PART
5 –
Ch.XXXIII.18
The
Pelasgians or proto – Latins (Arimii)
(The
Pelasgians from the northern parts of the
XXXIII.
18. Latinii. Ancient genealogy of the Latin tribes.
The Latin tribes of
Italy constituted in the beginning only a small branch of the large family of
the Latin nation, scattered in prehistoric times through various regions of
Asia and Europe.
According to the
most ancient traditions, which we find with the Greek and Latin authors, the
geographical origin of the Latinii in
One of these
traditions, which in fact appears to be the oldest, is transmitted by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (lib. I.
43). Following his expedition against Geryon, Hercules crossed into Italy, and had there a son called Latinus, born by a Hyperborean maiden, whom he had taken hostage from her parents.
In this
ethnographic tradition, Latinus figures as the eponymous patriarch of the Latin
people.
His genealogy is
the genealogy of the Latin people in ante-Roman times. Hercules, as we know, is
the great national hero of the Pelasgians from the lower Danube. There were
also the dwellings of the legendary Hyperboreans, who had played such a
significant role in the cult of Apollo (the sun). From there, from the lower
Danube, had taken Hercules therefore the Hyperborean maiden, with whom he had
crossed into Italy.
Another tradition
presents Latinus as a son of Hercules, but born by the wife (Dio Cassius, lib. I -XXXVI, fr. 8), or
the daughter (Justin. XLIII. 1), of
king Faunus. This legend is in fact
only a simple version of the first. The wife of Faunus, who had given birth to
Latinus, had been, according to Dionysius of Halikarnassus, the same as the
Hyperborean “maiden” (chore), about whom we spoke above.
We find the third
tradition about the origin of the Latinii with Suidas, and it is as follows:
Hercules had a son called Telephus,
but also called Latinus, who had
reigned over the Cetii (Ketioi),
and during his reign the Cetii had started to be called Latini (Suidas, see Latinoi).
In examining this
latter tradition, the first question is: who had been Telephus-Latinus in prehistoric times, and which were the lands
over which he had reigned?
In the ancient
poems and epic legends, Telephus appears as a king of Mysia. Telephus and his son had taken active part in the Trojan
war, as allies of Priam. Some of the ancient authors believed that to have been
the region of Mysia from Asia Minor, but Dios
Chrysostomus from Bithynia, who, in the times of Domitianus had retreated
to the Getae from the lower Danube and had written a history of the Dacii
called Geticha, tells us that this Telephus had been a king of the
Getae; that his kingdom had stretched very far; that he had reigned over the
entire territory called Mesia, which
bordered at east with the mouths of the Danube, at west with Istria, at south
with Macedonia and at north with the Danube (Jornandis, De Get. orig. II. c. 9).
In other words,
Telephus-Latinus of the Trojan times had reigned over Mesia, Illyria, Dalmatia,
Pannonia and Noric.
All of these
ancient traditions, which show us Hercules as the first ancestor of the
Latinii, are in reality only a simple fragment from a genealogical table of a
larger group of peoples, in which Hercules, the national hero of the Pelasgians
from the north of Hellada, figures at the same time as parent of the
Agathyrsii, Gelonii and Scythii.
We find this part
of the historical tradition studied here, with Herodotus (IV. 9-10).
The Greeks from the
Black Sea, he says, tell the following about the origin of the Scytii:
Hercules, after taking the cattle herds of Geryon, had come to Scythia, where,
losing his horses, had found them finally, after much and prolonged searching,
with the virgin Echidna, who ruled
over that country. Hercules had spent some time with Echidna, and had had with
her three sons, Agathyrsus, Gelonus
and Scythes, and to them, according
to the ancient traditions, drew their origin the dynasties of the Agathirsii,
Gelonii and Scythii.
The country of
Echidna, as Hesiodus tells us, had
been the country of the Arimii
(Theog. v. 304). But according to Herodotus,
Echidna was from a region of Scythia called Hylea (Silvosa), a translated geographical term which, as results
from the meaning of the name, seems to indicate one of the mountainous regions
of ancient Dacia: Transilvania (Hung. Erdely, meaning the Woodland), or the
Romanian Country (Muntenia, Transalpina, Hung. Havasalfold).
According to all
these ethnographic traditions, two Italic and two Pontic, the genealogy of the
four ancient peoples about which we speak here appears as follows:
If we examined now closer
this versions – which all are part of the same epic cycle of Hercules – Geryon,
the genealogical legend of the Latinii becomes more clear, and the correlation
among the various versions is easily made: the Hyperborean virgin is the same
as Echidna from the country of the Arimii, and therefore the ancient form of
this ethnographic table was the following:
According to these
genealogic traditions, the Agathyrsii
of Transilvania, the Scythii from
near the
[1. Horatio mentions in one of his odes (II. 20) as peoples of Latin language, the
inhabitants from the Bosphorus, the Getulii from Africa, the Hyperboreii, the Colchii, Dacii, Gelonii, Iberii, Volcii and Ligurii from the Rhodan].
