Osci
- the Oscans, a primitive people of Campania; in more ancient times called also Opici and Opsci (Obsci), Verg. A. 7, 730; cf. Paul. ex Fest. p. 198 Müll. —Hence,
- II Oscus, a, um, adj., Oscan: ludi, Cic. Fam. 7, 1: lingua, Varr. L. L. 7, § 28 Müll.; Verg. A. 7, 730; Liv. 10, 20, 8: ludicrum, Tac. A. 4, 14.—Adv.: Oscē, in Oscan: qui Osce et Volsce fabulantur: nam Latine nesciunt, Titin. ap. Fest. p. 198 Müll.: dicere aliquid, Varr. L. L. 5, § 131 Müll.: scire, Gell. 17, 17, 1.
OSCIor OPICI(in Greek always Ὄπικοι: the. original form of the name was OPSCUS,which was still used by Ennius, ap. Fest. s. v. p. 198), a nation of Central Italy, who at a very early period appear to have been spread over a considerable part of the peninsula. So far as we can ascertain they were the original occupants, at the earliest time of which we have anything like a definite account, of the central part of Italy, from Campania and the borders of Latium to the Adriatic; while on the S. they adjoined the Oenotrians, whom there is good reason to regard as a Pelasgic tribe. Throughout this extent they were subsequently conquered and reduced to subjection by tribes called Sabines or Sabellians, who issued from the lofty mountain tracts of the Apennines N. of the territory then occupied by the Oscans. The relation between the Sabellians and the Oscans is very obscure ; but it is probable that the former were comparatively few in number, and adopted the language of the conquered people, as we know that the language. both of the Campanians and Samnites in later times, was Oscan. (Liv. 10.20.) Whether it remained unmixed, or had been modified in any degree by the language of the Sabellians, which was probably a cognate dialect, we have no means of determining, as all our existing monuments of the language are of a date long subsequent to the, Sabellian conquest. The ethnical affinities of the. Oscans, and their relations to the Sabellian and other races of Central Italy, have been already considered under the article ITALIA;it only remains to add a few words concerning what is known of the Oscan: language.
Niebuhr has justly remarked that the Oscan language is by no means an inexplicable mystery, like the Etruscan. Had a single book in it been preserved, we should be perfectly able to decipher it out of itself.(Nieb. vol. 1. p. 68.) Even with the limited means actually at our command we are able in great part to translate the extant inscriptions in this language, few and mostly brief as they are; and though the meaning of many words remains uncertain or unknown, we are able to arrive at distinct conclusions concerning the general character and affinities of the language. The Oscan was closely connected with the Latin ; not merely as. the Latin was with the Greek and other branches of the great Indo-Teutonic family, as offshoots from the same original stock, but as cognate and nearly allied dialects. This affinity may be traced throughout the grammatical forms and inflections of the language not less than in the vocabulary of single words. The Latin was, however, in, all probability a composite language, derived from a combination of this Oscan element with one more closely akin to the Greek, or of Pelasgic origin [LATIUMp. 137]; while the Oscan doubtless represents the language of Central Italy in its more unmixed form. In many cases the older and ruder specimens of the Latin retain Oscan forms, which. were laid aside in the more refined stages of the language: such is the termination of the ablative in d,which is found in the Duilian and other old Latin inscriptions, and appears to have been universal in Oscan.
