According to the numerous forms of the Italian national names, the Umbri must also have been called Umbrici: this the Greeks pronounced Ombrici, and saw therein an allusion to their great antiquity. The name was supposed to indicate that they existed even before the rain-floods, which, according to the creed of the Grecian sages also, had in many countries destroyed earlier races of men. This trifling was probably never meant seriously: but it is certain that the Umbrians were a great nation, before the Etruscans, in the time of the Oenotrians, and that they deserve to be called a most ancient genuine people of Italy. Their city Ameria was built according to Cato 964 years before the war with Perseus, or 381 years before Rome, It is certain too that in ancient times they inhabited a very extensive country; probably, as has been said already, beside what continued to be known as Umbria, the south of Etruria; and, according to definite Roman traditions, the district occupied by the Sabines between the Apennines and the Tiber. On the north-east of the Apennines toward the upper sea and the Po they are said to have spread as conquerors, to have expelled Liburnians and Siculians from the coast, and to have maintained an obstinate contest with the Etruscans for the territory on the lower Po.

History finds the Umbrians restricted to the left bank of the Tiber; with some scattered towns on the coast and near the Po, preserved to them partly, as Ravenna was, by the marshes around them, partly by paying tribute to the Gauls.