It was a wolf, hirpo as they called him in their Oscan language, who guided them southwards from the territory, the Sannio, where their ancestors from Sabina had settled. The large group of young Samnites in search of new lands to populate entered the wooded mountains, discovering verdant valleys crossed by rivers that made them fertile. Many rivers, the great wealth of that region which was later to take the name of Irpinia from the Samnite tribe, the Irpini, who had stopped there. And that he had chosen the wolf as a sacred animal.