THE SANNITICHE WARS

The pressure caused by the increase of the population had pushed the Sanniti to stray from the plains because they were in desperate need of good pastures for their flocks. They were pushed to the east towards Puglia and to the west towards Campania installing themselves on the banks of the middle and high Volturno, and on the northwest they neared the river basin of the Lira. This brought them dangerously close to the Lazio, where in the second half of IV Century, the Romans had conquered political predominance. The Sanniti could not be certain if the Romans had remained there as they continued to advance.

Sooner or later a clash between the two inevitably had to happen. In fact, there were three small Sanniti wars that broke out. These lasted approximately 50 years.
For the Roman it was not the usual war carried out against a subject with a weak and helpless population, but a clash between two powers that had competed equally. The Roman, installed in the Lazio, aimed at the expansion in the remainder of Italy. The Sanniti did not accept the aims of Rome to become owners of the peninsula. The hatred of the Sanniti towards Rome was born from their right for survival, for which they fought fiercely against the Roman aggressor, in order to defend their own freedom. The Sanniti were a true thorn in the side of the Roman, who had fought against them for 50 years and knew their strength.

The Roman on his part, nourished feelings of fear and respect for the Sanniti, as they recognized in them the quality that they admired above all the others. The war worsened.
The three wars fought against the Sanniti (from 343 a.C. to the 341 a.C.; from 327 a.C. to 304 a.C.; from 298 a.C. to 290 a.C.) were the most difficult and uncertain in Roman history. On more than one occasion, they were on the edge of financial ruin. In the course of the Second Sanniti War, the Romans knew without hesitation the shame of the giogo in the famous Forche Caudine. (a.C.-if you mean after Christ-it would be AD in English- before Christ would be BC)
The Romans had to resort to great resources, to generate and to exercise them in order to combat the courageous resistance of these “people of the mountains” who were determined to defend with stubbornness their own independence and cultural identity.

The final outcome of the three wars was the elimination of the Sanniti people due to the military endeavors of Rome with its complete absorption into the Roman people. But the Sanniti features are still preserved today in the genetic code of the people of the Matese.

THE SANNIO

The Sannio was the inner plateau at the center of southern Italy. It was bordered to the north from the river Sangro to the south from the river Ofanto, to the east from the Tavoliere of Puglia, and to the west from the Campania Plain.

Its predominant characteristic is the gray limestone mountain cliffs that are not passable. They are obstructed especially on the west boundary. The mountains are the main cause of the material and cultural isolation that has characterized the Sannio through the centuries.

In the Sannio, the Apennini is not a logical mountainous chain of continuous features, but rather a complicated maze of bulky spurs and alternate recesses from valleys often without outlets. To the north the slopes of the Maiella, in the southern Sannio it winds off to the contours of Mt. Taburno and even more to the south the Irpini mountains. The western boundary of the Sannio has a large natural bastion, the harsh massive Matese, the ancient Mons Tifernus. This is Mt. Miletto, which is about 40 km. long and 25 km. wide, with a lake at its summit. It rises beyond 2000 meters in altitude. It is visible almost to the Adriatic Sea and dominates the spacious valley of the Volturno River.

Nothing much is known of the men that lived in the territory. The population “osco-umbre” that included also the Sanniti (in language osca “SAFINIM”), had been developed from the merger between “Aborigine” with “Indo-European”. In 600 AD there existed a distinguished and separate tribe called Osco-Umbre. In 500 the historically famous people known as the Sanniti were clearly identifiable. They had the uncontested control of the Sannio.

The “Sanniti” were a part of those “Italici” people who spoke from variations of there Indo European existence. This was seen for the first time certainly in Italy during the Iron Age.
Today the students use the Sabelli term in order to designate the people of central Italy who spoke the dialect of the osco group.

Therefore Sabelli is a generic term in order to designate the type of people “osco”. These were the Sanniti, the Frentani, the Sidicini, the Campania, the Lucani, the Apuli, the Bruzi and the Mamertini. It can be said that Sabelli people were all who spoke the true and actual osco, a language that phonetically recalled an archaic Latin with endings of harsh and guttural alliteration.

