This project aims to spread knowledge and awareness of the Oscan language.

Salavs!

I’m William, and I created The Oscan Odes Project. My experience in the Classics classroom thus far has probably been similar to yours: I’ve read Vergilian poetry, decoded Catullus’ love, and examined Caesar’s war campaigns. But amidst all this, I wondered: How do these Latin texts relate to an ancient Roman provincial—someone outside of Rome’s literary and political elite? While Latin was certainly the language of Rome’s urban population and eventually all of Italy’s, Oscan was used in significant portions of provincial Italy from Etruria to Campania. I created The Oscan Odes Project with the goal of spreading more knowledge and awareness of the Oscan language, which I hope will fascinate you as much as it has me over the past few years.

Oscan is a rare language with little freely available resources on the internet. Most books and resources about it have costs that can run into the hundreds and are decades if not centuries old. This project aims to make resources to learn Oscan more accessible and digital, so that anybody on the internet has the ability to learn. This website is one of the premier online resources for the Oscan language available online, having the most lessons of any site.

Check out our database of Oscan vocabulary words, our lessons on Oscan grammar, our articles on Oscan culture, and more! Happy learning!

Special thanks to Professor Zair and Professor Weiss for their help in learning about Oscan.