PART
5 –
Ch.XXXIII.8
The
Pelasgians or proto – Latins (Arimii)
(The
Pelasgians from the northern parts of the Danube and the Black Sea)
XXXIII. 8. Migrations of the Arimii in the Iberian
peninsula.
From the regions of
the Alps and from south Gallia, part of the
Arimic tribes pass and extend in the Iberian peninsula.
The Cantabrii of the Pyrenees, and the Lusitanii from near the western sea
(the ancient inhabitants of Portugal), are called Arimanic tribes by the historian Flavius Josephus, who had lived in the
times of Vespasian (Bell. Jud. lib. II. 16.
4); a term which, as we saw above, had with the Greek authors two meanings, one
indicated the nation, or ethnic family, of these peoples, the other their
barbarian, bellicose, customs.
The same author
also tells us that the ancient Iberii,
‘Iberes
oi palai (c. Appion. lib. II. 4), were called ‘Romaioi, exactly like
the Etruscii and the Sabinii. Here Flavius Josephus uses, as we see, the
general political term of Romani
also for the Arimanii of Iberia.
We still have the
following data about the existence of an ancient Arimic population on the territory of Hispania:
A tribe from the Pyrenees has in Roman
inscriptions the name Viromenici (C. I. L. vol. II. nr. 5741), certainly
a simple dialectal form of Romenici,
or (H)Romenici, as the Romandi of Gallia were called Viromandui in the official Roman
geography.
Argamonici (more correctly Aramonici) is the name of
another nation from Tarraconia (C. I. L. vol. II. nr. 2856). They
probably belonged to the same family of the Viromenici.
A city on the
territory of the Vacceii was called in the Roman epoch Hermandica (Livy,lib.
XXI.5), a term which corresponds to an older form of (H)Armantica, Salmantica, today Salamanca (with S as aspiration and with an l formed from r) in the itinerary of Antoninus.
The principal
mountain chain in the upper parts of Lusitania had in the Roman
epoch the name of Herminius mons (Suetonius, Caes. C. 54), Arminna in the Middle Ages.
As we see, the
Arimic pastoral tribes had occupied this mountainous region in very remote
times.
The ruins of an
ancient fortress in the mountains of Lusitania are still called
today Aramanha or Aramenha (C. I. L. vol. II. p. 21).
On two inscriptions
written in the national idiom of a tribe of Lusitania, we find the words
Arimo and Arimom, probably the name of a locality (C. I. L. vol. II. nr. 738, 739).
In the south
eastern parts of the Pyrenees exists an ancient
city of the Ilergetii, called Osca,
where had been coined the first national coins of Hispania, known under the
name of argentums Oscense. One of
these coins shows on the reverse the figure of Armis of Dacia, as messenger of
the gods, having under it the inscription *PMAN
(Orman) – see Ch. XXXIII.4. Two other coins from Tarraconia, also predating the
Roman conquest, present the names of some national rulers, Ramescyus and Rami,
written with ancient Pelasgian letters (Mionnet,
Descr. d. med. ant. Suppl. I. Pl. Iv. nr. 71, 72).
Finally, we also
find with the ancient inhabitants of Hispania the personal names Armonicus and Harmonicus, Armonia, Harmonia and Ramnia, as transmitted by Roman inscriptions (C. I. L. vol. II. nr. 3892, 4, 4008, 4373797, 920), in which we see
the same vacillation between the aspirated and non-aspirated forms, exactly
like the names of tribes and localities about which we have spoken above.