{{Short description, Ancient Italic tribe
The Campanians (also Campani) were an ancient
Italic tribe
The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at leas ...
, 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 languag ...
Apennines
The Apennines or Apennine Mountains (; grc-gre, links=no, Ἀπέννινα ὄρη or Ἀπέννινον ὄρος; la, Appenninus or – a singular with plural meaning;''Apenninus'' (Greek or ) has the form of an adjective, which wou ...
, the proto-Osci settled in the areas of present-day
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 BCE.
Latin and Faliscan belong ...
origin. The
Opici The Opici were an ancient italic people of the Latino-Faliscan group who lived in the region of Campania. They settled in the area in the late Bronze Age but their territory was later conquered during the Iron Age by the Osci, another Italic people ...
,
Ausones
"Ausones" (; ), the original 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, to denote the partic ...
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
The Province of Caserta ( it, Provincia di Caserta) is a province in the Campania region of southern Italy. Its capital is the city of Caserta, situated about by road north of Naples. The province has an area of , and had a total population of ...
,
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adm ...
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 w ...
as also most of the inland.
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ; 1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which ...
, XII.31. Amongst those reconquered cities there were Cumae (taken from the
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser extent, ot ...
Etruscans
The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roug ...
).
From the Greeks and the Etruscans the Osci learnt of the institution of the ''
Polis
''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...
'', soon differentiating themselves from the akin people of the
Samnites
The Samnites () were an ancient Italic people who lived in Samnium, which is located in modern inland Abruzzo, Molise, and Campania in south-central Italy.
An Oscan-speaking people, who may have originated as an offshoot of the Sabines, they f ...
, 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 '' Capua'', the leading city of the ''Capuan League'', one of the Oscan main polities. 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
Ancient Campania (often also identified as Campania Felix or ager Campanus) originally indicated the territory of the ancient city of Capua in the Roman period, and later also the plains of the various neighboring municipalities. It was a very lar ...
''.
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 Regio (pl. ''regiones'') is the Latin word for ‘region’ and the Italian word for ‘royal’
It may refer to:
*Regiopolis, a concept for urban centers in between metropolitan areas.
Ancient toponymy
* Regiones of Augustan Italy, the departmen ...
Ancient peoples of Italy
This list of ancient peoples living in Italy summarises groupings existing before and during the Roman expansion and conquest of Italy. Many of the names are either scholarly inventions or exonyms assigned by the ancient writers of works in anc ...