Sabellians
Encyclopedia
Sabellians is a collective ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...

 for a group of Italic peoples or tribes inhabiting central and southern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 at the time of the rise of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. The name was first applied by Niebuhr
Niebuhr
Niebuhr is a German surname.* Barthold Georg Niebuhr, 19th century German statesman and historian* Carsten Niebuhr, 18th century German traveller, explorer and surveyor, and father of Barthold Georg Niebuhr * Reinhold Niebuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr, brothers and American Christian scholars...

 and encompassed the Sabines, Marsi
Marsi
Marsi is the Latin exonym for a people of ancient Italy, whose chief centre was Marruvium, on the eastern shore of Lake Fucinus, drained for agricultural land in the late 19th century. The area in which they lived is now called Marsica. During the Roman Republic the people of the region spoke a...

, Marrucini
Marrucini
The Marrucini were an ancient tribe which occupied a small strip of territory around the ancient Teate , on the east coast of Abruzzo, Italy, limited by the Aterno and Foro Rivers...

 and Vestini
Vestini
Vestini is the Roman exonym for an ancient Italic tribe that occupied the area of the modern Abruzzo included between the Gran Sasso and the northern bank of the Aterno river...

. Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 in one passage says the Samnites were also called Sabelli, and this is confirmed by Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

. The term Sabellus is found also in Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

 and other Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 writers, as an adjective form for Samnite, though never for the name of the nation; but it is frequently also used, especially by the poets, simply as an equivalent for the adjective Sabine.

In the modern usage it is also a synonym for the whole, or only a part, of the different Osco-Umbrian
Osco-Umbrian languages
The Osco-Umbrian languages or Sabellic languages are a group of languages that belong to the Italic language family of the Indo-European languages. They were spoken in central and southern Italy before Latin replaced them as the power of the Romans expanded...

 peoples and it is supposed it had effectively been their ethnic endonym from an Old italic root *sabh- :
  • Old italic - indoeur. root *sabh- > osco-umbrian *saf- (Safineis, Safinìm)
  • Old italic - indoeur. root *sabh- > lat. sab- (Sabini, Sabelli, Samnites, Samnium)


and consequently:
  • *safno->*safnio>Safinìm>Samnium
  • *safio->Safini>Sabini


as also
  • oscan Safineis > lat. Samnites.


Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

 in his Geography (V, 3, 1) writes: The Sabini not only are a very ancient race but are also the indigenous inhabitants (and both the Picentini and the Samnitae are colonists from the Sabini, and the Leucani from the Samnitae, and the Brettii from the Leucani)http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/5C*.html.
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