Origins Of The Sabines?

[Guest Scanderbeg]

I heard people state that Sabines were an Oscan speaking people and some said they were a Hellenic people. Anyway know some truth on their origins and language?

[Lacertus]

No, they were not Hellenic people. They belonged to group of Italic tribes migrating from northeast at the end of the second millennium AD. Sabini, marsi, frentani, samni, osci were the syngenetic tribes and had similar languages.

[Pantagathus]

I'll point to a quote from one of the best sources of this kind of stuff. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), William Smith (Editor):

 

The general similarity between their dialect and that of the Oscan was probably the cause that they adopted with facility in the more southern regions of Italy, which they had conquered, [p. 866] the language of their Oscan subjects; indeed all the extant inscriptions in that language may be considered as Sabello-Oscan, and have probably received some influence from the language of the conquerors, though we have no means of estimating its amount. The original Sabines appear to have early lost the use of their own language, and adopted the general use of Latin; which, considering the rugged and secluded character of their country, and their primitive habits of life, could hardly have been the case, had the two languages been radically distinct.

 

 

So as Lacertus has said they were not Greek as that notion came from Roman poets who fancied the Sabines as being like the Spartans (in manners and institutions).

 

If you take the clue from William Smith and consider the evolution of their use of Latin from Sabello-Oscan that they were most probably indiginous Italians to the point of being one of the earliest Indo-European migration groups.