Hirpini

The Hirpini (Latin: Hirpini; Greek: Ἱρπινοί;) were an ancient Samnite people of Southern Italy. While generally regarded as having been Samnites, sometimes they are treated as a distinct and independent nation. They inhabited the southern portion of Samnium, in the more extensive sense of that name, roughly the area now known as Irpinia from their name—a mountainous region bordering on Basilicata towards the south, on Apulia to the east, and on Campania towards the west. No marked natural boundary separated them from these neighboring nations, but they occupied the lofty masses and groups of the central Apennines, while the plains on each side, and the lower ranges that bounded them, belonged to their more fortunate neighbors. The mountain basin formed by the three tributaries of the Vulturnus (modern Volturno)—the Tamarus (modern Tammaro), Calor (modern Calore), and Sabatus (modern Sabato), which, with their valleys, unite near Beneventum, surrounded on all sides by lofty and rugged ranges of mountains—is the center and heart of their territory. Its more southern portion comprised the upper valley of the Aufidus (modern Ofanto) and the lofty group of mountains where that river takes its rise.

Their name derives, according to ancient writers, from hirpus, the Oscan for wolf; and, in accordance with this derivation, their first ancestors were supposedly guided to their new settlements by a wolf. This tradition implies that the Hirpini were regarded as having migrated, like the other Sabellian races in the south of Italy, from the north, but when this migration occurred is unknown. From their position in the vastnesses of the central Apennines, they were probably there long before they first appear in history.

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