Region
Picenum
S Marche and N Abruzzo
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Picenum, the land between the Adriatic and the Apennines, covers what is now southern Marche and northern Abruzzo. It was the country of the Picentes, an Italic people whose own culture flourished from the ninth to the fourth century BC; their many cemeteries have yielded chariots, sculpture and banqueting ware, and inscriptions survive in their language. Rome first made a treaty with them in 299 BC, subdued them in 268 BC and resettled some near the Gulf of Paestum. Under Augustus, Picenum became the fifth region of Italy.