Orobii
The Orobii also Orumobii or Orumbovii were a population that inhabited the northern Italian valleys of Bergamo, Como and Lecco in the 1st millennium BC.
Pliny the Elder ascribes to them the foundation of the cities of Como, Bergamo, Licini Forum[1] and Parra.[2]
Classical historians such as Pliny the Elder himself thought them as of Greek origin, tracing the etymology of their ethnonym from the Greek "Ορων βιον".[3]
The modern interpretation by archaeologists and linguists is different, they see the Orobii as a population of celticized Ligurians, or Celtic-Ligurians, formed with the contribution of Celtic immigrants from the Rhine and the Danube areas[4] in an early historical period preceding the Gallic invasions of the 4th century BC[5] who settled in north-west Italy between the Oglio and the Ticino rivers.
See also
Notes
- ^ Probably near the modern city of Erba.
- ^ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, III, 124-125.
- ^ C. Cantù, Storia di Como e sua provincia, Como, 1859.
- ^ M. Gianoncelli, "Vecchie e nuove ipotesi sulla stirpe degli Orobi", in Oblatio; A. Noseda ed, Como, 1971.
- ^ R. de Marinis, "La civiltà di Golasecca", in La Lombardia, Jaka book, 1985.