Italic People
The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of
the Indo-European language family.
The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at
least the second millennium BC onwards. Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes,
establishing ancient Roman civilization. During this development, other Italic tribes
adopted Latin language and culture in a process known as Romanization. This process was eventually
extended to certain parts of Europe. The ethnic groups which emerged as a result are known
as Romance peoples.
Classification
Ethnolinguistic map of Italy in the Iron Age.The Italics were an ethnolinguistic group who are identified by their use of the Italic languages, which
form one of the branches of Indo-European languages.
Outside of the specialised linguistic literature, the term is also used to describe the ancient peoples of
Italy as defined in Roman times, including pre-Roman peoples like the Etruscans and the Raetians, who
did not speak Indo-European languages.[1] Such use is improper in linguistics, but employed by sources
such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, which contends that «Italy attained a unified ethnolinguistic,
political, and cultural physiognomy only after the Roman conquest, yet its most ancient peoples remain
anchored in the names of the regions of Roman Italy
— Latium, Campania, Apulia, Bruttium, Lucania, Emilia
Romagna, Samnium, Picenum, Umbria, Etruria, Venetia, and Liguria».[2]