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Updated: May 8, 2025
In despair at this Mamercus sailed to Italy, to try to bring the Lucanians against Timoleon and the Syracusans; but he was deserted by his followers, who turned their ships back, sailed to Syracuse, and surrendered Catana to Timoleon. Mamercus now was forced to take refuge in Messina with Hippo, the despot there. But Timoleon came and besieged it both by sea and land.
In vain the Lucanians and Samnites conjured him not to desert them; in vain the Tarentines summoned him either to comply with his duty as their general or to give them back their city. The king met their complaints and reproaches with the consolatory assurance that better times were coming, or with abrupt dismissal.
The same causes as before occasioned its inaction internal misgovernment, and the passing over of the Lucanians once more to the Roman party in the year 456; to which fell to be added a not unfounded dread of Agathocles of Syracuse, who just at that time had reached the height of his power and began to turn his views towards Italy.
On the other hand the Romans succeeded, by means of a weak corps which advanced along the Lucanian frontier and of the garrison of Venusia, in preventing the Lucanians and Samnites from uniting with Pyrrhus; while the main force four legions as it would appear, and so, with a corresponding number of allied troops, at least 50,000 strong marched against Pyrrhus, under the consul Publius Laevinus.
The war was at first unfavourable to the Romans. In the consulship of L. Julius Cæsar, B.C. 90, a Lex Julia was proposed which gave the Roman citizenship to all the Italians who had continued faithful to Rome, if they chose to accept it. A Lex Plautia Papiria of the following year extended the Lex Julia and gave the Roman citizenship to all the allies except the Samnites and Lucanians.
While Marcus Marcellus continued the struggle against Hannibal in person with his wonted obstinacy and energy, and in a two days' battle, beaten on the first day, achieved on the second a costly and bloody victory; while the consul Quintus Fulvius induced the already wavering Lucanians and Hirpinians to change sides and to deliver up their Phoenician garrisons; while well-conducted razzias from Rhegium compelled Hannibal to hasten to the aid of the hard-pressed Bruttians; the veteran Quintus Fabius, who had once more for the fifth time accepted the consulship and along with it the commission to reconquer Tarentum, established himself firmly in the neighbouring Messapian territory, and the treachery of a Bruttian division of the garrison surrendered to him the city.
Then Sotimus, one of the royal band of youths which attended him, asking why he delayed in such a critical moment, showed him that the Lucanians were watching an opportunity to perpetrate some act of treachery: whereupon the king, looking back, and seeing them coming towards him in a body, drew his sword, and pushed on his horse through the middle of the river.
The Samnites and the Lucanians paid the severe penalty of their rashness; but the rest of the Italian states, as they successively returned to their duty, were admitted into the bosom of the republic, and soon contributed to the ruin of public freedom.
When the sun had risen, Gracchus led out his troops to the field of battle; nor did the enemy delay to engage him. His troops consisted of seventeen thousand infantry, principally Bruttians and Lucanians, with twelve hundred horse, among which were very few Italians, almost all the rest being Numidians and Moors. The contest was fierce and protracted.
But he, bravely resolving to make an extraordinary effort, at the head of a chosen band, broke through the midst of their forces; engaged singly, and slew the general of the Lucanians, and collecting together his men, who had been scattered in the retreat, arrived at a river which pointed out his road by the ruins of a bridge which had been recently broken by the violence of the flood.
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