Chapter VIII: The Conquest of Central Italy (2)

At length the time arrived for a decisive action. The Samnite army was divided into two corps, the one clad in purple, the other in white linen tunics, the former having their brazen shields adorned with gold, the latter with silver: the shields were broad above, narrow below. Each soldier wore a crested helmet, a large sponge to protect his breast, and a greave on his left leg. In the battle the Roman dictator led the right wing against the gold-shielded, the master of the horse, C. Junius, the left against the silver-shielded Samnites. Junius made the first impression on the enemy; the dictator urged his men to emulation, and the Roman horse by a charge on both flanks completed the victory. The Samnites fled to their camp, but were unable to retain it, and ere night it was sacked and burned. The golden shields adorned the dictator’s triumph, and they were then given to the money dealers to ornament their shops in the Forum.

Q. Fabius was continued in the consulate for 309 and P. Decius given to him as his colleague; the former had the Samnite, the latter the Etruscan War. Fabius routed the Marsians and Pelignians, who had now joined against Rome, and he then led his legions into Umbria, whose people had taken arms, and with little difficulty reduced them to submission. Decius meantime had forced the Etruscans to sue for peace, and a year’s truce was granted them on their giving each soldier two tunics, and a year’s pay for the army.

In the remaining years of the war, the exhausted powers of the Samnites could offer but a feeble resistance to the legions of Rome. On the occasion of a defeat which they sustained in 308, the proconsul, Q. Fabius, adopted the novel course of dismissing the Samnite prisoners, and selling for slaves those of their allies. Among these there were several Hernicans, whom he sent to Rome; the senate having instituted an inquiry into the conduct of the Hernican people in this affair, those who had urged them to give aid to the Samnites now engaged them to take arms openly. All the Hernican peoples but three shared in the war; but they made a stand little worthy of their old renown; one short campaign sufficed for their reduction, and they were placed (307) on nearly the same footing as the Latins had been thirty years before.

The Samnites at length (304) sued for peace, and obtained it on the condition they had so often spurned, that of acknowledging Rome’s supremacy, in other words, of yielding up their independence; but peace on any terms was now necessary, that they might recruit their strength for future efforts. The Romans then turned their arms against the Æquians who had joined the Hernicans in aiding the Samnites, and in fifty days the consuls reduced and destroyed forty-one of their Cyclopean-walled towns. The Marsian league sought and obtained peace from Rome.

THE THIRD SAMNITE AND ETRUSCAN WARS

[Sidenote: [304-297 B.C.]]

A few years passed away in tolerable tranquillity; in 298 Lucanian envoys appeared at Rome, praying for aid against the Samnites who had entered their country in arms, given them various defeats, and taken several of their towns. The Romans, in right of their supremacy, sent orders to the Samnites to withdraw their troops from Lucania: the pride of the Samnites was roused at being thus reminded of their subjection; they ordered the fetials off their territory, and war was once more declared against them by the Romans. As the Etruscans were now also in arms, the consul L. Cornelius Scipio went against them, while his colleague Cn. Fulvius invaded Samnium.

Scipio engaged a numerous Etruscan army near Volaterræ. Night ended a hard-fought battle, leaving it undecided. The morn however revealed that the advantage was on the side of the Romans, as the enemy had abandoned their camp during the night. Having placed his baggage and stores at Falerii, Scipio spread his ravages over the country, burning the villages and hamlets; and no army appeared to oppose him. Fulvius meantime carried on the war with credit in Samnium. Near Bovianum he defeated a Samnite army, and took that town and another named Aufidena.

(From a statuette)]

[Sidenote: [297-295 B.C.]]

The rumour of the great preparations which the Samnites and the Etruscans were said to be making caused the people to elect Q. Fabius to the consulate, against his will; and at his own request they joined with him P. Decius. As the Etruscans remained quiet, both the consuls invaded Samnium (297), Fabius entering from Sora, Decius from Sidicinum. The Samnites gave Fabius battle near Tifernum, their infantry stood firm against that of the Romans, and the charge of the Roman cavalry had as little effect. At length, when the reserve had come to the front, and the contest was most obstinate, the legate Scipio, whom the consul had sent away during the action with the hastats of the first legion, appeared on the neighbouring hills. Both armies took them for the legions of Decius; the Samnites’ courage fell, that of the Romans rose, and evening closed on their victory. Decius had meantime defeated the Apulians at Maleventum. During five months both armies ravaged Samnium with impunity; the traces of five-and-forty camps of Decius, of eighty-six of Fabius, bore witness to the sufferings of the ill-fated country.

