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When at length the season allowed the Roman armies to assume the offensive, Cato entered the Marsian territory and advanced, successfully encountering the enemy there; but he fell in the region of the Fucine lake during an attack on the enemy's camp, so that the exclusive superintendence of the operations in Central Italy devolved on Strabo.

The capital was so totally undefended, that a resolute Marsian officer Quintus Pompaedius Silo, one of the most intimate friends of Drusus, is said to have formed the design of stealing into the city at the head of a band of trusty associates carrying swords under their clothes, and of seizing it by a coup de main.

He gave many and early proofs of his valor and conduct, in the Marsian war, and was admired by Sylla for his constancy and mildness, and always employed in affairs of importance, especially in the mint; most of the money for carrying on the Mithridatic war being coined by him in Peloponnesus, which, by the soldiers' wants, was brought into rapid circulation, and long continued current under the name of Lucullean coin.

In the territory of the Paeligni situated in the centre of the Marsian, Samnite, Marrucinian, and Vestinian cantons and consequently in the heart of the insurgent districts, in the beautiful plain on the river Pescara, the town of Corfinium was selected as the Opposition-Rome or city of Italia, whose citizenship was conferred on the burgesses of all the insurgent communities; there a Forum and a senate-house were staked off on a suitable scale.

When at length the season allowed the Roman armies to assume the offensive, Cato entered the Marsian territory and advanced, successfully encountering the enemy there; but he fell in the region of the Fucine lake during an attack on the enemy's camp, so that the exclusive superintendence of the operations in Central Italy devolved on Strabo.

Perseverance of the Samnites We see only and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia, that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions that the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their own land, and, after "Italia" was vanquished, undertook to continue the struggle as "Safini" or Samnites.

The Umbrian stock, including the Samnite or Oscan, the Volscian and the Marsian, had a more extended area. At one time it possessed the district afterwards known as Etruria, as well as the Sabellian and Umbrian territories. These show a close affinity with one another, and a decided, though more distant, relationship with the Latin.

In a military point of view the insurgent country fell into two divisions; in the northern, which reached from Picenum and the Abruzzi to the northern border of Campania and embraced the districts speaking Latin, the chief command was held on the Italian side by the Marsian Quintus Silo, on the Roman side by Publius Rutilius Lupus, both as consuls; in the southern, which included Campania, Samnium, and generally the regions speaking Sabellian, the Samnite Gaius Papius Mutilus commanded as consul of the insurgents, and Lucius Julius Caesar as the Roman consul.

The latter employed himself partly in continuing the siege of Asculum, partly in the subjugation of the Marsian, Sabellian, and Apulian districts. To relieve his hard-pressed native town, Iudacilius appeared before Asculum with the Picentine levy and attacked the besieging army, while at the same time the garrison sallied forth and threw itself on the Roman lines.

War in Picenum Asculum Besieged And Conquered Subjugation of the Sabellians and Marsians Thus began the second campaign in 665. The insurgents opened it, even before winter was over, by the bold attempt recalling the grand passages of the Samnite wars to send a Marsian army of 15,000 men to Etruria with a view to aid the insurrection brewing in Northern Italy.