Aurunci

The Aurunci were an Italic tribe which lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC.

Aurunci is the name given by Roman writers to an ancient race or nation of Italy. It appears that "Aurunci" was the appellation the Romans gave to the people called "Ausones" by the Greeks: indeed, the two names are merely different forms of the same, as the letter "r" was a common variation for "s" in Latin (Aurunci = Auronici = Auruni = Ausuni).

The identity of the two is distinctly asserted by Servius, and clearly implied by Cassius Dio, where he says that the name of Ausonia was properly applied only to the land of the Auruncans, between the Volscians and the Campanians. In like manner, Festus makes the mythical hero Auson the founder of the city of Aurunea. Servius terms the Aurunci one of the most ancient nations of Italy. They appear to have been much more powerful and widely spread at an early period than we subsequently find them, but it does not appear that the name was ever employed by the Romans in the vague and extended sense in which "Ausones" was used by the Greeks.

At a later period, in the fourth century BC, the two names of Aurunci and Ausones had assumed a distinct signification, and came to be applied to two petty nations, evidently mere subdivisions of the same great race, both dwelling on the frontiers of Latium and Campania; the Ausones on the west of the Liris, extending from thence to the mountains of the Volscians; the Auruncans, on the other hand, being confined to the detached group of volcanic mountains now called Monte Santa Croce, or Rocca Monfina, on the left bank of the Liris, together with the hills that slope from thence towards the sea. Their ancient stronghold or metropolis, Aurunca was situated near the summit of the mountain, while Suessa, which they subsequently made their capital, was on its south-western slope, commanding the fertile plains from thence to the sea. On the east and south they bordered closely on the Sidicini of Teanum and the people of Cales, who, according to Livy, were also of Ausonian race, but were politically distinct from the Auruncans. Virgil evidently regards these hills as the original abode of the Auruncan, and speaks of them as merely a petty people.

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