Lucanians

The Lucanians, or Lucani, were an ancient Italic people who inhabited the region of Lucania in southern Italy, roughly corresponding to modern Basilicata and parts of Campania and Calabria. They spoke Oscan, part of the Osco-Umbrian branch of the Italic languages, and were culturally related to other Oscan-speaking groups such as the Samnites.

Their territory stretched along the Tyrrhenian and Ionian coasts with inland highlands, bordered by the Campanians to the north and the Bruttians to the south. The Lucanians did not form a single centralized state but a loose confederation of tribes and hill towns. Greek colonists founded several coastal cities within Lucanian territory, most notably Metapontum and Heraclea Lucania, which traded with and sometimes clashed with Lucanian communities.

In the classical period the Lucanians emerged as a regional power, resisting Greek influence from the coast and later Roman expansion. They allied with neighboring Oscan groups at times and fought in broader Italic and Greek-Roman conflicts. Beginning in the 3rd century BCE, Rome gradually defeated Lucanian resistance and incorporated Lucania into the Roman state; by the late Republic the Lucanians were governed as Roman allies and citizens.

The Lucanian language is known from Oscan inscriptions, while material culture shows a blend of Italic and Greek influences in coastal areas. The legacy of the Lucanians lives on in the toponymy and archaeology of southern Italy, in a region later absorbed into Magna Graecia and then Roman Italy.