ANCIENT TRIBES AND PLACES WITHIN CIOCIARIA FROSINONE.

TRIBES AND PLACES OF CIOCIARIA

Anagni

Bonifacio: Al secolo Benedetto Caetani, fu il ponteficie anagnino che fissò in termini giuridici i caratteri del primo Giubileo della storia della Cristianità. Nacque ad Anagni, probabilmente attorno al 1235, da una nobile famiglia di campagna.

The Carthusian monastery of Trisulti.  Monastic life was started at Trisulti, situated at the foot of Mt. Rotonario, in the territory of Collepardo, diocese of Alatri, by St.Dominic of Foligno, a great reformer and founder of Benedictine abbeys in southern Latium. In the year 1000, he built a magnificent monastery, which we can still admire, despite the collapse of the central part (the church and chapterhouse).

After two centuries of Benedictine life, Pope Innocent III decreed in 1204 that the abbey and its possessions should pass to the Carthusians, who sent four laybrothers with the task of building a new monastery suitable for their kind of monastic life and safe from rockfalls.
The construction of the charterhouse was carried out very close to the old abbey.

The official installation took place on September 25th, 1208, with monks coming from the charterhouse of Casotto. On July 17th, 1211, the new church was consecrated and dedicated to the apostle St. Bartholomew, again by Pope Innocent III, who, as a sign of his benevolence towards the monks, had a palace built for himself in the surroundings. This building was restored in 1958 and is still called by his name.

A number of changes in the course of time have masked the charterhouse's original appearance. Since 1947 the monastery has been inhabited and looked after by the Cistercians of Casamari who carry on a holy witness by their life interwoven with work and prayer. The small group of monks, a simple priory directly dependent on the abbey of Casamari, gave life to the old charterhouse, welcoming tourists and, above all, offering their services to parish priests in the neighbourhood. Aequi

The Aequi were an ancient people of Italy, whose name occurs constantly in Livy's first decade as hostile to Rome in the first three centuries of the city's existence.

They occupied the upper reaches of the valleys of the Anio, Tolenus and Himella; the last two being mountain streams running northward to join the Nar. Their chief centre is said to have been taken by the Romans about 484 BC (Diodorus xi. 40) and again about ninety years later (id. xiv. 106), but they were not finally subdued till the end of the second Samnite war (Livy ix. 45, fx. i; Diod. xx. 101), when they seem to have received a limited form of franchise (Cic. Off. i. n, 35).

All we know of their subsequent political condition is that after the Social war the folk of Cliternia and Nersae appear united in a res publica Aequiculorum, which was a municipium of the ordinary type (C.I.L. ix. p. 388). The Latin colonies of Alba Fucens (304 BC) and Carsioli (298 BC) must have spread the use of Latin (or what passed as such) all over the district; through it lay the chief (and for some time the only) route (Via Valeria) to Luceria and the south.

Of the language spoken by the Aequi before the Roman conquest we have no record; but since the Marsi, who lived farther east, spoke in the 3rd century BC a dialect closely akin to Latin, and since the Hernici, their neighbours to the south-west, did the same, we have no ground for separating any of these tribes from the Latian group. If we could be certain of the origin of the q in their name and of the relation between its shorter and its longer form (note that the i in Aequiculus is long--Virgil, Aen. vii. 744--which seems to connect it with the locative of aequum "a plain," so that it would mean "dwellers in the plain"; but in the historical period they certainly lived mainly in the hills), we should know whether they were to be grouped with the q or the p dialects, that is to say, with Latin on the one hand, which preserved an original q, or with the dialect of Velitrae, commonly called Volscian (and, the Volsci were the constant allies of the Aequi), on the other hand, in which, as in the Iguvine and Samnite dialects, an original q is changed into p. There is no decisive evidence to show whether the q in Latin aequus represents an Indo-European q as in Latin quis, Umbro-Volsc. pis, or an Indo-European k + u as in equus, Umb ekvo-. The derivative adjective Aequicus might be taken to range them with the Volsci rather than the Sabini, but it is not clear that this adjective was ever used as a real ethnicon; the name of the tribe is always Aequi, or Aequicoli.

