Italici

a group of Indo-European tribes in ancient Italy who spoke Italic languages. The Italici were divided into two branches: Latin-Faliscan, which included the Faliscans, Latini, Aurunci, and Aenotrians (the Siculi probably also belonged to this branch), and Osco-Umbrian-Sabellian, which consisted of the Umbri, Osci (Samnites, Sabini, Aequi, and Volsci), and Sabellians (Marsi, Marrucini, Frentani, and Vestini). The Italici were at different stages of socioeconomic and cultural development: the greatest development was made by the Latini, who in the sixth century B.C. were mainly at the stage of early class states.

In the 19th century, scholars maintained the notion that the Italici came across the Alps to the Apennine Peninsula in the second millennium B.C., bringing with them metal culture (the Italian scholar L. Pigorini regarded the Italici as the creators of the bronze and iron cultures in the territory of Italy). The Russian scholar V.I. Modestov and the Italian researcher G. Devoto assumed that the Italici migrated from Central Europe in two waves: the Proto-Latins, who created the Ter-ramara culture early in the second millennium B.C., and the ancestors of the Umbri and Sabellians, creators of the Villanovan culture, late second and early first millennium B.C. Italian historians are now of the opinion that the ancient cultures of Italy developed continuously and in succession from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, regardless of the migrations (G. Patroni, P. Orsi, and U. Rellini); that sporadic migrations of Indo-European tribes from the Balkan Peninsula across the Adriatic occurred early in the second millennium B.C.; and that the tribes spread over the Apennine Peninsula from the west to the east, north, and south (the Italian archaeologist M. Pallottino).

The term “Italici” is also used as the general name for all the tribes that inhabited the Apennine Peninsula and were subjugated by Rome in the fifth to third centuries B.C. The Italici were granted Roman citizenship after the Civil War (early first century B.C.); they underwent Romanization in the first century B.C.