Page:Regal Rome, an Introduction to Roman History (1852, Newman, London, regalromeintrodu00newmuoft).djvu/17

Rh elucidate this dark subject a little, we must cast a wider glance over the inhabitants of Italy.

Two nations are mentioned as dwelling in the earliest times to the north and south of Latium, one or both of whom seem to answer to the notion of Aborigines:—the and the. The Umbrians were regarded by the Romans as a truly primæval Italian race; who at one time held possession of all Lombardy and Tuscany, reaching perhaps into Latium. The Oscans, (in Greek, Opikes,) under various names,—Volscians, Ausones, Auruncans,—appear as a principal people of Southern Italy, who in historical times press from Campania northward into Latium. Their position on the peninsula, unless they cam by sea, would suggest that they must have entered it still earlier than the Umbrians. What are the relations of the Umbrian and the Oscan languages, has not been very satisfactorily settled, although documents of both remain to us. In the 2