Latium

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Latium was a region of ancient Italy, home to the original Latin people. Its area is now part of the (much larger) modern Italian Regione of Lazio, also called Latium in Latin and also occasionally so in modern English. Their language later became Latin.

[edit] History

The region which would become Latium was, in the centuries before the future Romans inhabited it, populated by several different peoples, some of which spoke non-Indo-European languages. It was dominated by the Etruscans, both culturally and politically, but was a region with many local cultures, each city-state having its own, somewhat akin to Greece. Indeed, trade with Greeks and Phoenicians strongly influenced the Etrurian culture, which acquired its alphabet (later inherited by Rome), and some cultural traits, from those two sources.

At the same time that the latest Indo-European tribes were moving into Greece, closely related tribes invaded many other regions. They were seen as weak newcomers, a sort of instant underclass, by most of the people of the native city-states.

This subjected them to local imperialism and eventually they united against the Etruscans and Samnites, fighting a series of wars which ended in 338 BC with their main city, Rome, dominating the region. After the Social War in 90 BC, Rome granted citizenship to the people of all the cities in the region who remained allied with Rome.

Latium has great importance for history, art, architecture, archaeology, religion, and culture in general. The immense patrimony of the city of Rome forms only a part of the treasures spread over the hundreds of towns, villages, abbeys, churches, monuments, and other sites of the region.

[edit] References

Strabo - Geographica (Strabo) book V chapter 3 - Rome 20 BC
Athanasius Kircher - Latium - 1669 - Amsterdam 1671
G.R.Volpi - Vetus Latium Profanum et Sacrum - Rome 1742
T.J.Cornell - The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars - London 1995
C.H.Smith - Early Rome and Latium. Economy and Society, c. 1000 - 500 BC, "Oxford Classical Monographs" - Oxford 1996

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