I popoli alpini tra rappresentazioni antiche e nuovi dati

This paper aims to show that a new assessment of the literary sources about the Alpine peoples is much needed. In fact, while historiography and geographic literature (particularly Strabo, whose account may partially depend on Augustus’ Memoirs) emphasizes the defeat and annihilation of the ‘savage’ inhabitants of the Alps following the Augustan campaigns, archaeological and epigraphic evidences on the one hand attest that in the early 1st century A.D. some of the Alpine valleys were experiencing a substantial economic flourishing as well as an advanced cultural integration; on the other, they reveal an ethnic complexity usually neglected by literary sources.