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Updated: June 1, 2025
But a hostile attack made by Alexander of Epirus on the Lucanians drew away the attention of the Samnites to another quarter; these two nations fought a pitched battle against the king, as he was making a descent on the district adjoining Pæstum.
Here, two thousand one hundred of the Samnites, making resistance, were surrounded and taken prisoners; and abundance of other spoil was captured.
The Romans invaded the Samnite territories, pillaging and destroying as far as Apulia, on which the Samnites sent back the Roman prisoners and sought for peace. But peace was refused by the inexorable enemy, and the Samnites prepared for desperate resistance. They posted themselves in ambush at an important pass in the mountains, and shut up the Romans, who offered to capitulate.
They were spoils from the war with the Samnites. Farther on, standing along the wall, a row of hideous wooden dwarfs, dyed red and blue, stripped from the prows of Carthaginian ships after the great victory at the Ægates Islands; iron bars which had closed the gates of many cities conquered by the Romans; the golden standards decorated with fantastic animals which led the troops of Pyrrhus; the enormous tusks of the elephants which this descendent of Achilles had marched against the legions of Rome; the horned or eagle-winged helmet of the Ligurians; the darts of Alpine tribes, and, beside the door, as a trophy of honor, the armor of the glorious Camillus, paraded in triumph by the city after this great Roman had driven the Gauls from the Capitol.
The Samnites being driven to the most extreme distress, and unable to defend themselves, were obliged to call in the assistance of a foreign power, and have recourse to Pyr'rhus, king of Epi'rus, to save them from impending ruin. 12.
Again, when Papirius Cursor would have had Fabius put to death, because, contrary to his orders, he had fought with the Samnites, among the reasons pleaded by the father of Fabius against the persistency of the dictator, he urged that never on the occasion of the defeat of any of their captains had the Romans done what Papirius desired them to do on the occasion of a victory.
The true mainstay of the government was wholly without any cooperation on its part the new burgesses; their assistance was acquiesced in, but nothing was done to regulate the strange position of the Samnites, who were now nominally Roman citizens, but evidently regarded their country's independence as practically the real object and prize of the struggle and remained in arms to defend it against all and sundry.
The wise politicians in the capital were already recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip from the east and by Hannibal from the west; they conceived that the new Hannibal, just like his predecessor, after having by himself subdued Spain, could easily arrive with the forces of Spain in Italy sooner than Pompeius, in order that, like the Phoenician formerly, he might summon the Etruscans and Samnites to arms against Rome.
Gauls, Samnites, Latins, all that ever attacked her, were but taking a house-cloth to dry up a running spring. The Crest-Wave was coming to Italy; whose vital forces, all centrifugal before, must now be made to turn and flow towards the center. That was Rome; and as they would not flow to her of their own good will, out she must go and gather them in.
The dictator entered the city in triumph; and, though desirous of resigning his office immediately, yet, by order of the senate, he held it until the consuls were elected: these were Caius Sulpicius Longus a second time, and Quintus Æmilius Cerretanus. The Samnites, without finishing the treaty of peace, the terms being still in negotiation, brought home with them a truce for a year.
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