Messapii, an ancient tribe which inhabited, in historical times, the south-eastern peninsula or "heel" of Italy, known variously in ancient times as Calabria, Messapia and Iapygia.

Their chief towns were Uzentum, Rudiae, Brundisium and Uria. They are mentioned (Herod. vii. 170) as having inflicted a serious defeat on the Greeks of Tarentum in 473 BC. Herodotus adds a tradition which links them to the Cretan subjects of "King Minos." Brundisium (Gr. ... Bust of Herodotus Herodotus (Greek: ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΣ, Herodotos) was an ancient historian who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC - c. ... Map of Italy showing Taranto in the bottom right Taranto is a coastal city in Apulia, southern Italy. ... Centuries: 4th century BC - 5th century BC - 6th century BC Decades: 520s BC 510s BC 500s BC 490s BC 480s BC - 470s BC - 460s BC 450s BC 440s BC 430s BC 420s BC 478 BC 477 BC 476 BC 475 BC 474 BC 473 BC 472 BC 471 BC 470... In Greek mythology, Minos was a semi-legendary king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. ...

Their language is preserved for us in a scanty group of perhaps fifty inscriptions of which only a few contain more than proper names, and in a few glosses in ancient writers collected by Mommsen (Unteritalische Dialekte, p. 70). Unluckily very few originals of the inscriptions are now in existence, though some few remain in the museum at Taranto. The only satisfactory transcripts are those given by: Messapian (also known as Messapic) is an extinct Indo-European language of South-Eastern Italy, in the regions of Apulia and Calabria. ... Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (30 November 1817 - 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar and historian, generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century. ...

1. Mommsen (loc. cit.)
2. John P Droop in the Annual of the British School at Athens (1905-1906), xli. 137, who includes, for purposes of comparison, as the reader should be warned, some specimens of the 'unfortunately numerous class of forged inscriptions.

A large number of the inscriptions collected by Gamurrini in the appendices to Fabretti's Corpus inscriptionum italicdrum are forgeries, and the text of the rest is negligently reported. It is therefore safest to rely on the texts collected by Mommsen, cumbered though they are by the various readings given , to him by various, authorities. In spite, however, of these difficulties some facts of considerable importance have been established.

The inscriptions, so far as it is safe to judge from the copies of the older finds and from Droop's facsimiles of the newer, are all in the Tarentine-Ionic alphabet (with for v and I- for h). For limits of date 400-150 BC may be regarded as. approximately probable; the two most important inscriptions--those of Bindisi and Vastemay perhaps be assigned provisionally to the 3rd century BC. Mommsen's first attempt at dealing with the inscriptions and the language attained solid, if not very numerous, results, chief of which were the genitival character of the endings-aihi and ihi; and the conjunctional value of "inoi" (loc. cit. 79-84 sg(1). (4th century BC - 3rd century BC - 2nd century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) Events The first two Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome over dominance in western Mediterranean Rome conquers Spain Great Wall of China begun Indian traders regularly visited Arabia Scythians occupy...

Since that time (1850) very little progress has been made. There is, in fact, only one attempt known to the present writer to which the student can be referred as proceeding upon thoroughly scientific lines, that of Professor Alf Torp in Indogermanische Forschungen (1895), V, 195, which deals fully with the two inscriptions just mentioned, and practically sums up all that is either certain or probable in the conjectures of his predecessors. Hardly more than a few words can be said to have been separated and translated with certainty--kalatoras (masc. gen. sing.) "of a herald" (Written upon a herald's staff which was once in the Naples Museum); "aran" (acc: sing. fem.) "arable land"; tnazzes, "greater" (neut. acc. sing.), the first two syllables of the Latin maiestas; while tepise (3rd sing. aorist indic.) "placed" or "offered"; and forms corresponding to the article (la- = Greek ro) seem also reasonably probable. The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ...