The next year (296) the Samnites put into execution a daring plan which they had formed in the preceding war, namely, sending an army, to be paid and supported out of their own funds, into Etruria, leaving Samnium meantime at the mercy of the enemy. The Samnite army, under Gellius Egnatius, on arriving there, was joined by the troops of most of the Tuscan states; the Umbrians also shared in the war, and it was proposed to take Gallic mercenaries into pay. The consul App. Claudius entered Etruria with his two legions and twelve thousand of the allies, but he did not feel himself strong enough to give the confederates battle. His colleague L. Volumnius, probably by command of the senate, led his army to join him; but Appius gave him so ungracious a reception that he was preparing to retire, when the officers of the other army implored him not to abandon them for their general’s fault. Volumnius then agreed to remain and fight: a victory was speedily gained over the Etruscans and Samnites, whose general Egnatius was unfortunately absent; 7300 were slain, 2120 taken, and their camp was stormed and plundered.

As Volumnius was returning by rapid marches to Samnium, he learned that the Samnites had taken advantage of his absence to make a descent on Campania, where they had collected an immense booty. He forthwith directed his course thither: at Cales he heard that they were encamped on the Vulturnus, with the intention of carrying their prey into Samnium to secure it. He came and encamped near them, but out of view; and when the Samnites had before day sent forward their captives and booty under an escort, and were getting out of their camp to follow them, they were suddenly fallen on by the Romans: the camp was stormed with great slaughter; the captives, hearing the tumult, unbound themselves, and fell on their escort; the Samnites were routed on all sides--six thousand were slain, twenty-five hundred were taken, seventy-four hundred captives, with all their property, were recovered.

The union of the Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls, which had now been formed, caused the greatest apprehension at Rome, and the people insisted on again electing Q. Fabius consul, to which he would only consent on condition of his approved mate in arms P. Decius being given him for colleague. His wish was complied with. The four legions of the former year were kept on foot and completed, two new ones were raised, and two armies of reserve formed. The number of troops furnished by the allies was considerable: among them were one thousand Campanian horse; for as the Gauls were strong in this arm, it was necessary to augment its force.

[Sidenote: [295-293 B.C.]]

During the winter, Fabius set out, with four thousand foot and six hundred horse, to take the command in Etruria. As he drew nigh to the camp of App. Claudius he met a party sent out for firewood; he ordered them to go back and use the palisades of their camp for the purpose. This gave confidence to the soldiers; and to keep up their spirits, he never let them remain stationary, but moved about from place to place. In the spring (295) he returned to Rome to arrange the campaign, leaving the command in Etruria with L. Scipio.

The consuls led their main force to join the troops left with Scipio; one army of reserve, under the proprætor Cn. Fulvius, was stationed in the Faliscan; another, under the proprætor L. Postumius, in the Vatican district. But the Gauls, pouring in by the pass of Camerinum, had annihilated a Roman legion left to defend it; their numerous cavalry spread over Umbria and got between Scipio and Rome; and as they rode up to the consular army, the heads of the slain Romans which they carried on spears and hung at their horses’ breasts, made the Romans believe that Scipio’s whole army had been destroyed. A junction however was formed with him, and the proconsul L. Volumnius, who commanded in Samnium, was directed to lead his legions to reinforce those of the consuls. The three united armies then crossed the Apennines, and took a position in the Sentine country to menace the possessions of the Senonian Gauls; and the two armies of reserve advanced in proportion, the one to Clusium, the other to the Faliscan country. The confederates came and encamped before the Romans; but they avoided an action, probably waiting for reinforcements. The consuls, learning by deserters that the plan of the enemy was for the Gauls and Samnites to give them battle, and the Etruscans and Umbrians to fall on their camp during the action, sent orders to Fulvius to ravage Etruria: this called a large part of the Etruscans home, and the consuls endeavoured to bring on an engagement during their absence. For two entire days they sought in vain to draw the confederates to the field; on the third their challenge was accepted.

Fabius commanded on the right, opposed to the Samnites and the remaining Etruscans and Umbrians; Decius led the left wing against the Gauls. Ere the fight began, a wolf chased a hind from the mountains down between the two armies; the hind sought refuge among the Gauls, by whom she was killed; the wolf ran among the Romans, who made way for him to pass; and this appearance of the favourite of Mars was regarded as an omen of victory.

