Latins (Italic tribe)

The Latins, sometimes known as the Latials or Latians, were an Italic tribe that included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium, the area in the Italian Peninsula between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo southeast of Rome. Following the Roman expansion, the Latins spread into the Latium adiectum, inhabited by Osco-Umbrian peoples.
Their language, Latin, belonged to the Italic branch of Indo-European. Speakers of Italic languages are assumed to have migrated into the Italian Peninsula during the late Bronze Age. The material culture of the Latins, known as the Latial culture, was a distinctive subset of the proto-Villanovan culture that appeared in parts of the Italian peninsula in the first half of the 12th century BC. Before and after their political unification under Rome in 338 BC, the Latins maintained close cultural and religious relations, including common festivals and religious sanctuaries.
The rise of Rome as by far the most populous and powerful Latin state from 600 BC led to volatile relations with the other Latin states, which numbered about 14 in 500 BC. In the period of the Tarquin monarchy, Rome apparently acquired political hegemony over the other states. After the fall of the Roman monarchy around 500 BC, there appears to have been a century of military alliance between Rome and the other Latin states to confront the threat posed to all Latium of raiding by the surrounding Italic mountain tribes, especially the Volsci and Aequi. This system progressively broke down after roughly 390 BC, when Rome's aggressive expansionism led to conflict with other Latin states, both individually and collectively. In 341–338 BC, the Latin states jointly fought the Latin War against Rome in a final attempt to preserve their independence. The war ended in 338 BC with a decisive Roman victory. The other Latin states were either annexed or permanently subjugated to Rome.

Etymology

The name Latium has been suggested to derive from the Latin word latus, referring, by extension, to the plains of the region. If that is true, Latini originally meant "men of the plain".

Origins

The Latins belonged to a group of Indo-European-speaking tribes, conventionally known as the Italic tribes, that populated central and southern Italy during the Italian Iron Age, which began around 900 BC. The most widely accepted theory suggests that Latins and other proto-Italic tribes first entered Italy in the late Bronze Age proto-Villanovan culture, then part of the central European Urnfield culture system. In particular various authors, such as Marija Gimbutas, had noted important similarities between the proto-Villanovan culture, the South-German Urnfield culture of Bavaria-Upper Austria and Middle-Danube Urnfield culture. According to David W. Anthony proto-Latins originated in today's eastern Hungary, kurganized around 3100 BC by the Yamna culture, while Kristian Kristiansen associated the proto-Villanovans with the Velatice-Baierdorf culture of Moravia and Austria. This is further confirmed by the fact that the subsequent Latial culture, Este culture and Villanovan culture, which introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula, were so closely related to the Central European Urnfield culture, and Hallstatt culture, that it is not possible to tell them apart in their earlier stages. Furthermore, the contemporary Canegrate culture of Northern Italy represented a typical western example of the western Hallstatt culture, whose diffusion most probably took place in a Celtic-speaking context.
Similarly, several authors have suggested that the Beaker culture of Central and Western Europe was a candidate for an early Indo-European culture, and more specifically, for an ancestral European branch of Indo-European dialects, termed "North-west Indo-European", ancestral to Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic branches. All these groups were descended from Proto-Indo-European speakers from Yamna-culture, whose migrations in Central Europe probably split off Pre-Italic, Pre-Celtic and Pre-Germanic from Proto-Indo-European.
Leaving archaeology aside, the geographical distribution of the ancient languages of the peninsula may plausibly be explained by the immigration of successive waves of peoples with different languages, according to Cornell. On this model, it appears likely that the "West Italic" group were the first wave, followed, and largely displaced by, the East Italic group. This is deduced from the marginal locations of the surviving West Italic niches. Besides Latin, putative members of the West Italic group are Faliscan, and perhaps Siculian, spoken in eastern Sicily. 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. The chronology of Indo-European immigration remains elusive, as does the relative chronology between the Italic IE languages and the non-IE languages of the peninsula, notably the Etruscan, which is considered related to the Raetic spoken in the Alps. Other examples of non-IE languages in Iron Age Italy are the Camunic language, spoken in the Alps, and the unattested ancient Ligurian and Paleo-Sardinian languages. Most scholars consider that Etruscan is a pre-IE survival, a Paleo-European language part of an older European linguistic substratum, spoken long before the arrival of proto Indo-European speakers. Some scholars have earlier speculated that Etruscan language could have been introduced by later migrants. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus preserves the tradition that the Tyrrhenoi originated in Lydia in Anatolia, but Lydians spoke an Indo-European language, completely different from the Etruscan language. Despite this, a possible support for an eastern origin for Etruscan may be provided by two inscriptions in a language closely related to Etruscan found on the island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean Sea, even though some scholars believe that the Lemnian language might have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula. Other scholars, however, argue that the presence of a language similar to Etruscan in Lemnos was due to Etruscan commercial adventurers arriving from the west shortly before 700 BC. The archaeological evidence available from Iron Age Etruria shows no sign of any invasion, migration, or arrival of small immigrant-elites from the Eastern Mediterranean who may have imposed their language. Between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, Etruria shows above all contacts with Central Europe and the Urnfield culture, as there is great consensus that the subsequent orientalizing period was an artistic-cultural phenomenon not exclusively Etruscan, also spread to other areas of Italy and the Greek world, and that can be better explained by trade and exchange rather than by migrations. Genetic studies on samples of Etruscan individuals, both on mitochondrial and autosomal DNA, are also against an eastern origin of the Etruscans and have supported a deep, local origin. A 2019 Stanford genetic study, which has analyzed the autosomal DNA of Iron Age samples from the areas around Rome, has concluded that Etruscans were similar to the Latins from Latium vetus. According to British archeologist Phil Perkins, "there are indications that the evidence of DNA can support the theory that Etruscan people are autochthonous in central Italy".

