- Rutuli
The Rutuli or Rutulians were members of a legendary Italic tribe. Thought to have been descended from the
Umbri and thePelasgians , the Rutuli were located in territory whose capital was the ancient town of Ardea, located about 20 miles southeast of Rome. [Hazlit, William. "The Classical Gazetteer" (1851), p. 297.]In
Virgil 'sAeneid , the Rutuli are led byTurnus , a young prince to whomLatinus , king of theLatins , had promised the hand of his daughterLavinia in marriage. When the Trojans arrive in Italy, Latinus decides to give his daughter toAeneas because of instructions he had received from the gods to marry his daughter to a foreigner. Turnus is outraged and leads his people as well as several other Italian tribes against the Trojans in war. Virgil's text ends when Aeneas defeats Turnus in single combat and therefore gains the right to marry Lavinia. In some other accounts of the story of Aeneas, he is later killed in a subsequent battle with them.During the 6th century BC, Roman king
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus besieged and conquered Ardea, and eventually the Rutulians, like the other Italic tribes, were subsumed within the Roman Republic. ["The Geography of Strabo", published in Vol. II of the "Loeb Classical Library Edition", 1923, Book V, Chapter 3.]References
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