Bruttii

The Bruttii (Greek: Βρέττιοι, Italian: Bruzi), were an ancient Italic tribe people who inhabited the southern extremity of Italy, from the frontiers of Lucania to the Sicilian Straits and the promontory of Leucopetra, roughly corresponding to modern Calabria.

The Bruttii spoke Oscan, as attested by several finds of Oscan script, though this may have been a later influence from their Sabellic neighbors, the Lucani.

Both Greek and Latin writers expressly tell us that Bruttii was the name of the people: no separate designation for the country or province appears to have been adopted by the Romans, who almost universally use the plural form, or name of the nation, to designate the region which they inhabited. Thus Livy uses Consentia in Bruttiis, extremus Italiae angulus Bruttii, Bruttii provincia, etc.: and the same usage prevailed down to a very late period. The name of Bruttium to designate the province or region, though adopted by almost all modern writers on ancient geography appears to be unsupported by any classical authority: Pomponius Mela, indeed, uses in one passage the phrase in Bruttio, but it is probable that this is merely an elliptic expression for in Bruttio agro, the term used by him in another passage, as well as by many other writers. The Greeks, however, used Βρεττία for the name of the country, reserving Βρέττιοι for that of the people.Polybius, in more than one passage, calls it ἡ Βρεττιανὴ Χώρα.

The land of the Bruttians, or Bruttium, was bounded on the north by Lucania, from which it was separated by a line drawn from the river Laus near the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Crathis near the Gulf of Tarentum. On the west it was washed by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and on the south and east by that known in ancient times as the Sicilian Sea, including under that appellation the Gulf of Tarentum.

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