Pompeii Didn’t Begin with the Romans: The Lost Story of the Oscans, Its First Inhabitants

Pompeii Didn’t Begin with the Romans: The Lost Story of the Oscans, Its First Inhabitants

Ruins of Pompeii. Credit: Tanya Dedyukhina / CC BY 3.0 Pompeii is most famous today for being utterly destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD. However, it had a long history before that, and only part of it involved the Romans. In fact, for most of its history, Pompeii was not a Roman city. What do we know about the history of Pompeii, including its language and its culture, prior to the time of the Romans? Pompeii as an Oscan city The first t…