Aurunci

▪ ancient Italian tribe

      ancient tribe of Campania, in Italy. They were exterminated by the Romans in 314 BC as the culmination of 50 years of Roman military campaigns against them. The Aurunci occupied a strip of coast situated between the Volturnus and Liris (Volturno and Liri) rivers in what is now the province of Caserta, with their capital at Suessa Aurunca (modern Sessa Aurunca). No written record of their language survives, but the frequency of the use of the “-co” suffix in that part of the coast suggests that the Aurunci spoke Volscian (Volscian language), the same Italic dialect as their northern neighbours, the Volsci. The name Ausones, the Greek form from which the Latin Aurunci was derived, was applied by the Greeks to various Italic tribes, but the name came to denote in particular the tribe that the great Roman historian Livy called Aurunci. The name was later applied to all Italians, and Ausonia became a poetic term, in Greek and Latin, for Italy.

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