Laudator Temporis Acti

Vergil, Aeneid 7.744-749 (tr. C. Day Lewis):

The mountainy district of Nursae sent forth to the war Ufens,
Who had a high reputation as a successful fighter:
His clan, the Aequi, living on a thin soil and hardened
By constant hunting over the woodlands, excelled in toughness.
Armed to the teeth they are when they till the ground, and they never
Tire of carrying off new plunder, living on loot.

et te montosae misere in proelia Nersae,
Ufens, insignem fama et felicibus armis;        745
horrida praecipue cui gens adsuetaque multo
venatu nemorum, duris Aequicula glaebis.
armati terram exercent, semperque recentis
convectare iuvat praedas et vivere rapto.

Alexander G. McKay (1924-2007), Vergil's Italy (Greenwich: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1970), p. 238:

The poet's description of the Aequi and of their durable nature as farmers, hunters, and sturdy aggressors is in keeping with his admiration for the Italic stock. The Aequi were among Rome's most ancient enemies, mountaineers who eked out a living in the thin-soiled valleys of the upper Anio, Tolenus, and Himella in central Italy (Strabo 5, 3, 1; 5, 3, 4-5; 5, 3, 9-10) . They based themselves in the mountains behind Tibur and Praeneste and finally in 431 B.C. had to be expelled by force from the Alban Hills, where they had controlled the pass into Hernican territory. In 304, when they were confined to their original homeland, Rome made determined attacks on their settlements along the Liris, in the Upper Anio region, and in the areas north and west of the Fucine Lake. Their late intervention in the Second Samnite War cost them dearly, for they lost much of their territory and saw the establishment of two Latin colonies to restrain them for the future and to assist their rapid Romanization: one at Alba Fucens (mod. Albe) in 303, and another at Carseoli (mod. Carsoli) in 293. The Aequi had vanished as an independent nation long before Vergil's time.

Nicholas Horsfall on Nersae (line 744):

Not securely the uicum Neruesiae of Plin. Nat. 25.86, but firmly identified by inscriptional evidence with a site between Nesce and Civitella in the rough country between the Montagne della Duchessa and the Lago del Salto (vidi!). V. names an appropriately remote and minor uicus as a centre of these backward bandits (vd. Z.Mari in EV s.v. Nerse). On the uici of Aequi(culi), Marsi, Hernici, Volsci in general, cf. G.Grossi in Insediamenti fortificati ed.R. Papi (Pescara 1995), 59ff..

From Christopher Brown:

Your passage put me in mind of the view expressed by the Greeks that a soft land produces a soft people: cf. Herodotus 9.122.3, on the Persians, and Posidonius on the Etruscans (ap. Diod. 5.40 = fr. 83 Theiler = FGrHist 87 F 119). In light of the Hellenistic historians' preoccupation with the deleterious effects of τρυφή, I expect that these examples could be multiplied.

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