RUTULI  , a

people of ancient Italy inhabiting Ardea and the district round it on the coast of Latium, at no great distance from Aricia, and just W. of the territory of the Volsci . They are ranked by the form of their name with the Siculi and Appuli (Apuli), probably also with the Itali, whose real Italic name would probably have been Vituli (see ITALY) . This suggests that they belong to a fairly early stratum of the Indo-European population of Italy . The same is suggested by the tradition adopted or moulded by Virgil, by which the leader of the people of the soil in their resistance to the settlement of Aeneas was the Rutulian prince Tumus, a name which, if any conjecture could be founded on it, might be held to point rather to Etruria than to any pure Italic source; he is represented as the hospes of the exiled Etruscan king Mezentius, and as taking up arms to defend him against his angry subjects . Pliny (iii . § 6) classes them, with the Siculi, among the primitive tribes that at one time or another inhabited part of Latium, and it is to be observed that they are not included in the thirty Latin communities who once took part in the Latin Festival on the Alban Mount (see further SICULI) . (R . S .