Marrucini

The Marrucini were an ancient tribe which occupied a small strip of territory around the ancient Teate (modern Chieti), on the east coast of Abruzzo, Italy, limited by the Aterno and Foro Rivers. Other Marrucini centers included Ceio (San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore), Iterpromium (whose ruins are under the Abbey of San Clemente at Casauria), Civitas Danzica (Rapino), and the port of Aternum (Pescara), shared with the Vestini.

History

The tribe is first mentioned in history as a member of a confederacy with which the Romans came into conflict in the second Samnite War, 325 BC, and it entered the Roman Alliance as a separate unit at the end of that war (see further Paeligni).

Language

Something of the language of the Marrucini is known from an inscription known as the "Bronze of Rapino" or Tabula Rapinensis, which belongs to about the middle of the 3rd century BC (now in a Russian museum). It is written in Latin alphabet, but in a dialect which belongs to the North Oscan group. The name of the city or tribe which it gives us is touta marouca, and it mentions also a citadel with the epithet tarincris. Several of its linguistic features, both in vocabulary and in syntax, are of considerable interest to the student of Latin or Italic grammar (e.g. the use of the subjunctive, without any conjunction, to express purpose, a clause prescribing a sacrifice to Ceres being followed immediately by pacr si ut propitia sit). The earliest Latin inscriptions are of Ciceronian date.

The form of the name is of considerable interest, as it shows the suffix -NO- superimposed upon the suffix -CO-, a change which probably indicates some conquest of an earlier tribe by the invading Safins (or Sabini).

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

• Conway, R.S. (1933). The Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy. p. 253 seq..