BRUTTII (Βρέττιοι), a people who inhabited the southern extremity of Italy, from the frontiers of Lucania to the Sicilian Straits and the promontory of Leucopetra. Both Greek and Latin writers expressly tell us that Bruttii was the name of the people: no separate designation for the country or province appears to have been adopted by the Romans, who almost universally use the plural form, or name of the nation, to designate the region which they inhabited. Thus Livy uses "Consentia in Bruttiis," "extremus Italiae angulus Brattii," "Bruttii provincia," &c.: and the same usage prevailed down to a very late period. (Treb. Poll. Tetricus, 24; Notit. Dign. ii. pp. 10, 120.) The name of Bruttium, to designate the province or region, though adopted by almost all modern writers on ancient geography appears to be unsupported by any classical authority: Mela, indeed, uses in one passage the phrase "in Bruttio," but it is probable that this is merely an elliptic expression for "in Bruttio agro," the term used by him in another passage, as well as by many other writers. (Mela, ii. 4, 7; In Flor. iii. 20. § 13, Bruttium is also an adjective.) The Greeks, however, used Βρέττία for the name of the country, reserving Βρέττιοι for that of the people. (Pol. ix. 7, 25, xi. 7; Strab. vi. p. 255.) Polybius, in more than one passage, calls it ή Βρεττιανή χώρα (i. 56, ix. 27). The land of the Bruttians, or Bruttium (as we shall continue to designate it, in accordance with modern usage), was bounded on the N. by Lucania, from which it was separated by a line drawn from the river Laus near the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Crathis near the Gulf of Tarentum. On the W. it was washed by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and on the S. and E. by that known in ancient times as the Sicilian Sea, including under that appellation the Gulf of Tarentum. It thus comprised the two provinces now known as Calabria Citra and Calabria Ultra with the exception of the northernmost portion of the former, which was included in Lucania. The region thus limited is correctly described by Strabo (l. c.) as a peninsula including within it another peninsula. The breadth from sea to sea, at the point where its frontier joins that of Lucania, does not exceed 300 stadia, or 30 Geog. miles; it afterwards widens out considerably, forming a mountainous tract of above 50 Geog. miles in breadth, and then again becomes abruptly contracted, so that the isthmus between the Terinaean Gulf and that of Scyllacium is less than 17 Geog. miles in width (Strabo calls it 160 stadia, which is very near the truth). The remaining portion, or southernmost peninsula, extending from thence to the promontory of Lencopetra (Capo dell' Armi), is about 60 miles long by 37 in its greatest width. The general form of the Bruttian peninsula may be not inaptly compared to a boot, of which the heel is formed by the Lacinian Promontory near Crotona, and the toe by that of Leucopetra. It is traversed throughout its whole extent by the chain of the Apennines, to which it owes its entire configuration. This range of mountains enters the Bruttian territory on the confines of Lucania, and descends along the western coast of the province as far as the Terinaean Gulf. Throughout this extent the central chain approaches very close to the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea, while the great outlying mountain mass of the Sila (to the E. of the main chain, from which it is partly separated by the valley of the Crathis, though at the same time closely connected with the same mountain system) |
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Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/465
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