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The Italic People of Ancient Apulia
Introduction
“... Much has been written about the Greek colonists in Magna Graecia, but there is almost nothing in English about the Iapygians, the Messapians, or the Peucetians, the Italic (non-Greek) people who inhabited Apulia, the vast region of southern Italy that stretches from the tip of the heel up along the Adriatic to the bulge of the Gargano and inland to the Bradano river.
Ancient authors were aware of the often fraught interactions between Italic peoples and Greek colonists.
Herodotus (7.170) could write that the greatest slaughter Greeks ever experienced was when the combined forces of Greeks from Taras and Rhegium were defeated by the Iapygians of Messapia in 473 B.C.E.1 Thucydides (7.33.4) could write of an alliance between Athens and Artas, a chieftain of the Messapians in 413 B.C.E.
Pausanias, in his Description of Greece (10.10.6 and 10.13.10), tells of two fifth century B.C.E. monuments at Delphi set up by the Tarentines to celebrate victories, one over the Messapians, the other over Opis, king of the Iapygians, who was an ally of the Peucetians.
The Italic people of Apulia, however, left no writings of their own and thus they have essentially vanished from history. Our knowledge of them today depends largely on evidence from archaeology, much of which has come to light during the past half century. ...”
Introduction
“... Much has been written about the Greek colonists in Magna Graecia, but there is almost nothing in English about the Iapygians, the Messapians, or the Peucetians, the Italic (non-Greek) people who inhabited Apulia, the vast region of southern Italy that stretches from the tip of the heel up along the Adriatic to the bulge of the Gargano and inland to the Bradano river.
Ancient authors were aware of the often fraught interactions between Italic peoples and Greek colonists.
Herodotus (7.170) could write that the greatest slaughter Greeks ever experienced was when the combined forces of Greeks from Taras and Rhegium were defeated by the Iapygians of Messapia in 473 B.C.E.1 Thucydides (7.33.4) could write of an alliance between Athens and Artas, a chieftain of the Messapians in 413 B.C.E.
Pausanias, in his Description of Greece (10.10.6 and 10.13.10), tells of two fifth century B.C.E. monuments at Delphi set up by the Tarentines to celebrate victories, one over the Messapians, the other over Opis, king of the Iapygians, who was an ally of the Peucetians.
The Italic people of Apulia, however, left no writings of their own and thus they have essentially vanished from history. Our knowledge of them today depends largely on evidence from archaeology, much of which has come to light during the past half century. ...”
