SABELLIC (from Latin Sabellus, Samnite) has often been used of a minor group of the Italic dialects, namely the pre Latin dialects of the Paeligni, Marrucini and Vestini (better called North Oscan), of the Volsci, and of the Marsi, Aequi, Sabini and other central Italian tribes (conveniently called Latin ian) ; these dialects are all closely related to Oscan (q.v.). The same name, or sometimes Old Sabellic, is also used, but inac curately, to describe two small but distinct groups of inscriptions from various sites near the east coast of central Italy (I) from Novilara and Fano (near Pesaro) ; (2) from Belmonte Piceno, Cupra Marittima, Castignano, Bellante, Grecchio and Superequo. These may be better designated, by "East Italic." The second group, not more recent in date than the 6th cen tury B.C., are doubtless the oldest written documents known from Italian soil. The lines of writing run alternately left to right and right to left, the positions of the letters being both reversed and inverted in the lines written right to left. Their alphabet is clearly of the same Chalcid-Etruscan origin as that of all the other alphabets of ancient Italy (except the Greek and Phoenician), but shows some peculiarities which suggest direct Greek influence; the language, still untranslated, will probably prove to be an Indo-European (two I.-E. stems, pater father, mater mother
have been identified) and ancient Illyrian dialect (meitime is an Illyrian name). For it is known from the elder Pliny (N.H. 3,11o, cf. 113), from the Iguvine tables (iapuzkum Iapydian, i.e.. belonging to the Illyrian Iapydes), and from archaeological evidence, that there were Illyrian settlers in or near that district, the ancient Picenum, where these inscriptions were discovered.
But the documents of the Novilara group are later in date, distinct in alphabet—this is perhaps of Etruscan origin, but shows certain resemblances both to the Umbrian and to the Oscan alphabets—and probably also in dialect. The suggestion that the dialect, however, is allied to Etruscan itself, is quite unsupported by the evidence; the decorative motifs, for example the spiral, which appear on all three of the inscriptions of this group, point rather to the opposite coast of the Adriatic, where similar motifs occur, especially round Nesazio, on contemporary monuments and there is nothing in the word-forms of these documents which may not be Indo-European, while the characteristic Etruscan syncope and elision (at least in the writing) are entirely lacking.