The LUCANIANS proceeded from the Samnites, but became quite independent of them. The connection with the mother-country was extremely loose with all these people; their migrations are quite different from those of other nations: they are conquests of emigrating bands of men, who for this reason lose their language and national character, and adopt those of the old inhabitants. According to a tradition, the Lucanians emigrated from Samnium as a _ver sacrum_. This phenomenon occurs among all the Italian nations: a people made a vow, that all boys born within a certain year should, after the lapse of twenty years, emigrate and seek a new home for themselves. Thus the Lucanians emigrated, and spread from the frontiers of Samnium as far as Rhegium on the straits of Messina. The ancient inhabitants were subdued, and thus three strata of different nations were mixed together: the ancient Oenotrians were conquered by the Oscans, and the Oscans by the Samnites. But these subjects afterwards rose against their rulers, and formed an independent state under the name of BRUTTIUM. The Bruttians, therefore, did not belong to the Sabellians; they must be regarded as a mixture of Oenotrians and Greeks, and were Greek rather than Italian, whence they were treated by the Romans as Greeks. The Greek language was so firmly established there, that in Terra di Lecce, about Otranto, documents were composed in the Greek language as late as the fifteenth century; specimens of it occur in the Biblioteca Barberini. In the town of Rossano in Calabria, Greek was spoken as late as the sixteenth century,[47] and in Sicily Greek poetry was written in the twelfth; when the Arabs were expelled the remaining population consisted of Greeks, and it was not till a later period that they became Italians. The praetor of Messina was, ever since the Greek times, called _Stratigo_, until in 1672[48] the people revolted against Spain, when the constitution and the office were abolished. The laws of king Roger and of Frederic II. were written in Greek.