In the 3rd century we find it issuing coins with an Oscan legend, but in 211 B.C. it shared the fate of Capua.
Like Umbrian also, but unlike Latin and Oscan, it has degraded all the diphthongs into simple vowels (Volscian se parallel to Oscan svai; Volscian deue, Old Latin and Oscan deivai or deiuoi).
We have now to notice (3) the points in which Umbrian has diverged from Oscan.
It would follow, on the other hand, that what is called Oscan represented the language of the invading Sabines (more correctly Safines), whose racial affinities would seem to be of a distinctly more northern cast, and to mark them, like the Dorians or Achaeans in Greece, as an early wave of the invaders who more than once in later history havevitally influenced the fortunes of the tempting southern land into which they forced their way.
Mommsen (Unteritalische Dialekten, p. 345) pointed out that in the social war all the coins of Pompaedius Silo have the Latin legend "Italia," while the other leaders in all but one case used Oscan.
