Osci
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,
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Oscan Inscription from Pompeii.
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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 iso
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Oscan Inscription known as “The Curse of Vibia.” (Leaden plate
found at Capua in 1876.)
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lated. 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.
