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The introduction of Indo-European languages (Latin, Osco-Umbrian, Venetic, and Messapian) into "Italy" dates back to the late Neolithic age. The great cultural units of historical Italy—Etruscan, Latin, Sabellian, and Iapygian in Apulia; Venetic in Venetia—were formed in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. During the 7th century BC, the non-Indo-European ETRUSCANS became the dominant people of central Italy today known as Tuscany. In a simultaneous development, Greeks began settling around Italy's South Western shorelines and on Sicily. Etruscan dominance ended in the 5th century with their expulsion from Latium and the loss of the sea to Greeks, of Campania to the Sabelli, and of the Po Valley to the Gauls. From the 4th through the 1st centuries, Roman conquest, colonization, and co-optation caused Etruscan civilization to decline and finally end. The LATINS lived on the western (Tyrrhenian) coastal plain—Latium—that stretches from the Tiber in the north to Monte Circeo 65 miles to the south. Northern Latium is enclosed on the east by the foothills of the Apennines; further south, the Lepini Mountains mark the eastern boundary.
Traditionally there were 50 small Latin communities which were united by common Latin cults and by the common Latin rights of intermarriage, contractual dealing, and intermigration. By the 7th century, contacts with Etruscans and Greeks had influenced the Latins to organize themselves into about a dozen communities resembling Greek poleis. Although still tied to each other by intercommunal rights and common cults, these Latin “city-states” became increasingly independent and competitive.
In the historical period the Apennines were inhabited by Sabellian peoples who spoke a variety of Osco-Umbrian languages and who periodically raided and sometimes conquered the fertile plains around them. In historical times the Sabines had moved into Latium where they are said to have exerted a formative influence on early Rome. The territories of the Umbrians extended from the highlands east of the Arno and Tiber to the Adriatic coast between Rimini and Ancona. Another Osco-Umbrian-speaking people from the central Apennines were the Aequi, who invaded Latium c. 500 BC. Inhabiting the south-central Apennines were the SAMNITES, who spoke an Oscan language and by the 4th century were united in a loose but formidable confederation. During the late 5th and early 4th centuries, Oscan-speaking peoples moved into Campania, Lucania, and Bruttium, where they came to be known as Campani, Lucani, and Bruttii, respectively.
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