Their submission however was still but imperfect; and though they remained tranquil throughout the First Punic War, the successes of Hannibal in the Second, proved too much for their fidelity, and the Bruttians were among the first to declare in favour of the Carthaginian general after the battle of Cannae. (Liv. xxii. 61.) The defection of the people did not indeed in the first instance draw with it that of the towns: but Petelia and Consentia, which had at first held aloof, were speedily reduced by the Bruttians, assisted by a small Carthaginian force, and the more important cities of Locri and Crotona followed not long after. Rhegium alone remained firm, and was able to defy the Carthaginian arms throughout the war. (Id. xxiii. 20, 30, xxiv. 1—3.) In B.C. 215 Hanno, the lieutenant of Hannibal, after his defeat at Grumentum by Tib. Graochus, threw himself into Bruttium, where he was soon after joined by a body of fresh troops from Carthage under Bomilcar: and from this time he made that region his stronghold, from whence he repeatedly issued to oppose the Roman generals in Lucania and Samnium, while he constantly fell back upon it as a place of safety when defeated or hard pressed by the enemy. The physical character of the country, already described, rendered it necessarily a military position of the greatest strength: and after the defeat and death of Hasdrubal Hannibal himself withdrew all his forces into the Bruttian peninsula, where he continued to maintain his ground against the Roman generals, long after they were undisputed masters of the rest of Italy. (Id. xxvii. 51.) We have very little information concerning the operations of the four years during which Hannibal retained his position in this province: he appears to have made his headquarters for the most part in the neighbourhood of Crotona, but the name of Castra Hannibalis retained by a small town on the Gulf of Scyllacium, points to his having occupied this also as a permanent station. Meanwhile the Romans, though avoiding any decisive engagement, were continually gaining ground on him by the successive reduction of towns and fortresses, so that very few of these remained in the hands of the Carthaginian general, when he was finally recalled from Italy. The ravages of so many successive campaigns must have already inflicted a severe blow upon the prosperity of Bruttium: the measures adopted by the Romans to punish them for their rebellion com |
From this time the Bruttians as a people disappear from history: but their country again became the theatre of war during the revolt of Spartacus, who after his first defeats by Crassus, took refuge in the southernmost portion of Bruttium (called by Plutarch the Rhegian peninsula), in which the Roman general sought to confine him by drawing lines of intrenchment across the isthmus from sea to sea. The insurgent leader however forced his way through, and again carried the war into the heart of Lucania. (Plut. Crass. 10, 11; Flor. iii. 20.) During the Civil Wars the coasts of Bruttium were repeatedly laid waste by the fleets of Sextus Pompeius, and witnessed several conflicts between the latter and those of Octavian, who had established the headquarters both of his army and navy at Vibo. (Appian, B. C. iv. 86, v. 19, 91, 103, &c) Strabo speaks of the whole province as reduced in his time to a state of complete decay, (vi. p. 253.) It was included by Augustus in the Third Region, together with Lucania; and the two provinces appear to have continued united for most administrative purposes until the fall of the Roman empire, and were governed conjointly by a magistrate termed a "Corrector." The Liber Coloniarum however treats of the "Provincia Bruttiorum " as distinct from that of Lucania. (Plin. iii. 5. s. 10; Not Dign. ii. 18. p. 64; Orell. Inscr. 1074, 1187; Lib. Colon, p. 209.) After the fall of the Western Empire Bruttium passed with the rest of Italy under the dominion of the Goths: but was reconquered by the generals of Justinian, and continued from thenceforth subject to the Byzantine emperors till the 11th century. It was during this interval that a singular change took place in its name. During the greater part of this period it appears that Bruttium and a small part of the Calabrian peninsula were all that remained to the Greek emperors in Italy, and that the name of Calabria came to be gradually applied to the two provinces thus united under their government. But when they eventually lost their possessions in the eastern peninsula, the name of Calabria, which had originally belonged to that only, came to be used on the contrary to designate exclusively the Bruttian peninsula, which has in consequence retained to the present day the name of Calabria. It is impossible to trace exactly the progress, or determine the period of this change: but it appears to have been completely established before the provinces in question were finally wrested from the Greek Empire by the |
Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/467
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
