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Pyrrhus now divided his forces, sending one portion into Lucania to harass the other consul and prevent his coming to the assistance of his colleague, while he himself led the remainder to attack Manius Curius, who was quietly encamped near the city of Beneventum, awaiting the arrival of the Lucanian forces.
Dexterously playing on the greed and prejudices of the various tyrants who ruled Naples and Salerno, and occasionally allying itself with them in order to repel the fierce attacks of their common enemy, the Saracenic hordes who were then harrying the Lucanian coast, Amalfi continued to uphold its political freedom and dignity in the face of immense difficulties.
From its Lucanian masters the captured town received the name of Paestum, and its inhabitants were at once deprived of their independence, were forbidden to carry arms, and were probably in many instances reduced to the level of serfs.
Of the fate of Samnium we have already spoken; there was no confiscation there, but the land was laid waste for ever, its flourishing towns, even the former Latin colony of Aesernia, were left in ruins, and the country was placed on the same footing with the Bruttian and Lucanian regions. Assignations to the Soldiers
The wealthy merchant-republic of Tarentum, daily exposed to more serious peril from the Lucanian and Messapian bands and justly distrusting its own sword, gained by good words and better coin the help of -condottieri- from the mother-country.
One more element is to be considered there in the far south. Our Lucanian and Bruttian and Iapygian refugees, themselves, or some of them, naturally the oldest people in Italy, the most original inhabitants, would find themselves, when they arrived there, very much de-civilized; but, because the coast is full of fine harbors, probably sooner or later in touch with settlers from abroad.
He desired that "all would aim at the Lucanian traitor and deserter;" adding, that "the man who should send that victim to the shades before him, would acquire the most distinguished glory, and furnish the highest consolation for his own death." While thus speaking, he wound his cloak round his left arm, for they had not even brought their shields out with them, and then rushed upon the enemy.
When he had now reached the shallow, a Lucanian exile from a distance transfixed him with a javelin: after his fall, the current carried down his lifeless body, with the weapon sticking in it, to the posts of the enemy: there a shocking mangling of it took place; for dividing it in the middle, they sent one half to Consentia, and kept the other, as a subject of mockery, to themselves.
At the same time the Lucanian Libius Severus succeeded to the throne. All that is known of him is that he was an inglorious creature of Ricimer, and prolonged a government without record until the autumn of 465, when his maker got tired of him. He disappeared, and Ricimer ruled alone for nearly two years.
Claiming descent from Pyhrrus, son of Achilles, and being a son of Æacides, he was in the direct line the Kings of Epirus. He was also cousin of an Alexander, who, in the year 332, had crossed over from Epirus to help the Tarentines against the Lucanians, had formed an alliance with the Romans, and had finally been killed by a Lucanian on the banks of the Acheron, in 326.
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