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and the military events concerning them. Let's start immediately by remembering that
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the Rhaetians are actually a much debated reality, and that the only
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certain data in our possession is that they were a non-Indo-European population, who lived in
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the central-eastern area of the Alps. The territories populated by the Rhaetians included
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today's Trentino-Alto Agide, Austrian Tyrol, Canton of Grisons in Switzerland,
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Eastern Lombardy mountains and the Venetian Pre-Alps. According to Strabo, part of the Rhetians was also the people
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of the Euganei, in turn divided into three tribes, the Triumplini of Val Trompia, the Camunni
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of Val Camonica and the Stoeni of Eastern Lombardy, Western Trentino and the mountains
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north of Verona. Actually speaking about Verona, Pliny
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describes it as a center of the Rhetians and Euganei, and although he probably does not refer
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exactly to the city of Verona city but more to the area of Montorio Veronese, where,
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following the excavations of the archaeologist Luciano Salzani, a Rhaetian settlement was discovered,
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the link between the two populations is obviously very strong, so much so that the famous protohistorian
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Carlo De Marinis proposed that one reality - the Euganei- was simply an emanation
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of the other - the Rhaetians- According to Pliny and Trogus the Rhaetians would have
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been the descendants of those Etruscans who, led by the prince Reto, from whom they would
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later take their name, would have fled to the mountains to escape the ravages of the Gauls.
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While the Celts would have conquered the fertile plains of the Northern Etruria (PoValley), its original population
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would have taken refuge on the Alps, where according to Livy they
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would have barbarized, forgetting their noble origins.
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Livy on the other hand reports a similar myth for the Euganei people, who as we have
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seen probably were a fraction of the Rhaetians, only in this case the invaders are not
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the Gauls, but the Veneti. According to Livy, when Antenor arrived in Veneto
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leading Trojans, Enetoi and Meonians, he found the Euganei, and to conquer the lands where he
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would have founded Padua, he fought them and drove them up to the mountains. Solving the myth of the origin
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of the Rhaetians is very difficult. From the point of view of the material culture, the Rhaetian one
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is identified with the Culture of Fritzens-Sanzeno, called as such from the name of two sites, one in Tyrol and the other
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in Trentino, and what can be deduced from the archaeological data is certainly a deep
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bond with the Etruscan culture. The Rhaetians used the Etruscan alphabet to write
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- but, this must be said, like many other peoples of Northern Italy - the point
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is, however, that the language of the Rhetians itself is a non-Indo-European language, just like Etruscan,
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and according to the majority of the linguists it also seems strictly linked to it, so much so
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that Rhaetian, Estruscan and Lemnian would make up the family of the Tyrsenic languages.
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Unfortunately this data does not help us to give an univocal answer to the myth of the origins,
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because it can lead to different interpretations. On one hand, it would be tempting to subvert
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the classical myth, and rather than think of the Rhaetians as
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"barbarized Etruscans", on the contrary begin to imagine the Etruscans as "civilized Rhaetians",
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as the father of modern epigraphy, Theodor Mommsen, seems to suggest,
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In any case, whether it was the cradle of the Etruscan culture or its northernmost
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offshoot, in this interpretation the Rhaetian world would be a constituent part of it. On the contrary,
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however, one can also imagine the Rhetians as the indigenous people of the Alps, initially
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detached from the Etruscan sphere, but which over the years has been gradually Etruscanized
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by the influences coming from the Po Valley, both through trade and through the settlement
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of Etruscan elites as ruling class into its social fabric. It is interesting
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in this regard to reflect on the fact that when the Romans speak of the populations of the
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Alps they sometimes use the term "Rhetians" and the term "Ligurians" as if they were interchangeable,
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as happens for example with the Stoeni, and this, (although some linguists want to see in the
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Ligurians an Indo-European people, according to some even speaking a Celtic language,
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although prior to the Gallic descent) could make us imagine a picture as follows: a series
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of peoples inhabiting Northern Italy, linked in various ways and with different intensity
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to Etruscan culture, which with the emergence of new realities, such as the Veneti Este Culture
