ABSTRACT
IT is convenient to take together Campania and the central Italic regions because, before the Roman advance into Campania, that district had been overrun by the progeny of the hill-tribes whom the Romans knew collectively as " Sabelli". The early stages in this movement are just outside the beginning of the written history of Italy, and the later ones well within it: Capua was seized by the Sabellians in 445 B.C., and Cumre seventeen years later. But the grouping of the tribes, the pre-Roman remains of which form the subject of this chapter-and they go back much further than the Sabellian expansion-was quite different from that of the Augustan organization. Campania, with the Aurunci and the Volsci, was included in the first Augustan regio (cf. p. 2.61 above); the Samnites, the Sabines, the Frentani, Marrucini, Marsi, Preligni, Vestini, and lEqui, together made up the fourth regio. These are the districts and tribes which we shall consider here, and also the Hirpini, who belonged to the second Augustan regio, but not the Hernici, whom we have already classified with the Latini.
