Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

Hecataeus in the late sixth century BC suggests that Nola was an Ausonian town 573
Several ancient sources imply that most of southern Italy was populated by an Italic
population of some kind before the arrival of the Etruscans. 574
The foundation history of Abella is less colourful. Servius says that the first
inhabitants of the town were Greeks, although the city was founded by the mythical king
Muranus. 575 All these passages describe the region as ethnically diverse. Our literary
sources do not record when the Samnite occupation of the two towns occurred, but it
probably happened in the second part of the fifth century, as was the case with most of
the Campanian cities. Nola acquired its name from the Samnites, for Nola means `New
Town' in Oscan. The Ronga necropolis does not reveal an interruption or
impoverishment of the tombs in the period following the presumed Samnite occupation.
In historical accounts, Nola first figures in an incident involving Naples on the eve
of the Second Samnite war. The accounts of Dionysius Halicarnassus and Livy are
somewhat confused. Dionysius mentions the arrival of Tarentine and Nolan ambassadors
at Naples in 327 BC. 576
In this period, the Samnites and Romans were competing to
secure as much support in Campania as possible. The Tarentine support of the Samnites
towards the end of the 330s BC allowed the latter to put more pressure on the Volscian
area and to gain support among the Campanian towns, - probably including Nola. The
Tarentine and Nolan legates went to Naples to prevent the city from forming an alliance
with Rome. The atrocities 'committed against the Romans dwelling in the districts of
Campania and Falerii' by the inhabitants of Palaeopolis culminated in war between
373 Hecataeus fr. 28 FGrH. Beloch (1890) 389 was puzzled by this passage, because he thought that
Campania was more likely to have been inhabited by the Etruscans or Greeks in the author's time.
574
Aristotle Pol. 1329b 18; Antiochus in Strabo 5.4.3; Livy 8.15.16. Polyb 34.11.7.
575
lust. 20.1.13; Serv. 7.790.
576 Dion. Hal. 15.5.2.
161