OSCI, or OPICI, a people of ancient Italy, who seem to have been identical with the Ausonians, or Aurunci, and who inhabited the central part of the peninsula— from Campania and the borders of Latium to the Adriatic. Some ancient writers consider the Ausoniana to be a branch of the Osci; others, as Polybius, have spoken of them as distinct tribes, but this appears to be an error. The names Opicus and Oscus are undoubtedly the same. Aristotle (` vii. 10) calls the country from the Tiber to the Silarus, Ansonia and Opicia ; and other ancient writers extended the name much farther, to the Straits of Sicily, but the southern extremity of the peninsula appears to have been occupied by the CEnotrians, a Pelasgic people, who were conquered by the Lucanians and Bruttii. Curate, one of the earliest Greek colonies on the coast of Italy, was in the country of the Opici. There was an ancient tradition in Italy in the time of the historian Dionytrim, of a sudden irruption of strangers from the opposite coast of the Adriatic, which caused a general commotion and dispersion among the aboriginal tribes. Afterwards came the Hellenic colonies, which occupied the whole sea-coast from Mount Garganus to the extremity of the peninsula, in the first and second centuries of Rome, in consequence of which the population of the southern part of the Italian peninsula became divided into two races, the tribes of aboriginal or Oscan descent, such as the Sabini, Samnites, Lucanians and Bruttii, who remained in possession of the highlands, and the Greek colonists and their descendants, who occupied the maritime districts, but never gained possession of the upper or Apennine regions. Such is the view taken by Micali and other Italian writers ; but Niebuhr (' History of Rome, vol. i.) describes the Sabini, and their colonies the Samnites, Lucaniane, and other tribes which the Roman writers called by the general name of Sabellian, as a people distinct from the Osci or Opici. He says, after Cato and other ancient historians, that the Sabini issued out of the highlands of the central Apennines near Ami ternum, long before the epoch of the Trojan war, and driving before them the Cancan or Prisci Latini, who were an Oscan tribe, settled themselves in the country which has to this day retained the name of Sabina. From thence they sent out numerous colonies, one of which penetrated into the land of the Opiama, and became the Samnite people; and afterwards the Samnites occupied Campania, and, mixing themselves with the earlier Oscan population, settled there, and adopted their language. But further on, speaking of the Sabini and Sabellian, Niebuhr admits the probability of their being originally a branch of the same stock as the Opici or Osci. Micali considers the Sabini, Apulians, Mesaapians, Campanian, Aurunci, and Volsci, as all branches of the great Oscan family.
The Greeks, being superior to the native tribes in refinement and mental cultivation, affected to despise them, and they applied to the native Italian tribe, including the Romans, the adjunct Opican, as a word of contumely to denote barbarism both in language and manners (Cato apud l'liny, xxix. 1) ; and the later Roman writers themselves adopted the expression in the same sense : " Osce loqui" was tanta mount to a barbarous mode of speaking. Juvenal (Hi. 207) says : " Et divine Opict rodebant carmine murcs; " and Ausonius uses " Opicas charters" to mean rude unpolished com positions. The Oscan language was the parent of the dialects of the native tribes from the Tiber to the extremity of the peninsula, Sabini, Hernici, Marci, Samnites, Sidicini, Lucanians, and Bruttii, and it was evidently a cognate dialect with the Latin ; whilst in the regions north of the Tiber the Etruscan predominated. Livy (x. 20) mentions the Oscan as being the language of the Samnites. The older Latin writers, and especially Ennius, have many Oscan words and Oscan terminations. The Oscan continued to bo understood in many parts of Italy down to a late period under the empire. The Avettaxx FABULE doubtless originated with them, though probably Strabo is mistaken in asserting that they were performed at Rome in his day in the Oscan language. In the Social War, the Confederates, who were chiefly people of Oscan descent, stamped Oscan legends on their coins. In Campania and Saraniurn the Oscan continued to be the vulgar tongue long after the Roman conquest, as appears from several monuments, and especially from the Oscan inscriptions found at Pompeii, and the bronze tablet found at Agnonc in northern Samnium, which gives a list of offerings at a dedication. (Mlcali, Storia degli Antichi Popoli Italiani; eh. raiz., and ' Atlas,' pl. 120.
The Oscan race, like the Etruscan, appears to have been from the remotest times strongly under the influence of religious rites and laws (Festus, under the head Oscura '), and the primitive manners and simple morals of the Oscan and Sabine tribes, as well as their bravery in arms, have been extolled by the Roman writers, among others, by Virgil (` 2Eneid; vii. 728-730), and Silius Italicus (viii. 526-529).
Concerning the scanty remains of the Oscan language which have come down to us, see Linguae °sew Specimen singulare quod superest Nolen in marmore MUS,Ti Seminarii; which is given by Passed, in his Picturm Etruscorum in Vasculis; &c., Rome, 3 vols. fol., 1767-75 ; also Guarini, In Osca. Epigrammata nonnulla Commentarium,' Naples, 8vo, 1830, where several Oscan inscriptions are found collected. Klenze, Philologische Abhandlungen,' 1839; and Mommsen, Unter Italieni ache Dialekte,' 1850. For Niebuhr's views on the Opici or Osci, see his 'Roman History,' vol. i.