Latins (Italic tribe)
Encyclopedia
"Latini" redirects here. For other uses of the ethnonym, see Latins
Latins
"Latins" refers to different groups of people and the meaning of the word changes for where and when it is used.The original Latins were an Italian tribe inhabiting central and south-central Italy. Through conquest by their most populous city-state, Rome, the original Latins culturally "Romanized"...

. For people with the last name Latini, see Latini (disambiguation).

The Latins (or Latini) were a people of ancient Italy who included the inhabitants of the early City of Rome. From ca. 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small part of the peninsula known to the Romans as Old Latium
Old Latium
Old Latium was, in ancient Roman times, the part of the Italian peninsula bounded on the North by the river Tiber, on the East by the central Apennine mountains and on the South by Monte Circeo. It corresponded to the central part of the modern eponymous regione of Lazio...

 (Latium Vetus), that is, the region between the river Tiber
Tiber
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...

 and the promontory of Monte Circeo (ca. 60 mi or 100 km SE of Rome).

Name etymology

Latini probably simply means "people of Latium". It has been suggested that the name of their homeland, Latium, derives from the Latin word latus ("broad"), referring to the extensive plains of the region (in contrast to the mainly mountainous Italian peninsula).

Linguistic affiliation

The tribe spoke the Latin language, a member of the western branch of the Italic languages
Italic languages
The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...

, in turn a branch of the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 (IE) family of languages. Other members of the West Italic group are believed to have been Faliscan
Faliscan language
The Faliscan language, the extinct language of the ancient Falisci, forms, together with Latin, the group of Latino-Faliscan languages. It seems probable that the dialect lasted on, though being gradually permeated with Latin, until at least 150 BC.-Corpus:...

 (now regarded as simply a Latin dialect), Venetic (in NE Italy) and Sicel, a language spoken in central Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. The West Italic languages were thus spoken in limited and isolated areas, whereas the "East Italic" group comprised the Oscan and Umbrian dialects spoken over much of central and southern Italy. Iron Age Italy also hosted non-IE languages, Etruscan
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

 and its apparent derivative, Raetian, as well as Ligurian. It is uncertain whether these languages were pre-IE survivals, or post-IE intrusions. Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 and Gallic were certainly later intrusions, introduced by migrations in the periods 800-600 BC and 600-400 BC respectively.

The oldest extant inscription in the Latin language is on the Lapis Niger
Lapis Niger
The Lapis Niger is an ancient shrine in the Roman Forum. Together with the associated Vulcanal it constitutes the only surviving remnants of the old Comitium, an early assembly area that preceded the Forum and is thought to derive from an archaic cult site of the 7th or 8th century BC.The black...

 ("Black Stone") discovered in 1899 in the Roman forum
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...

, dating from ca. 600 BC, in the mid-point of the Roman kingdom
Roman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories....

, according to the traditional Roman chronology. In a very archaic form of the language, the importance of this find is that it proves that the Romans remained Latin-speakers in the period that some historians have suggested that Rome had become "Etruscanised". (It also proves the existence of the kings of Rome
Roman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories....

 in this era, which some historians regarded as mythical. The inscription contains the word recei, the word for "king" in the dative case in archaic Latin).

Origins

The Latins belonged to a group of Indo-European tribes, conventionally known as the Italic tribes, that populated central and southern Italy during the Italian Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

 (from ca. 900 BC onwards). The most common hypothesis is that the Italic peoples migrated into the Italian peninsula some time during the Italian Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 (ca. 1800-900 BC). The most likely route for the Italic migration was from the Balkan peninsula along the Adriatic coast. However according to Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza is an Italian population geneticist born in Genoa, who has been a professor at Stanford University since 1970 .-Books:...

 given that the time depths of such patterns are not known, “associating them with particular demographic events is usually speculative”.

The archaeological evidence shows a remarkable uniformity of culture in the peninsula during the period 1800-1200 BC - the so-called "Apennine culture
Apennine culture
The Apennine culture or Italian Bronze Age is a technology complex of central and southern Italy spanning the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age proper. It is preceded by the Neolithic and succeeded by the Iron Age Villanovan culture. Apennine culture pottery is a black, burnished ware incised and...

". Pottery with much the same incised geometric designs is found throughout Italy, and the design of weapons and tools was also homogenous. During this period, it appears that Italy was a heavily wooded land with a sparse population, concentrated in the mountainous centre of the peninsula. Most people were pastoralists practicing transhumance
Transhumance
Transhumance is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and to lower valleys in winter. Herders have a permanent home, typically in valleys. Only the herds travel, with...

 and inhabiting, at most, small villages. Inhumation was the universal method of burial. In the latter period of the Bronze Age (1200-900 BC), this pattern was disrupted by the appearance of cremation burials and the appearance of distinct regional variations in culture. Some historians have ascribed these changes to the arrival of the Italic peoples. But the distribution of the novel cremation culture (the "Villanovan culture
Villanovan culture
The Villanovan culture was the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture and giving way in the 7th century BC to an increasingly orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which was followed without a severe break by the...

