 Livy speaks in more than one passage of the Caudini as a tribe or people, in the same terms as of the Hirpini, and Niebuhr supposed them to have been one of the four tribes comprising the Samnite confederacy As the most western of the Samnite groups, they were the Samnite tribe most affected by the neighbouring Greeks of Campania.Together with the Hirpini, Pentri, and Carceni tribes, the Caudini people were described as rustic, thriving on an agrarian economy mainly as "massari" (peasant farmers) and "pecorari" (herdsmen and shepherds).The extent of their territory is unclear.