07/04/2026
A map showing what the Italian peninsula looked like in 400 BC, more than 2,400 years ago.
Before Italy was Italy, before Rome became an empire, and before Latin spread across much of the known world, the peninsula was home to a remarkable collection of different peoples, each with their own language, culture, religion, and territory. In 400 BC, Rome was still a small city-state on the banks of the Tiber, and nobody looking at this map would have predicted that one of these groups would go on to build the most powerful empire of the ancient Mediterranean.
The north was dominated by Celtic groups, who had crossed the Alps and moved into the Po Valley around this period. Their arrival was violent and destabilising, and around 390 BC, a Celtic army under a chieftain named Brennus would march south and sack Rome itself, an event so traumatic it was remembered by Romans for centuries. The Etruscans, shown in yellow, occupied the heartland of what is now Tuscany and northern Lazio. They were one of the most sophisticated civilisations in ancient Italy, with a writing system, rich artistic traditions, and trade networks stretching across the Mediterranean. The Romans borrowed heavily from Etruscan culture, including their alphabet, religious practices, and elements of early architecture.
The Umbrians occupied parts of the central Apennine highlands to the east of the Etruscans and were considered by ancient sources to be among the old peoples of Italy. The Samnites, shown in dark green in the south-central mountains, were one of the most formidable military powers in the peninsula. They would go on to fight Rome in three brutal wars over the following century, coming closer than almost anyone else in Italy to stopping Roman expansion in its tracks.
The south and Sicily tell a different story. The coastlines of southern Italy were dotted with Greek colonies, a region later known as Magna Graecia, meaning Greater Greece. Cities like Neapolis, modern Naples, Tarentum, and Syracuse were wealthy, urban, and deeply connected to the wider Greek world. The Carthaginians, based in North Africa, controlled parts of western Sicily and Sardinia, making them a major naval and commercial power in the western Mediterranean. The rivalry between Carthage and the Greek cities of Sicily shaped the politics of the region and would later draw Rome into conflicts that changed the course of world history.
What is most striking about this map is how fragmented and diverse the peninsula was. Within the next few centuries, Rome would conquer, absorb, or dominate nearly every major rival on the peninsula, gradually spreading Roman citizenship, Latin, and Roman institutions across Italy.
