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Umbrians


The Umbri were an Italic tribe of ancient Italy. A region called Umbria still exists and is now occupied by Italian speakers. It is somewhat smaller than the ancient Umbria.

Most ancient Umbrian cities were settled in the 9th-4th centuries BC on easily defensible hilltops. Umbria was bordered by the Tiber and Nar rivers and included the Apennine slopes on the Adriatic. The ancient Umbrian language is a branch of a group called Oscan-Umbrian, which is related to the Latino-Faliscan languages (Buck, 1904).

Also called Ombrii in some Roman sources. Many Roman writers thought the Umbri to be Celtic; Cornelius Bocchus wrote that they descended from an ancient Gaulish tribe. Plutarch wrote that the name might be a different way of writing the name of the Celto-Germanic tribe Ambrones, which loosely means "King of the Boii." He also suggested that the Insubres, another Gaulish tribe, might be connected; their Celtic name Isombres could possibly mean "Lower Umbrians," or inhabitants of the country below Umbria. Similarly Roman historian Cato the Elder, in his masterpiece Origines, defines the Gauls "the progenitors of the Umbri". The Umbrii are mentioned, with the Lombards and the Suebi, among the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe in the poem Widsith. Furthermore, according to Roman authors, The Umbrii/Ambrones originated somewhere in Germany or Scandinavia.Pliny the Elder wrote concerning the folk-etymology of the name:

The Umbrian people are thought the oldest in Italy; they are believed to have been called Ombrii (here, "the people of the thunderstorm," after ὅμβρος, "thunderstorm") by the Greeks because they survived the deluge (literally "the inundation of the lands by thunderstorms, imbribus). The Etruscans vanquished 300 Umbrian cities.


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