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Updated: May 8, 2025
It is a significant indication of the state of feeling, that the Samnite government informed the Roman envoys that it was not able to guarantee their inviolability, if they should set foot on Samnite ground. The war thus began anew , and while a second army was fighting in Etruria, the main Roman army traversed Samnium and compelled the Lucanians to make peace and send hostages to Rome.
Mamercus, now forsaken and despairing of success, took ship for Italy with the design of bringing in the Lucanians against Timoleon and the people of Syracuse; but the men in his galleys turning back and landing again and delivering up Catana to Timoleon, thus obliged him to fly for his own safety to Messena, where Hippo was tyrant.
The Lucanians were of Sabine origin, and conquered the Oenotrians, who first possessed the country: they also subdued several Greek cities on the coast. The chief cities were Posido'nia or Pæstum, He'lia or Ve'lia, Sib'aris and Thu'rii. Brut'tium is the modern Cala'bria, and received that name when the ancient province was wrested from the empire.
The Romans, however, sullied their victories by the execution of C. Pontius, the Samnite general, who had once spared the lives of two Roman armies, B.C. 291. Rome now became the ruling State of Italy, but there were still two great nations unsubdued—the Etruscans in the north, and the Lucanians in the south.
But we know that a revolution at Croton destroyed, at the end of the sixth century, the Pythagorean School; after which the hope and messengers of the Movement Aeschylus, Plato worked in Greece; and that although the Pythagorean individual Lucanians, Iapygians, and even Samnites that noble Gaius Pontius of the Caudin Forks was himself a Pythagorean and a pupil of the Pythagorean Archytas, it was, in the Teacher's own lifetime, practically broken up and driven out into Sicily, where those two great Athenians contacted it.
We are not exactly informed how far the Romans had carried out the dissolution of the larger Italian confederacies; but it is not improbable that the Marsians, the Paelignians, and perhaps even the Samnites and Lucanians still were associated in their old communal leagues, though these had lost their political significance and were in some cases probably reduced to mere fellowship of festivals and sacrifices.
Under the banners of Pyrrhus there fought, besides his Epirot and Macedonian troops, the Italian mercenaries, the burgess-force the white shields as they were called of Tarentum, and the allied Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites altogether 70,000 infantry, of whom 16,000 were Greeks and Epirots, more than 8000 cavalry, and nineteen elephants.
It is evident that the Lucanians did not fear the tears and lamentations of this unhappy subject state, for this custom continued to be observed throughout the whole period of Samnite oppression, and survived even till Roman times—perhaps to the very end of the city’s existence,—although in the course of passing generations there could have been but few persons of pure Greek descent left in the place.
It was an enterprise worthy of a Greek great king to protect the Siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome, and to put an end to piracy on either sea; and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans, that along with numerous others made their appearance at Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula and of entering into relations with it.
Hellenic influence had a similar, though less powerful, effect on the Lucanians and Bruttians as on the Campanians.
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