Language

The tribe spoke the Latin language, a member of the western branch of the Italic languages, in turn a branch of the Indo-European family of languages in Europe
The oldest extant inscription in the Latin language is believed to be engraved on the Lapis Niger discovered in 1899 in the Roman Forum, dating from around 600 BC: in the mid-Roman Kingdom era, according to the traditional Roman chronology, but more likely close to its inception. Written in a primitive form of Archaic Latin, it indicates that the Romans remained Latin-speakers in the period when some historians have suggested that Rome had become "Etruscanised" in both language and culture. It also lends support to the existence of the Kings of Rome in this era, whom some historians regarded as mythical: the inscription contains the word recei, the word for "king" in the dative singular in archaic Latin - regi in classical Latin, or to the rex sacrorum, rather than the political king of Rome.

Material culture

There is no archaeological evidence at present that Old Latium hosted permanent settlements during the Bronze Age. Some very small amounts of Apennine culture pottery shards have been found in Latium, most likely belonging to transient pastoralists engaged in transhumance. It thus appears that the Latins occupied Latium Vetus not earlier than around 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. A notable area of early settlement were the Alban Hills, a plateau about 20 km SE of Rome containing a number of extinct volcanoes and 5 lakes, of which the largest are lacus Nemorensis and lacus Tusculensis. These hills provided a defensible, well-watered base. Also the hills on the site of Rome, certainly the Palatine and possibly the Capitoline and the Quirinal, hosted permanent settlements at a very early stage.
The Latins appear to have become culturally differentiated from the surrounding Osco-Umbrian Italic tribes from onwards. From this time, the Latins exhibit the features of the Iron Age Latial culture found in Etruria and the Po valley. In contrast, the Osco-Umbrian tribes do not exhibit the same features of the Latins, who thus shared the broadly same material culture as the Etruscans. The variant of Villanovan found in Latium is dubbed the Latial culture. The most distinctive feature of Latial culture were cinerary urns in the shape of miniature tuguria. In Phase I of the Latium culture these hut-urns only appear in some burials, but they become standard in Phase II cremation burials. They represent the typical single-roomed hovels of contemporary peasants, which 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 about 650 BC. The most famous exemplar was the Casa Romuli 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.
Around 650 BC began a period of urbanisation, with the establishment of political city-states in Latium. The most notable example is Rome itself, which was originally a group of separate settlements on the various hills. It appears that they coalesced into a single entity around 625 BC, when the first buildings were established on the site of the later Roman Forum.