173 



OSCI. 



OSCILLATION. 



174 



Of the kinds imported into England, the Carolina is the best, 

 and is grown in the marshy grounds of North and South Carolina. 

 The grains are shorter, broader, and boil softer than the Patna rice, 

 which is the best Indian kind known in this country, though in 

 India there are several superior varieties, as for instance the Riliheet, 

 which are much more esteemed there. In the year 1859, 3,692,023 

 cwte. were imported into England. The quantity retained for con- 

 sumption in the United Kingdom was 1,761,865 cwts. ; of the estimated 

 value of 1,652,505/. The relative values may be judged of by the 

 price of the Carolina rice being 20. when the Patna was 1 7. ; Bengal 

 white, 12*. ;'and the Cargo only 9. 6d. The Cargo is a reddish- 

 coloured, coarse, but sweetish grain, which is liked by the lower caste 

 of natives of India. 



OSCI, or OPICI, a people of ancient Italy, who seem to have been 

 identical with the Ausonians, or Aurunci, and who inhabited the 

 central part of the peninsula from Campania and the borders of 

 Latium to the Adriatic. Some ancient writers consider the Ausoniang 

 to be a branch of the Osci ; others, as Polybius, have spoken of 

 them as distinct tribes, but this appears to be an error. The names 

 Opicus and Oscus are undoubtedly the same. Aristotle (' Polit.,' vii. 

 10) calls the country from the Tiber to the Silarus, Ausonia and 

 Opicia ; and other ancient writers extended the name much farther, to 

 the Straits of Sicily, but the southern extremity of the peninsula 

 appears to have been occupied by the (Enotrians, a Pelasgic people, 

 who were conquered by the Lucaniansand Bruttii. Cumte, one of the 

 earliest Greek colonies on the coast of Italy, was in the country of the 

 Opici. There was an ancient tradition in Italy in the time of the 

 historian Dionysiua, of a sudden irruption of strangers from the 

 opposite coast of the Adriatic, which caused a general commotion and 

 dispersion among the aboriginal tribes. Afterwards came the Hellenic 

 colonies, which occupied the whole sea-coast from Mount Garganus to 

 the extremity of the peninsula, in the first and second centuries of 

 Rome, in consequence of which the population of the southern part of 

 the Italian peninsula became divided into two races, the tribes of 

 aboriginal or Oscan descent, such as the Sabini, Samnites, Lucanians 

 and Bruttii, who remained in possession of the highlands, and the Greek 

 c> ib mists and their descendants, who occupied the maritime districts, 

 but never gained possession of the upper or Apennine regions. Such 

 is the view taken by Micali and other Italian writers ; but Niebuhr 

 (' History of Rome,' vol. i) describes the Sabini, and their colonies the 

 Kamnites, Lucanians, and other tribes which the Roman writers called 

 liy the general name of Sabellians, as a people distinct from the Osci 

 or Opici. He says, after Cato and other ancient historians, that the 

 S iliirii issued out of the highlands of the central Apennines near Ami- 

 ternum, long before the epoch of the Trojan war, and driving before 

 them the Cascans or Prisci Latini, who were an Oscan tribe, settled 

 themselves in the country which has to this day retained the name of 

 Sabina. From thence they sent out numerous colonies, one of which 

 penetrated into the land of the Opicang, and became the Samnite 

 people; and afterwards the Samnites occupied Campania, and, mixing 

 themselves with the earlier Oscan population, settled there, and 

 adopted their language. But further on, speaking of the Sabini and 

 Sabellians, Niebuhr admits the probability of their being originally a 

 branch of the same stock as the Opici or Oaci. Micali considers the 

 Sabini, Apulians, Messapians, Campanians, Aurunci, and Volsci, as all 

 branches of the great Oscan family. 



The Greeks, being superior to the native tribes in refinement and 

 mental cultivation, affected to despise them, and they applied to the 

 Italian tribes, including the Romans, the adjunct Opican, as a 

 word of contumely to denote barbarism both in language and manners 

 :ipu<l Pliny, xxix. 1); and the later Roman writers themselves 

 adopted the expression in the same sense : " Osce loqui " was tanta- 

 mount to a barbarous mode of speaking. Juvenal (iii. 207) says : 



" Et divina Opici rodc-bant Carolina mures ; " 



and Ausonius uses " Opicas chartas " to mean rude unpolished com- 

 positions. The Oscan language was the parent of the dialects of the 

 native tribes from the Tiber to the extremity of the peninsula, Sabini, 

 Herniri, Marci, Samnites, Sidicini, Lucanians, and Bruttii, and it was 

 evidently a cognate dialect with the Latin ; whilst in the regions north 



Tiber the Etruscan predominated. Livy (x. 20) mentions the 

 Oscan as being the language of the Samnites. The older Latin writers, 



!*-ci;illy Knnius, have many Oscan words and Oscan terminations. 