We arrive now at
the Christian legend about the
origin of the so-called Latin populations.
According to Ch.X
of Genesis, from Iavan, the son of
Iaphet, son of Noah, were born Elisa, Tharsis and Dodanim.
The Mosaic
tradition though, had in its view, as we know, only the populations from the
eastern basin of the Mediterranean and from around the Black Sea. Moses’
knowledge of geography was quite limited. After a long series of centuries
though, when Christianity, with its Hebraic doctrines and traditions, had
spread over the entire Greco-Roman world, the Biblical genealogy about the
origin of peoples did not correspond any more to ethnographic reality. Because
of this, the chroniclers of the Middle Ages were compelled to complete the
Biblical tradition, about the ancestry and kinship of the populations, with new
data, offered by the ancient traditions on the one hand, and their historical
knowledge on the other.
In this way, the
Biblical tradition about the peoples whose proto-parent had been Iuvan (or Hercules of the Pelasgians),
has received in the Middle Ages (Riese,
Geogr. Lat. min. p. 161. 168) the following form:
[2. Under the name Elisa, from the ethnographic table of
Moses, were understood in the first times of Christianity, the original
inhabitants of Hellada (the Pelasgians) and the Pelasgian tribes emigrated from
those parts to
The Christian
traditions present therefore Iuvan (or Hercules of the heroic times, Romanian
Iovan), as the proto-parent of the entire southern Latin nation: of the Siculii, Iberii, Tursenii, Romanii, Latinii
and Trojanii.
According to this
ethnographic table, the Romans and the Latinii are only the descendants of an
older people, which had in Hebrew traditions the name of Cythii (Cuthii).
But the tradition
transmitted by Suidas says the same:
that the Cetii had started to be
called Latini only since the times
of king Telephus-Latinus.
We ask though, in
which part of the ancient world were the dwellings of the Cetii, who, as it
seems, must have been a famous people in ante-Mosaic times.
In the Argonautic
traditions, under the name Cytaei
figure the inhabitants of the vast
The region of
Scythia over which reigned Aietes is also called Kutais gaia, Cytaea terra by Apollonius Rhodius (IV, 511), king Aietes himself has the epithets Kutaieus
and Kutaios
(II. 403, 1094; III. 228), and his capital was, as we know, near the lower
Danube (see Ch.XXVI. 3).
In Homer’s Odyssey (XI.v. 521), the
inhabitants of Mesia, over which reigned Telephus, are also called Cetei (Kateioi), and according
to Dios Chrysostomos, Telephus had
been the king of the Getae, and his empire stretched over the entire region
from the mouths of the
The ancient Latins
were therefore, according to Christian traditions, a people of the great
kingdom from the lower
We find another
version of the Christian tradition about the origin of the Latin people with
the Polish historian Dlugos (+
1480ad). This version, the basis of which is formed by the Biblical genealogy,
appears under the following form:
According to this
table, communicated by Dlugos, the origin of the Latin tribes of Italy, of the
Calabrii (Enotrii), Siculii (Sicanii), Apulii and Latinii of Latium, was
reduced to the Scythii or Sarmatii of Europe, and namely to that part of the
Scythians whom the Greeks called Regini.
(TN – the Royal
Scythians)
We ask though, who
were the Sarmatii whom the Greeks called Regini?
An important
mention about this mysterious people is found in the historical notes relating
to the life of St. Demetrios, which have been discovered at the Castamonitos
Monastery.
The respective
passage in these manuscripts is the following: “in the days of the iconoclastic
emperors (726-780ad), the peoples who dwelt in the regions near the Danube, the so-called Rechinii or better said Blacho – Rechinii and the Sagudatii, taking advantage of the
anarchy which had followed the war of the un-pious emperors of the Romans
against the holly icons, after subjecting Bulgaria, spread little by little to
various other lands, over Macedonia, and finally arrived at Mount Athos” (Uspenski, Ist. Athona, III. 311).
So the Blacho – Rechinii, from the historical
notes of the Castamonitos Monastery, were a people who dwelt near the lower
[3. Under the name Sagudatei figure here the inhabitants
of the southern parts of Transilvania, where exists even today the Romanian village
Sacadate, near the Olt.
The more correct form of the name Rechini and Regini seems to have been in any case Remini or Remni (cf.
Homer who says Rigmon instead of Rimon)].
From all these
traditions results therefore that the Latinii
of Italy were only a branch of the Pelasgian people from the eastern parts of
Europe, of the Hyperboreans from the lower Danube; that they formed the same
ethnic family with the Agathyrsii
from Transilvania, with the ancient Scythii
from the Black Sea, and with the Gelonii,
who dwelt beyond the river Borysthenes, and even beyond the river Tanais.