In the hope of tiring the Samnites, Fabius made his men act rather on the defensive, and he refrained from bringing his reserve into action. Decius, on the other hand, knowing how impetuous the first attack of the Gauls always was, resolved not to await it; he therefore charged with both foot and horse, and twice drove back the numerous Gallic cavalry; but when his horse charged a third time, the Gauls sent forward their war-chariots, which spread confusion and dismay among them; they fled back among their infantry; the victorious Gauls followed hard upon them. The battle, and with it possibly the hopes of Rome, was on the point of being lost, when Decius, who had resolved, if defeat impended, to devote himself like his father at Vesuvius, desired the pontiff M. Livius, whom he had kept near him for the purpose, to repeat the form of devotion; then adding to it these words, “I drive before me dismay and flight, slaughter and blood, the anger of the powers above and below; with funereal terrors I touch the arms, weapons, and ensigns of the foe; the same place shall be that of my end and of the Gauls and Samnites,” he spurred his horse, rushed into the thick of the enemies, and fell covered with wounds.

The pontiff to whom Decius had given his lictors, encouraged the Romans; a part of Fabius’ reserve came to their support: the Gauls stood in a dense mass covered with their shields; the Romans, collecting the _pila_ that lay on the ground, hurled them on them; but the Gauls stood unmoved, till Fabius, who by bringing forward his reserve, and causing his cavalry to fall on their flank, had driven the Samnites to their camp, sent five hundred of the Campanian horse, followed by the principes of the third legion, to attack them in the rear; they then at length broke and fled. Fabius again assailed the Samnites under their rampart; their general, Gellius Egnatius, fell, and the camp was taken. The confederates lost twenty-five thousand men slain and eight thousand taken; seven thousand was the loss in the wing led by Decius, twelve hundred in that of Fabius. Such was the victory at Sentinum, one of the most important ever achieved by the arms of Rome.

The following year (294) the war was continued in Etruria and Samnium, and a bloody but indecisive battle was fought at Nuceria. The next year (293) the consuls, L. Papirius Cursor and Sp. Carvilius, took the field against a Samnite army, which all the aids of superstition had been employed to render formidable.

All the fighting men of Samnium were ordered to appear at the town of Aquilonia. A tabernacle, two hundred feet square, and covered with linen, was erected in the midst of the camp. Within it a venerable man named Ovius Pacctius offered sacrifice after an ancient ritual contained in an old linen book. The imperator or general then ordered the nobles to be called in separately: each as he entered beheld through the gloom of the tabernacle the altar in the centre, about which lay the bodies of the victims, and around which stood centurions with drawn swords. He was required to swear, imprecating curses on himself, his family, and his race, if he did not in the battle go whithersoever the imperator ordered him; if he fled himself, or did not slay any one whom he saw flying. Some of the first summoned, refusing to swear, were slain, and their bodies lying among those of the victims served as a warning to others. The general selected ten of those who had thus sworn, each of whom was directed to choose a man till the number of sixteen thousand was completed, which was named from the tabernacle the Linen legion. Crested helmets and superior arms were given them for distinction. The rest of the army, upwards of twenty thousand men, was little inferior in any respect to the Linen legion.

The Roman armies entered Samnium; and while Papirius advanced to Aquilonia, Carvilius sat down before a fortress named Cominium, about twenty miles from that place. The ardour for battle is said to have been shared to such an extent by all the Roman army, that the pullarius, or keeper of the sacred fowl, made a false report of favourable signs. The truth was told to the consul as he was going into battle; but he said the signs reported to him were good, and only ordered the pullarii to be placed in the front rank; and when the guilty one fell by the chance blow of a _pilum_, he cried that the gods were present, the guilty was punished. A crow was heard to give a loud cry as he spoke; the gods, he then declared, had never shown themselves more propitious, and he ordered the trumpets to sound and the war-cry to be raised.

The Samnites had sent off twenty cohorts to the relief of Cominium; their spirits were depressed, but they kept their ground, till a great cloud of dust, as if raised by an army, was seen on one side. For the consul had sent off before the action Sp. Nautius, with the mules and their drivers, and some cohorts of the allies, with directions to advance during the engagement, raising all the dust they could. Nautius now came in view, the horseboys having boughs in their hands, which they dragged along the ground; and the arms and banners appearing through the dust, made both Romans and Samnites think that an army was approaching. The consul then gave the sign for the horse to charge; the Samnites broke and fled, some to Aquilonia, some to Bovianum. The number of their slain is said to have been 30,340, and 3870 men and 97 banners were captured. Aquilonia and Cominium were both taken on the same day. Carvilius then led his army into Etruria; his colleague remained in Samnium, ravaging the country, till the falling of the snow obliged him to leave it for the winter.

[Sidenote: [293-290 B.C.]]

