The Etruscan expansion in the plain of the Po and the invasion of the Gauls confined the Ligurians between the Alps and the Apennines, where they offered such resistance to Roman penetration that they gained a reputation with the ancients for primitive fierceness. Among the more considerable Ligurian monuments are rock engravings and anthropomorphic sculptures analogous to those of southern France, found in Lunigiana and Corsica. Some of these artistic manifestations are repeated in territories farther east. But it remains doubtful whether the similar cultural imprint indicates an original identity of stock. Ligurian and Celto-Ligurian tombs of the Lombard lakes region, often holding cremations, reveal a special iron culture called the culture of Golasecca, while Ligurian sepulchres of the Italian Riviera and of Provence, also holding cremations, exhibit Etruscan and Celtic influences.
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
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Phoenicia
historical region, Asia
Phoenicia, ancient region corresponding to modern Lebanon, with adjoining parts of modern Syria and Israel. Its inhabitants, the Phoenicians, were notable merchants, traders, and colonizers of the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium bce. The chief cities of Phoenicia (excluding colonies) were Sidon, Tyre, and Berot (modern Beirut).
It is not certain what the Phoenicians called themselves in their own language; it appears to have been Kenaʿani (Akkadian: Kinahna), “Canaanites.” In Hebrew the word kenaʿani has the secondary meaning of “merchant,” a term that well characterizes the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians probably arrived in the area about 3000 bce. Nothing is known of their original homeland, though some traditions place it in the region of the Persian Gulf.
At Byblos, commercial and religious connections with Egypt are attested from the Egyptian 4th dynasty (c. 2613–c. 2494); extensive trade was certainly carried on by the 16th century, and the Egyptians soon established suzerainty over much of Phoenicia. The 14th century, however, was one of much political unrest, and Egypt eventually lost its hold over the area. Beginning in the 9th century, the independence of Phoenicia was increasingly threatened by the advance of Assyria, the kings of which several times exacted tribute and took control of parts or all of Phoenicia. In 538 Phoenicia passed under the rule of the Persians. The country was later taken by Alexander the Great and in 64 bce was incorporated into the Roman province of Syria; Aradus, Sidon, and Tyre, however, retained self-government. The oldest form of government in the Phoenician cities seems to have been kingship—limited by the power of the wealthy merchant families. Federation of the cities on a large scale never seems to have occurred.
The Phoenicians were well known to their contemporaries as sea traders and colonizers, and by the 2nd millennium they had already extended their influence along the coast of the Levant by a series of settlements, including Joppa (Jaffa, modern Yafo), Dor, Acre, and Ugarit. Colonization of areas in North Africa (e.g., Carthage), Anatolia, and Cyprus also occurred at an early date. Carthage became the chief maritime and commercial power in the western Mediterranean. Several smaller Phoenician settlements were planted as stepping stones along the route to Spain and its mineral wealth. Phoenician exports included cedar and pine wood, fine linen from Tyre, Byblos, and Berytos, cloths dyed with the famous Tyrian purple (made from the snail Murex), embroideries from Sidon, wine, metalwork and glass, glazed faience, salt, and dried fish. In addition, the Phoenicians conducted an important transit trade.