At the end of the Republican period the Aequi appear, under the name Aequiculi or Aequicoli, organized as a municipium, the territory of which seems to have comprised the upper part of the valley of the Salto, still known as Cicolano. It is probable, however, that they continued to live in their villages as before. Of these Nersae (mod. Nesc'e) was the most considerable. The polygonal terrace walls, which exist in considerable numbers in the district, are shortly described in Romische Mitteilungen (1903), 147 seq., but require further study.

il Territorio dei VOLSCI.
Permangono molte incertezze sia sui modi, sia sull'itinerario dell'occupazione volsca del Lazio meridionale. Se da una parte sembra ormai assodato che le loro sedi di partenza vadano individuate nell'area compresa tra il Fucino e l'alto Sannio, permangono forti dubbi sulla cronologia degli avvenimenti, in particolare se l'occupazione dell'agro pontino sia da collocarsi esclusivamente nel V secolo, o se già sul finire del VI i Volsci iniziassero ad affacciarsi a sud dei Colli Albani e nell'area costiera tra questi ultimi e Terracina. I dati archeologici hanno suggerito gli stretti legami delle zone presumibilmente occupate dai Volsci, con quelle del Fucino - valle del Sangro - alto Volturno (ritrovamento di anforette di tipo Alfedena, di fibule, di un disco - corazza proveniente dalla zona del Fucino e ritrovato ad Anagni, di una spada del tipo Alfedena rinvenuta a San Giorgio a Liri).

Questi ritrovamenti fanno pensare ad una certa mobilità di individui non necessariamente legata alle transumanze stagionali. L'itinerario privilegiato per questi spostamenti è stato sempre considerato quello della Val Roveto, ma sono plausibili anche altri percorsi; attraverso la Val Comino (tramite il passo di Forca d'Acero), e quello che dal cassinate (attraverso la valle del Rapido), conduce direttamente al Sannio.
Certamente verso la metà del V secolo (che dovrebbe corrispondere al momento di massima espansione della potenza volsca) occupavano una zona molto ampia, delimitata a nord-ovest dall'asse Anzio - Satricum - Velletri - Cori, cioè la linea storica "di frizione" tra Volsci e romano - latini, lungo la quale si svolsero le alterne fasi di una lotta caratterizzata da continui indietreggiamenti e riconquiste. Con ogni probabilità il controllo si estendeva sul territorio compreso tra questa linea e la valle dell'Amaseno (e Terracina), sulla Valle del Sacco - Trerus, su tutta la media Valle del Liri (compreso Cassino) e sulla Val Comino (probabilmente fino ad Atina).
Le fonti letterarie (Livio e Dionisio) concordano nell'indicare taluni avvenimenti, pertanto possiamo fissare alcune date; Anzio appare volsca nel 496, Velletri (forse) dal 494, Corioli, Longuna e Polusca nel 493.

Torna ai Volsci

SAMNITES, the name given by the Romans to the warlike tribes inhabiting the mountainous centre of the S. half of Italy. The word Samnites was not the name, so far as we know, used by the Samnites themselves, which would seem rather to have been (the Oscan form of) the word which in Latin appears as S~bini (see below). The ending of Samnites seems to be connected with the name by which they were known to the Greeks of the Cainpanian coast, which by the time of Polybius had become ~wvirat; and it is in connection with the Greeks of Cumae and Naples that we first hear of the collision bet~veen Rome and the Samnites. We know both from tradition and from surviving inscriptions (see OscA LINGUA and R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, pp. 169 to 206) that they spoke Oscan; and tradition records that the Samnites were an offshoot of the Sabines  On two inscriptions, of which one is unfortunately incomplete, and the other is the legend on a coin of the Social War, we have the form Safinim, which would be in Latin *Sabinium, and is best regarded as the nominative or accusative singular, neuter or masculine, agreeing with some substantive understood, such as nummum . 

The abundance of the ethnica ending in the suffix -no- in all the Samnite districts classes them unmistakably with the great Safine stock, so that linguistic evidence confirms tradition (dee further SABINI). The Samnites are thus shown to be intimately related to the patrician class at Rome (see ROME: history, admit.);

So that it was against their own stock that the Romans had to fight their hardest struggle for the lordship of Italy, a struggle which might never have arisen but for the geographical accident by which the Etruscan and Greek settlements of Campania divided into two halves tile Safine settlements in central Italy.

The longest and most important monument of the Oscan language, as it was spoken by the Samnites (in, probably, the 3rd century n.c.) is the small bronze tablet, engraved on both sides, known as the Tabula Agnonensis, found in 1848 at the modern village Agnone, in the heart of the Samnite district, not very far from the site of Bovianum, which was the centre of the N. group of Samnites called Pentri (see below). This inscription, now preserved in the British Museum, is carefully engraved in full Oscan alphabet, and perfectly legible (facsimile given by Mommsen, Unteritaliscile Dialekte, Taf. 7, and by I. Zvetaieff, Sylloge inscriptionum Oscarum). The text and commentary will be found in Conway, op. cit. p. 191: it contains a list of deities to whom statues were erected in the precinct sacred to Ceres, or some allied divinity, and on the back a list of deities to whom altars were erected in the same place. Among those whose names are immediately intelligible may be mentioned those of Jove ihe Ruler and of Hercules Cerealis. The other names are full of interest for the student of both the languages and the religions of ancient Italy.

