We cannot decide how far the Sabellians constituted one race with the Opicans and Auruncans, whether they were akin in a degree like that subsisting between the upper and lower Germans, the Suabians and Saxons, or the Germans and Scandinavians, or whether they were as foreign to each other as the Romans were to the Etruscans. That they differed from each other, is expressly attested. But the ancients are too inaccurate in these matters to allow a careful modern inquirer to accept their statement without hesitation; and although Varro attests that the Sabines and Oscans spoke different languages, still we cannot ascertain, whether he meant only different dialects, or entirely different languages. In like manner, the extension of the Sabellians in southern Italy from the Apennines can be traced only very indefinitely. This much, e.g., is attested, that the neighbourhood of Beneventum was previously occupied by Oscans, without their being the original natives of it; they must have extended even farther upwards into the country of the Marsians, and must have been expelled by the Sabines. The name Maluentum shows, that originally a people of Tyrrhenian origin dwelt between the Apennines and the valley of the Calore. Before the Sabines conquered that district, they probably had their abode in the eastern Apennines. The real and unmixed Sabines occupied a considerable extent of country; in the narrowest sense, they did not touch the sea on either side, either the Adriatic or the Lower Sea, but they extended so far, as to be separated from the latter only by a narrow strip of land, from Amiternum to the vicinity of Rome. But they sent forth branches of their nation which established themselves in other parts and became great nations.