they were really distinct, as some authors mention the Opicans and Oscans as if they were two different nations when they are clearly the same. However, the use of "Ausones" as identical with that of the Opicans may simply be due to the fact "Ausones" was used as a vague term for all inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, as stated above. As a General Term Indeed, it is probable that the Greeks frequently applied the name with little regard to accuracy, and may have included races widely different under the common appellation of Ausonians, but it is impossible to account for this vague and general use of the name, unless the people to whom it referred shared many attributes and formed an important part of the population of central Italy. The precise relation in which they were considered as standing to the Opicans or Oscans it is impossible to determine, nor perhaps were the ideas of the Greeks themselves upon this point very clear and definite. The passages already cited prove that they were considered as occupying the western coast of Campania, on which account the Lower Sea (Mare Inferum, as it was termed by the Romans), subsequently known as the Tyrrhenian Sea, was in early ages commonly called by the Greeks the Ausonian Sea. Other accounts, however, represent them as originally an inland people, dwelling in the mountains about Beneventum. Scymnus Chius also writes of them as occupying an inland region; and Strabo states that they had occupied the mountain tract above the Pontine marshes, and in Roman history only with Volscians. On the whole, it is probable that the name was applied with little discrimination to all the native races who, prior to the invasion of the Samnites, occupied Campania and the inland mountainous region afterwards known as Samnium, and from thence came to be gradually applied to all the inhabitants of central Italy. But they seem to have been regarded by the best authorities as distinct from the Oenotrians, or Pelasgic nations, which inhabited the southern parts of the peninsula; though other authors certainly confounded them. Hellanicus according to Dionysius wrote of the Ausonians as crossing over into Sicily under their king Siculus, where the people meant are clearly the Siculi. Again, Strabo wrote of Temesa as founded by the Ausones, where he must probably mean the Oenotrians, the only people whom we know of as inhabiting