A History of the Roman World (3 page)

Throughout the dim ages when early man was painfully struggling up the first steps of civilized life, the centre of interest in Europe constantly fluctuated with the appearance of new peoples and with man’s discovery of new metals or of fresh skill in handling them, until there gradually evolved two contrasting civilizations of the western and eastern Mediterranean. As the ice of the last great glacial period advanced, and mammoth and cave-bear wrested the lordship of creation from elephant, rhinoceros and hippopotamus, so the primitive hunters of the Old Stone Age appeared upon the stage which nature was setting for them in western Europe. But later a more revolutionary change
came about. Palaeolithic man had taken the world much as he found it, but with climatic changes there appeared in the west new peoples who tried to alter the world to suit their needs. These newcomers of the Neolithic Age began to cultivate the earth, and to domesticate animals; they invented the sickle, millstone and hammer-axe, and they discovered the art of making pottery, hand-made with impressed decoration. These early farming communities continued for centuries. Man’s next great stride forward was when he discovered that by heating certain stones he obtained a substance which he could model or mould into a more efficient tool than stone. He thus initiated the Copper or Chalcolithic Age, which in turn was gradually merged into the Bronze Age when he found out that an admixture of tin with copper produced in bronze much harder and more serviceable tools. Metallurgy flourished much earlier in the east than in the west, and culminated there in the splendid Bronze Age civilization of Crete and the eastern Mediterranean.

Meanwhile the west had witnessed some remarkable developments. During the fourth millennium
BC
, if not earlier, Neolithic peoples had spread westwards from Anatolia to the Danube basin and to the lands along the northern shores of the Mediterranean as far as the Iberian peninsula. During the second half of this millennium skills and ideas from the more advanced civilizations of the Near East were radiating ever westwards, diffused by traders, settlers and individuals. The use of larger megalithic graves spread to Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and France, and thence to Brittany and England. Somewhat later in some of these graves in the west bell-shaped vases have been found. These were made by the so-called Bell Beaker folk, a warlike brachycephalic people who helped to spread metal implements (copper not bronze) and to open up trade routes in Europe. They comprised two main groups, one in central Europe, the other (by the late third millennium
BC
) in the Iberian peninsula, whose mineral wealth had already attracted prospectors and settlers from the Aegean world. Many authorities believe the peninsula to have been the original home of the Bell Beaker people. Around 2000
BC
warriors from the Caspian area began to spread the use of the stone battle-axe in Europe (e.g. in Greece); they used the horse, and they decorated their pottery with horizontal cord-impressions; these Corded Ware people were probably speakers of an Indo-European tongue. They led the way to the full flowering of the European Bronze Age of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile another group of people in the middle Danube area, who also had contacts with the east, made extensive use of bronze, improved agricultural methods and cremated their dead, whose ashes they buried in urns in large cemeteries. This Urnfield culture spread widely north of the Alps from
c.
1250
BC
into the Rhineland, and eventually into southern France (before 700) and into part of Spain; it also affected Italy. At this time the east also was suffering great changes: the collapse of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor, the sack of Troy and
the downfall of Mycenaean power in Greece, the attacks of the Peoples of the Sea on Egypt and the Philistine invasion of Palestine. The impulse for some of these upheavals may have stemmed ultimately from the movements of the Indo-European peoples of the Urnfield culture. The use of iron, which became common soon after 1000
BC
, confirmed the superiority of the north, and the more westerly parts of Europe became a barbarian region, culturally less developed than the neighbouring classical civilization which, though having many ties with transalpine Europe, yet increasingly differed from it.

Thus the limelight, which reveals fascinating glimpses of man’s early progress, plays first on the lands of the western and eastern Mediterranean: Italy, the central peninsula, long remained obscure. Traces of the Palaeolithic Age (starting some 200,000 years ago) have been found in the cave-dwellings of Liguria, in the foothills of the Apennines, and in the neighbour-hood of Rome. Descendants of this age of hunters and food-gatherers may have survived, but they do not appear to have influenced the development of their successors in any significant way. The first important settlement in Italy was due to the appearance of men who practised the arts of polishing stone implements and making pottery (
c.
5000
BC
). These Neolithic folk were of Mediterranean stock and short in stature. They came from overseas and brought precious seed-corn with them. At first they may have lived in caves, but gradually many settled in villages. Some certainly came from across the Adriatic, since their remains are found in northern Apulia on the Tavoliere, a plain around Foggia. Here aerial photography first revealed extensive settlements: their villages were surrounded by ditches, within which huts were grouped in smaller compounds, each in turn enclosed within its own ditch; the largest village embraced an area of some 500 by 800 yards and included a hundred smaller compounds.

The inhabitants of such villages, although still given to hunting, were a pastoral people who cultivated their land and had domesticated the goat, sheep, pig, ox, ass and dog. They buried their dead in contracted positions. Their stone implements display a variety of styles, and they even obtained obsidian, a hard glass-like material, from the island of Lipari off the northern coast of Sicily. Their pottery, not yet the product of the potter’s wheel, was plain with simple impressed decoration, but it improved artistically with the passage of centuries. By inventing a needle with an eyelet they were able to sew clothes.

