In the state of things which now existed between Rome and Samnium, it was not difficult for the ancient historians, to bring the circumstances most vividly before their minds; which we particularly find to be the case with Dionysius, in the excerpta de Legationibus. Both parties saw in each other’s doings arch-knavery and malignity, and on the whole they may not have been mistaken. The Romans had kept the peoples who dwelt on the side towards Campania, partly in a position of isopolity, as the Fundanians and Formians; partly in one of dependence, as the Privernates. These last tried to shake off their yoke, as the civitas sine suffragio was only a burthen to them, the advantages which they enjoyed from it being trifling in proportion; that they could possess land in the Roman territory, was no great gain when their own town itself had a fruitful soil. The Romans beheld in this rebellion an instigation which came from Samnium; and without doubt, any one who was discontented with the Roman rule, met with fellow-feeling among the Samnites. The Privernates were joined by the Fundanians: Vitruvius Vaccus, a Fundanian of high rank, had led his countrymen into this undertaking; yet they did not follow it up, but drew out of it. On the Privernates the Romans passed a severe judgment, of which Livy and Valerius Maximus tell a very pretty story. The ambassadors were to answer on their conscience, what punishment they had deserved; and they said that they deserved that punishment which he ought to have, who has struggled for freedom. The consuls took this answer in good part, and then asked whether they would keep the peace? “If you give us a good peace,” they replied, “we will keep it; if you give us a bad one, we will break it.” The Romans then gave them the right of citizenship. Dionysius has the same story in the excerpta de Legationibus; but he dates it many years earlier, and it has perhaps no foundation whatever. Valerius Maximus is really no authority at all: he is nothing but the echo of Livy. The tale has perhaps originated with the Gens Æmilia, or the Plautia, who were the patrons of Privernum, and had the surname of Privernas; the annalists then foisted it in where it seemed best to tally.[139] A few years afterwards, the Privernates, according to an unimpeachable statement in a plebiscitum,[140] again revolted. This is, however, struck out, in order to maintain the old tradition with all its interest. At a later period, we find Privernum in possession of the right of citizenship, and that a much more ample one, than the bare Cærite franchise, as its people constituted the Tribus Ufentina. Fundi and Formiæ were likewise severely punished. This is the natural course of those events which Livy relates so pathetically; the magnanimity which is there ascribed to the senate, is quite incredible, and mere declamation.
There is no doubt that the Samnites secretly fomented the disturbances among the subjects of Rome: they openly demanded the evacuation of Fregellæ. Justice was undeniably on their side. The Romans had no right to found a colony on the territory which the Samnites had conquered, although these were not in possession of Fregellæ at the time that they took it: such indeed was the state of the case, as otherwise it is not likely that this would have happened. Yet in matters like these justice cannot always be done;—want of right and injustice are often very different things. I would not throw a stone at the leading men among the Romans for not having given up a place which they had occupied on a waste soil, although they had positively no business to do so. The Samnites were spreading rapidly in that neighbourhood; Fregellæ was a tête-de-pont and a point of defence on the upper Liris against them, and the advantage which the Romans would have derived from its possession, was much less than the disadvantage of its being in the hands of the Samnites. The Latin road would have been laid open as soon as they gave it up; and their allies, the Hernicans, Latins, and without doubt, the Æquians also, would have been left at the mercy of the enemy. It was very like the case which occurred in the year 1803, after the peace of Amiens, when every one called for the evacuation of Malta by the English: they could not give it up, notwithstanding their promise to do so, which indeed they ought never to have made. The sluggishness of the Samnite senate might have perhaps afforded a guarantee against any ill use being made of Fregellæ.
