Lucanians and Southern Italy 517The Lucanians as an Ethnic Group
The references noted in the preceding text are descriptions of a people seen from the
points of view of Greek and Roman authors, and Musti, in fact, suggests that the appella-
tion “Lucanian” was applied extrinsically to these people. An ethnic construct, in general,
may be defined by people outside the group in question or by those within the group
itself. There are often reasons the construct has been distinguished, and certain traits
identify members of the ethnic group. As Malkin (2001: 1–28) notes, modern schol-
ars have often posited features in a population that form significant markers of an ethnic
collective; nevertheless, different scholars, both ancient and modern, often emphasize dif-
ferent criteria. While ethnicity may assume a putative concept of kinship (Malkin 2001:
10), modern studies demonstrate that many traits, often cultural or social in nature, may
articulate the boundaries of an ethnic group.
Certain features such as language, common territory, a lost fatherland, common ori-
gins, kinship, religious institutions, and common political organizations are often cited
as markers of an ethnic construct. Nevertheless, as Konstan (2001: 30) remarks (in
discussing Greek ethnicity from the point of view of Greek writers): “In themselves,
however, common traits, whether recognized as such or not, do not constitute an eth-
nic self-awareness. Rather, ethnicity arises when a collective identity is asserted on the
basis of shared characteristics.” This would be true for self-awareness of ethnicity as
well as external cognizance of another ethnic group. When individuals decide to apply
a label or name to a people, they use certain traits to distinguish the group in ques-
tion, and these traits may not be the same or carry the same weight with every group
in question. Indeed, the perception of an ethnic group and the traits used to iden-
tify the group in question may change over time. J. Hall (2002: 9–29) is correct in
assuming that ethnic groups are not static. What seems to be important, however, is a
perception of commonness. As Konstan (2001: 30) remarks, “Central to any claim of
ethnic identity is the notion of common essence.” Luraghi (2008: 10), in his study of
the ancient Messenians, identifies a natural result of this sense of commonality, concur-
ring with other scholars, “...a constant and necessary component of an ethnic group is a
collective name.”
Ancient Greek and Roman Perceptions
of the Lucanians
Writers of the late republic and early empire portray the Lucanians as a sizeable collec-
tive identity in southern Italy. Isayev (2010: 206) suggests that these writers, interested
in describing alliances and campaigns, usually presented Italic peoples “as large, defin-
able, and cohesive ethnic units for the purposes of the narrative.” It is possible that, in
one sense, the Lucanians exist as an identifiable group precisely because this construct
made it easier for writers to distinguish the players in the story of Rome’s growth to
power. As a narratological construct, the Lucanians written about by ancient Greeks and
Romans would have been marked by certain characteristics so as to be readily identifiable
as Lucanian.