In the mean time the Latins had recovered strength, and determined to shake off the Roman yoke, and the Romans made peace with the Samnites and formed a close alliance, B.C. 341. The Romans and Samnites were ranged against the Latins and Campanians. The hostile forces came in sight of each other before Capua, and the first great battle was fought at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. It was here that Titus Manlius, the son of the consul, was beheaded by him for disobedience of orders, for the consuls issued strict injunctions against all skirmishing, and Manlius, disregarding them, slew an enemy in single combat. “The consul's cruelty was execrated, but the discipline of the army was saved.”
Reconquest of the Latin cities.
This engagement furnishes another legend of the heroic and patriotic self-devotion of those early Romans. The consuls, before the battle, dreamed that the general on the one side should fall, and the army on the other side should be beaten. Decius, the plebeian consul, when he found his troops wavering, called the chief pontiff, and after invoking the gods to assist his cause, rushed into the thickest of the Latin armies, and was slain. The other consul, Torquatus, by a masterly use of his reserve, gained the battle. Three-fourths of the Latin army were slain. The Latin cities, after this decisive victory, lost their independence, and the Latin confederacy was dissolved, and Latin nationality was fused into one powerful State, and all Latium became Roman. Roman citizens settled on the forfeited lands of the conquered cities.
Jealousy of the Samnites.
The subjugation of Latium and the progress of Rome in Campania filled the Samnites with jealousy, and it is surprising that they should have formed an alliance with Rome, when Rome was conquering Campania. They were the most considerable power in Italy, next to Rome, and to them fell the burden of maintaining the independence of the Italian States against the encroachments of the Romans.
The war. The Samnite war. Siege of Lucania.
The Greek cities of Palæapolis and Neapolis, the only communities in Campania not yet reduced by the Romans, gave occasion to the outbreak of the inevitable war between the Samnites and Romans. The Tarentines and Samnites, informed of the intention of the Romans to seize these cities, anticipated the seizure, upon which the Romans declared war, and commenced the siege of Palæapolis, which soon submitted, on the offer of favorable terms. An alliance of the Romans with the Lucanians, left the Samnites unsupported, except by tribes on the eastern mountain district. 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. Instead of accepting the capitulation and making prisoners of the whole army, the Samnite general, Gaius Pontius, granted an equitable peace. But the Roman Senate, regardless of the oaths of their generals, and regardless of the six hundred equites who were left as hostages, canceled the agreement, and the war was renewed with increased exasperation on the part of the Samnites, who, however, were sufficiently magnanimous not to sacrifice the hostages they held. Rome sent a new army, under Lucius Papirius Cursor, and laid siege to Lucania, where the Roman equites lay in captivity. The city surrendered, and Papirius liberated his comrades, and [pg 425] retaliated on the Samnite garrison. The war continued, like all wars at that period between people of equal courage and resources, with various success—sometimes gained by one party and sometimes by another, until, in the fifteenth year of the war, the Romans established themselves in Apulia, on one sea, and Campania, on the other.
The people of Northern and Central Italy, perceiving that the Romans aimed at the complete subjugation of the whole peninsula, now turned to the assistance of the Samnites. The Etruscans joined their coalition, but were at length subdued by Papirius Cursor. The Samnites found allies in the Umbrians of Northern, and the Marsi and Pieligni of Central Italy, But these people were easily subdued, and a peace was made with Samnium, after twenty-two years' war, when Bovianum, its strongest city, was taken by storm, B.C. 298.
Victory of Seutinum.
The defeated nations would not, however, submit to Rome without one more final struggle, and the third Samnite war was renewed the following year, for which the Samnites called to their aid the Gauls. This war lasted nine years, and was virtually closed by the great victory of Seutinum—a fiercely contested battle, where the Romans, though victorious, lost nine thousand men. Umbria submitted, the Gauls dispersed, and the Etruscans made a truce for four hundred months. The Samnites still made desperate resistance, but were finally subdued in a decisive battle, where twenty thousand were slain, and their great general, Pontius, was taken prisoner, with four thousand Samnites. This misfortune closed the war, but the Samnites were not subjected to humiliating terms. The Romans, however, sullied their victories by the execution of C. Pontius, the Samnite general, who had once spared the lives of two Roman armies, B.C. 291. Rome now became the ruling State of Italy, but there were still two great nations unsubdued—the Etruscans in the north, and the Lucanians in the south.