Lucania
Lucania is a historical region located in southern Italy, predominantly corresponding to the modern area of Basilicata, along with parts of Campania and Calabria. Its early inhabitants included various groups such as the Oenotri and the Chones, with Greek colonization beginning around the 7th century BC. Significant Greek settlements emerged along the coasts, forming cities like Metapontum and Posidonia. The region is named after the Lucanians, an Oscan-speaking people who conquered much of the interior by the mid-5th century BC and gradually Hellenized while engaging in conflicts with neighboring Taras.
The Lucanians allied with Rome in 326 BC, though tensions rose leading to military interventions and a series of conflicts, including support for the Epirote king Pyrrhus during his invasion of Italy. Despite their resistance, the region faced decline due to Roman colonization, the impacts of the Social War, and the establishment of large estates worked by slaves. By the end of the Roman Empire, Lucania had lost its distinct identity as a separate nation and was integrated into the broader administrative divisions of Rome. Historically significant figures, such as the western emperor Libius Severus, hailed from Lucania, underscoring its role in ancient Roman history.
Subject Terms
Lucania
(corresponding to most of the modern region of Basilicata, together with the districts of Salernum [Salerno] and Consentia [Cosenza])
A mountain region of southern Italy, bounded by Campania, Apulia (Puglia) and Bruttii (Calabria). Its earliest known inhabitants were Oenotri (a term vaguely applied by the Greeks to peoples throughout southern Italy: perhaps here Sicels) and Chones (Illyrians). From c 700, however, the Greeks began colonizing the fertile shorelands of Lucania, establishing settlements on the east coast (Gulf of Taras [Tarentum, Taranto]) at Metapontum (Metaponto), Heraclea (Policoro) and Sybaris (Sibari, replaced by Thurii) and on the west coast (Tyrrhenian Sea) at Posidonia (Paestum), Elea (Velia), Pyxus (Buxentum, Policastro) and Laus (near Cirella). The most important inland town was Potentia (Potenza).
The territory received its name from the Lucanian people, an Oscan-speaking (Sabellian) southern branch of the Samnites. These Lucanians conquered most of the interior in about the mid-fifth century BC, and a generation or two later began to reduce their Greek neighbors, becoming partially Hellenized themselves. Their principal enemy was Taras, which appealed first to Archidamus III of Sparta (c 342) and then to Alexander I of Epirus (c 333). In 326 the Lucanians formed an alliance with Rome, but underwent military intervention from Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus in 298, and in 291 were so seriously provoked by the Roman colonization of Venusia (Venosa) that they promptly supported the Epirote king Pyrrhus when he invaded Italy (281). Reduced to subjection by Rome, they again supported its enemy during the Second Punic War (216), and during the subsequent hostilities suffered depredations—from Hannibal and the Romans alike—from which they never recovered, although the Via Popillia (132), traversing the country from north to south, opened it up to traders. Thereafter an unhealthy geographical location, and the extension of large slave-operated estates, and the Italian rebellion against Rome known as the Social War (91–87; in which they suffered massacres at the hands of Sulla) all contributed to hasten their decline, so that the Lucanians as a separate nation eventually ceased to exist.
Their territory, together with Bruttii, formed the third Region of Augustus' Italy, and remained a province or district of Italian Suburbicaria in the later empire. When Diocletian arranged that he and his colleague Maximian should abdicate from the throne in AD 305, it was to Lucania that Maximian, reluctantly and temporarily, retired. The western emperor Libius Severus (461–65) was a Lucanian by birth.