Definition Of Tribe

[julieboy]

Was a tribe one big extended family? What exactly is a tribe?

 

Who were the components that made up a tribe? What separated tribes from being defined as a nation? What were some of the early tribes that Rome conquered? Were Sabines,Samnites,tribes or nations? Wjat about Siculi and Sicani/ Were they tribes?What other tribes and "nations were there in the early days of Italy,inccluding Sicily?

 

What groups of tribes were related by blood to one another ?

[Favonius Cornelius]

Well, most of your questions can be found in a early Roman History book. As to the questions of what makes a tribe, I think it's possible to generalize that when referring to the Italian tribes, it generally referred to a group of thousands which lived in a general area and were generally related by blood. Lots of generalities I know, but that's the fact, all borders are porus.

 

When you refer to the Siculi and Sicani, I'm fairly certain they lived in Sicilia and not southern Italia. I bet Panthagus would be great for these questions.

[caldrail]

A tribe is a group of extended families who live together in a single community (not necessarily a single area) rather like a family of families.

[Moonlapse]

If you want the very basic root of the word, the Roman citizens of the regal period were divided into three voting groups called Tribes. They were the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres if you'd like to seach for more info on that.

 

Now, the word is used for a group that shares a common culture and ancestry. I think those two aspects are the most definitive. A nation is a group under a common government, regardless of cultural/ancestral ties.

[sullafelix]

For some source material stuff on this look in Pliny's Natural History, Strabo's Geography and early books of Livy.

 

Remember when reading dource material there is no distinction made between voting tribe and cultural tribe so be careful

[Pantagathus]

1. A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent.

 

2. A political, ethnic, or ancestral division of ancient states and cultures, especially:

a.) Any of the three divisions of the ancient Romans, namely, the Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan.

b.) Any of the 12 divisions of ancient Israel.

c.) A phyle of ancient Greece. - American Heritage Dictionary

 

As suggested above, tribes become nations usually when under a single government or tribal federation. However, not always... If there is enough cultural & ethic cohesion across a big enough area, the people within that area may be considered a nation even if they are at odds with each other.

 

For instance, the Romans considered the Celtiberians a nation even there were may tribes under their own chieftans who didn't always cooperate with each other.

 

I see you have posted a couple of different threads that overlap... School assignment you don't quite understand? PM me that actual question you are trying to work out and maybe I can help.

[julieboy]

Trying to figure ot the possibility of a tribe of one group of Italians being related to another tribe in a distant part of Italy,especially if the word tribe is used to mean a large extended family.

 

Lots of times a whole bunch of Italian immigrants from the same village will move to the same neighborhood in an American city.Many of these villages consisted of families that had a lot of intermarrige where often relatives married each other.

 

In their new Italian city,they might not feel close to immigrants from another Italian village,but in reality what possibility is there that somehow they may have at one time been split off from the same original tribe? For example,I belive it was Frederick II that exiled a bunch of Sicilians that he didn't feel he could control to the area of Bari,on Italy's Adriatic side. So possibly many people from Bari, would have a large number of blood relations in Sicily.

[Andrew Dalby]

Trying to figure ot the possibility of a tribe of one group of Italians being related to another tribe in a distant part of Italy,especially if the word tribe is used to mean a large extended family.

 

Lots of times a whole bunch of Italian immigrants from the same village will move to the same neighborhood in an American city.Many of these villages consisted of families that had a lot of intermarrige where often relatives married each other.

 

In their new Italian city,they might not feel close to immigrants from another Italian village,but in reality what possibility is there that somehow they may have at one time been split off from the same original tribe? For example,I belive it was Frederick II that exiled a bunch of Sicilians that he didn't feel he could control to the area of Bari,on Italy's Adriatic side. So possibly many people from Bari, would have a large number of blood relations in Sicily.

 

There are some questions about ancient Italy to which we'll never really know the answer, and yours may be among them. I work on language history (sometimes), and I know that you can sometimes get a better idea of how things may have felt in ancient times, by comparing with how they feel now. People move from Italy to the United States -- a great example this -- and they move around within the United States. Consider how easy or difficult this is, what problems arise, and you may get some idea of how it was at other periods of history to migrate from one tribal area to another, to learn the new language or dialect, and to get accepted in the new tribe. You don't assume that it was always the same, but, starting from that point, you then hunt out factors as between modern and ancient times that might have made it somehow different.

[Pertinax]

May I add a little from one of my own specialities here, an interesting point that arises from long distance movement and complete relocation of a group of persons is the lack of geographical dispersal at the point of arrival (certainly within initial immigrant groups) -as AD mentions very appositely Italians migrating to the USA had very specific initial "landfall" areas .You see this pattern oft repeated when rural populations move into large urban areas-people from Monaghan moving into Dublin for example forming specific enclaves The linguistic reprucussions are very interesting, perhaps preserving archaic/pure forms in remote enclaves .

The Ubian removal to Upper Germania (if I remember correctly) is an appropriate example from our own target period.I am just reading the excellent "Hermes the Thief" (as suggested by Pantagathus -and due for review on this site by him) which rather knocks some of the much vaunted "central place theory" of Christaller and Loesch into the bin , demonstrating as it does the agora as the boundary (in ancient Greece ) rather than the central market area:this made me think very hard about the role of the autonomous village/community and its fear of "the stranger" or the other in ancient society -if a community had no choice but to relocate (famine/war/disaster) then I suggest wholesale movement as a coherent group as a norm rather than fracturing of a community. Im sure there will be suggestions that division might occur across class lines in later societies .

 

just some musings