On this gulf, at the foot of mount Vesuvius, were situated the celebrated towns of POMPEII and HERCULANEUM, remarkable for their destruction and their re-discovery. Both are called Oscan, though it is said in regard to Herculaneum, that at an earlier period it was Tyrrhenian. But from their ruins, especially those of Herculaneum when compared with those of Roman origin, it is clear that the place had assumed an entirely Greek character. Pompeii was conquered by the Romans in the Social War, and there, too, we can clearly distinguish the ancient Oscan and the more recent Roman town. In ancient times, the bay of Naples was encircled by a wreath of towns, extending all over the coast from Naples to Sorrentum and the promontory of Minerva; but I cannot trace them here, and must now proceed to the interior of Italy. THE SABELLIANS, SABINES, SAMNITES. I am now going to speak of the great Sabellian nation; I shall treat of it according to its tribes beginning with the Sabines, who formed the original stock. The names _Sabini_ and _Sabelli_ are the same, just as _Hispani_ and _Hispalli_, _Graeci_ and _Graeculi_. The form _Sabelli_ is either a diminutive or changed by a pleonasm, _Sabinulus_, and, with a change of vowel, _Sabellus_.[46] This nation occupies a large extent of country in history; but we should be mistaken, if we were to suppose, that all the tribes included under the name were pure Sabines and that they alone inhabited the countries governed by them; for they did not by any means extirpate the ancient inhabitants when they conquered a country. According to a tradition admitted by Cato himself, which contains some truth, but disfigured, the Sabines had originally come from Amiternum, the highest district of the Abruzzi, or as we may call them, the real Apennine Alps. We must not, indeed, understand this, as if the Sabines had been autochthons there, as has sometimes been asserted; but the meaning is, that the tribe from which the different Sabellian cantons issued, came down from those mountains. The ancients say no more than this, but later writers have converted it into a genealogical connection.