United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A fleet of three thousand Isaurians cast anchor in the Bay of Naples and afterwards at Ostia. Above two thousand horse, of whom a part were Thracians, landed at Tarentum; and, after the junction of five hundred soldiers of Campania, and a train of wagons laden with wine and flour, they directed their march on the Appian way, from Capua to the neighborhood of Rome.
In Italy the war was shifting to the south, and about 213 B.C. Hannibal was besieged in the town of Tarentum by a Roman fleet which had blocked the entrance to the gulf on which the city was situated. The alarm in Tarentum was great; escape seemed impossible; but Hannibal ordered boards to be placed in the night across a little spit of land that lay between the gulf and the open sea.
There also the people with true instinct was in favour of joining the Samnites; but, as an alliance with the Samnites involved peace with Tarentum and a large portion of the governing lords of Lucania were not disposed to suspend their profitable pillaging expeditions, the Romans succeeded in concluding an alliance with Lucania an alliance which was invaluable, because it provided employment for the Tarentines and thus left the whole power of Rome available against Samnium.
I had learnt from Lenormant that at a certain spot, Fontanella, by the shore of the Little Sea, were observable great ancient heaps of murex shells the murex precious for its purple, that of Tarentum yielding in glory only to the purple of Tyre. I hoped to see these shells, perhaps to carry one away.
When winter came on, the king evacuated the enemy's territory, and distributed his troops among the friendly towns, taking up his own winter quarters in Tarentum. Thereupon the Romans also desisted from their operations. The army occupied standing quarters near Firmum in Picenum, where by command of the senate the legions defeated on the Siris spent the winter by way of punishment under tents.
Some ancient cities made a most obstinate resistance, like Tarentum; Carthage, which stood a siege of four years; Numantia in Spain, and Jerusalem. When cities were of immense size, population, and resources, like Rome when besieged by Alaric, it was easier to take them by cutting off all ingress and egress, so as to produce famine. Tyre was only taken by Alexander by cutting off the harbor.
The Romans secured themselves by fortresses and by colonies, the most important of which was that of Venusia, at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, where they placed twenty thousand colonists. TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS. The Samnites were overcome.
He was obliged to renounce the campaign and to go into winter quarters; which the king took up in Tarentum, the Romans on this occasion in Apulia.
With the advent of Alexander of Epirus, who had been called into Italy by the Greeks of Tarentum in order to assist the sorely-pressed colonies of Magna Graecia, Epirot troops were landed at the mouth of the Silarus.
Their ships were driven by contrary winds out of their course, and they were thrown at last upon the coast of Iapygia, a country occupying the heel of Italy. Here they were seized by the inhabitants and made slaves. It happened that there was living in this wild country at that time a man of wealth and of cultivation, who had been exiled from Tarentum on account of some political offenses.