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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.
While the Syracusans after the Sicel disaster put off any immediate attack upon the Athenians, Demosthenes and Eurymedon, whose forces from Corcyra and the continent were now ready, crossed the Ionian Gulf with all their armament to the Iapygian promontory, and starting from thence touched at the Choerades Isles lying off Iapygia, where they took on board a hundred and fifty Iapygian darters of the Messapian tribe, and after renewing an old friendship with Artas the chief, who had furnished them with the darters, arrived at Metapontium in Italy.
And now rumours began to reach them of the enemy. He was at Praetutia, at Hadriana, at Marrucina, at Frentana! He had set out toward Iapygia! he had reached Luceria! and everywhere the country was a garden before him and a desert behind. Only one gleam of light shone through the darkness, the Apulians submitted to ravage, but they refused to save their lands by joining fortunes with the invaders.
Yet they were still as jealous as before of his soldiers, and the rather, because the war was now carried on principally by sea; Philistus being come from Iapygia with a great fleet to Dionysius's assistance.
In addition to his soldiers' own arms, he carried two thousand shields, a very great number of darts and lances, and abundant stores of all manner of provisions, that there might be no want of anything in their voyage; their purpose being to keep out at sea during the whole voyage, and use the winds, since all the land was hostile to them, and Philistus, they had been told, was in Iapygia with a fleet, looking out for them.
Among the great roads which conveyed to Rome as a centre were the Clodian and Cassian roads which passed through Etruria; the Amerina and Flavinia through Umbria; the Via Valeria, which had its terminus at Alternum on the Adriatic; the Via Latina, which, passing through Latium and Campania, extended to the southern extremity of Italy; the Via Appia also passed through Latium, Campania, Lucania, Iapygia to Brundusium, on the Adriatic.
There is also Cannæ, the "plain of Diomed," near Daunian Apulia. Messapia was called also Iapygia, later Salentia, and then Calabria. Argyrippa, a Diomedian city, was renamed Arpi by the Apulians. Cp. Later he was arrayed against the Romans at Cannæ, when the Roman generals were Paulus and Terentius.
He is said to have been defeated in a great battle by Mamercus Aemilius, and to have fallen in it. Appian says that Metellus defeated him in Iapygia; Orosius, that Sulpicius defeated him in Apulia. However that may be, with him the last gleam of hope for the Samnite cause faded away.
Orders had been previously given to most of the allies, to the corn-ships, the smaller craft, and generally to the vessels in attendance on the armament that they should muster at Corcyra, whence the whole fleet was to strike across the Ionian Gulf to the promontory of Iapygia.
This silence is the more inexplicable as one of the earliest geographers mentions the stone of Iapygia; Ptolemy speaks of a similar stone on the shores of the ocean; Strabo, of a group of dolmens near Cape Cuneus; Quintus Curtius, of an important alignment in Bactriana; Pliny, who mentions a leaning pillar in Asia Minor, says nothing of the megalithic monuments of Gaul, which he crossed several times.
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