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He found a subterranean world tracing back before the birth of Christ: a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar.

He laid claim to be descended from the old Messapian kings, a claim which Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the introduction of Messapus leading his followers in the gathering of the Italian races, Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant.

Her good fortune supplied from among the contingent furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of a nature so sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to gain for the ideal thus created a permanent realisation.

In the level country, the rich arable lands, such as the Campanian and Capuan plains, extended in vast tracts, and produced a profusion of fruits of every species, while on the acclivities, where the skirts of the mountains began to break into little hills and sloping fields, the olive and vine basked on soils famed for Messapian oil, and for wines of which the very names cheer and revive us.

A notable figure is Ennius, a Messapian, who began to write at the close of the third century B. C.