Bruttii

The Bruttii (Greek: , Italian: Bruzi), were an ancient people who inhabited the southern extremity of Italy, from the frontiers of Lucania to the Sicilian Straits and the promontory of Leucopetra, roughly corresponding to modern Calabria. They spoke Oscan, as attested by several finds of Oscan script, though this may have been a later influence from their Sabine neighbors. Both Greek and Latin writers expressly tell us that Bruttii was the name of the people: no separate designation for the country or province appears to have been adopted by the Romans, who almost universally use the plural form, or name of the nation, to designate the region which they inhabited. Thus Livy uses Consentia in Bruttiis, extremus Italiae angulus Bruttii, Bruttii provincia, etc.: and the same usage prevailed down to a very late period. (Treb. Poll. Tetricks, 24; Notit. Dign. ii. pp. 10, 120.) The name of Bruttium to designate the province or region, though adopted by almost all modern writers on ancient geography appears to be unsupported by any classical authority: Mela, indeed, uses in one passage the phrase in Bruttio, but it is probable that this is merely an elliptic expression for in Bruttio agro, the term used by him in another passage, as well as by many other writers. (Mela, ii. 4, 7; in Flor. iii. 20. § 13, "Bruttium" is also an adjective.) The Greeks, however, used for the name of the country, reserving for that of the people. (Pol. ix. 7, 25, xi. 7; Strabo vi. p. 255.) Polybius, in more than one passage, calls it (i. 56, ix. 27).
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