") avoids the central region dominated by the Italic tribes. As Cornell points out: "Nothing in the archaeological record of the Italian Bronze and Iron ages proves, or even suggests, that any major invasions took place between ca. 1800 and ca. 800 BC". At the same time, however, archaeology does not prove that invasions did not take place. It is now firmly established that burial customs are not ethnically-based.

The geographical distribution of the ancient languages of the peninsula can plausibly be explained by the immigration of successive waves of peoples with different languages. On this model, it appears likely that the "West Italic" group (including the Latins), migrated into the peninsula in a first wave, followed later, and largely displaced, by the eastern (Osco-Umbrian) group. This is deduced from the marginal locations of the surviving West Italic niches. However, the timing remains elusive, as does the sequence of the Italic IE languages with the non-IE languages of the peninsula, notably Etruscan
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

. The majority view of scholars is that Etruscan represents a pre-IE survival. However, it could equally be an intrusion introduced by later migrants. In any case, language change can be explained by scenarios other than mass migration.

There is no archaeological evidence at present that Old Latium hosted permanent settlements during the Bronze Age. Very small amounts of Apennine-culture pottery sherds have been found in Latium, most likely belonging to transient pastoralists engaged in transhumance. It thus appears that the Latins occupied Latium Vetus from ca. 1000 BC. Initially, the Latin immigrants into Latium were probably concentrated in the low hills that extend from the central Apennine range into the coastal plain (much of which would have been marshy and malarial). For example, the Alban Hills, a plateau containing a number of extinct volcanoes and two substantial lakes - lacus Nemorensis (Lake Nemi
Lake Nemi
Lake Nemi is a small circular volcanic lake in the Lazio region of Italy south of Rome, taking its name from Nemi, the largest town in the area, that overlooks it from a height.-Archaeology and history:The lake is most famous for its sunken Roman ships...

) and lacus Tusculensis (Lake Albano). These hills provided a defensible, well-watered base. Also the hills of the site of Rome, certainly the Palatine
Palatine Hill
The Palatine Hill is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city...

 and possibly the Capitoline
Capitoline Hill
The Capitoline Hill , between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the seven hills of Rome. It was the citadel of the earliest Romans. By the 16th century, Capitolinus had become Capitolino in Italian, with the alternative Campidoglio stemming from Capitolium. The English word capitol...

 and the Quirinal, hosted permanent settlements at a very early stage.

The Latins appear to have become culturally differentiated from the other Italic tribes in the period ca. 1000-700 BC. This may be deduced by the emergence in this period of so-called Latial culture
Latial culture
The Latial culture , formerly southern Villanovan, is a variant of the archaeological Villanovan culture. The Latial ranged approximately over ancient Latium...

, or Latium variant of the Villanovan culture of central Italy and the Po
Po
-Places:* Po , a major Italian river* Pô , the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy* Potha, the name of two villages in Pakistan* Po, Wiang Kaen, a village in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand...

 valley. The most distinctive feature of this Latium culture were funerary urns in the shape of miniature tuguria ("huts"). These hut-urns appear in only some burials during Phase I of the Latium culture (ca. 1000-900 BC), but become standard in Phase II cremation burials (ca. 900-770 BC). They represent the typical single-roomed hovels of contemporary peasants. These were made from simple, readily available materials: wattle-and-daub walls and straw roofs supported by wooden posts. The huts remained the main form of Latin housing until ca. 650 BC. The most famous exemplar was the casa Romuli
Casa Romuli
The casa Romuli , also known as the tugurium Romuli, was the reputed dwelling-place of the legendary founder and first king of Rome, Romulus . It was situated on the south-western corner of the Palatine hill, where it slopes down towards the Circus Maximus, near the so-called "Steps of Cacus"...

("Hut of Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...

") on the southern slope of the Palatine Hill, supposedly built by the legendary Founder of Rome with his own hands and which reportedly survived until the time of emperor Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

 (ruled 30 BC - AD 14).

Mythical origins

According to Roman legend, the Latin tribe's first king was called Latinus
Latinus
Latinus was a figure in both Greek and Roman mythology.-Greek mythology:In Hesiod's Theogony, Latinus was the son of Odysseus and Circe who ruled the Tyrsenoi, presumably the Etruscans, with his brothers Ardeas and Telegonus...

, who gave his name to the tribe and founded the first capital of the Latins, Laurentum
Laurentum
Laurentum was an ancient Roman city of Latium situated between Ostia and Lavinium, on the west coast of the Italian Peninsula southwest of Rome. Roman writers regarded it as the original capital of the Latins, before Lavinium assumed that role after the death of King Latinus...