The Romans were so prepared for the breaking out of the war, that as early as two years before, they had an army in cantonments on the frontier; because they dreaded an attack against Fregellæ. At that time, the Romans had not only secured a friend by the treaty with Alexander of Epirus, but they also tried to guard against the enemy by means of a peace with the Gauls. These had now had their abode in Italy for more than sixty years. The national migration had stopped; and as they had nowhere been quite a savage people, they had not failed to adopt a certain degree of civilization. They betook themselves to the tilling of land, and became a meek race of peasants; like the Goths under Vitigis, who were likewise a set of unwarlike husbandmen, so that the great Totila had to train them anew into soldiers. The Gauls had two roads to Southern Italy,—the marshes on the Arno; and the Apennine country, which was grown quite wild, being the bulwark of Etruria,—the one down the Tiber, through Umbria, to Latium and Campania; the other through Picenum, along the Adriatic, to Apulia. By the latter of these they must have advanced more than once; but there they were withstood by the northern Sabellian peoples in the Abruzzi; and it is also more difficult than the former. Now, in order not to be troubled by an attack of the Gauls, which the Samnites might easily have brought about, the Romans concluded a formal peace with them, which is passed over in silence by Livy, but is positively mentioned by Polybius, and which there is no doubt that they bought with a sum of money.
This carefulness of the Romans also makes it highly probable, in my opinion, that the old account of their having, in common with other Italian peoples, sent an embassy to Alexander at Babylon, is not a mere fiction. Alexander had put a limit to his conquests in the East; to go southwards against the Ethiopian nations would have been folly; that he would settle down to rest, no one could believe: it was therefore to be expected that he would turn to the West. People generally fancy the places in the west to have been much more isolated than they were; and they will suppose for instance, that the Romans had known nothing whatever of Alexander. But surely they must have had at Rome some knowledge of Alexander’s campaigns, just as Clapperton and Denham, in the interior of Soudan, heard of the insurrection in Greece, and of the part which individual Europeans took in it. When my father was at Sana, in the time of the seven years’ war, there they had quite positive news of what was going on, especially of the struggle between the English and French; an Arab showed him a map of Europe: and yet these modern Arabs are people quite lost to the world. The communication was also much easier in those days, than it was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, though even then there was some intercourse with the interior of Asia. In Rome there must have been at that period, maps of the world, as in Greece; individuals among the Romans may also have been imbued with Greek learning, as the cognomen of P. Sempronius Sophus seems to prove. That the Samnites and Lucanians sent ambassadors to Alexander, is disputed by no one; that this was done by the Romans, the later writers have doubted. The Lucanians did it, to turn aside from themselves his anger at the death of his uncle; the Samnites, that they might be good friends with him should he come to Italy; the Romans, in like manner, so as at least not to offend him, even though they might not have hoped to gain him for their friend. Even the Iberians sent to him, when they heard of his warlike preparations against Carthage. Livy takes it in his head, that the Romans had perhaps never heard of him. Either they may have suppressed the above-mentioned notice from pride, or the Greeks have invented it from vanity; which, however, must have been done at a time when the Romans were already so powerful, that the homage of Rome heightened the glory of Alexander. But Clitarchus, by whom that statement has been handed down to us, was an elegant author who wrote immediately after the death of Alexander, when the Romans were still engaged in the doubtful struggle with the Samnites. Aristobulus and Ptolemy Lagus, who in historical truth stand far above him, speak of Tyrrhenians and Samnites: in this case, the Romans are comprehended under the former name, even as all the Sabellian peoples are meant by the term Samnites. If Alexander had lived, he would first have turned his arms against Sicily, and from thence have gone against Carthage, which would certainly have fallen; then to Italy, where the Greeks would have received him with the same enthusiasm as in Asia Minor; for he was δεινὸς παρέλκειν. He would have gained them over, have made leagues with them, and have so weakened those who opposed him, that the whole of the peninsula would have been his. Livy has on this subject a discussion which is very finely written, but quite a failure. Altogether blinded by national vanity, he is grievously mistaken in his estimate of the contending forces, and likewise, when he thinks that the whole of Italy would have united in withstanding Alexander. Had Alexander lived, Rome would have fallen: his death was a necessary dispensation of Providence in order that Rome might become great.
THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR.
