A Great Coming Together
A Small Ancestral Story about the Coalescence of Unrelated Peoples
In between the downfall of ancient Greece and the rise of Rome, a local Italic tribe known as the Bruzi (or Bruttii) controlled the bulk interior of Calabria, the foot of Italy.
Their time on the historical record is short-lived but fierce. In just 50 years, they went from an enslaved caste of shepherd-servants to the region’s most formidable force.
One element that propelled this rapid rise was their ability to create alignment among various local peoples - both internally and intertribally.
You see, the Bruzi were not a homogeneous, genetically-connected ethnic group. Rather, they were a composite of several of the region’s peoples.
Peoples that had come together of their own free will.
The tribe’s mix is unknown but was most likely:
A backbone of the formerly enslaved shepherds-servants who had rebelled and secured their freedom
The remainder of the local Oenotri tribe who was in decline due to invasions
Refugees who had fled to this difficult mountain terrain in order to escape slavery in other areas
Members of other local Southern Italic tribes like the Samnites (from inland Abruzzo, Molise & Campania) and the Messapii (from Puglia, “the heel”)
After their own coalescence around 356 BCE, the Bruzi drew together a multi-tribal partnership with their neighbors, including their former enslavers, the Lucani.
The Italics then turned a collective eye towards the cities of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece), which dotted the coastlines.
Unlike their neighbors, the local Greeks had fought, power-grabbed and bickered amongst themselves for generations. Weakening them further were the recurring wars launched by Greek tyrant kings on the neighboring island of Sicily.
Power-grabbing erodes a people; alignment empowers them.
The Bruzi Confederation took advantage of this Greek weakness and their own strength.
First through raids, then by sieges and all-out warfare, the Bruzi claimed many Greek cities as their own. Terina, a Greek city on the “top of the foot,” was their first target and their first success.
From there more Magna Graecia cities fell to the Bruzi Confederation: Hipponium, Sipontum, Argentano, Pandosia, Hyporo, Petelia, Temisa…
By 300 BCE, remaining free Greek cities such as Rhegion and Locri may have paying “taxes” (aka extortion fees) to prevent Bruzi attacks.
This is how the Bruzi pivoted from a caste of enslaved shepherds to the region’s most formidable force in just half a century.
Now, while I do not condone acts of conquering or threats of violence, I find the lesson in the Bruzi rise to autonomous power is as true now as it was then:
It was through alliance, agreement, and alignment across an ethnically heterogeneous mix of peoples - peoples not bound by blood or kinship - that the Bruzi built protection, power, and prowess.
The importance of this great coming together was recognized by the Bruzi themselves.
For somewhere in the fog between their slave-rebellion and their first attack, the Bruzi sealed the promise of partnership into the name of their tribal hub.
They called their capital, Cosentia, meaning “consensus.”
Or as she is called today, Cosenza, the mountain city from which my Calabrese ancestors hail.
Resources & Further Readings
L. Cappelletti” The Bruttii, in: G.D.Farney - G.Bradley (eds.), The Peoples of Ancient Italy, Boston - Berlin 2018, 321-336.
History Files The Kingdoms of Italy - Bruttii
Italian Wiki: Bruzi
Image Credit
Cosenza: Lupo silano 1914, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Wow!!! Now this is some wisdom to look back to as we build La Befana’s Table---people coming together by choice not bound by race or creed and just wanting to live a legendary story.