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and/or the Gauls coming from beyond the Alps, not being
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competitive from a military point of view, found themselves being pushed, relagated,
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contained in the less attractive areas, the most mountainous, rocky, harsh,
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difficult to cultivate. In fact when the Romans speak of these
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two peoples, the Ligurians and the Rhetians, they insist on the fact that they are of very ancient lineage,
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but relegated, isolated, contained in rocky and unhospitable areas: as well as
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the Rhetians on the mountains of the Alps, the Ligurians on the Ligurian and Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. The
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Rhaetians participate in what is called "Art of the Situlae", also common
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to the Veneti, however rather than a Veneti influence, in this case it should be
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considered more an Etruscan heritage. Also because the relationship between the Rhaetinas and the Veneti is difficult to
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define. The theory that the name "Rhetians" derives from the Veneti goddes
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Reitia is not entirely convincing. In fact the name "Rhaetians" seems to be an exonym,
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a name given by a foreign reality, in this specific
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case the Celts, who would have named the Rhetians from the term of their language
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"Rait", which indicates the highlands and the mountains. So "Rhaetians" would be
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"the Mountain-Men"/"The Highlanders", which actually would also make sense.
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The Rhaetians in fact undergo to a considerable influence from the Celtic populations,
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in particular starting from the II century BC. This influence initially can be seen
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in what is obviously the sphere of material culture linked to the military world:
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the omnipresent La Tène swords are also found in the Rhaetian area. But not only: in particular
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within the Camunni tribe we have Celtic influences that affect
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both onomastics and religion, also because the Camunni probably found themselves
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integrating Celtic elements fleeing from the Po Valley during the phase
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of the Roman conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. In the graffiti of Val Camonica we can
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in fact distinguish the figure of Cernunnos, the Celtic deity patron of the wildlife,
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who is recognized by the deer antlers and the snake he holds in one hand. Moreover,
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after the Roman conquest, the epigraphs that we find in Val Camonica, which bear
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the Romanized names of the natives, show names that are all of Celtic origin.
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The image that classical sources give of the Rhetians is ambivalent: Strabo describes them
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both as a people that produces an exquisite wine, which has nothing to envy to Italian wines,
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and as ferocious highlanders accustomed to looting and robbery. This last detail is
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also found in Horace, who paints the Reti as fierce warriors who descend from the mountains
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brandishing the lethal "Amazonian Battle-Axe", probably a reference to the Hellebardenaxt,
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a weapon characteristic of the people of the Alps. Surely the first Roman
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military campaign against the Rhetians seems a punitive expedition after their raids
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into the plains. We are in 118 BC, and the consul Quintus Marcius Rex moves against the Stoeni, that
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tribe of the Euganei who lived in an area between Val Sabbia, Val di Chiese,
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Valli Giudicarie and Monte Baldo, therefore ideally a crescent that it included the mountains
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north of Brescia, the western part of Trentino and the mountains north of Verona. Orosius, who describes in
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detail the clash between the legionaries and the Alpine tribe, presents us a picture
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of unprecedented ferocity: when the Stoeni realize they are defeated, they refuse
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to surrender, they kill all their women, all their children, they set fire to their
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villages and finally throw themselves into the burning huts, committing suicide. So what
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is offered to us is a picture of total barbarism and rebelliousness. It must be said that
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the definitive conquest of Rhaetia will take place much later, in 15 BC, when Augustus sent
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his two sons Tiberius and Drusus to complete the task started
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the previous year by Silius Nerva, the governor of Illyricum. Also in this case the Roman
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operation is described as a reaction to the ferociousness of the Rhaeti: Cassius Dio wrote that the
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Rhaetians imposed heavy tributes on Roman merchants and travelers when they had to cross
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the Alpine passes. It also tells us that the Rhaetians regularly descended in Italy and Gaul
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to plunder and devastate, and even goes so far as to write that the Rhaetians killed all the
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male prisoners they captured, even tearing the fetuses from the wombs of the mothers, after having