In the next campaign (292), the Samnite general C. Pontius gave the Roman consul Q. Fabius Gurges, son of the great Fabius, a complete defeat. A strong party in the senate, the enemies of the Fabian house, were for depriving the consul of his command; but the people yielded to the prayers of his father, who implored them to spare him this disgrace in his old age; and he himself went into Samnium as legate to his son. At a place whose name is unknown the battle was fought, which decided the fate of Samnium. Fabius gained the victory by his usual tactics, of keeping his reserve for the proper time. The Samnites had twenty thousand slain and four thousand taken, among whom was their great general C. Pontius. In the triumph of Fabius Gurges, his renowned father humbly followed his car on horseback; and C. Pontius was led in bonds, and then, to Rome’s disgrace, beheaded. Q. Fabius Maximus, one of the greatest men that Rome ever produced, died, it is probable, shortly afterwards.

The Samnite War, which had lasted with little intermission for nine-and-forty years, was now terminated by a peace, of the exact terms of which we are not informed (290). The Sabines, who, after a cessation of 150 years, foolishly took up arms against Rome, were easily reduced by the consul M. Curius Dentatus, and a large quantity of their land was taken from them. Much larger assignments than the usual seven jugera might now be made, but Curius deemed it unwise to pass that limit; and when the people murmured, he replied that he was a pernicious citizen whom the land which sufficed to support him did not satisfy. He refused for himself five hundred jugera and a house at Tifata which the senate offered him, and contented himself with a farm of seven jugera in the Sabine country.

The Samnite War caused considerable distress at Rome, and it even came to a secession. The people posted themselves on the Janiculum; but the dictator, Q. Hortensius, induced them to submit, either by an abolition or a considerable reduction of the amount of their debts. This is the last secession we read of in Roman history.

On this occasion the Hortensian law, which made the plebiscits binding on the whole nation, was passed;[42] a measure probably caused by the obstinacy and caprice of the patricians, but pregnant with evil, from which however the good fortune of Rome long preserved her. It was as if in England a measure which had passed the Commons were to become at once the law of the land.

Among the events of this period, the introduction of the worship of the Grecian god Æsculapius deserves to be noticed. In the year 293 an epidemic prevailed at Rome, and the Sibylline books being consulted, it was directed to fetch Æsculapius to Rome. A trireme with ten deputies was sent to Epidaurus for that purpose. The legend relates, that the senate of that place agreed that the Romans should take whatever the god should give them; and that as they were praying at the temple, a huge snake came out of the sanctuary, went on to the town five miles off, through the streets, to the harbour, thence on board the Roman trireme, and into the cabin of Q. Ogulnius. The envoys having been instructed in the worship of the god, departed, and a prosperous wind brought them to Antium. Here they took shelter from a storm; the snake swam ashore, and remained twined round a palm-tree at the temple of Apollo while they stayed. When they reached Rome he left the ship again, and swimming to the island, disappeared in the spot where the temple of the god was afterwards built.

LUCANIAN, GALLIC, AND ETRUSCAN WARS

[Sidenote: [290-282 B.C.]]

Rome now rested from war for some years. At length (284) the Tarentines, who had been the chief agents in exciting the last Samnite War, succeeded in inducing the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls in the north, and the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites in the south, to take arms simultaneously against her. The commencement was the hostility exercised by the Lucanians against the people of the Greek town of Thurii, who, despairing of aid from any other quarter, applied to the Romans.

[Sidenote: [282-280 B.C.]]

In 282, a Roman army under C. Fabricius Luscinus came to the relief of Thurii. The spirits of the Romans sank as they viewed their own inferiority of force; when, lo! a youth of gigantic stature, wearing a double-crested helm, like those on the statues of Mars, was seen to seize a scaling-ladder, and mount the rampart of the enemies’ camp. The courage of the Romans rose, that of the foes declined, and a signal victory crowned the arms of Rome. When next day the consul sought that valiant youth, to bestow on him the suitable meed, he was nowhere to be found. Fabricius then directed a thanksgiving to Father Mars (as it must have been he) to be held throughout the army. Many other victories succeeded; and no Roman general had as yet acquired so much booty as Fabricius did in this campaign.

When the Roman army retired, a garrison was left for the defence of Thurii. As it was only by sea that a communication could be conveniently kept up with it, a squadron of ten triremes, under the duumvir L. Valerius, was now in these waters. Some years before, it had been an article in a treaty with the Tarentines, that no Roman ship of war should sail to the north of the Lacinian Cape; but as they had taken no notice of it now, and there was as yet no open hostility between them and the Romans, Valerius appeared off the port of Tarentum. The people unluckily happened at that moment to be assembled in the theatre, which commanded a view of the sea; a demagogue named Philocharis, a man of the vilest character,[43] pointing to the Roman ships, reminded them of the treaty; the infuriated populace rushed on shipboard, attacked and sank four, and took one of the Roman vessels. The Tarentines then sent a force against Thurii, where they plundered the town and banished the principal citizens: the Roman garrison was dismissed unmolested.

