The Lucanians in 218 B.C.

The Lucanians — Roman Republic › Socii (Italic Allies).

The Lucanians were the Oscan-speaking highlanders of Lucania, the rugged mountain country between the Tyrrhenian and the gulf of Tarentum. A warlike confederation of cantons, they had fought Rome through the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars before being drawn into her alliance in the early third century. By 218 they furnished tough hill infantry to the allied levy, but their fidelity was thin: after Cannae much of Lucania would break to Hannibal, and the country became a theatre of raid and counter-raid for the rest of the war.