The cause of this war is to be traced to Neapolis and Palæopolis, the old Parthenope. Palæopolis we find mentioned only in Livy; it was an old colony of Cumæ, the citizens of which had fled for refuge thither across the sea. Neapolis has its name from its being a much later settlement of different Greek peoples: it was probably first founded Ol. 91, about the time of the Athenian expedition against Sicily, as a bulwark of the Greeks against the Sabellian nations. The Athenians may have had a share in its foundation. Both of the towns were, however, of Chalcidian origin, and constituted a confederate state, which at that time may perhaps have been in possession of Ischia. About the site of Palæopolis, a great deal of worthless stuff has been written, most of all by the Italian antiquaries; we have nothing whatever to build upon besides the two statements in Livy, that Palæopolis was by the side of Neapolis, and that the Roman camp was pitched between the two towns. The old Neapolis undoubtedly lay in the centre of the present city, above the church of Sta. Rosa, the sea having now considerably receded. People, however, sought for Palæopolis likewise within the present city, without considering whether an army could have had room enough between the two towns. I should never have found out the site. A French diplomatist, my friend De Serre, who had been an officer in his youth, and thus had the quick eye of a soldier, discovered it when he was taking a walk with me. The town was on the outer side of the Posilipo, where the lazaretto now stands, a nice healthy place in the direction of Nisida and Limon: perhaps there was in old times a harbour there; both of the isles have very good harbours. This was also the natural communication with Ischia: the Posilipo with its prolongations lay between the two towns in an interval of less than half a German mile; here the Roman army could have encamped on the mountains, and thus the two towns have been cut off from each other. Monuments and coins of Palæopolis are, however, no more to be found. According to the usual supposition, the two towns would have been so near together, that the missiles from the walls of either might have reached the other.
The cause of the hostilities was piracy, or at least attacks by sea against the unprotected merchant-ships of the Romans; who at that time had no fleet, and, strange to say, wanted to disregard the sea, as if indeed it could be disregarded. Complaints about the division of the Falernian territory might likewise have had something to do with it. Many people, in such divisions, of course sold their lots, and so this became a running sore to Rome. Yet if the people of Palæopolis were on this ground at enmity with Rome, the reproach of piracy, which Dionysius puts forth in such a declamatory style, is quite uncalled for; as it is but natural that they should try to harass the trade of a hostile people. The Neapolitans, relying on their alliances with the Samnites and the people of Nola, refused the satisfaction which the Romans demanded from them. Nola had an Oscan population with Chalcidian immigrants: how much the inhabitants were hellenized, may be seen from the Greek stamp of the coins, which bear the inscription ΝΩΛΑΙΩΝ. On the whole, the friendliness between the Samnites and the Greeks is striking: Strabo calls them φιλέλληνες. The Samnites, having no literature of their own, were certainly open to the Greek one: they even tried to talk like the Greeks themselves. Romans and Greeks were always on bad terms with each other; Lucanians and Greeks also were enemies, although the Lucanians partook of Greek civilization: it is certainly no fable that the Pythagorean philosophy was homebred among them. The statement that Pythagoras was a Tyrrhenian of the isles, has no doubt this meaning, that the roots of the Pythagorean philosophy, so far as it is theological, are for the most part to be sought among the Pelasgians in the religion of Samothrace.
