Posted on Monday 28 October 2002

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Before the rise of Rome, the Italian peninsula was a patchwork of languages and nations. Most famously, perhaps, were the Etruscans a people who developed the largest and most powerful pre-Empire civilization and who spoke a non-Indo-European language that is today only partially understood. To the mountainous North were encroaching Celtic tribes and to the South, coastal enclaves of Greek colonists. The rest of the peoples that inhabited Italy spoke numerous tongues that included Messapic, Rhaetic, Venetic, Picene, Umbrian and Oscan. Latin began as a minor Indo-European language and was restricted to only a small area of coastal Central Italy under the control of the Etruscans but it soon broke free to become the language of the Roman Empire and later provide much of the vocabulary of Western Europe's languages.

Víteliú was the Oscan term for the Italian peninsula. This name is probably connected with the word for "calf" (seen in Latin vitulus and Umbrian vitlu ), and was originally applied to the Greek colonies in Italy. Gradually, the word came to refer to the entire peninsula, and was adopted by allied Sabellian tribes to foster a sense of nationalism during the Italic revolt against Rome. A form of the ancient word survives in the modern name Italia.