Pompeii is most famous today for being utterly destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD. However, it had a long history before that, and only part of it involved the Romans. In fact, for most of its history, Pompeii was not a Roman city. What do we know about the history of Pompeii, including its language and its culture, prior to the time of the Romans?
Pompeii as an Oscan city
The first thing to understand about Pompeii before the Romans is that it was fundamentally an Oscan city. While at least two other groups—the Etruscans and the Greeks—controlled it at various points in its pre-Roman history, the Osci were the ones who originally founded the settlement and, for the most part, made up its population.
The Osci were an Italic people, though they were not Latins. They, along with several other groups such as the Samnites, spoke an Oscan language. These communities lived throughout the mountainous regions of central and southern Italy. The Oscan language family was closely related to several other languages spoken in Ancient Italy, including Latin, even if it wasn’t exactly the same.
Although Oscan was distinct from Latin, its speakers sometimes used a version of the Romans’ Latin alphabet—something that might feel familiar to modern readers. This is similar to the way various languages nowadays share the same writing system. They also occasionally used the Etruscan script. In addition, the Greek alphabet appears in surviving inscriptions, especially in southern Italy, where Oscan speakers lived closer to the Greek cities of Magna Graecia and were more directly influenced by Greek culture.
Over time, however, the expansion of Rome led to the decline and eventual disappearance of the Oscan languages, which were replaced by Latin. This broader linguistic shift is exactly what we see reflected in the history of Pompeii.
The origin and early history of Pompeii prior to the Romans
The origins of Pompeii stretch back to around the ninth or eighth century BC. There are no contemporary records of its founding, nor do we know of any legends about how it began. What historians have reconstructed through archaeology suggests that it was founded by the Osci from Campania—the southwestern Italian region where Pompeii is situated.
Initially, these Oscan speakers set up a cluster of five small villages located near each other. By the sixth century BC, these villages merged into a single, unified settlement. A similar process happened in Greece with the city of Sparta, which originally consisted of four separate villages before coming together.
Even before Pompeii’s villages merged, Greek influences were already shaping the area. It seems that the Greeks of Magna Grecia came to dominate the region, likely not through military conquest but by cultural and economic influence, around 700 BC—shortly after the city’s first establishment.
Following this, in the seventh century BC, the Etruscans expanded south into Campania. Like the Greeks before them, they appear to have taken control of Pompeii and the surrounding territory without major warfare against its inhabitants. The Etruscans maintained dominance over Pompeii until the first half of the sixth century BC. Their power waned as wars began to dismantle the Etruscan civilization, opening the door for a new ruling force: the Samnites.
What was Oscan Pompeii like?
In a linguistic sense, it was almost as if Pompeii had come full circle. The Samnites, who became the dominant power in the city before the Romans arrived, spoke Oscan—just like the Osci who had originally founded Pompeii.
The Samnites appear to have called themselves the Safineis. This was likely the name that at least some of Pompeii’s pre-Roman inhabitants used for themselves. Sadly, we don’t know what the original Osci settlers called their own people.
What we do know is that early Pompeii was heavily influenced by Greek culture in multiple ways. Archaeology reveals this from the very earliest layers of the site. For example, there was a Doric-style temple dating to around 700 BC, alongside evidence of a cult devoted to Apollo, showing how Greek religious practices had taken root. During the period of Etruscan dominance, unsurprisingly, traces of Etruscan influence appear as well. Archaeologists have uncovered an Etruscan necropolis dating to the sixth century BC, and the Oscan language was sometimes written using the Etruscan script.
Interestingly, the Greek alphabet did not disappear after the Greeks lost control of Pompeii in the early fifth century BC. In fact, its use may have even increased over time, likely reflecting growing trade connections with the powerful cities of Magna Grecia. From its founding through the Roman conquest, Pompeii’s Oscan inhabitants clearly had no problem adopting elements from other cultures—like the Greek alphabet—and weaving them seamlessly into their daily lives.
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