Oscans

The Osci (also called Opici, Opsci, Obsci, Opicans, Ancient Greek: Ὀπικοί, Ὀσκοί), were an Italic people of Campania and Latium adiectum during Roman times. They spoke the Oscan language, also spoken by the Samnites of Southern Italy. Although the language of the Samnites was called Oscan, the Samnites were never called Osci, or the Osci Samnites.

Traditions of the Opici fall into the legendary period of Italian history, approximately the first half of the first millennium BC, down to the foundation of the Roman Republic. No agreement can be reached concerning their location and language. At the end of that time, the Oscan language appeared and was spoken by a number of sovereign tribal states. By far the most important in military prowess and wealth was the Samnites, who rivalled Rome for about 50 years in the 2nd half of the 4th century BC, sometimes being allies, and sometimes at war with the city, until they were finally subdued with considerable difficulty and were incorporated into the Roman state.

Between the Samnites and the Romans were the Oscans. Though often eager to go to war, they were never a power to be taken seriously militarily. They cost the Romans no more than a single battle to defeat on every trial of their prowess. Their final disposition more closely resembled the farces with which they regaled Roman audiences than a serious war. They kept their independence by playing off one state against another, especially the Romans and Samnites. That sovereignty fell victim at last in the Second Samnite War, when prior to invading Samnium, the Romans found it necessary to secure the border tribes. After the war, the Oscans assimilated quickly to Roman culture. Their memory survived only in place names and in literature.

According to Aristotle, the Opici lived in "the part of Italy towards Tyrrhenia" and were called also Ausones.Antiochus of Syracuse agreed that the Opici were Ausones and placed them in Campania.Strabo, however, the chief source for the fragments of Antiochus, himself distinguished between the Osci and the Ausones, remarking that the Osci had disappeared, but the Romans still used their dialect as a literary language, and that the "high sea" near Sicily was still named Ausonian even though the Ausonians never lived near it.Aurunci is the Roman name for Ausones by a commonplace change of an s to an r in Latin: *Ausuni> *Auruni> *Aurunici> Aurunci. They were perhaps the same people in the early Roman Republic. In the 4th century BC the names came to be applied to distinct tribes.

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