328-321 B.C.

power capable of disputing with Rome the supremacy of Italy. Had the Samnites been able to count on the active coöperation of all Sabellian tribes, of the Lucanians and Bruttians, as well as of the smaller cantons, such as the Vestini, Frentani and Marrucinihad they, further, been able to persuade the Greeks of Campania and of southern Italy to sink minor differences in the face of a common danger-had they been able to rouse at once the Etruscans in the north, and the still chafing and indignant Latins, Volscians, and Hernicans, Rome might no doubt have succumbed. But such. combinations belong rather to the imagination of the historian than to the facts of history. The immediate cause of the outbreak of war lay in the two independent Greek cities of Campania, Palaeopolis and Neapolis. Rome was scheming to obtain possession of these towns, and the Samnites combined with the Tarentines to prevent them. A strong garrison was placed in Palaeopolis by the Samnites. The Romans laid siege to the town; and thus war began, nominally against the people of Palaeopolis, really against the Samnites, in 327 B.C. Palaeopolis, weary alike of the foes without and the Samnite garrison within, got rid of the latter by stratagem, and concluded peace with Rome on the most favorable conditions in the following year. The Campanian Greeks generally followed the example of Palaeopolis, and held to the Roman side; and Rome still further attained her object of isolating Samnium, by detaching the Sabellian towns to the south of the VolturnusNola, Nuceria, Herculaneum, and Pompeii-through the influence of the aristocratic party in those cities. By the same means Rome secured an alliance with the Lucanians, who were the natural allies of the Samnites. This alliance was of great importance, as it left Rome free to turn all her attention to Samnium, while the Samnite ally, Tarentum, was occupied with guarding herself against Lucanian inroads.

It is not necessary to recount in detail all the events of this war, which lasted seven and thirty years. The isolated position of the Samnites, the disasters that befell them in quick succession, the humble request they made for peace in 322 B.C., the rejection of the same by the Romans; the desperate resistance and brief success of Samnite arms at the Caudine Pass, under the brave Gavius. Pontius, in 321 B.C.; the refusal of the senate to recognize the agreement made by the defeated generals, mark the first period of the war. When it was renewed, the Samnites occupied Luceria in Hist. Nat. III

6

321-311 B.C.

Apulia, the attempt to relieve which town had caused the Romans the disaster in the pass of Caudium; and they captured Fregellae, and gained over the Satricans. Lucius Papirius Cursor now was placed in command of the Roman forces, and took Luceria in 319 B.C., having received no small assistance from the people of Arpi and other Apulians. Roman successes followed this important capture, and Satricum was recovered and severely punished. For a moment, indeed, fortune deluded the Samnites with hopes of victory. The frontier towns of Nuceria and Nola sided with them. Sora, on the upper Liris, expelled the Roman garrison. The Ausonians on the coast and at the mouth of the Liris threatened to rise, and the Samnite party in Capua began to bestir itself. But the recapture of Sora in 314 B.C., the cruel suppression of the Ausonian revolt, the execution or voluntary death of the leaders of the Samnite party in Capua, the defeat of the Samnite army before the walls of that city, the treaty with Nola which detached that city forever from the Samnites in 313 B.C., and the fall of Fregellae in the same year, turned the tide of war once more in Rome's favor, and placed Apulia and Campania in her hands. Her position was secured by the usual process of founding new fortresses; e.g., Luceria in Apulia, Saticula on the frontier of Campania and Samnium, Interamna, and Suessa Aurunca on the road from Rome to Capua. Appius Claudius, the censor, completed in 313 B.C. the great military road from Rome to Capua, across the Pomptine marshes. Thus by roads and fortresses Samnium was now cut off, and the ultimate object of the subjugation of Italy was within Rome's grasp.

The close of the second period of the war exhibits an attempt at coalition-which at the outset might have rescued Italy. Tarentum, indeed, practically continued an inactive spectator of the contest; with childish arrogance its rulers had, in 320 B.C., ordered the Roman and Samnite armies in Apulia to lay down their arms; but, when Rome refused, Tarentum lacked the courage and sense of honor to declare war. Towards the close of the war she once more invoked Greek aid against the Lucanians, and the Spartan prince Cleonymus succeeded in compelling the latter to make peace with Tarentum; but he did not dare to enter on the more perilous course of actively siding with the Samnites against Rome. But in the north and center of Italy the ignoble example of Tarentum found no imitators. The Etruscans in 311 B.C. made one more fiery effort for freedom, and for two years the Roman frontier

311-299 B.C.