THE SANNITI AND THE CITY OF BOJANO

The spacious community of the Sanniti, in its time, was composed mainly of four tribes: the Carecini, the Pentri, the Caudini and the Irpini. The names of other possible groups were not handed down to us. These four tribes gathered to form the Sannitica League, which was initially formed for religious and sacred purposes, but later was also used for military reasons.

It is difficult to characterize the dividing lines between the several Sanniti tribes. The Pentri were above the rest, mountaineers who populated the heart of the Sannio, the region of the Massive Matese, its vicinity and the valleys of the rivers Trinius and Trifernus. They were thought of as strong and frightening and frightening, the thorn in the back of the Sannita nation. A good number of them were concentrated in the only open area of the Sannio, a valley dominated with Bovianum and Saepinum.
The Sannitiche tribes were devoted to breeding and agriculture. The lands of the Carecini and Pentri were unfit for cultivations, so the breeding of cattle prevailed. This has been practiced in such areas from prehistoric times and it was certainly of capital economical importance.

This was indicated not only by the bulls that acted, as animal-guides in the ritual of the Ver Sacrum, and therefore the name of their capital town became Bovianum, but also by the allusions to the herds of cattle in available literature. In effect, the breeding of the cattle had to be as important in antiquity as it is today since many of the bare rocky hills now have limited pastureland because of the exploitation through time. It was this area in the Matese in which the production of dairy products blossomed.

From the administrative point of view the political unit of the Sannio was not municipal but touto. This was a unit that had corporative character. Most likely each of the four tribes formed, as one together, the Sannita people, constituted a touto.

The political unit under the tribe was a typical Italian ancient institution, the Pagus. This was an administrative lower community, the smallest that existed of the Italian people. It was not a town, but a district of variable range, which had greater funds than was usual for smaller territories. Therefore the Pagus was a semi-independent rural district that took care of social, agricultural and above all religious issues. It carried out governmental functions from a local level. For this purpose it possessed town property, including some buildings.

Each touto included various Pagi. Indeed a touto was formed when a certain satisfied number united in a tight association, therefore immediately being able to count on the absolute fidelity of all its members. Likely each tribe had a locality that was its capital, the administrative center of the whole touto. Bovianum was the capital of the tribe of the Pentri.

THE VER SACRUM

The individual Sabelle tribes gathered together to give thanks in a religious ritual, the Ver Sacrum or Sacred Spring. This was a means by which the people of the osca language moved themselves further forward along the Appennines.

In order to win a battle, to remove a danger or to put an end to a natural disaster such as a famine or an epidemic, the Sabelli promised to sacrifice to Mamerte all that was to be born in the next spring. The children that were born in such a period were not sacrificed but left to grow, but they were “sacrati”. This meant that they were consecrated to God. At their adult age they had an obligation to leave their tribe and to try new forests and pastures under the guidance of a sacred animal to the divinity. The animal-guide could be a bull, a wolf, a woodpecker, a bear or a red deer. The emigrating group would settle down at the point that the animal had indicating. Today we know that the Sanniti followed a bull, the Irpini and the Lucani a wolf, and the Picenti a woodpecker.

The first Ver Sacrum of the Sabelli was carried out in prehistoric times. The first “sacrati” to settle themselves down in the Sannio were lead from “Comius Castronius” by a bull to Bovianum, which became the cradle of their nation.

It is clear that the Sabelli did not constitute a unitary nation, but they were uniform in a tribal way that they were able to differ in practices and customs in the political order. The restlessness of the movements of the Sabelli and the different personalities of those who guided several “Sacred Springs’ explain in part the tribal divisions.

An ethnic truth therefore is outlined. The Sabelli, constituted from the tribes of the Alfaterni, the Sanniti, the Apuli and the Frentani, occupied the zone that goes from the Gulf of Salerno, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the central southern coast of the Adriatic Sea.

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