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Giddenem had hidden those who were mutilated behind the others. Hamilcar perceived them. "Who cut off your arm?" "The soldiers, Eye of Baal." Then to a Samnite who was staggering like a wounded heron: "And you, who did that to you?" It was the governor, who had broken his leg with an iron bar. This silly atrocity made the Suffet indignant; he snatched the jet necklace out of Giddenem's hands.
Wage war, since Spurius Postumius has just now struck with his knee the herald, in character of ambassador. The gods are to believe that Postumius is a citizen of Samnium, not of Rome; and that a Roman ambassador has been violated by a Samnite; and that therefore a just war has been waged against us by you.
On the other hand the Samnite people decidedly exhibited the highest political development among the eastern Italian stock, as the Latin nation did among the western.
The essential unity of all the Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous appellation Opikos which is applied to all the Latin and Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to the Iapygians or Etruscans.
The Satricans, however, when the Roman army approached their walls, sent deputies to sue for peace, with humble entreaties; to whom the consul answered harshly, that "they must not come again to him, unless they either put to death, or delivered up, the Samnite garrison:" by which terms greater terror was struck into the colonists than by the arms with which they were threatened.
The speedy capture and fearful punishment of Aeclanum spread terror throughout the Hirpinian country; it submitted even before the arrival of the Lucanian contingent which had set itself in motion to render help, and Sulla was able to advance unhindered as far as the territory of the Samnite confederacy.
The absence of the Samnite army would enable them, they thought, to force their way through Samnium without difficulty; and, blinded by their false confidence, the consuls recklessly led their men into the fatal pass of Caudium. This pass was a narrow opening in the outer wall of the Apennines, which led from the plain of Campania to Maleventum.
Presumably about the same time, and in consequence doubtless of the Samnite peace, peace was also made between Rome and Tarentum. The two cities had not indeed directly opposed each other in the field.
A Samnite army advanced into Campania and encamped before the city, in the hope that its vicinity might place the national party in the ascendant . But Sora was immediately attacked by the Romans and recaptured after the defeat of a Samnite relieving force . The movements among the Ausonians were suppressed with cruel rigour ere the insurrection fairly broke out, and at the same time a special dictator was nominated to institute and decide political processes against the leaders of the Samnite party in Capua, so that the most illustrious of them died a voluntary death to escape from the Roman executioner . The Samnite army before Capua was defeated and compelled to retreat from Campania; the Romans, following close at the heels of the enemy, crossed the Matese and encamped in the winter of 440 before Bovianum, the: capital of Samnium.
Not when Brennus was at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when, fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army the only army which Rome then possessed had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass under the Samnite yoke.
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