fortress of Sutrium was hotly besieged. But all was in vain; in 310 B.C. Quintus Fabius Rullianus penetrated for the first time Etruria proper, marching through the Ciminian forest, and at the Vadimonian Lake crushed the roused Etruscans. The three most powerful towns, Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium, made peace with Rome; and two years later, after another defeat, Tarquinii followed their example, and the Etruscans laid down their arms. Meanwhile the Samnites abated not their exertions; but their hopes, based on Etruscan aid, were rudely dashed to the ground by the terrible battle in 309 B.C., in which the very flower of their army -the wearers of striped tunics and golden shields, and the wearers of white tunics and silver shields-was extirpated by Lucius Papirius Cursor. Too late to save them came the allied forces of the Umbrians, the Marsi, and Paeligni, and, later, the Hernicans, who all rose against Rome—too late, for the Etruscans had already cowered back into inaction. The first three peoples were soon mastered by Roman arms; but for a moment the rising of the Hernicans in the rear of the Roman army threatened destruction. But Anagnia, the chief Hernican city, fell; and two consular armies penetrated the fastnesses of Samnium, and took the Samnian capital, Bovianum, by storm in 305 B.C. A brief peace, on moderate terms, ensued, not only with Samnium, but with all the Sabellian tribes; and about the same time, owing to the withdrawal of the Spartan Cleonymus to Corcyra, Tarentum, whose part in the contest we have already described, came to formal terms with Rome.

Rome lost no time in turning her victory to good account. In the first place, she dissolved the Hernican league, and punished those communities which had revolted. by taking away their autonomy and giving them citizenship without voting power. Those Hernican communities which had not joined in the revolt remained with their old rights. In carrying out her wise policy of subjugating central Italy, Rome severed the north of Italy from the south, and prevented the inhabitants from being in direct touch with one another. The old Volscian land was completely subdued and soon Romanized, by planting a legion of four thousand men in Sora on the upper Liris, by making Arpinum subject, and taking away a third of its territory from Frusino. Two military roads ran through the country separating Samnium from Etruria; the northern one which was afterwards the Flaminian, covered the line of the Tiber, passing through Ocriculum to Nequinum, which was later called Narnia,

299-290 B.C.

The southern road,

when the Romans colonized it in 299 B.C. afterward called the Valerian, commanded the Marsian and Aequian land, running along the Fucine Lake by way of Carsioli and Alba, in both of which towns colonies were planted. Thus, when we remember the roads and fortresses which already commanded Apulia and Campania, it is easy to see that Samnium was enclosed by a net of Roman strongholds. Such a peace was more ruinous than war, and the proud and heroic Samnites viewed it in that light.

We have now reached the third and final period of their brave but ill-fated struggle. This time the Samnites, taught by experience, brought pressure to bear on the Lucanians, and secured their alliance; strong hopes were entertained, not only of a rising in central Italy, but of active aid from the Etruscans and from mercenary Gauls. War broke out afresh in 298 B.C., and the first move was the suppression of the Lucanians by Roman arms, and two Samnite defeats in the following year. The superhuman efforts of the Samnite nation put three fresh armies into the field, and their general, Gellius Egnatius, who led an army into Etruria, caused the Etruscans to rise once more and take into their pay numerous Celtic bands. The Romans strained every nerve to meet the threatened danger; and, by sending part of their forces into Etruria, drew off a portion of the Etruscan forces which were encamped with the Samnites and Gauls near Sentinum, in Umbria, on the eastern slope of the Apennines, in 295 B.C. It was here that the two consuls Publius Decius Mus and the aged Quintus Fabius Rullianus encountered the confederate army; and it was here that the heroic death of Publius Decius rallied the Roman legions when wavering before the Gallic hordes, and at the cost of nine thousand Roman lives gained a victory, which broke the coalition and made Etruria sue for peace. The Samnites, however, met their fate with a spirit unbroken by disaster, and in the following year gained some successes over the Roman consul, Marcus Atilius; but in 293 B.C. the battle of Aquilonia dealt a blow to the Samnites from which they never recovered; and, though in their mountain strongholds they continued the struggle till 290 B.C., deserted by all to whom they looked for aid, decimated and exhausted by a war which had lasted thirty-seven years, they at last concluded an honorable peace.

For Rome, their great antagonist, was too wise to impose disgraceful or ruinous conditions. Her object was to secure for

295-239 B.C.

ever what she had already subjugated. With this end in view, two fortresses, Minturnae and Sinuessa, were established on the Campanian coast in 295 B.C. All the Sabines were forced to become subjects in 290, and the strong fortress of Hatria was established in the Abruzzi, not far from the coast, in 289 B.C. Still more important was the colony of Venusia, founded with twenty thousand colonists in 291 B.C., which, standing on the great road between Tarentum and Samnium, at the borders of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, kept in check the neighboring tribes, and interrupted the communications between Rome's two most powerful enemies in southern Italy. Thus the compact Roman domain at the close of the Samnite wars extended on the north to the Ciminian forest, on the east to the Abruzzi, on the south to Capua, while the two advanced posts, Luceria and Venusia, established towards the east and south on the lines of communication of their opponents, isolated them on every side. Rome was no longer merely the first, but was already the ruling power in the peninsula when, towards the end of the fifth century of the city, those nations which had been raised to supremacy, by the favor of the gods and by their own capacity, began to come into contact in council and on the battlefield; and as at Olympia the preliminary victors girt themselves for a second and more serious struggle, so on the larger arena of the nations, Carthage, Macedonia, and Rome now prepared for the final and decisive contest.