Apuan
The Apuanians (Latin Apuani ) were an important ancient tribe of the Ligurians in what is now northwestern Italy. According to the description of the Roman historian Titus Livius , they seem to have been the easternmost Ligurian tribe. They settled in the area around Pontremoli in the upper valley of the Macra (today Magra ), the border river between Liguria and Etruria .
For the first time the Apuans were 187 BC. Mentioned when they were defeated by the consul Gaius Flaminius , who had crossed the Apennines , and forced to submit. With this the consul wanted to prevent their constant incursions into the territories of Bononia and Pisae . The latter city served the Romans from the beginning of the 2nd century BC. BC as a basis for ventures against the Ligurians. 186 BC The Apuans lured the consul Quintus Marcius Philippus into remote and narrow forest ravines, then attacked and beat him. The Romans lost 4,000 soldiers and three standards in the battle. The location of this fiasco has since been called Marcius Saltus .
The Roman defeat was avenged the next year and after several successive campaigns the consuls of 181 BC attacked. Chr., Publius Cornelius Cethegus and Marcus Baebius Tamphilus , who had done nothing against the Apuanians in their consulate and who only did so in the next year 180 BC. B.C. had been able to defeat, to the means to resettle the entire people now to Samnium . This affected 40,000 members of the tribe including women and children. In Samnium they received residences in uninhabited plains, the so-called Ager Taura sine (named after the early defunct Samnite city Taurasia ) to the territory Beneventum assigned. In the same year 180 BC After the example of his predecessors , the suffect consul Quintus Fulvius Flaccus transplanted 7000 Apuans who had remained in their homeland to their compatriots who had already been resettled in Samnium. According to the consuls who had undertaken most of this relocation of their homes, the Apuans have since been referred to as Ligures Baebiani and Ligures Corneliani . Under this name, they encountered Samnium as an independent population group during the reign of Emperor Trajan . Those Apuans who had been left in their homeland made 155 BC. A rebellion that the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus put down and thus saved the colony of Luna founded there .
The mountains around Carrara , the Apuan Alps , still bear the name of this ancient people today .
literature
- Christian Hülsen : Apuani . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 1, Stuttgart 1895, Col. 288.
- Konrat Ziegler : Apuani. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 1, Stuttgart 1964, column 469.
- Apuani . In: William Smith (ed.): Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854). ( online )