Although more settled than their nomadic predecessors, these Neolithic farmers might move on to other virgin areas if their population became too large or the soil around their villages became exhausted. Thus they spread out in southern and eastern Italy, while from about 3500
BC
increasing desiccation of the Tavoliere led to expansion in the north and west, including a settlement at Sasso di Furbara north of Rome. Further north still, other groups had
emerged from early Neolithic times, both in Liguria and in the northern Italian plain on either side of the eastern stretches of the Po. The latter group may have come partly from lands east of the Adriatic and partly from the south up the Italian coast of the Adriatic. Subsequently, external influences increased, deriving from the Neolithic cultures of western Europe in France, Spain and North Africa; thus the skills of spinning and weaving perhaps first reached Italy. A late Neolithic settlement at Lagozza di Besnate near Varese is typical of many villages built alongside the Italian Lakes of Maggiore and Garda, constructed on piles at the edges of the lakes (
palafitte
). At the same time others grew up by the swampy rivers of the Po valley.
³

Under the impulse of ‘warrior’ immigrants from central Europe Italy began to move into the Copper Age. Three main centres are known. In the north a typical site is found at Remedello near Brescia, and later, as the Bronze Age advanced, a fairly uniform culture, called Polada from a village on Lake Garda, spread over much of north Italy (
c.
1800–1450
BC
). Further south remains from the Copper Age are found in two areas, at Rinaldone in Tuscany and at Gaudo near Paestum not far from Salerno. The older Neolithic population of course lived on in part, affected in varying degree by the fresh influences, while the new metal was too scarce to replace stone for most of the tools and implements of everyday life: flint daggers and stone battle-axes continued to be used, and supplies of obsidian were still needed from Lipari. In the north some Bell-Beaker influences are found (including burials as well as beakers), while in the Italian peninsula itself the discovery in 1971 of some beakers near Viterbo (at Fosso Conicchio) shows some degree of penetration.
⁵
To what extent these central and more southerly settlements were affected by Aegean influences also remains somewhat uncertain.

With man’s ability to turn copper into bronze we reach Bronze Age Italy, which divides into two distinct cultural areas, one in the north, the other along the Apennines. In the north, as we have seen, a steady development occurred around the Lakes and in the Po valley from Neolithic times onwards, but in the middle or later Bronze Age a new phase developed with settlements which archaeologists have named Terremare from the ‘black earth’ (terra mara) which modern farmers have used as a fertilizer for its rich nitrogenous content. These settlements were thought to have been regular in type, with huts raised on wooden platforms on pile foundations and divided into regular blocks by parallel streets; outside lay cemeteries where the ashes of the dead were buried in urns, incineration being the distinctive mark of this culture. In fact the similarity of the supposed regular construction to the layout of later Roman camps and towns led some archaeologists to suppose that these
people were both the architects of the Bronze Age in Italy and the ancestors of the Romans, some of them having migrated southwards through Etruria to the site of Rome. It is, however, now clear that they did not arrive from the Danube area until the mid-fifteenth century, some three hundred years after the earliest Bronze Age settlements, and that they did not expand towards Rome. In fact their villages are confined to the modern provinces of Modena, Reggio Emilia, Parma and Piacenza. They were often surrounded by an earthen bank, wooden palisade and a ditch which would protect them against enemies and flooding, and the huts were built on raised terraces or piles. Climatic deterioration towards the end of the second millennium
BC
may have promoted increased building on piles and may possibly have contributed to the ultimate abandonment of the settlements. Thus these Terramaricoli were not ancestors of the Romans; they might perhaps in some sense be regarded as ‘cousins’ of the Palafitticoli of the Lakes, but they were probably fresh immigrants from the central Danube area.

They were in the main agriculturalists and stock farmers, though many continued to hunt boars, deer and bears, and perhaps to fish. Fowl and duck now joined the farmyard, and the horse was widely used for draught purposes. Remains of flax, beans, lentils and two kinds of wheat, together with wild fruits such as hazel nuts, pears and apples have been found in their settlements. They worked in wood, bone and horn as well as bronze, and carried on textile and ceramic industries: their pottery was distinctive but varied. The discovery of many razors and combs suggests an interest in their personal appearance, while the comparative absence of weapons points to a fairly peaceful existence. Two aspects of their culture that were significant for the future were their cremation cemeteries and the fact that in all probability they spoke an Indo-European language. Further, as they kept up a connection with the Danube area, which had probably been their original homeland, they formed a communication channel by which the more northerly Bronze Age culture spread southwards; they thus became an important link in the trade routes of Europe. But they were manufacturers as well as importers and their products ultimately began to move southwards into Apennine Italy, which was poor in metals.

