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 language of the Samnites was called Oscan, the Samnites were never referred to as Osci, nor were the Osci called Samnites.

Traditions of the Opici fall into the legendary period of Italian history, roughly from the beginning of the first millennium BC until the foundation of the Roman Republic. No consensus can be reached concerning their location and language. By the end of this period, the Oscan language had evolved and was spoken by a number of sovereign tribal states. By far the most important of these in terms of military prowess and wealth was the Samnites, who rivalled Rome for about 50 years in the second 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.

The Osci kept their independence by playing one state against another, especially the Romans and Samnites. Their sovereignty was finally lost during 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 cultural legacy survived only in place names and literary references.

According to Aristotle, the Opici lived in "the part of Italy towards Tyrrhenia" and were also called 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.

A people called the Aurunci by Livy appear the earliest in history. In 503 BC, the Latin colonies of Cora and Pometia rebelled against Roman authority, obtaining the assistance of the Aurunci, seat unknown. Two consular armies sent against them won after a hard-fought battle in which "many more were killed than were taken prisoners; the prisoners were everywhere butchered, even the hostages ... fell a victim to the enemy's bloodthirsty rage". The enemy fell back on Pometia, which was besieged by the Romans. The Aurunci sallied out, burned the siege towers, massacred the troops and grievously wounded one of the consuls. The Romans withdrew but returned later in greater force. Taking the town, they beheaded the Aurunci officers, sold the Pometians into slavery, levelled the buildings and put the land up for sale.

The Aurunci appear one more time in the early republic in a failed attempt to support the Volsci in their struggle against Rome. In 495 BC, putting an army on the march for Rome, they sent envoys ahead to demand the withdrawal of the Romans from Volscian territory. The consul Publius Servilus Priscus Structus met them on the march at Arricia and "in one battle finished the war". No more is heard of the Oscans for almost a century.

In the last half of the 4th century BC, the remaining Oscan populations (who were not Samnites) lived in three sovereign states: the Sidicini, the Aurunci and the Ausones. The Sidicini's capital city was Teanum, which minted its own coins bearing inscriptions in the Oscan language. The town of Cales was the capital of the Ausones.

The beginning of the end of Oscan sovereignty was their attempted exploitation of an opportunity to maraud against the Romans in the period of instability following a major victory against the Volsci, a tribe occupying the Volsci Mountains overlooking and including the Pontine Marshes. During the final revolt of the Volsci, the Romans had sacked and levelled Satricum about 346 BC and had sold the remaining 4,000 fighting men into slavery. For whatever reasons, the Aurunci chose this moment to send a marauding expedition against the Romans. Panic ensued in the city. The senators saw a wider conspiracy with the Latin League. They appointed Lucius Furius Camillus dictator, halted business, drafted an army on the spot and sent it into the field against the Aurunci, but "the war was finished in the very first battle". The Romans used the army to complete the conquest of the Volsci at Sora.