Picentes

The Picentes (Latin: Picentes; also known as Picentini or Piceni in modern scholarship) were an ancient Italic people who inhabited the central Adriatic coastal region of the Italian peninsula, corresponding broadly to modern Marche and northern Abruzzo. Their territory, known in antiquity as Picenum, extended between the Esino River to the north and approximately the Saline River to the south, bounded by the Apennines to the west and the Adriatic Sea to the east. The Picentes culture flourished from the 9th to the 3rd century BC before being incorporated into the expanding Roman Republic following conquest in 269–268 BC.^[1][2]

Ancient sources such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder referred to these people as Picentes, sometimes attributing their name to a legendary origin involving a woodpecker (Latin: picus), a bird sacred to Mars.^[3][4] Modern archaeology and linguistics have revealed significant cultural and linguistic diversity within this region. Scholars distinguish between a southern area—associated with speakers of the South Picene language (a member of the Sabellic branch of Italic languages)—and a northern zone where the unclassified and largely undeciphered North Picene language was used, attested primarily in the Novilara stele.^[5][6]

Following the Roman conquest, a portion of the Picentes population was forcibly relocated to southern Campania, where they became known as the Picentini and settled in the Sele plain near what would become Salernum.^[7][8] This displaced community maintained a distinct identity through the Imperial period, and their name survives today in the Campanian Monti Picentini mountain range.

Recent scholarship emphasizes that the Picentes should not be understood as a monolithic ethnic group but rather as a diverse cultural complex shaped by regional variation, intercultural exchange, and eventual Roman administrative categorization.^[9][10] After participation in the Social War (91–88 BC), the remaining Picentes communities received Roman citizenship and were integrated into Roman political structures, though elements of their cultural heritage persisted well into the Imperial period.^[11]