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From a very remote period of antiquity there was undoubtedly a settlement on or near the coast to the south of the river Silarus, whilst it is commonly held that this spot was called Peste—a name almost identical with the modern Italian appellation—many hundreds of years before the arrival of Doric settlers on the shores of the Tyrrhene Sea.
According to the new division of Italy, the fertile and happy province of Campania, the scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of the citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennine, from the Tiber to the Silarus.
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.
The armies met on the Silarus, in the northern part of Lucania; and the battle which followed, and which was to finish this remarkable war, was fought not far from where the traveller now sees the noble ruins of Paestum. Spartacus made his last speech to his soldiers, warning them of what they would have to expect, if they should fall alive into the hands of their old masters.
The whole soil, with the exception of a few possessions of foreigners or of Campanians well disposed towards Rome, was declared by the senate to be public domain, and was thereafter parcelled out to small occupiers on temporary lease. The Picentes on the Silarus were similarly treated; their capital was razed, and the inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages.
A third, and perhaps a preferable way, consists in using the railway beyond Battipaglia to Eboli, a town of no little interest in the upper valley of the Silarus, and thence driving along the base of the rocky hills that enclose the maritime plain and through the oak wood of Persano that was brigand-haunted within living memory.
Before our goal can be reached it is necessary for us to cross the broad willow-fringed stream of the Sele, the Silarus of antiquity, which according to the testimony of Silius Italicus once possessed the property of petrifying wood.
With the fall of the mother city, this flourishing colony was left alone to face the attacks of the Samnites, the native barbarians who peopled the dense forests and the barren mountains of Lucania; yet it somehow contrived to retain its independence until the close of the fourth century B.C., when the Samnite hordes, forcing the fortified line of the Silarus, made themselves masters of Poseidonia, and put an end, practically for ever, to its existence as a purely Hellenic city.
The whole soil, with the exception of a few possessions of foreigners or of Campanians well disposed towards Rome, was declared by the senate to be public domain, and was thereafter parcelled out to small occupiers on temporary lease. The Picentes on the Silarus were similarly treated; their capital was razed, and the inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages.
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