Tlu: Oscan language continued to be understood in many parts of Italy 



down to a late period under the empire. The ATKI.LA.VJE KABUL* 



'less originated with them, though probably Strabo is mistaken in 



asserting that they were performed at Rome in his day in the Oscan 



I?;. In the Social War, the Confederates, who were chiefly 

 I>t;o).le of Oscan descent, stamped Oscan legends on their coins. In 

 Campania and Samnimn the Oscan continued to be the vulgar tongue 

 long after the Roman conquest, as appears from several monuments, 



pecially from the Oscan inscriptions found at Pompeii, and the 

 bronze tablet found at Agnone in northern Samnium, which gives a 

 list of offerings at a dedication. (Micali, ' Storia degli Antichi Popoli 

 Italiani,' ch. xxix., and ' Atlas,' pi. 120. 



The Oscan race, like the Etruscan, appears to have been from the 

 remotest times strongly under the influence of religious rites and laws 

 (Festus, under the head 'Oscum'), and the primitive manners and 



simple morals of the Oscan and Sabine tribes, as well as their 

 bravery in arms, have been extolled by the Roman writers, among 

 others, by Virgil (' JEneid,' vii. 728-730), and Silius Italicus (viii. 

 526-529). 



Concerning the scanty remains of the Oscan language which have 

 come down to us, see ' Lingua; OSCEB Specimen singulare quod superest 

 Noise in marmore Mussei Semiuarii,' which is given by Passeri. in his 

 'Picturaj Etruscorum in Vasculis,' &c., Rome, 3 vols. fol., 1767-75 ; 

 also Guarini, ' In Osca Epigrarnmata nonnulla Commentarium,' 

 Naples, 8vo, 1830, where several Oscan inscriptions are found collected. 

 Klenze, ' Philologische Abhandlungen,' 1839; and Mommsen, ' Unter- 

 Italieni sche Dialekte,' 1850. For Niebuhr's views on the Opici or Osci, 

 see his ' Roman History,' vol. i. 



OSCILLATION and CENTRE OF OSCILLATION. When any 

 system is slightly disturbed from its position of equilibrium, it either 

 falls altogether or endeavours to recover the position which it lost. 

 In the latter case the equilibrium is said to be stable, and in the former 

 unstable. A pendulum hanging downwards is an instance of the 

 stable kind, and the same pendulum, if it could be so nicely adjusted 

 as to rest immediately over the pivot, would be of the unstable kind. 

 [STABLE AND UNSTABLE.] 



When a system endeavours to recover its position, it acquires some 

 velocity in the process ; so that, though it would rest at the position 

 of equilibrium if that velocity were then destroyed, it is really urged 

 through the position by the velocity acquired, and continues to depart 

 from it on the other side until, by the forces which act to restore it to 

 the position, all the velocity acquired has been destroyed. Repetitions 

 of the same phenomenon then take place in succession, the body never 

 remaining still when it has attained the position of equilibrium, since it 

 never is in that position except when moving with the velocity acquired 

 in its descent to that position. If then there were neither friction nor 

 resistance of the air to help in destroying this velocity, it would be a 

 universal law of mechanics that a system disturbed from its position 

 of equilibrium would never recover it, but would make perpetual 

 oscillations about it. 



In the widest sense, the problem of oscillations includes most of 

 those which occur in astronomy, optics, &c. The moon and planets 

 add to their average motions small oscillations about their mean places : 

 the tides consist of oscillations of the ocean about the uniform 

 spheroid, which, but for the action of the heavenly bodies, would be 

 carried round in the diurnal rotation of the earth ; the phenomena of 

 light are produced by the oscillations which take place in an elastic 

 aether ; those of sound by the oscillations of the air ; and so on. 

 Usually, however, the problem of oscillation refers to nothing more 

 than the oscillations of a solid system, acted on by gravity, about a 

 horizontal axis, the original departure from the position of equilibrium 

 being but small ; in fact, to the purely theoretical part of the problem 

 of the PENDCLUM, to which we shall here confine ourselves, giving the 

 investigations in a brief form, since it is impossible, within our limits, 

 to explain the numerous points alluded to with sufficient illustration 

 for a learner. 



Let a material point, a very small body, be attached by a string or 

 rod without weight to an immovable pivot. In the position of rest the 

 string hangs vertically : let us now suppose it removed out of the 

 vertical position, and let go when it makes an angle a with the vertical. 

 When t seconds have elapsed, let it make an angle 8 with the vertical. 

 The material point is acted on by gravity with a force which would 

 produce an acceleration g (or 32'1908) feet nearly, in one second : if 

 then I be the length of the string, 1 9 is the arc, through which the 

 point must move before it arrives at the lowest point of its course, and 

 we have by the well-known equations of motion, 



<F.l9 



sin 9, or I j 



d'e 



The first integration of this gives 



Id 8\i 

 1 (lli) = 2 9 < C08 6 ~ co8 ) 



since it is a condition that the motion began when 8 was = a. This 



dff 



V(sin 2 a' - sin 2 ff) 



a and <? being the halves of a and 8, and the negative sign being taken 

 because tf diminishes as I increases. The integration of this is 

 facilitated by assuming sin 8' = sin a . sin </>, which gives 



V(sin 3 o' sin 2 8') = sin a' cos <f>, 

 sin a! cos <t> . dip 



J at _T ' 



a & . //I nl2 -' nlT.2 ^ \ 



VI 

 g- 



- sin s a'.sin s </ 



1 + 



1.8 

 274 



1.3.5 

 2.4.6 



