Italic peoples

The Italic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, identified by their use of the Italic languages.

Classification

The Italics were all the people who spoke an idiom belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages and had settled in the Italian peninsula. The first Italic tribes, the Latino-Falisci (or "Latino-Veneti", if the membership of the ancient Veneti is also accepted), entered Italy across the eastern Alpine passes into the plain of the Po River about 1200 BC. Later they crossed the Apennine Mountains and eventually occupied the region of Latium, which included the area of Rome. Before 1000 BC, the Osco-Umbrians followed, which later divided into various groups and gradually moved to central and southern Italy.

The Italics are therefore the set of all Indo-Europeans present exclusively in Italy in antiquity, and not Indo-European people that were present also in other areas of Europe, such as the Cisalpine Gauls (a Continental Celtic people) or the Messapians (related to the Illyrians). In improper sense, the term is sometimes used, especially in the non-specialized literature, to refer to all pre-Roman people of Italy, including therefore (definitely or supposedly) not of Indo-European lineages, such as the Etruscans, the Raetians and the Elymians.