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Travelling in an express train from Rome we find ourselves whirled suddenly, by magic as it were, into the atmosphere of the South, when with the sight of the domes and towers of Capua, the ancient capital of Campania the Prosperous, we first note the presence of orange trees and hedges of aloe, of white lupin crops and clumps of prickly pear, and we feel we are nearing Naples with “its burning mountain and its tideless sea,” so that we eagerly strain our eyes in a southerly direction to catch our first glimpse of Vesuvius, with whose shape and history we have been so familiar since our childhood’s days.
He who knows the social customs of Campania, the magical charms scribbled on the walls of Pompeii, the deadly curses scratched on enduring metal by forlorn lovers, curses hidden beneath the threshold or hearthstone of the rival to blight her cheeks and wrinkle her silly face, knows very well that such folks are the very singers that Vergil might meet in his walks about the hills of the golden bay.
Cato was of the age for military service about the time of the battle of Lake Trasimenus, and entered the army then as a common soldier. The first expedition in which he is definitely said to have taken part is that of Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator against Hannibal in Campania, in 214. This Roman commander was a man entirely after Cato's heart, and became one of his models in public life.
The names and divisions of the copper money, the sole coin of the infant state, were of Dorian origin: the harvests of Campania and Sicily relieved the wants of a people whose agriculture was often interrupted by war and faction; and since the trade was established, the deputies who sailed from the Tyber might return from the same harbors with a more precious cargo of political wisdom.
Avienus had been already privately noted by Caesar as having been connected with the mutiny in Campania. His own habits in the field were simple in the extreme, and he hated to see his officers self-indulgent. He used the opportunity to make an example of him and of one or two others at the same time. He called his tribunes and centurions together.
Ere long footmen and horsemen were in view, and the Byzantines, brought to the wall by thousands, gazed and listened in nervous wonder; for look where they might over the campania, they saw the enemy closing in upon them, and heard his shouting, and the neighing of horses, the blaring of horns, and the palpitant beating of drums.
He was holding a kind of fort in Campania, and when Caesar's party got the upper hand set out with his wife Livia Drusilla and with his son Tiberius Claudius Nero. This episode illustrated remarkably the whimsicality of fate. This Livia who then fled from Caesar later on was married to him, and this Tiberius who then escaped with his parents succeeded him in the office of emperor.
The wives of the senators, who had been surprised in the villas of Campania, were restored, without a ransom, to their husbands; the violation of female chastity was inexorably chastised with death; and in the salutary regulation of the edict of the famished Neapolitans, the conqueror assumed the office of a humane and attentive physician.
The position of the Romans was critical; the legions which had crossed the Liris and occupied Campania were cut off by the revolt of the Latins and Volsci from their home, and a victory alone could save them. In the two following years the individual towns, so far as they still offered resistance, were reduced by capitulation or assault, and the whole country was brought into subjection.
They are affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in its inland districts in times quite historical. These settlements were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the Cumaeans at Vesuvius. Etruscan Commerce
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