, whose exact location remains uncertain. The Trojan hero Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

 and his men fled by sea after the capture and sack of their city, Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

, by the Greeks, supposedly in 1184 BC. After many adventures, Aeneas landed on the Latium coast near the mouth of the Tiber. Initially, king Latinus attempted to drive out Aeneas and his Trojan army, but was defeated in battle. Later, he accepted Aeneas as an ally and eventually allowed him to marry his daughter, Lavinia. Aeneas founded the city of Lavinium
Lavinium
Lavinium was a port city of Latium, to the south of Rome, at a median distance between the Tiber river at Ostia and Anzio. The coastline then, as now, was a long strip of beach. Lavinium was on a hill at the southernmost edge of the Silva Laurentina, a dense laurel forest, and the northernmost...

 (Pratica di Mare, Pomezia
Pomezia
Pomezia is a municipality in the province of Rome, Lazio, central Italy. In 2009 it had a population of about 60,000.-History:The town was built entirely new near the location of ancient Lavinium on land resulting from the final reclamation of the Pontine Marshes under Benito Mussolini, being...

), on the coast not far from Laurentum, which he named after his wife and which became the Latin capital after Latinus' death. The couple's son, Ascanius
Ascanius
Ascanius is the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and a legendary king of Alba Longa. He is a character of Roman mythology, and has a divine lineage, being the son of Aeneas, who is son of Venus and the hero Anchises, a relative of Priam; thus Ascanius has divine ascendents by both parents, being...

, founded a new city, Alba Longa
Alba Longa
Alba Longa – in Italian sources occasionally written Albalonga – was an ancient city of Latium in central Italy southeast of Rome in the Alban Hills. Founder and head of the Latin League, it was destroyed by Rome around the middle of the 7th century BC. In legend, Romulus and Remus, founders of...

 in the Alban Hills, which in turn replaced Lavinium as capital city. It remained so for some 250 years under his successors, the Alban kings, until his descendant, Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...

 founded Rome in 753 BC. Under their king Tullus Hostilius
Tullus Hostilius
Tullus Hostilius was the legendary third of the Kings of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius, and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius...

 (ruled 673-642 BC), the Romans razed Alba Longa to the ground and resettled its inhabitants on the mons Caelius (Caelian Hill
Caelian Hill
The Caelian Hill is one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome. Under reign of Tullus Hostilius, the entire population of Alba Longa was forcibly resettled on the Caelian Hill...

) in Rome.

Cornell regards Alba Longa as probably mythical. Early Latial remains have been discovered on the shore of the Alban lake, but they belong to a series of small villages, not an urbanised city-state. In any case, traces of the earliest phase of Latial culture also occur at Rome at the same time (1000 BC), so archaeology cannot be used to support the tradition that Rome was founded by people from Alba Longa.

The Latin city-states maintained close culturo-religious relations throughout their history. Their most important common event was the 4-day feriae Latinae ("Latin Festival"), held in winter each year on the sacred mons Albanus (Monte Cavo
Monte Cavo
Monte Cavo is the second highest mountain of the complex of the Alban Hills, near Rome, Italy. An old volcano extinguished around 10,000 years ago, it lies about from the sea, in the territory of the comuneof Rocca di Papa. It is the dominant peak of the Alban Hills...

, Alban Hills, SE of Rome), an extinct volcano. Led by the Roman consul
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

s, the Latins would make sacrifices to Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....

 Latiaris. The central ritual was the sharing of sacrificed meat by the representatives of the Latin communities.

Conflict with Rome

From an early stage, the external relations of the Latin city-states were dominated by their largest and most powerful member, Rome.

See also

  • Latium
    Latium
    Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...

  • Latin League
    Latin league
    The Latin League was a confederation of about 30 villages and tribes in the region of Latium near ancient Rome, organized for mutual defense...

  • Roman kingdom
    Roman Kingdom
    The Roman Kingdom was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories....

  • Etruscans
  • Casa Romuli
    Casa Romuli
    The casa Romuli , also known as the tugurium Romuli, was the reputed dwelling-place of the legendary founder and first king of Rome, Romulus . It was situated on the south-western corner of the Palatine hill, where it slopes down towards the Circus Maximus, near the so-called "Steps of Cacus"...

  • Ancient peoples of Italy

Ancient

  • Dio Cassius
    Dio Cassius
    Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus , known in English as Cassius Dio, Dio Cassius, or Dio was a Roman consul and a noted historian writing in Greek...

     Roman History (ca. AD 250)
  • Dionysius of Halicarnassus
    Dionysius of Halicarnassus
    Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

    Roman Antiquities (ca. 10 BC)

Modern

  • Cornell, T. J. (1995): The Beginnings of Rome
  • Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Ed (1995): Micropædia: "Latium"

External links

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