The other main area of Bronze Age settlement was the Apennine culture, which reached its full development
c.
1500
BC
and was far less advanced than the northern settlements, though more central to peninsular Italy. The people consisted of descendants of the Neolithic and Copper Age population, intermixed with some ‘warriors’ who may have come in small groups from overseas (from the Aegean world) and landed either in Apulia or on the west coast, and who probably spoke an Indo-European language. They show relatively few traces of settled agricultural life, but comprised a scattered population of herdsmen who moved between semi-permanent winter
settlements on low ground (often mere caves by watercourses) to summer pastures high up in the Apennines. Such seasonal transhumance of flocks has continued into modern times. By the twelfth century they had become somewhat more settled and practised some agriculture, perhaps influenced by the more settled Terramara and Urnfield peoples of the north. Their semi-nomadic way of life would have helped to spread their language, which may well have been the ancestor of the later Umbro-Sabellian dialects spoken by the Samnites. Unlike the northern Bronze Age folk, they buried their dead, and they lacked the northerners’ technological skill in metal work: their domestic sites have produced very little bronze. Their dark burnished pottery, which was quite attractive and varied in shape, has been found widely: at the future site of Rome, in south-east Emilia, through Etruria, Latium, Campania, Apulia and in Lipari. Some scholars have seen in this culture the primary continuing factor in the composition of the Italic people from Lipari to the Po.
⁶

In the late Bronze Age the two groups, the Terramaricoli and the Apennine folk, began to move closer together. The former may well have sought the copper of Etruria to supplement their supplies from north of the Alps. At any rate, whether or not they brought copper with them, some of the Apennine people had settled in open villages near the Adriatic and the mouth of the Po by the eleventh century. The northerners in turn worked the metal and began to send their products not only to Etruria but also down the Adriatic coast as far south as the neighbourhood of Tarentum where (at Scoglio del Tonno) an Apennine settlement had been trading with the Mycenaean Greeks until the collapse of their empire (see below). Thus in the final phase of the Bronze Age, from
c.
1150
BC
, a more uniform culture began to spread throughout all Italy and the two main groups drew closer together, as may be seen, for instance, at a settlement at Pianello inland from Ancona. Above all, from
c.
1000
BC
cremation and urnfields appeared in many areas where previously inhumation had prevailed, though in many central and southern parts the old Apennine culture and inhumation persisted well into the Iron Age. But before turning to this obscure transitional period we must glance at two other aspects of the Italian Bronze Age.

The extent to which merchant adventurers fared forth into western waters from Minoan Crete is uncertain, though some have left their traces in Sicily and Lipari, while the tradition that an expedition was launched against Sicily to avenge the death of Minos reflects some interest in the west. However the Mycenaean Greeks took stronger action. Their presence in Sicily and Lipari has been detected even before 1400
BC
; not only did individual traders subsequently press on into southern Italy as well, but some even established a permanent trading post near Tarentum where they continued to operate until their own world collapsed in the twelfth century. From Tarentum they could extend their trade over the heel of Italy, up the Adriatic coast, and to Sicily and
Lipari. Thus Mycenaean pottery has been found around Syracuse, at Mylae in northeast Sicily, at Lipari, at the island of Ischia off Naples, and most surprisingly five pieces, dating to
c.
1250
BC
, at Luni in Etruria. This last item strengthens the likelihood that one of the principal objectives of Mycenaean trade was the bronze of Etruria. If, though it is far from certain, the name ‘Metapa’ found on a Linear B tablet at Pylos represents the later Greek city of Metapontum in southern Italy then this area may even have come under some control by Nestor’s kingdom of Pylos in the Peloponnese. At all events, Mycenaean trade in the west was considerable, and some trade between Greece and Italy apparently continued on a smaller scale even after the collapse of the Mycenaean empire and the abandonment of the settlement at Tarentum in the twelfth to eleventh century.
⁷

Lipari and the other volcanic Aeolian Islands, lying some twenty-five miles north-east of Sicily, owed their early significance to the native obsidian which was exploited even in Neolithic times, while Greek pottery, imported during the Bronze Age, has provided valuable dating material. In about 1250
BC
the Middle Bronze Age villages on the citadel of Lipari and on other islands were destroyed and succeeded by a culture which belonged to the Apennine group. This conquest has been linked by some scholars to the story, told by Diodorus, that Liparus, the son of the king of the Ausonians in central-southern Italy, seized Lipari and established a city there; consequently this new cultural phase has been called Ausonian. But since the remains of the new settlement appear to have more links with the Adriatic side of Italy than with Campania and the south, others would associate Diodorus’ Ausonians with the slightly later Final Bronze Age period, when in the islands (and at Milazzo in northeast Sicily) we find a fusion of Terremare and Apennine elements such as occurs on the mainland at Pianello, with cremation predominating, as in the Urnfields of Italy. This phase (Ausonian II) must have been due to fresh invaders from the peninsula and continued at least into the ninth century; later it faded out, for when the Greeks arrived to establish a colony at Lipari in 580
BC
they found a population of only five hundred. Thus Ausonian culture led on to the Early Iron Age and the Villanovans, while the material from Lipari has some close parallels with the early Bronze Age remains from the Palatine and Forum at Rome.
⁸