Samnite auxiliaries, amounting to four thousand men, together with two thousand Nolans, threw themselves into the towns of Palæopolis and Neapolis: the Tarentines also are mentioned as those who had stirred up Palæopolis. The Tarentines and Samnites were very closely allied; and the former spent their money in getting up a distant war against Rome. The Romans looked upon the occupation of Palæopolis by the Samnites as an act of hostility, and complained of it to the assembly at Samnium. The evacuation was a moral impossibility; and the answer was, that one must not quibble about single grievances, that war was what they wanted, and war they should have. The national assemblies confirmed this answer. In the meanwhile, the siege of Palæopolis had lasted a long time, and the Romans had no prospect of success; their own practice in sieges was still in its very infancy, and the Greeks opposed to them considerable technical skill: their assaults were therefore without effect, and the sea remained free. But what force could not do, treachery brought about. Neapolis had ships of war with which frequent attacks may have been made against the Roman coasts, which the Romans were not able to protect: the Samnite garrison, at least to all appearance, lay for the greater part in Palæopolis, the Greeks in Neapolis. Two Greeks, Charilaus and Nymphæus, now betrayed the Samnites to the Roman consul Publilius Philo. They proposed an expedition against the Roman coast, and the Samnites marched out of the town ready to embark. The towns were on the side of the harbour enclosed with walls, so the conspirators now shut the gates behind them, and let the Romans in by another gate; the ships had also in the mean time cast off from the shore, and the Samnites were obliged to save themselves as they best could. Palæopolis disappears, and without doubt was destroyed on this occasion. Neapolis (Naples) obtained a favourable alliance; so the conspirators must have been Neapolitans. This acquisition was of great importance to the Romans; for they thus got possession of the two harbours of Naples and Nisida, the only places from which inroads against their territory could possibly be made by sea. This conquest was achieved by Q. Publilius Philo pro Consule: he is the first whose consular power was on the motion of a tribune prolonged by a Senatus consultum and a Plebiscitum (429), his own law on the plebiscita being now applied to him. This is a great change in the constitution: a magistracy was created, new in its nature, though not in its form. Until then, no one had triumphed out of his time of holding office; Publilius triumphed as proconsul.
Now begins the second Samnite war, by far the greatest, most interesting, and most wonderful, that of Hannibal excepted. On the whole, it is only with much trouble that we can arrive at somewhat satisfactory results concerning it. Where the battles were fought, is in most cases passed over in silence. Livy has described it, sometimes with a great deal of spirit, at other times with weariness, which comes from his manner of composing. He had set to work without preparation; and therefore he wrote indeed with much freshness, but in a way which was detrimental to anything like criticism or comprehensiveness of view. If he had made a better use of his annals, we might have a clearer insight. It is a pity that the books of Dionysius on this war have been lost: the few fragments in Appian, who copied from him, and in Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, throw a bright light on many points; for with regard to these times, Dionysius must have been excellent, as the annals were now already quite enough to make out real history from, if one searched as diligently through them as Dionysius did. Even in that age, there were some detached anonymous chronicles, dry and obscure as to details. That isochronistic historiography commences only a hundred years afterwards, does not prejudice this case. Unfortunately, Livy has made no use whatever of the old materials which formed the groundwork of the annals; whenever, therefore, their statements are conflicting, he chooses from among them just what he likes, and is in most instances quite wrong. Livy does not give us a comprehensive view of this war, which lasted for twenty-two years; I succeeded only very late in forming a clear outline of it: it is divided into several periods.
The first period is from 429 to 433. At its beginning, the behaviour of the Samnites seems to us quite strange. They had wished for war; and yet we find them unprepared, and conscious of not being able to carry it through. The instigators must have lost their popularity. It was the same with the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war; after the first and second campaigns, they wished for peace: so did the Venetians after the battle of Ghiera d’Adda. In England, during the year 1793, the war against France was quite popular (I was there myself part of the time); people had not forgotten the meddling conduct of France in the American war; much was still hoped from the colonies, and the national hatred on the whole was very great. But when the war was badly managed, and the power of France increased, it became thoroughly unpopular, and there was a general outcry for peace: the ministers very wisely yielded, and entered into negotiations. Then the nation saw that peace was not possible; new efforts were made, and in 1798 and 1799 the war again was highly popular; after that it was once more unpopular. Thus it happened also with the Samnites. The Romans carried the war in quite a different manner from what these had expected; they saw that their hopes had not been fulfilled, and wished now for peace. Afterwards, however, things completely changed. As the war went on, it became a passion like gambling, especially, of course, when it was not waged successfully. People will not then draw back; they will sooner perish than give themselves up to the mercy of the conqueror, and the war becomes a guerilla struggle. Towards the middle of it therefore, under much greater disasters, the feeling of the Samnites becomes evident, that peace was impossible.