ABSTRACT
THE ancient name has been recently revived to replace that of Basilicata for a modern province of Italy which agrees fairly closely (except on the west where a large piece has been lost to Campania) with the ancient Lucania. This Lucania of the Romans, together with the ager Bruttiorum (now called Calabria)-the toe of Italy-made up the third Augustan regio. All that we shall be concerned with in this chapter is the ancient Lucania, which stretched from the river Bradanus on the east (entering the gulf of Tarentum east of Metapontum) to the Silarus on the west, where the frontier marched with that of Campania. The dividing-line between Lucania and the Bruttii ran across the neck of the peninsula from a point just north of Thurii to a point just south of Laus. Archreologically the region is more a blank than any other in ancient Italy; this is partly no doubt due to the almost complete lack of excavation. But the meeting of the Sabellian current from the north with the Illyrian, Sicel, and Greek tides from the south-east and the south-west does seem to have produced a veritable slack water; on the linguistic side we have a few Oscan inscriptions, and the written tradition adds very little more. A new interest in Lucania may be stimulated by the formation of the " Societa Magna Grecia " which has begun to publish since 193 I reports and discussions in its Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania.1
