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Preparations were accordingly made for a revolt; treaties were concluded, and arming went on silently but actively, till at last, as usual, the insurrection broke out through an accident somewhat earlier than the leading men had intended. Outbreak of the Insurrection in Asculum Marsians and Sabellians Central and Southern Italy

The Sabellians and Greeks thus passed over to Pyrrhus; but the victory produced no further effect. The Latins showed no inclination to get quit of the Roman rule, burdensome as it might be, by the help of a foreign dynast. Venusia, although now wholly surrounded by enemies, adhered with unshaken steadfastness to Rome.

The mode of reckoning therefore in Latium and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans was by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which was next expected; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between 7 and 8 days, the average length being 7 3/8; and by lunar months which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days, the average duration of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes.

The process of Latinizing, moreover, made rapid progress in these regions; the Celtic nationality was evidently far from able to oppose such resistance as the more civilized nations of Sabellians and Etruscans.

His conduct in the previous campaign was not satisfactory, and the conqueror of the Cimbri, at sixty-six, was thought to be in his dotage. Asculum was besieged and taken by the Romans, who had seventy-five thousand troops under the walls. The Sabellians and Marsians were next subjugated, and all Campania was lost to the insurgents, as far as Nola.

Transmarine communities might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia any more than in the country beyond the Apennines.

In Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class of free farmers, Matters were better in Latium which could not be entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war as well as in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians.

From the Sabines and the Marsi, who were the nearest neighbours of the Romans and had long lived in peaceful relations with Rome, little more could be expected than lukewarm sympathy or neutrality. The Apulians, the ancient and bitter antagonists of the Sabellians, were the natural allies of the Romans.

It was not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when they began to employ the division into hours; which explains why even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight, the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon.

Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is mentioned in Greek records. On the other hand we find that the Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the disposition for war than the Romans and Sabellians: the un-Italian custom of employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among the Etruscans at a very early period.