The Geography of Strabo, Vol. III (Loeb)

completely "barbarized," Meaning they have lost their Greek identity. and some parts have been taken and are held by the Lucanians and the Brettii, and others by the Campanians—that is, nominally by the Campanians, but in truth by the Romans, since the Campanians themselves have become Romans. However, the man who occupies himself with the description of the earth must speak not only of current facts, but also sometimes of historical facts, especially when they are notable. As for the Lucanians, I have already spoken of those whose territory borders the Tyrrhenian Sea, while those who hold the interior are the people who live above the Gulf of Tarentum. But the latter, and the Brettii, and the Samnites themselves (the ancestors of these peoples), have so utterly deteriorated that it is difficult even to distinguish their various settlements. The reason is that no common organization survives in any of the separate tribes; their characteristic differences in language, armor, dress, and the like have completely disappeared; and, furthermore, their settlements, individually and in detail, are now entirely obscure.

3. Accordingly, without making distinctions between them, I shall tell in a general way what I have learned about the peoples who live in the interior—I mean the Lucanians and such of the Samnites as are their next neighbors. Petelia, then, is regarded as the metropolis of the Chones and has been quite well-populated down to the present day. It was founded by Philoctetes after he, as the result of a political quarrel, had fled from Meliboea. It has such a strong position by nature that the Samnites once fortified it as a garrison against the Thurians. And the old