The Romans, as they had an Etruscan war on their hands, were anxious to accommodate matters amicably in the south. Their demands were therefore very moderate: they only required the release of those taken in the trireme; the restoration of the Thurians, and restitution of their property; and the surrender of the authors of the outrage. Audience was given to the envoys in the theatre. When they entered, the people laughed at the sight of their purple-bordered _prætextæ_, and the faults of language committed by L. Postumius, the chief of the embassy, redoubled their merriment. As the envoys were leaving the theatre, a drunken buffoon came and befouled the robe of Postumius in the most abominable manner: the peals of laughter were redoubled; but Postumius, holding up his robe, cried out, “Ay, laugh, laugh while ye may; ye will weep long enough when ye have to wash this out in blood.” He displayed at Rome his unwashed garment; and the senate, after anxious deliberation, declared war against Tarentum (281). The consul L. Æmilius Barbula was ordered to lead his army thither, to offer anew the former terms, and if they were refused, to carry on the war with vigour. The Tarentines, however, would listen to no terms; they resorted to their usual system of seeking aid from the mother country, and sent an embassy to invite over Pyrrhus, the renowned king of Epirus. Meantime Æmilius laid waste their country, took several strong places, and defeated them in the field.

We will now turn our view northwards. In 283 a combined army of Etruscans and Senonian Gauls having laid siege to Arretium, the prætor L. Metellus hastened to its relief; but his army was totally defeated, thirteen thousand men being slain, and nearly all the remainder made prisoners. When an embassy was sent to the Gauls to complain of breach of treaty, and to redeem the prisoners, the Gallic prince Britomaris, to avenge his father, who had fallen at Arretium, caused the fetiales to be murdered. The consul P. Cornelius Dolabella instantly marched through the Sabine and Picentian country into that of the Senonians, whom he defeated when they met him in the field: he then wasted the lands, burned the open villages, put all the men to death, and reduced the women and children to slavery. Britomaris, who was taken alive, was reserved to grace the consul’s triumph.

The Boians, who dwelt between the Senonians and the Po, were filled with rage and apprehension at the fate of their brethren, and assembling all their forces they entered Etruria, where being joined by the Etruscans and the remnant of the Senonians, they pressed on for Rome; but at the Lake Vadimo the consular armies met and nearly annihilated their whole army; the Senonians, it is said, in frenzy of despair put an end to themselves when they saw the battle lost. The Gauls appeared again the next year (284) in Etruria; but a signal defeat near Populonia (282) forced them to sue for peace, which on account of the war in the south, the Romans readily granted.

The war with the Etruscans continued till the year 280, when, in consequence of that with Pyrrhus, the Romans concluded a peace with them on most favourable terms. This peace terminated the conflict, which had now lasted for thirty years, and converted Etruria into Rome’s steadiest and most faithful ally.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[38] [Edward A. Freeman[e] calls the Samnites “the worthiest foes whom Rome ever met within her own peninsula.” He adds, “There can be little doubt that they possessed a Federal Constitution. Their resistance ended only with the extermination of their race.”]

[39] [Freeman[e] notes that Rome had never appeared to be “the mere capital of the Latin League. As far as the faintest glimmerings of history go back, Rome holds a position towards Latium far more lordly than that of Thebes towards Bœotia. It is no wonder that a League of small towns could not permanently bear up against a single great city of their own race whose strength equalled their united strength, and which was more liberal of its franchise than any other city-commonwealth ever was.”]

[40] [In the interpretations of clauses 1 and 2 of the Publilian Law scholars are divided. The comitia curiata had now lost all real power, and in fact had never enjoyed the right to pass upon resolutions adopted by other assemblies. It was probably either the senate or the patrician part of the senate which was required to give its previous consent to bills brought before the centuries. Clause 2 probably gave validity to resolutions of the tribal assembly, even when no patricians were present; cf. Botsford.[h]]

[41] [This is the Papirius Cursor of whom Livy [g] writes the glowing eulogy we have quoted in the preceding Volume, Chapter LVII, where Livy claims that Papirius Cursor--as the contemporary of Alexander and the general whom he would have met had he attacked Rome instead of Persia--would have equalled the Macedonian and driven him out of Italy.]

[42] [This law probably made unnecessary the consent of the senate to resolutions passed by the tribal assembly under the presidency of the plebeian tribunes.]

[43] [The Tarentines were not of course so bad as the Roman historians represent. Though imprudent, they had good ground for indignation.]