The few notices of Oscan words which, have been preserved to us by Latin writers, as: Varro, Festus, &c., are of comparatively little importance. Our chief knowledge of the language is derived, from extant inscriptions; of which the three most important are: 1. the Tabula Bantina, a bronze tablet found in the neighbourhood of Bantia, on the borders of Apulia and Lucania, and which refers to the municipal affairs of that town; 2. the Cippus Abellanus, so called from its having been found at Abella in Campania, and containing a treaty or agreement between the two neighbouring cities of Nola and Abella; and 3. a bronze tablet recently discovered in the neighbourhood of Agnonein; northern Samnium, containing a dedication of various sacred offerings. It is remarkable that these three monuments have been found in nearly the most distant quarters of the Oscan territory. By the assistance of the numerous minor inscriptions, we may fix pretty clearly the limits within which the language was spoken. They include, besides Campania and Samnium Proper, the land of the Hirpini and Frentani, and the northern part of Apulia. No inscriptions in Oscan have been found in Lucania (except immediately on its borders) or Bruttium, though it is probable that in both of these countries the Sabellian conquerors introduced the Oscan language, or one closely connected with it; and we are distinctly told by Festus that the Bruttians spoke Greek and Oscan. (Fest. p. 35, M.) We learn also with certainty that not only the vernacular, but even the official, use of the Oscan language continued in Central Italy long after the Roman conquest. Indeed few, if any, of the extant inscriptions date from. an earlier period. The comic poet Titinius alludes to it as a dialect still in common use in his time, about B.C. 170. (Fest. s.v. Opscum, p. 189.) The coins struck by the Samnites and their allies during the Social War (B.C. 90-88) have Oscan inscriptions; but it is probable that, after the close of that contest and the general admission of the Italians to the Roman franchise, Latin became universal as the official language of Italy. Oscan, however, must have continued to be spoken, not only in the more secluded mountain districts, but even in the towns, in Campania at least, until a much later period ; as we find at Pompeii inscriptions rudely scratched or painted on the walls, which from their hasty execution and temporary character cannot be supposed to have existed long before the destruction of the city in A.D. 79.
(Concerning the remains of the Oscan language see Mommsen, Unter-Italischen Dialekte, 4to. Leipzig, 1850; Klenze, Philologische Abhandlungen, 8vo. Berlin, 1839 ; and Donaldson, Varromianus, pp. 104-138.)
We have no evidence of the Oscans having any literature, properly so called ; but it was, certainly from them that the Romans derived the dramatic entertainments called Atellanae, a kind. of rude farces, probably bearing considerable resemblance to the performances of Pulcinello, still sot popular at Naples and in its neighbourhood. When these were transplanted to Rome they were naturally rendered into Latin; but though Strabo is probably mistaken in speaking of the Fabulae Atellanae of his day as still performed at Romein Oscan, it is very natural to suppose that they were still so exhibited in Campania as long as the Oscan language continued in common use in that country. (Strab. 5. p. 233; concerning the Fabulae Atellanae see Mommsen, l. c.p. 118; Bernhardy, Römische Literatur, p. 378, &c.; Munk, de Fabulis Atellanis, Lips. 1840.)
[E.H.B]or Opĭci. The name Opiscan or Oscan, properly Opscian language (φωνὴ Ὀπικῶν; τῶν Ὄσκων ἡ διάλεκτος), was first applied by the Greek colonists of the coast of Campania to the dialect of the Italic race of Ὁπικοί (Opici) or Ὄσκοι (Opsci, prop. Opisci) whom they found to be the chief inhabitants of that region. The Opici have been occasionally identified with the Ausones, also inhabiting Campania, and certainly closely related to them, and to the Aurunci, living on the neighbouring coast of Latium, and probably also to the Sidicini, who settled the middle valley of the Volturnus. The association of the Aurunci, on the other hand, with the aborigines, once living farther north in Southern Sabini, about Reaté, appears to be more than doubtful. The Oscans were not unsusceptible to Greek civilization; they constructed an excellent alphabet of twenty-one characters from the Greek: a, b, g, d, e, v, z, h, i, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, f, í (sound between i and e), and ú (sound between w and o). The signs for d and r are interchangeable, according to pronunciation indicating either letter; the peculiar Italic spirant f takes the place of the aspirates; the z is vocal s as well as sibilant-dental (=ts, ds); rewritten in Greek and Latin, ú is regularly represented by o (ω), í occasionally by ε (ει), e.
The Etruscan supremacy in Campania from about B.C. 800 to 400 appears, as in Rome, to have been exercised by a small military aristocracy, and therefore very superficial. We have no written traces of them other than a number of inscriptions on vases, partly in a mixed language mainly Oscan, so that it may be inferred that the Etruscan supremacy, even if it broke the national power of the Oscans, yet rather advanced than suppressed their language and culture.
