The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

FS AND Q'S 151
it was a corruption of a tribal name as some have thought/* does not concern us here. It
is sufficient for our purpose that he mentions that their original home lay to the east, in
the valley of the Velino and its tributary the Salto, which drains Lake Fucino. He
mentions by name many of their cities, and describes the position of most of them. The
sites of the majority have been identified, though some yet remain unknown. Judging
by what can be ascertained of their position, we gather that the Aborigines occupied
the Salto vaUey from Marruvium, on the shores of Lake Fucino, as far as Reatse, where
it joins the Velino, and thence to the junction of the latter with the Nera. One of
their cities, Batia, lay considerably to the north, across the Apennines, in the direction
of Ascoli, where the Type B, sword was found. How far the territory of the
Aborigines stretched towards Lake Trasimene is uncertain, as the sites of some of their
towns remain unidentified, but several of them lay in that direction, outside the later
area of Q speech, but in Sabine territory.
Dionysius tells us that one night the Sabines issued from Amitemum and seized
Liste, the capital of the Aborigines, who retired to Reatae, whence they endeavoured
to recapture it.'' They appear to have been successful eventually in recovering the
land around Lake Fucino, but would seem to have lost the territory to the north-west
around Reatae. About the same time many of them migrated south-westwards to the
lands around Rome.'^ As one of their original cities had been called Palatium it
seems likely that it was they who gave its name to the Palatine Hill.
The general agreement between the area in which we find the leaf-shaped swords,
the area occupied by the Aborigines before the Sabine expedition, and the area of Q
speech, suggests that these three are one especially as there is a progressive abandonment
of the north-western portion and a movement towards the south-west near the mouth
of the Tiber. My suggestion is that the Aborigines were the descendants of the leaf-
shaped sword people and the ancestors of the Q speaking Latin peoples of later days.
Umbrian speech, though it extended towards the south-east and surrounded the
Latin tongues, is found mainly on the north-east of the Apennines, and seems to have
come from that direction ; before the advent of the Gauls it reached, as we have seen,
to the foot of the Alps. This is the region in which we find the chief remains of
16 Niebuhr (1827) i. 80. '* Dion. Halic. xvi.
'7 Dion. Halic. xiv.