OSCO'DA, a co. in n. Michigan, intersected centrally by the Au Sable river; 570 sq.m.; pop. '80, 467-357 of American birth, 8 colored. Its surface is elevated table land, uneven and largely covered with timber. It is visited in the season by large num bers of sportsmen, the Au Sable being famous for good fishing, containing the grayling,. a kind of salmon with a very small mouth, found in the streams of England, Sweden,. Norway, and Lapland, considered delicious food. Its soil is fertile, easily cultivated, and adapted to the production of grain and potatoes. Lumber is the chief article in-_ trade. Co. seat, Harmon. r° 08'0I, originally Orscrt(rendered by Mommsen "laborers," from opus, a work), in Greek always OPIKOI, the name of an Italian people, who at an early period occupied Campania, and were either closely allied to or the same race as the Ausones., Subse quently (about 423 B. c.) Samnites from the hilly districts to the north overran the country, and amalgamated with the inhabitants whom they had subjugated. It is conjectured that the conquerors were few in numbers. as (like the Normans in English history) they adopted, in time, the language of the conquered, but whether they modified the original Oscan language, and, if so, to what extent, cannot now be ascertained. As it was these Samnitic Oscar's or Campanians who formed that Samnitic people with whom both the Greeks of lower Italy and the Romans first came into contact, the names Osci and Oscan language were subsequently applied to all the other races and dialects whose origin was nearly or wholly the same. The Oscan language was not substantially different from the Latin, but only a ruder and more primitive form of the same central Italic The territory where it was spoken comprised the countries of the Samuites, Frentani, northern Apulians, Hirpini, Campani, Lucani, Bruttii, and Mamertidi, whose dialects only slightly differed from each other; besides the entire Samnitic races, whence the language is sometimes called Samnitic or Safinic. The races situated n. of the
Sllarus were purely Samnitic; those s. of it, and even of the region round the gulf of Naples, were Gneco-Samnitic. The use of the national Samnitic alphabet was confined to the former. By the victories of the Romans over the Samnites, and the conferring of the civitas on all the Italians (88 n.c.), an end was put to the official use of the Oscan tongue; nevertheless, in the time of Varro (1st c. u.c.) it was still used by the people, and as late as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii was spoken by a few indi viduals. During its most flourishing period it was something more than a country patois; it is even possible that the Oscans had a literature and art of their own, which alliy not have been without influence on the early Calabrian poets Ennius and Pacuvius, and the Campanian Lueifins. At any rate, we certainly know of a poetic creation peculiar to the Campanians, a kind of unwritten, regular, probably improvised farce, with fixed parts and changing situations, which was transplanted to Home about 304 13.C., but was imitated there not in Oscan but in Latin. See ATELLAN.-E. Besides a considerable number of coins with Oscan legends, there are still extant a number of inscriptions in the Oscan tongtfe, among which the most important for linguistic pur poses are: 1st, the Tabula Bantina, a bronze tablet found iu the neighborhood of Bantia the borders of Lucania and Apulia), referring to the municipal affairs of that town; .2d, the Cippus Abellanus, or stone of Abella (in Campania); and, 3d, a bronze tablet found near Agnone, in northern See Mommsen's Oskische Studien (Berlin, 1845), -and Die U nteritait'selten Dialekte (Lcip. 1850); also Friedlander's Die Osk.isciten Manzen (Leip. 1850); Kirchhoff's Das Stadtrecht von Bantia (Berl.n, 1353); and Donaldson's Yarronianus (pp. 104-138).