TheUmbri were anItalic people of ancient Italy.[1] A region calledUmbria still exists and is now occupied by Italian speakers. It is somewhat smaller than theancient Umbria.
Most ancient Umbrian cities were settled in the 9th-4th centuries BC on easily defensible hilltops.Umbria was bordered by theTiber and Nar rivers and included the Apennine slopes on the Adriatic. The ancientUmbrian language is a branch of a group calledOscan-Umbrian, which is related to theLatino-Faliscan languages.[2]
They are also calledOmbrii in someRoman sources. Ancient Roman writers thought the Umbri to be ofGaulish origin;[3]Cornelius Bocchus wrote that they were descended from an ancient Gaulish tribe.[4]Plutarch wrote that the name might be a different way of writing the name of a northern European tribe, theAmbrones, and that both ethnonyms were cognate with "King of theBoii".[5]However, both Greek and Roman scholars sometimes conflated Celtic and Germanic peoples. The historical Ambrones originated in or aroundJutland, were apparently a Germanic-speaking people, and no evidence that they had a connection to the Celtic peoples, per se, has been found.Livy suggested that theInsubres, another Gaulish tribe, might be connected; their Celtic nameIsombres could possibly mean "Lower Umbrians," or inhabitants of the country below Umbria.[6] Similarly RomanhistorianCato the Elder, in his masterpieceOrigines, defines the Gauls as "the progenitors of the Umbri".[7] The Ambrones are also mentioned, with theLombards and theSuebi, among the tribes of Northern Europe in the poemWidsith.[8][9][10]
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 thedeluge (literally "the inundation of the lands by thunderstorms,imbribus). The Etruscans vanquished 300 Umbrian cities.[1]
Ancient Greek historians considered the Umbri as the ancestors of the Sabellian people, namely theSabines and theSamnites, and the tribes which sprung from them, as theMarsi,Marrucini,Peligni,Picentes,Hirpini, and others.[11][12][13] Their expansion was in a southward direction, according to the rite ofVer Sacrum.[14]
Lepontic inscriptions have also been found inUmbria,[15] in the area which saw the emergence of the Terni culture, which had strong similarities with the Celtic-speaking cultures ofHallstatt andLa Tène.[16] The Umbrian necropolis ofTerni, which dates back to the 10th century BC, was virtually identical in every aspect to the Celtic necropolis of theGolasecca culture.[17]
During the 6th–4th centuries BC, Umbrian communities constructed rural sanctuaries in which they sacrificed to the gods. Bronzevotives shaped as animals or deities were also offered. Umbrian deities includeFeronia, Valentia, Minerva Matusia andClitumnus. TheIguvine Tablets were discovered in 1444 atScheggia, nearGubbio, Italy. Composed during the 2nd or 3rd centuries BC, they describe religious rituals involving animal sacrifice.[18]
The ancient sanctuary toVenus (or her Umbrian equivalent) atHispellum was an important sacred place for Umbrian tribes from the 3rd c. BC and the site was monumentalised in the Republican age (2nd-1st century BC).[19]
The modern Festival of Ceri, celebrated every year in Gubbio on May 15 in honor of BishopUbald or Ubaldo of Gubbio (1084-1160), shares certain features with the rites described in the 3rd c. BC Iguvine tables mentioned above, and so may be a survival of that ancient pre-Christian custom. It is also celebrated in Jessup, PA, a town with a large number of immigrants from the Gubbio area, asSaint Ubaldo Day.[20]
While we have little direct information about ancient Umbrian political structure, it is fairly clear that two men held the supreme magistracy ofuhtur and were responsible for supervising rituals. Other civic offices included themarone, which had a lower status thanuhtur (closely related to Latinauctor whence English "author"), and a religious position namedkvestur (cognate to or a borrowing of LatinQuaestor). The Umbrian social structure was divided into distinct groups probably based upon military rank. During the reign ofAugustus, four Umbrian aristocrats became senators. EmperorNerva’s family was from Umbria.[21]
According to Guy Jolyon Bradley, " The religious sites of the region have been thought to reveal a society dominated by agricultural and pastoral concerns, to which town life came late in comparison to Etruria."[21]
Throughout the 9th-4th centuries BC, imported goods fromGreece andEtruria were common, as well as the production of local pottery.
