MAMERTINI

This article appears in Volume V17, Page 519 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAL-MAR

MAMERTINI , or " children of Mars," the name taken by a band of Campanian (or Samnite) freebooters who about 289 B.C. seized the Greek colony of Messana at the north-

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

corner of Sicily, after having been hired by Agathocles to dafand it (Polyb. 1. 7. 2). The adventure is explained by tradition (e.g. Festus 158, Muller) as. the outcome of a ver sacrum; the members of the expedition are said to havebeen the male children born in a particular

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger.
springer
- SPRINGER (Fr. rein)
- SPRINGER, ANTON HEINRICH (1825–1891)
, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

of which the produce had been vowed to Apollo (cf. SAMNITES), and to have settled first in Sicily near Tauromenium. An inscription survives (R. S. Conway,

Italic

ITALIC

Dialects, I) which shows that they took with them the Oscan language as it was spoken in

Capua

CAPUA (anc.
Casilinum
- CASILINUM (mod. Capua)
;, a town and archiepiscopal see of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 7 M. W. by
rail
- RAIL
from the town oI Caserta. Pop. (1901) 14
CAPUA (mod. S. Maria di Capua Vetere)

or Nola at that date, and the constitution usual in

Italic

ITALIC

towns of a free community (touta=) governed by two annual magistrates (meddices). The inscription dedicated some large building (possibly a fortification) to Apollo; which so far confirms the tradition just noticed. Though in the Oscan language, the inscription is written in the Greek

alphabet

ALPHABET (see also WRITING)

common to

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

Italy from the 4th

century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

B.C. onwards, viz. the Tarentine Ionic, and so are the legends of two coins of much the same date as the inscription (Conway, ib. 4). From 282 onwards (B. V. Head, Historia numorum, 136) the legend itself is Graecized (MAMEPTINON, instead of MAAMEPTINOTM) which shows how quickly here, as everywhere, " Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit." On the Roman conquest of Sicily the town secured an independence under treaty (Cicero, Verr. 3. 6. 13). The inhabitants were still called Mamertines in the time of Strabo (vi. 2. 3).
See further Mommsen, C.I.L. x. sub loc., and the references already given. (R. S. C.)

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