Romans and Italians 449uncovered so far: that genealogy was often used to “explain” ethnic reputation, that the
Romans frequently joined in on ethnological discourse started by others, and that Cato
was a profoundly important figure in the development (or at least in the transmission) of
the images of nearly every Italic ethnic group.
At any rate, one of the most common claimedoriginesfor many central and south Italic
groups was directly from the Sabines. To make this connection, many explained that
various people originated from a “Sacred Spring” expedition (aver sacrum) dispatched
by the Sabines (Tagliamonte 1996: 9–21; Farney 2007: 206–10). This ritual is known
to us from Greek and Roman religious practice, wherein, in periods of crisis, all fruits
and animals born in one spring were dedicated and sacrificed to some god. The ones
initiated by the Sabines, however, involved people: all the children born in a year, once
they had reached adulthood, were sent out on expeditions to found colonies. These
expeditions were led by an animal of almost “totemic” significance. For instance, some
Samnites followed a bull, an animal that became emblematic for them. The Hirpini were
led by a wolf, from which they took their name, from the Oscan word for wolf,hirpus.
Similarly, the Picenes followed an eponymouspicus(Latin for “woodpecker”) (Guzzo
1996; Ferrando 2003). In turn, a writer named Alfius (Festus 150L), who was probably
a Samnite, accounted for the origins of fellow Oscan-speaking Mamertini from a Sacred
Spring sent out by the Samnites. Finally, according to the historian Cornelius Sisenna
(FRH16F91), the Social War rebels vowed their own Sacred Spring at some point during
the conflict—to what purpose is unclear, but the fragment claims that they were invoking
the “Sabines” who had done so also.
The archaeological evidence to date certainly does not bear out colonization from
Sabinum to these places. Instead, we must view these “original” Sacred Springs as artifi-
cial constructs, rationalizations of some linguistic and cultural similarities at best. Dench
(1995: 186–93) has argued that, in the late Republic, the Romans began to appreciate
closer origins for other Italic peoples, both to include them within the Roman world and
to associate the perceived pristine morality of the Italics with themselves via the Sabines.
It seems clear from Alfius and Sisenna that some Italic peoplesthemselvesaccepted their
origins from Sacred Springs. It would certainly be to the advantage of these groups to tie
themselves to the Sabines in the late Republic, since that would help to legitimize them
in the minds of the Romans.
Along with names and genealogies connecting people and individuals to the Sabines,
one tool for making a closer connection was the use of the ethnic term “Sabellus.” Salmon
(1967: 33) argued that the term was an invention of late Republican writers, noting that,
in our literary sources, the word first appears in a fragment of Varro from the 70sBCE,
which he applies to the Samnites. The word seems to be a diminutive of “Sabinus,” as
Strabo (5.4.12) concludes in his account of the Samnite Sacred Spring. Other ancient
authors who use “Sabellus” usually mean central Apennine people such as the Samnites,
but in some instances “Sabelli” is used to mean Sabines (Dench 1995: 223–6, for all
known instances of the word in literary sources). This new term conferred a certain sta-
tus, which suggests that the Apennine people had a hand in applying it to themselves.
Through this ethnic, they profited from their connection to one of the oldest and most
respected ethnic groups at Rome, the Sabines. It can be no coincidence that Horace uses