{{Short description, Ancient Italic tribe The Campanians (also Campani) were an ancient Italic tribe, part of the

Osci The Osci (also called Oscans, Opici, Opsci, Obsci, Opicans) were an Italic people of Campania and Latium adiectum before and during Roman times. They spoke the Oscan language, also spoken by the Samnites of Southern Italy. Although the langua ...

nation, speaking an

Oscan language Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian and South Picene. Oscan was spoken by a number of t ...

. Descending from the

Apennines The Apennines or Apennine Mountains ( ; or Ἀπέννινον ὄρος; or – a singular with plural meaning; )Latin ''Apenninus'' (Greek or ) has the form of an adjective, which would be segmented ''Apenn-inus'', often used with nouns s ...

, the proto-Osci settled in the areas of present-day

Campania Campania is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy located in Southern Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian Peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islan ...

at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, or even before. They established themselves there over a previous Italic population of possible

Latino-Faliscan The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC. Latin and Faliscan belong ...

origin. The Opici,

Ausones "Ausones" (; ), the original name and the extant Greek form for the Latin "Aurunci", was a name applied by Greek writers to describe various Italic peoples inhabiting the southern and central regions of Italy. The term was used, specifically, ...

and

Aurunci The Aurunci were an Italic tribe that lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. They were eventually defeated by Rome and subsumed into the Roman Republic during the second half of the 4th century BC. Identity Aurunci is the n ...

were later linguistically and culturally Oscanized. From the 7th to the 5th century BC, Greek colonists submitted or expelled them from the area, but starting from the mid of the 5th century BC, the Osci reconquered many cities on the coasts of present-day Province of Caserta,

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

and Low

Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil (Old Latium) on whic ...

as also most of the inland.

Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental Universal history (genre), universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty ...

, XII.31. Amongst those reconquered cities there were

Cumae Cumae ( or or ; ) was the first ancient Greek colony of Magna Graecia on the mainland of Italy and was founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BCE. It became a rich Roman city, the remains of which lie near the modern village of ...

(taken from the

Greeks Greeks or Hellenes (; , ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, southern Albania, Greeks in Turkey#History, Anatolia, parts of Greeks in Italy, Italy and Egyptian Greeks, Egypt, and to a l ...

) and

Capua Capua ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Caserta, in the region of Campania, southern Italy, located on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. History Ancient era The name of Capua comes from the Etruscan ''Capeva''. The ...

(from the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization ( ) was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in List of ancient peoples of Italy, ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. Af ...

). From the Greeks and the Etruscans the Osci learnt of the institution of the ''

Polis Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...

'', soon differentiating themselves from the akin people of the

Samnites The Samnites () were an ancient Italic peoples, Italic people who lived in Samnium, which is located in modern inland Abruzzo, Molise, and Campania in south-central Italy. An Oscan language, Oscan-speaking Osci, people, who originated as an offsh ...

, so much that, in the 4th century BC the Osci invoked the help of Rome against the menace of the Samnitic expansionism. The name ''Campanians'', used by the Romans from the 5th century BC, apparently comes from that of ''

'', the leading city of the ''Capuan League'', one of the Oscan main

polities A polity is a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of political institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any group of people organized for governance ...

. It was used to designate both the inhabitants of the city itself and those of the other federated cities. The surrounding territory was known as '' Ager Campanus''. During the Roman imperial age, consequently to the Augustan administrative reorganization of the Italian peninsula, the concept of ''

'' (the "Land of the Campani") was extended far beyond its original limits up to encompassing a much larger territory enclosed inside the southern part of the Regio I Latium et Campania.

Notes

Bibliografia

* Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, ''Italia, omnium terrarum alumna'', Officine grafiche Garzanti Milano, Garzanti-Schewiller, 1990¹ Osci

Notes

See also

Bibliografia