with each other, or the Messapians with them, for the possession of this country 55.

On the contrary, when history first notices the Lucanians, (Ol. 97. 3, anno 362,) it also mentions a general defensive alliance against that people, in which the common danger had united all the Italians 56. The punishment of death denounced against the general of that city, whose auxiliaries had been delayed by an irruption of the Lucanians into the Greek territories, proves how formidably this danger impended; yet the Lucanians, at that juncture, did not muster more than thirty-four thousand combatants". In the same year, the Thurians were completely routed near Laos 58, and almost annihilated. With this battle commenced the greatness of the Lucanians, and the downfall of the Greek cities: their first conquest was Posidonia 59. The latest Greek coins of this city cannot, from their impression, be

55

Strabo, VI. c. 1. § 14, 15; Diodor. XII. c. 36.

56 i. e. The Greeks of ancient and proper Italy.

57 Diodorus, XII. c. 101. ff.

58 In the text of Diodorus it stands thus: Bovλóuevoɩ (oi Ooúριοι) λαὸν καὶ πόλιν εὐδαίμονα πολιορκῆσαι, (ut sup.) This certainly should have appeared very suspicious, on account of the old word λaos, instead of Ovos, being found in a writer whose language is so modern. Besides, who would have used such an expression: ἔθνος, οι λαὸν πολιορκῆσαι? The true reading is: Βουλόμενοι Λαὸν πόλιν, εὐδ. πολ. ; and it is proved by Strabo, VI. c. § 1, from μerà de Пvžo≈vra to the end,) where, in one passage, a similar corruption has crept in; and, instead of λaol, Aãov should be read.

59 Strabo, ut supra, § 3.

dated lower than the beginning of the fourth century of Rome. It is, therefore, improbable that the Lucanians, who, about the year 329, had not yet entered ancient Italy, should have possessed even this corner of ancient Ausonia; from which, in the following thirty years, they had spread themselves so widely, that the city of Laos (a Sybarite colony) belonged to them: and the eastern coast dreaded their incursions.

Two chief cities of the Chones are mentioned; Chone, which gave its name to the people, and Pandosia, the residence of their kings 1. But when the Greek cities flourished in their highest glory, the whole nation unquestionably submitted to their sway. Pandosia itself was a Greek city 62, for both the coasts were planted with Greek colonies. Upon this narrow promontory did the magic power of Grecian genius, with which strangers became so quickly imbued, transform the natives into Greeks, and justly gave its own majestic name to the whole country. However fabulous the account of Sybaris's greatness and fall may be, certain it is 63, that the descendants of the original settlers were unable to populate a walled town of fifty stadia in circumference, without gratuitously imparting the right of citizenship to several thousands. Thus the Enotrians ceased to exist anywhere, as an independent nation, or distinct from

the Greeks, when the Lucanians destroyed all the splendour of that country. Strabo falsely asserts, that they had expelled the Chones and the Enotrians 65. They had not even to contend with them, but with their masters, where they had not yet become inseparably united with them by the rights of citizenship; and the Enotrians had changed their masters; otherwise, from being free Greeks, they became vassals. Aristotle (about A. 415) speaks of the Chones as an extinct nation; which, certainly, as the Lucanians had at that time been long a powerful people, merely allows an earlier and gradual change of the nation; if the whole passage, which is explained by the old national histories in which it is found, be referred to the time of Antiochus the historian 66, from whom, indeed, it is borrowed. In this case, those Italians, who still adhered to the ancient laws 67, could have been none other than the Siculi; of whom traces were still remaining in the extreme south of Italy, in the time of Thucydides 6, and of the same tribe which the Locrians had discovered, on settling at Zephyrium 69.

68

66 Τῶν Σαννιτῶν αὐξηθέντων ἐπιπολὺ, καὶ τοὺς Οίνωτροὺς ἐκβαXóvTwv.-Strabo, ut supra, § 2.

66 Polit. VII. c. 10, ἦσαν καὶ οἱ Χῶνες Οίνωτροὶ τὸ γένος. 68 Thucydides, VI. c. 2.

67 Ibid.

69 Polybius, XII. c. 5. An old fable, which mentions Siris, the daughter of Morge, and her husband, Scindus, evidently enumerates the Chones as Siculi, whose name thus becomes synonymous with the Enotrian.-See Etymologia Magna, in voce Zipis.

CHAPTER III.

THE AUSONIANS.

70

"THE Ausonians," says Aristotle, "called at that time, and even still, Opici, dwelt towards Tyrrhenia and adjoining Enotria "." The boundary between them and the Enotrians was the river Laos, according to the description of Western Enotria, given by Antiochus but differently in Herodotus, who mentions Elea as founded on the Enotrian soil. Temesa, south of the Laos, which supplied the Greeks with copper in the time of Homer", is also said to have been founded by the Ausonians "2. It can only, however, be considered as one of their conquests beyond the proper limits of AUSONIA or OPICA, which, taking Antiochus as our best authority in the history of these nations, was bounded by the Laos on the East, and extended from thence to the Tiber; Latium, also, being called by Aristotle a district of Opica "3.

70 Polit. ut supra.

72 Strabo, VI. c. 1. § 5.

"Odyss. a. v. 184.

73 Ἐλθεῖν (τῶν ̓Αχαιών τινας μετὰ τὴν Ἰλίου ἅλωσιν) εἰς τὸν τόπον τοῦτον τῆς Ὀπικῆς ὃς καλεῖται Λάτιον, ἐπὶ τῷ Τυῤῥηνικῷ weλáyɛɩ keiμevos.-Dionysius, I. c. 72.

But they not only inhabited the coast of this extensive country from the earliest times, but were also in possession of Samnium, before the Sabelli settled there, who completely exterminated the greater part of their once numerous tribes. But the history and grandeur of Ausonia also belong to very remote antiquity; in the time of the Romans, we merely find a remnant of them on the west of the Vulturnus. The Sidicini, whose capital was Teanum, belonged to the nation of the extinct Osci75; a small race who bore the exclusive name, Ausonians, inhabited Cales, and three towns at the mouth of the Liris. These were destroyed by the Romans in two unprovoked and exterminating wars, (419. 440 76.) Dio Cassius asserts, that the Aurunci were Ausonians 77 but he mistakes in confining the original application of the name, Ausonia, to their country. It is justly observed, that both these names are properly identical, and differ only in pronunciation and form 78. The Aurunci lived in Suessa, east of the Liris; but at an

74

Strabo, V. c. 4. § 10; also Festus (in voce Ausoniam, &c.} states, that the part of Italy in which lay Cales and Beneventum, was originally called by the name of Ausonia.

75 Strabo, V. c. 3. § 9.

76 Livius, VIII. c. 16. IX. c. 25.

77 Frag. IV. ex lib. xxxiv. prioribus. Ed. Reim.

78 Auruncus is Ausonicus. The ending belongs to that superfluity of adjective terminations in gentilitious names which abounded in the old Roman language: as, from Tuscus was formed even Tuscanicus. The change of s into r, in old Latin, is generally admitted. Festus (in voce Ausoniam) mentions the fabulous Auson, founder of the city Suessa Aurunca; that is, the Aurunci were Ausonians.