Chapter XI

.), have turned their attention to the study of the less promising indigenous fabrics.[2377]

The region with which the present section deals is that comprised by the three districts of Apulia, Lucania, and Campania. The barbarian races by which it was occupied in classical times were known by various names, used with some vagueness; but roughly we may divide them into two groups: the Iapygians or Messapians and the Peucetians, occupying the south-east portion of the peninsula from modern Bari to the end of the “heel”[2378]; and the Osco-Samnites, who occupied Campania and the mountainous district of Samnium on its north-eastern border. In Lucania the district of Sala Consilina has yielded local pottery.[2379] The Osco-Samnites appear to have been more amenable to the influence of Greek civilisation than the others, owing to the existence in their midst of such centres of culture as Cumae, Capua, and Poseidonia (Paestum); hence we find that the pottery of that region shows a much more Hellenic character than that of Apulia, and is more like that of Etruria in its attempts to imitate the Greek imported fabrics (see Vol. I. p. 484).

Greek painted vases are found in Southern Italy as early as the seventh century B.C., though even in “Aegean” times they had penetrated as far as Sicily, and even Marseilles (see Vol. I. pp. 69, 86).[2380] At Cumae in particular, and also at Nola, “Proto-Corinthian” and Corinthian wares have been found; during the sixth century Ionic and Attic B.F. wares make their appearance, but never in large quantities, as in Etruria. They, however, gave rise to a class of imitative fabrics found chiefly in Campania: small amphorae and other forms rudely painted with black silhouettes, dating from the fifth century. At Tarentum the finds of vases have been mainly Greek, but even these are comparatively rare. The principal examples of local wares are to be seen in the museums of Bari, Lecce, Taranto, and Naples; the British Museum, Louvre, and Berlin only possess isolated specimens.[2381] The general scarcity of imports is due, Signor Patroni thinks, to the restricted intercourse between the colonies on the coast and the interior districts peopled by hostile local tribes. After the fifth century, when large numbers of Greek artists were established in the towns of Southern Italy, the circumstances became different, and we have already made in