TheCampanians (alsoCampani) were an ancientItalic tribe, part of theOsci nation, speaking anOscan language.
Descending from theApennines, the proto-Osci settled in the areas of present-dayCampania at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, or even before. They established themselves there over a previous Italic population of possibleLatino-Faliscan origin. TheOpici,Ausones andAurunci were later linguistically and culturally Oscanized.
From the 7th to the 5th century BC, Greek colonists submitted or expelled them from the area, but starting from the mid of the 5th century BC, the Osci reconquered many cities on the coasts of present-dayProvince of Caserta,Naples and LowLatium as also most of the inland.[1] Amongst those reconquered cities there wereCumae (taken from theGreeks) andCapua (from theEtruscans).
From the Greeks and the Etruscans the Osci learnt of the institution of thePolis, soon differentiating themselves from the akin people of theSamnites, so much that, in the 4th century BC the Osci invoked the help of Rome against the menace of theSamnitic expansionism.
The nameCampanians, used by the Romans from the 5th century BC, apparently comes from that ofCapua, the leading city of theCapuan League, one of the Oscan mainpolities. It was used to designate both the inhabitants of the city itself and those of the other federated cities. The surrounding territory was known asAger Campanus.
During the Roman imperial age, consequently to the Augustan administrative reorganization of the Italian peninsula, the concept ofCampania (the "Land of the Campani") was extended far beyond its original limits up to encompassing a much larger territory enclosed inside the southern part of theRegio I Latium et Campania.