The Samnite towns in or near the upper valley of the Volturnus, namely, Telesia, Allifae, Aesernia, and the problematic Phistelia, learnt the art of striking coins from their neighbors in Campania, on the other side of the valley, Compulteria and Venafrum, in the 4th century B.C. (see Conway, op. cit. p. 196).

The Samnite alliance when it first appears in history, in the 4th century B.C., included those tribes which lay between the Paeligni to the N., the Lucani to the S., the Campani to the W., the Frentani and Apuli to the E.: that is to say, the Hirpini, Pentri and Caraceni, and perhaps also the Caudini (J. Beloch, Ilalischer Bund, p. 167, and R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, pp. I69 and 183); but with these are sometimes classed other friendly and kindred communities in neighboring territory, like the Frentani and Atina (Liv. x. 39). But after the war with Pyrrhus the Romans for ever weakened the power of the Italic tribes by dividing this central mountainous tract into two halves. The territories of the Latin colony Beneventum (268 B.c.) and the Ager Taurasinus (Livy xl. 38, C.I.L., 1st ed., i. 30) united that of Saticula on the W. (3,~ B.C.) to that of Luceria on the E., and cut off the Hirpini from their kinsmen by a broad belt of land under Latin occupation (Velleius Pat. i. 14; Liv. lx. 26). At the same time Allifae and Venafrum became praefectures (Fest. p. 233 M), and the Latin colony of Aesernia was founded in 263 B.C. jil purely Samnite territory to command the upper Volturnus valley. We hear of no further resistance in the N. of Samnium till the general rising of Italy in 90 B.C.~ but the more southerly Hirpini (q.v.) henceforth acted independently. (R. S. C.)

From the Swabians to the Angevins

On the death of Frederick II in 1250, his second son and heir Conrad IV settled in Germany, leaving the custody of the kingdom of Sicily to his half-brother Manfred of Swabia, prince of Tarente, the illegitimate son of Frederick II. On the death of his brother Conrad IV (1254), Manfred assumed the regency, was then crowned, thus depriving the crown from his nephew Conrad V.
But the great enemy of the Hohenstaufen Swabian dynasty was still the Pope. Manfred was unsuccessful in his policy of rapprochement with the Holy See, which increasingly sought the support of the communes in northern Italy and the kingdom of France. In fact, the Pope asked the king of France Saint Louis, to send an expedition against the partisans of the Hohenstaufen, the Ghibellines, and particularly against the usurper Manfred.
In 1266 the king of France’s brother, Charles of France, count of Anjou, arrived in southern Italy and defeated Manfred near Benevento. The kingdom was ripe for the conquering Angevins.

An incredible fusion of races, civilizations and systems of government; an unexpected interweaving of customs and habits; and an ever-changing and astonishing variety of landscapes with volcanoes and forests, seas and mountains are the attractions which await the tourist on his long journey from Naples to the wonders of Sicily.

Naples, the "New City" of the ancient Greeks, became the resplendent capital of Southern Italy, of that part of the peninsula which, in the course of its long history, has undergone the most varied and uninterrupted cultural and social changes. Today, this part of Italy is still known as Magna Grecia, just as it was in ancient times, though before the Greeks, there were the Italiots and with the Greeks, and after them, came the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians who tried to oppose the expansionist ambitions of the Greeks.
Under the Romans things seemed to have settled down, but no sooner did the Roman Empire decline and fall than other invaders established themselves: the Byzantines and the Arabs from the East, who later fought against, or mingled with, the Germans from the North, the Normans and the Swabians. Under the Swabians, Italy was to become the birthplace of King Frederick II, one of the most fascinating personalities of the Middle Ages.
He was followed by the infinitely worse Angevin kings who were not given the time to reign for long, for at the door was the House of Aragon, which, in its turn, was followed by that of Bourbon. And, finally, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily, and marched up to Naples in order to unite the South with the rest of Italy.

An incredible fusion of races, civilizations and systems of government; an unexpected interweaving of customs and habits; and an ever-changing and astonishing variety of landscapes with volcanoes and forests, seas and mountains are the attractions which await the tourist on his long journey from Naples to the wonders of Sicily.