Picenum was a region of ancient Italy. The name was assigned by the Romans, who conquered and incorporated it into the Roman Republic. Picenum became Regio V in the Augustan territorial organisation of Roman Italy. It is now in Marche and the northern part of Abruzzo.
The Piceni or Picentes were the native population of Picenum, but they were not of uniform ethnicity. They maintained a sanctuary to the Sabine goddess Cupra in Cupra Marittima.
The Italiotes (Ancient Greek: Ἰταλιῶται, Italiōtai) were the pre-Roman Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between Naples and Calabria.
Greek colonisation of the coastal areas of southern Italy and Sicily started in the 8th century BC and, by the time of the Roman ascendance, the area was so extensively hellenized that Romans called it Magna Graecia, that is "Greater Greece".
The Picentes or Piceni or Picentini were an ancient Italic people who lived from the 9th to the 3rd century BC in the area between the Foglia and Aterno rivers, bordered to the west by the Apennines and to the east by the Adriatic coast. Their territory, known as Picenum, therefore included all of today's Marche and the northern part of Abruzzo. Recently, a genome-wide archaeogenetic study of individuals from two Picene necropoleis found that all the individuals associated with this culture display genetic continuity with earlier populations.
The limits of Picenum depend on the era; during the early classical antiquity the region between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea south of Ancona was Picenum (South Picenians), while between Ancona and Rimini to the north the population was multi-ethnic (North Picenians) because after 390 BC the Senoni Gauls had combined with or supplanted earlier populations. In the Roman Republic the coastal part of northern Picenum was called the ager Gallicus.
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Sabina (Latin: Sabinum), also called the Sabine Hills, is a region in central Italy. It is named after Sabina, the territory of the ancient Sabines, which was once bordered by Latium to the south, Picenum to the east, ancient Umbria to the north and Etruria to the west. It was separated from Umbria by the River Nar, today's Nera, and from Etruria by the River Tiber.
The Ager Gallicus was the territory in northern Picenum that had been occupied by the Senone Gauls and was conquered by Rome between 284 and 282 BC, after the battles of the Lake Vadimon and Populonia.
The territory corresponds to the portion of the modern Marche region lying north of the Esino river, on the coast Adriatic Sea.
A lex agraria (pl.: leges agrariae) was a Roman law which dealt primarily with the viritane allotment of public lands. Such laws came largely from two sources: the disposition of lands annexed by Rome in consequence of expansion and the distribution of existing public lands to poor citizens as freeholds. Such legislation dealt almost exclusively with public lands which were held by the state and not privately owned. There were other types of Roman laws related to agriculture, including those establishing new colonies and those regulating the holding of public lands (lex de modo agrorum).
The most famous lex agraria was that of the plebeian tribune Tiberius Gracchus, passed in 133 BC, which allotted public lands across Italy to rural plebs. Such laws were not without precedent, such as the lex Flaminia of 232 BC which authorised viritane distributions of lands in Cisalpine Gaul and Picenum. Further such laws were also passed in the years after 133 BC, including that of Tiberius' younger brother Gaius in 122 BC, and the epigraphically attested lex agraria of 111 BC. The law of 111 BC, among other things, buttressed recognition of the lands distributed in the prior law of 133. Other leges agrariae include a series of three laws vaguely described by Appian, the laws of Saturninus in 103 and 100 BC, the laws of Julius Caesar in 59 BC, and a law of Mark Antony in 44 BC.
Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (c. 135 – 87 BC) was a Roman general and politician, who served as consul in 89 BC. He is often referred to in English as Pompey Strabo, to distinguish him from his son, the famous Pompey the Great, or from Strabo the geographer.
Strabo, the cognomen, means "cross eyed". He lived in the Roman Republic and was born and raised into a noble family in Picenum (in the south and the north of the modern regions of Marche and Abruzzo respectively) in central Italy, on the Adriatic Coast. Strabo's mother was called Lucilia. Lucilia's family originated from Suessa Aurunca (modern Sessa Aurunca) and she was a sister of satiric poet Gaius Lucilius. Lucilius was a friend of Roman general Scipio Aemilianus. Strabo's paternal grandfather was Gnaeus Pompeius, while his father was Sextus Pompeius. His elder brother was Sextus Pompeius and his sister was Pompeia.
The Frentani were an Italic tribe occupying the tract on the southeast coast of the Italian peninsula from the Apennines to the Adriatic, and from the frontiers of Apulia to those of the Marrucini. They were bounded on the west by the Samnites, with whom they were closely connected, and from whom they were originally descended. Hence Scylax assigns the whole of this line of coast, from the frontiers of Apulia to those of Picenum, to the Samnites. Their exact limits are less clearly defined, and there is considerable discrepancy in the statements of ancient geographers: Larinum, with its territory (extending from the Tifernus (modern Biferno) to the Frento), being by some writers termed a city of the Frentani, while the more general opinion included it in Apulia, and thus made the river Tifernus the limit of the two countries. The northern boundary of the Frentani is equally uncertain; both Strabo and Ptolemy concur in fixing it at the river Sagrus (modern Sangro), while Pliny extends their limits as far as the Aternus, and, according to Mela, they possessed the mouths both of that river and the Matrinus. The latter statement is certainly inaccurate; and Strabo distinctly tells us that the Marrucini held the right bank of the Aternus down to its mouth, while the Vestini possessed the left bank; hence, the former people must have intervened between the Frentani and the mouth of the Aternus. Pliny's account is, however, nearer the truth than that of Strabo and Ptolemy; for it is certain that Ortona and Anxanum (modern Lanciano), both of which are situated considerably to the north of the Sagrus, were Frentanian cities. The latter is indeed assigned by Ptolemy to that people, while Strabo also terms Ortona the port or naval station of the Frentani, but erroneously places it to the south of the river Sagrus. Hence, their confines must have approached within a few miles of the Aternus, though without actually abutting upon that river. On the west, they were probably not separated from the Samnites by any well-marked natural boundary, but occupied the lower slopes of the Apennines as well as the hilly country extending from thence to the sea, while the more lofty and central ridges of the mountains were included in Samnium.