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ascertained the male sex of the unborn child by magical means. Now, if the reference of the tributes imposed on travelers and
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merchantsis probable,as the occasional raids,
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the description of the murder of all the male prisoners and the crude details such
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as the quartering of mothers to slaughter their fetuses are evidently elements of
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propaganda. In reality, we now know that the pacification of the Alps wanted by Augustus
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had little or nothing to do with a supposed bellicosity of the Rhaetians, but was
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linked entirely to something else, another military campaign that Augustus had already planned: the conquest
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of Germania, which we know ultimately ended in a failure, but however
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to be carried out it needed a peaceful and solid background. Obviously, the Rhaetians were not
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in the least able to resist the Roman war machine, and were defeated
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in little more than a year. Even in this case, however, we have the testimony
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of a strenuous, ferocious, savage, atavistic resistance: from Florus we know that during the siege
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of one of the last pockets of resistance of the Rhaetians, the Rhaetian women, when ended the
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javelins and boulders to throw at the Romans, realizing that the resistance
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was vain, took their own babies, slam them on the ground killing them, and then
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hurl them as projectiles at the legionaries. Again, therefore, what is presented to us
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is a barbaric picture of resistance to the bitter end and rejection of the Roman conquest.
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In reality, however, regardless of these aspects, we will see that the Rhaetians, once conquered,
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will manage to insert themselves quite quickly within the Roman empire, so much so that
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Tacitus reports of Rhaetian auxiliary units, that just thirty years after the conquest of
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Rhaetia were already fighting alongside the Roman legionaries against the Germans
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in the victorious battle of Idistaviso. There is a sort of irony, if you want, in
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all of this: Rhaetia is conquered by the will of Augustus, who wants a solid
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background to proceed against Germania. Augustus, however, will see his efforts frustrated with the
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Clades Variana, the massacre of the Teutoburg Forest. But it will be precisely the auxiliaries
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of the Rhetians who, fighting alongside the Romans, will punish in Idistaviso those Germans who had
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refused to bow to Rome. The memory of the events linked to the Roman conquest of the Alps
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must somehow have profoundly marked the indigenous populations, so much so that it
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still resonates in the legends of Trentino. For example in the Fanes epic cycle, a sort of "Ladin Iliad",
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the epic cycle par excellence of the Dolomites, one of the peoples
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that is described as invincible and unstoppable invaders has the name of "Trusani", and if
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in the past it has been tried to make this people coincide with the inhabitants of Treviso,
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the term "Trusani" in reality is probably simply the corruption of "Drusiani", or the legionaries
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of Drusus, who as we know carried out part of the conquest of the Alps. Also,
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in a collection of fables from Val di Fassa, transcribed by Ulrike Kindl in 1984,
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we found the description of a battle that is clearly reminiscent of Florus chronicle, including
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the disturbing detail of the babies hurled against the invaders.
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In particular, according to Kindl, the name of the enemy leader, the perfidious
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"Munez", is simply the corruption of the name of Lucius Munatius Plancus,
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who celebrated a triumph over the Rhaeti, as we know from an epigraph in his
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mausoleum in Gaeta. However, it must be said that the total overlap of Florus's account and
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the Fassan legend rises suspicions.
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Actually it could be not a legend passed down orally regarding the actual facts described by Florus,
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but in reality that it is something born in a much
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more recent period, coming from and educated context. It was not uncommon in Italy between 1700 and 1800 that local scholars,
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or local parish priests - and often the two figures coincided -, went to search in
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historical sources for references that could be adapted to their small reality,
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in an attempt to find a lonk with the Roman past. in fact, an eminent figure of Val di Fassa
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who knew Florus work may have told the story of the heroic resistance of the Rhaetians
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to the population, who metabolized it, made it its own and transformed it into a
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local legend. If you liked this video, put a "like" and subscribe to the channel. And
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if you have any questions, feel free to write them in the comments.Thank you!