But when the Romans reached the region, about B.C. 380, the Oscan race, as well as the Ausones, had disappeared, absorbed by the Campanians, closely related to the Samnites, who had rushed down from the mountains, and made a sudden end of the Etruscan rule. From that time the Romans designated by the name lingua Opsca or Osca (also Obsca, by a leaning to obscaenus) not only the language of these Campanians, but that of the whole Samnite race, which then spread extensively over Southern Italy. And, in fact, the monuments of the language that have come down to us, and which are recognizable as Oscan, are found in an area of about 1000 square miles, almost as extensive as the Samnite territory—i. e. in Samnium proper (the land of the Caraceni, the Pentri, and Caudini), in the provinces of their descendants the Frent(r)ani in the east, the Hirpini in the south, as well as the adjacent parts of Apulia and Lucania, which they subdued, and above all, most numerously in Campania, whence the Mamertini carried the language to Bruttium (Vibo) and Sicily (Messana). The Oscan inscription of Nesce (Nersae) farther north, in the territory of the Aequicoli, is isolated. Finally, the coins of the Aurunci, who were perhaps conquered long before, have Oscan words and characters. The entire number of Oscan remains is about 200, and of these only four are important—the so-called municipal laws of Bantia (tabula Bantina); the treaty of temple-boundary between Nola and Abella (cippus Abellanus); the votive inscription (more properly an “inventory of temenos”) of Agnoné; and the lead plate of Capua with the Curse of Vibia.
Chronologically these remains extend from about B.C. 400 to the early Empire. Only the inscriptions found north of the Aufidus and Silarus show the Oscan alphabet; the southern have Greek or, as in the case of the Tabula Bantina, Latin characters. However, as their name shows and tradition confirms, the Samnite tribes were derived from the Sabines: Samnium=Sab(i)nium, Saf(i)nium; on the coins of the Social War, Safinum (not gen. pl.); cf. the softening in Greek Σαυνῖται, Σαυνῖτις χώρα. According to an old tradition, the Sabines in a war with the Umbrians sent out their finest young soldiers as ver sacrum (q. v.), who formed the stock of the Samnite race, and who again continued its extension in Southern Italy by like means. This Samnite people must therefore have originally used a Sabellian dialect; but the language of none of the Oscan remains can pass as such. If this difficulty be solved, nothing remains but to assume that after the Campanians the other Samnites appropriated the language of the more civilized Oscans and kindred tribes whom they had conquered, so that they both used and propagated it.
The Oscan language, with a well-developed phonetic system and series of forms, held its own uncorrupted till its latest days. In Campania, where Capua once dared to dispute with Rome the sovereignty of Italy, arose an extensive and diversified literature, as shown by the example of the ludi Atellani, a kind of popular farce, which the Romans eagerly adopted, and to which they gave a peculiar form of their own.
As an example of the Oscan dialect the following from the Tabula Bantina may be cited:
pon censtvr bansae tovtam censazet, pis cevs bantins fvst, censamvr esvf in ēitvam, poizad ligvd iosc censtvr censavm angetvzet.
In Latin:
Cum censores Bantiae populum censebunt quis civis Bantinus erit censetor ipse et pecuniam quoia lege ii censores censere proposuerint (?)
These few lines afford instances of the principal peculiarities of Oscan, some of which are found also in the Old Latin. Such are the p for c (q), the use of s for the future sign, the ending -d in the ablative, the ending -s in the nominative plural of the second declension, the infinitive in -m, etc. Other characteristic features of the language are the retention of the diphthongs in all positions (whereas the Umbrian regularly loses them), the dative and ablative plural in -ais (Gk. -αις) and -ois (Gk. -οις), the locative singular in ei (Gk. -ει, as in οἴκει), and the genitive singular of u-stems in -ous (us). The vowel-system of the Oscan is the most elaborate of any of the European languages except the Greek, and the weakening of the vowels in unaccented syllables (so characteristic of the Latin) is almost unknown to it.
On the Oscan language see the chapter in Gröber's Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1893); Mommsen, Die unteritalischen Dialekte (Leipzig, 1850); Buck, Vocalismus der oskischen Sprache (Leipzig, 1892); Bronisch, Die oskischen I und E Vocale (Leipzig, 1892); Von Planta, Grammatik der oskisch-umbrischen Dialekte (Strassburg, 1892); and Conway, The Italic Dialects (announced in 1895). The Oscan inscriptions are edited by Zvetaieff in his Sylloge Inscriptionum Oscarum, with plates and a vocabulary (St. Petersburg, 1878), and cf. his Inscriptiones Italiae Mediae Dialecticae (Leipzig, 1884); and Inscriptiones Italiae Inferioris Dialecticae (Moscow, 1886). See also the articles Italia; Tabula Bantina.