Bergamo e i Bergamaschi nelle fonti letterarie antiche dalle origini al tardo antico

The ancient literary sources provide us very limited information about the city of Bergamo and its inhabitants during the pre-Roman and Roman age until the Late Antiquity, due to their marginal importance during this period. However, the few available sources have raised the interest of many researchers, as in many cases they offer us new perspectives to interpretate the news provided by documentary sources. This article reviews, following a chronological order, the entire complex of the ancient literary sources referring to Bergamo, its origin, name, territory, history, population and single inhabitants during the antiquity; it aims to highlight on one side the knowledge that can be considered as acquired by general consensus of the modern scholars and the problems that, on the contrary, must be considered still open to different possible conclusions. Between these latter it is worth of a particular mention the long lasting debate about a famous text of the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder (nat. 3, 124-125) about Bergomum and the Bergomates, mentioning, between other issues, the oppidum Parra as the original settlement of the Bergomates. The discovery of the remains of a pre-Roman settlement in the territory of the modern municipality of Parre, in the Seriana Valley, led a few years ago archaeologists to identify it with this mysterious oppidum Parra. However, a combination between the news provided by the literary sources and the archaeological findings make this identification at least highly improbable (if not to be completely excluded).