in History, originally a proper name, given to a certain people in Italy, who inhabited the ancient Latium, or country now called Campagna di Roma. Whence this people came by the appellation is much disputed. St Jerome says, they were so called, as being aborigine origine, the primitive planters of the country after the flood: Dionysius of Halicarnassus accounts for the name, as denoting them the founders of the race of inhabitants of that country; others think them so called as being originally Arcadians, who claimed to be earth-born, and not descended from any people. The term Aborigines, in modern geography, is applied to the primitive inhabitants of a country, in contradistinction to colonies, or new races of people.