied the name with little
regard to accuracy, and may have included races widely different under the common
appellation of Ausonians, it is impossible to account for this vague and general
use of the name, unless the people to whom it really belonged had formed an important
part of the population of Central Italy. The precise relation in which they were
considered as standing to the Opicans or Oscans it is impossible to determine,
nor perhaps were the ideas of the Greeks themselves upon this point very clear
and definite. The passages already cited prove that they were considered as occupying
Campania and the western coast of Italy, on which account the Lower Sea (Mare
Inferum, as it was termed by the Romans), subsequently known as the Tyrrhenian,
was in early ages commonly called by the Greeks the Ausonian Sea.1
(Strab. v. 233; Dionys. i. 11; Lycophr. Alex. 44; Apoll. Rhod. iv. 590.) Other
accounts, however, represent them as originally an inland people, dwelling in
the mountains about Beneventum. (Festus, s. v. Ausonia.) Scymnus Chius also speaks
of them as occupying an inland region (Perieg. 228); and Strabo (p. 233) tells
us that they had occupied the mountain tract above the Pontine marshes, where
in Roman history we meet only with Volscians. On the whole, it is probable that
the name was applied with little discrimination to all the native races who, prior
to the invasion of the Samnites, occupied Campania and the inland mountainous
region afterwards known as Samnium, and from thence came to be gradually applied
to all the inhabitants of Central Italy. But they seem to have been regarded by
the best authorities as distinct from the Oenotrians, or Pelasgic races, which
inhabited the southern parts of the peninsula (see Aristot. l. c.); though other
authors certainly confounded them. Hellanicus according to Dionysius (i. 22) spoke
of the Ausonians as crossing over into Sicily under their king Siculus, where
the people meant are clearly the Siculi. Again, Strabo speaks (vi. p. 255) of
Temesa as founded by the Ausones, where he must probably mean the Oenotrians,
the only people whom we know of as inhabiting these regions before the arrival
of the Greeks. The use of the name of Aitsonia for the whole Italian peninsula
was merely poetical, at least it is not found in any extant prose writer; and
Dionysius, who assures us it was used by the Greeks in very early times, associates
it with Hesperia and Saturnia, both of them obviously poetical appellations (i.
35). Lycophron, though he does not use the name of Ausonia, repeatedly applies
the adjective Ausonian both to the country and people, apparently as equivalent
to Italian; for he includes under the appellation, Arpi in Apulia, Agylla in Etruria,
the neighbourhood of Cumae in Campania, and the banks of the Crathis in Lucania.
(Alex. 593, 615, 702, 922, 1355.) Apollonius Rhodius, a little later, seems to
use the name of Ausonia (Ausonie) precisely in the sense in which it is employed
by Dionysius Periegetes and other Greek poets of later times - for the whole Italian
peninsula. It was probably only adopted by the Alexandrian writers as a poetical
equivalent for Italia, a name which is not found in any poets of that period.
(Apoll. Rhod. iv. 553, 660, &c.; Dion. Per. 366, 383, &c.) From them the name
of Ausonia was adopted by the Roman poets in the same sense (Virg. Aen. vii. 55,
x. 54, &c.), and at a later period became not uncommon even in prose writers.
The etymology of the name of Ausones is uncertain; but it seems not improbable
that it is originally connected with the same root as Oscus or Opicus. (Buttmann.
Lexil. vol. i. p. 68; Donaldson, Varronianus, pp. 3, 4.)
1 Pliny,on the contrary (iii. 5 s. 10, 10. s. 15), and, if we may trust
his authority, Polybius also, applied the name of Ausonium Mare, to the sea on
the SE. of Italy, from Sicily to the Iapygian Promontory, but this is certainly
at variance with the customary usage of the term.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited October 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Aurunci (Aurounkoi), is the name given by Roman writers to an ancient
race or nation of Italy. It appears certain that it was originally the appellation
given by them to the people called Ausones by the Greeks: indeed, the two names
are merely different forms of the same, with the change so common in Latin of
the s into the r. (Aurunci=Aurunici=Auruni=Ausuni.) The identity of the two is
distinctly asserted by Servius (ad Aen. vii. 727), and clearly implied by Dion
Cassius (Fr. 2), where he says, that the name of Ausonia was properly applied
only to the land of the Auruncans, between the Volscians and the Campanians. In
like manner Festus (s. v. Ausonia) makes the mythical hero Auson the founder of
the city of Aurunca., Servius terms the Aurunci one of the most ancient nations
of Italy (ad Aen. vii. 206); and they certainly appear to have been at an early
period much more powerful and widely spread than we subsequently find them. But
it does not appear that the name was ever employed by the Romans in the vague
and extensive sense in which that of Ausones was used by the Greeks.
At a later period, in the fourth century B.C., 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 Latium and Campania; the Ausones on the W. of the Liris, extending
from thence to the mountains of the Volscians; the Auruncans, on the other hand,
being confined to the detached group of volcanic mountains now called Monte di
Sta Croce, or Rocca Monjina, on the left bank of the Liris, together with the
hills that slope from thence towards the sea. Their ancient stronghold or metropolis,
Aurunca was situated near the summit of the mountain, while Suessa which they
subsequently made their capital, was on its south-western slope, commanding the
fertile plains from thence to the sea. On the E. and S. they bordered closely
on the Sidicini of Teanum and the people of Cales, who, according to Livy (viii.
16), were also of Ausonian race, but were politically distinct from the Auruncans.
Virgil evidently regards these hills as the original abode of the Auruncan race
(Aen. vii. 727), and speaks of them as merely a petty people. But the first occasion
on which they appear in Roman history exhibits them in a very different light,
as a warlike and powerful nation, who had extended their conquests to the very
borders of Latium.
Thus, in B.C. 503, we find the Latin cities of Cora and Pometia revolting
to the Aurunci, and these powerful neighbours supporting them with a large army
against the infant republic. (Liv. ii. 16, 17.) And a few years later the Auruncans
took up arms as allies of the Volscians, and advanced with their army as far as
Aricia, where they fought a great battle with the Roman consul Servilius. (Id.
ii. 26; Dionys, vi. 32.) On this occasion they are termed by Dionysius 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. From this
time the name of the Auruncans does not again occur till B.C. 344, when it is
evident that Livy is speaking only of the petty people who inhabited the mountain
of Rocca Monfjna, who were defeated and reduced to submission without difficulty.
(Liv. vii. 28.) A few years later (B.C. 337) they were compelled by the attacks
of their neighbours the Sidicini, to apply for aid to Rome, and meanwhile abandoned
their stronghold on the mountain and established themselves in their new city
of Suessa. (Id. viii. 15.) No mention of their name is found in the subsequent
wars of the Romans in this part of Italy; and as in B.C. 313 a Roman colony was
established at Suessa (Liv. ix. 28), their national existence must have been thenceforth
at an end. Their territory was subsequently included in Campania.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited September 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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