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Updated: June 19, 2025
Already had his mind entertained a presentiment of this event, and he had accordingly prepared ships beforehand. Having, therefore, sent a crowd of useless soldiers under pretence of garrisons into the towns in the Bruttian territory, a few of which continued their adherence to him, more through fear than attachment, he transported the strength of his army into Africa.
At the same time the slave population increased, as the free population declined. In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land, pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated over agriculture; the half-savage slave-herdsmen were here in reality masters in the house.
These men Laevinus thought it hardly safe to leave in the island, when an unwonted tranquillity was growing up, as the materials of fresh disturbances; and besides, they were likely to be useful to the Rhegians, who were in want of a band of men habituated to robbery, for the purpose of committing depredations upon the Bruttian territory.
There was a young Tarentine in the army that had a sister in Tarentum, then in possession of the enemy, who entirely loved her brother, and wholly depended upon him. He, being informed that a certain Bruttian, whom Hannibal had made a commander of the garrison, was deeply in love with his sister, conceived hopes that he might possibly turn it to the advantage of the Romans.
Croton and Locri on the other hand were partly carried by storm, partly forced to capitulate, by the united Phoenicians and Bruttians; and the citizens of Croton were conducted to Locri, while Bruttian colonists occupied that important naval station. The Latin colonies in southern Italy, such as Brundisium, Venusia, Paesturn, Cosa, and Cales, of course maintained unshaken fidelity to Rome.
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
It forms a brilliant proof of the strategic talent of Hannibal as well as of the incapacity of the Roman generals now opposed to him, that after this he was still able for four years to keep the field in the Bruttian country, and that all the superiority of his opponents could not compel him either to shut himself up in fortresses or to embark.
What! will Hannibal, who has now for a long time been unavailingly soliciting succours from home, be rendered more powerful in men and arms when occupying the remotest corner of the Bruttian territory, or when near to Carthage and supported by all Africa?
The Lucanian conquest of the former country must, even at a time preceding the Roman domination, have formed a connection between the mountains and the plains, and pasturage on a large scale in the mountain glades of the Bruttian territory may have been an inheritance rather than a creation of the Romans; but the ruin caused in this district by the Second Punic War, the annexation to the State of large tracts of rebel land, and the reduction of large portions of the population to the miserable serf-like condition of dediticii, must have offered the capitalists opportunities which they could not otherwise have secured; and both here and in Apulia the tendency to extend the grazing system to its utmost limits must have advanced with terrible rapidity since the close of the Hannibalic war.
A Carthaginian quinquereme, wrecked on the Bruttian shore, furnished the model, the forests of Silo the timber, and the maritime cities of Italy and Greece, the sailors. In sixty days a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships was built and ready for sea. The superior seamanship of the Carthaginians was neutralized by converting the decks into a battle-field for soldiers.
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