Samnites

Abstract

According to most of our historical sources, namely the Greek and Roman writers, the Samnites were a tough and warlike people who lived in the mountains of central Italy (known today as the Apennine mountains) and who challenged Rome for many decades during the 4th and 3rd centuries bce. Ancient authors describe the Samnites as having a common origin (as descendants of the Sabines, according to one version), and their own distinctive cultural traits, such as language, religious traditions, and the habit of living scattered in villages and farms instead of in cities. They were said to rely on pastoralism instead of agriculture, and they were considered on the whole to be less wealthy and sophisticated than their neighbours who lived in the rich coastal plains of Italy. Modern interest in the Samnites can be traced back to 19th-century southern Italy: the so-called Agnone table, an Oscan-language inscription with a series of cult instructions, was discovered in 1848 near Pietrabbondante, where soon afterwards the impressive Samnite-period sanctuary was brought to light with its limestone temple and theater. These discoveries were followed by archaeological excavations and surveys that became increasingly systematic over the 20th century, resulting in the exponential growth of material and epigraphic data. The key challenge, however, is to determine how the communities that inhabited the central Italian mountains match up with the people who are described in ancient accounts as the Samnites. It has proven very difficult to locate the Samnites as a stable and geographically cohesive group in antiquity. As is the case with other ancient Italic peoples, the Samnites were not so much a cultural or political unit, but rather a fluid and changing collective whose boundaries shifted depending on the context. In ancient texts, the name “Samnite” is given to different communities and regions of central and southern Italy, albeit with a tendency to focus on the portion of the central Apennine mountains which roughly corresponds to the modern provinces of Campobasso, Avellino, Chieti, and Isernia. Roughly speaking, this is the area that runs from the Apennine mountains to the Adriatic sea, from the south of the modern region of Abruzzo to the area just north of Naples. The ancient inhabitants of this region saw themselves, and were seen by others, as part of networks that extended throughout Italy. But they also seem to have subscribed to more local identities associated with specific towns or districts. All of this has led to complexities in how the Samnites are defined in modern scholarship. Some scholars favor a broader outlook and use the term “Samnite” to mean the ancient inhabitants of large portions of central and southern Italy on the periphery of Etruria and Latium, most of whom spoke dialects of the Oscan language. Other scholars work with a narrower definition that normally encompasses the central Apennine communities only—and even then there is some additional fuzziness as to where the Samnites end and neighboring mountain “peoples” begin, such as the Vestini, Marsi, Marrucini and Paeligni. If we also take into account the earlier period before the 4th century bce, the issue becomes even more complex, as it is not entirely clear at what point it makes sense to start speaking of Samnites. There are many equally difficult questions around which modern scholars have been working, such as: what did the Samnites call themselves and did they see themselves as a people at any point? To what extent did cultural stereotypes and prejudices shape the way in which Greek and Roman authors portrayed the so-called Samnites? What kind of socio-political organization did these communities develop and is it comparable to anything we find in Greek or Roman Republican history? Does it make sense to regard the Samnites as a nonurban society? How were they affected by the rise of Roman supremacy and to what extent did their experience of Roman power differ from that of other Italian and Mediterranean communities? And at what point does it become impossible to speak of Samnites in any meaningful sense? The following discussion offers a general assessment of these and other key issues in the field. Given the complexities noted above, this article will focus mainly on the communities and areas of central Italy more frequently associated with Samnites in the historical record as described above, while also considering studies that adopt a broader outlook. In terms of chronology, not just the last four centuries bce are considered, when references to Samnites appear in our sources, but also the earlier period, to provide a long-term context.