The Romans first made contact with Umbria in 310 BC and settled Latin colonies there in 299 BC, 268 BC and 241 BC. They had completed their conquest of Umbria by approximately 260 BC. TheVia Flaminia linking areas of Umbria was complete by 220 BC. Cities in Umbria also contributed troops to Rome for its many wars. Umbrians fought underScipio Africanus in 205 BC during theSecond Punic War. ThePraetorian Guard recruited from Etruria and Umbria. The Umbri played a minor role in theSocial War and as a result were granted citizenship in 90 BC. Roman veterans were settled in Umbria during the reign of Augustus.[21]
The Umbrians descend from theculture of Terni, protohistoric facies of southern Umbria. The towns ofChianciano andClusium (Umbrian:Camars) near modernArezzo contain traces of Umbrian habitation dating to the 7th or 8th centuries BC.Terni (in Latin:Interamna Nahars) was the first important Umbrian center. Its population was called with the name ofUmbri Naharti. They were the largest, organized and belligerent tribe of the Umbrians and populated compactly across the basin of Nera River. This people is quoted 8 times in the Iguvine Tablets. Their importance is confirmed not only by the Iguvine Tablets and Latin historians, and by the important and privileged role played by this city in Roman times, but also by the discovery, at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, of one of the larger mixed burial necropoleis (Urnfield culture and burial fields) in Europe, about 3000 tombs (Necropoli delle Acciaierie di Terni).
Assisi, calledAsisium by the Romans, was an ancient Umbrian site on a spur ofMount Subasio. Myth relates that the city was founded byDardanus in 847 BC.
Perugia andOrvieto are not considered of Umbrian but Etruscan origin. According to the geographical distribution of the Umbrian territory, they are located on the left side of the Tiber River, which is part of the ancient Etruria. Umbri were on the opposite side of the river. According to the map ofRegio Umbria and Ager Galliucus by EmperorAugustus, the major Umbrian city-states were:Terni,Todi,Amelia andSpoleto (the current part of southern Umbria).
A 2020 analysis of maternal haplogroups from ancient and modern samples indicated a substantial genetic similarity among the modern inhabitants ofUmbria and the area's ancient pre-Roman inhabitants, and evidence of substantial genetic continuity in the region from pre-Roman times to the present with regard tomitochondrial DNA. Both modern and ancient Umbrians were found to have high rates of mtDNA haplogroups U4 and U5a, and an overrepresentation of J (at roughly 30%). The study also found that, "local genetic continuities are further attested to by six terminal branches (H1e1, J1c3, J2b1, U2e2a, U8b1b1 and K1a4a)" also shared by ancient and modern Umbrians.[22]
From Caius Sempronius (De Divis. Ital.,); "The portion of the Apennines from the sources of the Tiber to the Nar, the Umbri inhabit, the oldest stock of the Old Gael, (Veteres Galli), as Augustus writes." [Apenninum colunt Ligures, portionem vero Apennini inhabitant Umbri, prima veterum Gallorum proies, ut Augustus scribit.]
Solinus informs us that Bocchus, a writer who has been several times cited by Pliny, reported the Umbri to have been descended from the ancient Gauls; and a similar account of their origin has been adopted, either from the same or from different testimony, by Servius, Isidore, and other writers of a late period.
But Zenodotus of Troezen, a...historian, relates that the Umbrians, a native race, first dwelt in the Reatine territory, as it is called, and that, being driven from there by the Pelasgians, they came into the country which they now inhabit and changing their name with their place of habitation, from Umbrians were called Sabines. But Porcius Cato says that the Sabine race received its name from Sabus, the son of Sancus, a divinity of that country, and that this Sancus was by some called Jupiter Fidius.