Some phonetic characteristics of the dialect may be regarded as quite certain;

1. the change of the original short d to d (as in the last syllable of the genitive kalatoras)
2. of final -m to -n (as in aran)
3. of -ni- -ti- -si- respectively to -nn- -tb- and -ssas in Messapian Dazohonnes (Dasonius), Dazohonnihi, Dasbnii, Dazethes, genitive Dazetbihi (Dazetius, Dazetii) from the shorter stem Dazet-; Messapian Vallasso for Vallasio (a derivative from the shorter name Valla)
4. the loss of final d (as in tepise), and probably of final t (as in -des, perhaps meaning "set," from the root of Gr. rtthi)
5. the change of PIE "dh" to "d" ("anda" = Gr. entha) and PIE "bh" to "b" (beran = Lat. ferant)
6. -au- before (at least some) consonants becomes "-d-" (Bdsta, earlier *Bausta)
7. Very great interest attaches to the form penkaheh--which Torp very probably identifies with the Oscan stem pompaio--which is a derivative of the Indo-European numeral *penkwe- "5."

If this last identification be correct it would show, that in Messapian (just as in Venetic and Ligurian) the original velars were retained as gutturals and not converted into labials. The change of o to a is exceedingly interesting as being a phenomenon associated with the northern branches of Indo-European such as Gothic, Albanian and Lithuanian, and not appearing in any other southern dialect hitherto known. The Greek Aphrodite appears in the form Aprodita (dat. sing., fem.). The use of double consonants which has been already pointed out in the Messapian inscriptions has been very acutely connected by Deecke with the tradition that the same practice was introduced at Rome by the poet Ennius who came from the Messapian town Rudiae (Festus, p. 293 M). The Proto-Indo-Europeans are the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, a prehistoric people of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. ... The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and south-eastern France known as the Liguri. ... The Gothic language (*gutiska razda, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺) is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths and specifically by the Visigoths. ... Aphrodite (Αφροδίτη, risen from sea-foam) is the Greek goddess of love and beauty. ... A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture sufficient to cause audible turbulence, at one or more points along the vocal tract. ... Quintus Ennius (239 - 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. ... Salento is the south-eastern extremity of Italy, a sub-peninsula of the main Italian peninsula, sometimes described as the heel of the Italian boot. It is within the administrative area of Apulia (Puglia). ...

It should be added that the proper names in the inscriptions show the regular Italic system of gentile nomen preceded by a personal praenomen; and that some inscriptions show the interesting feature which appears in the Tables of Heraclea of a crest or coat of arms, such as a triangle or an anchor, peculiar to particular families. The same reappears in the Iovilae of Capua and Cumae. Capua (modern Santa Maria Capua Vetere) was the chief ancient city of Campania, and one of the most important towns of ancient Italy, situated 25 km (16 mi) north of Neapolis, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. ... Cumae (Cuma, in Italian) is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. ...

For further information the student must be referred to the sources already mentioned and further to W Deecke in a series of articles in the Rheinisches Museum, xxxvi. 576 sqq.; xxxvii. 373 sqq. ; xl. 131 sqq.; xlii. 226 sqq., S Bugge, Bezzenbergers Beiträge, vol. 18. A newly discovered inscription has been published by L Ceci Notizie degli Scavi (1908), p. 86; and one or two others are recorded by Professor Viola, ibid. 1884, p. 128 sqq. and in Giornale degli Scavi di Pompei, vol. 4 (1878), pp. 70 sqq. The place-names of the district are collected by RS Conway, The Italic Dialects, p. 31; for the Tarentine-Ionic alphabet see ibid. ii., 461.

For a discussion of the important ethnological question of the origin of the Messapians see:

• W Helbig, Hermes, xi. 257
• P Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschiehte der griechischen Sprache, pp. 262 sqq., 272 sqq.
• H Hirt, Die sprachliche Stellung der Illyrischen (Festschrift fur H Kiepert, pp. 179-188)

Reference should also be made to the discussion of their relation to the Veneti by C Pauli in Die Veneter, p. 413 sqq., especially p. 437; and also to RS Conway, Italic Dialects, i. 15. The Veneti were an ancient people who inhabited todays northeastern Italy (near Venice). ...

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), contend supporters, in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...