The affair naturally admitted of a diversity of opinions, each, agreeably to his particular temper, recommending either severity or lenity; matters were still further perplexed by one of the Privernian ambassadors, more mindful of the prospects to which he had been born, than to the exigency of the present juncture: who being asked by one of the advocates for severity, "What punishment he thought the Privernians deserved?" answered, "Such as those deserve who deem themselves worthy of liberty." The consul observing, that, by this stubborn answer, those who were adverse to the cause of the Privernians were the more exasperated against them, and wishing, by a question of favourable import, to draw from him a more conciliating reply, said to him, "What if we remit the punishment, in what manner may we expect that ye will observe the peace which shall be established between us?" He replied, "If the peace which ye grant us be a good one, both inviolable and eternal; if bad, of no long continuance." Then indeed some exclaimed, that the Privernian menaced them, and not in ambiguous terms; and that by such expressions peaceable states were incited to rebellion. But the more reasonable part of the senate interpreted his answers more favourably, and said, that "the words they had heard were those of a man, and of a free-man. Could it be believed that any people, or even any individual, would remain, longer than necessity constrained, in a situation which he felt painful? That peace was faithfully observed, only when those at peace were voluntarily so; but that fidelity was not to be expected where they wished to establish slavery." In this opinion they were led to concur, principally, by the consul himself, who frequently observed to the consulars, who had proposed the different resolutions, in such a manner as to be heard by several, that "surely those men only who thought of nothing but liberty, were worthy of being made Romans." They consequently both carried their cause in the senate; and, moreover, by direction of that body, a proposal was laid before the people, that the freedom of the state should be granted to the Privernians. The same year a colony of three hundred was sent to Anxur, and received two acres of land each.
The year following, in which the consuls were Publius Plautius Proculus and Publius Cornelius Scapula, was remarkable for no one transaction, civil or military, except the sending of a colony to Fregellæ, a district which had belonged to the Sidicinians, and afterwards to the Volscians; and a distribution of meat to the people, made by Marcus Flavius, on occasion of the funeral of his mother. There were many who represented, that, under the appearance of doing honour to his parent, a deserved recompence was made to the people, for having acquitted him, when prosecuted by the ædiles on a charge of having debauched a married woman. This distribution of meat intended as a return for favours shown on the trial, proved also the means of procuring him the honour of a public office; for, at the next election, though absent, he was preferred before the candidates who solicited in person the tribuneship of the commons. The city of Palæpolis was situated at no great distance from the spot where Neapolis now stands. The two cities were inhabited by one people: these came from Cumæ, and the Cumans derive their origin from Chalcis in Eubœa. By means of the fleet in which they had been conveyed hither, they possessed great power on the coast of the sea, near which they dwelt. Having first landed on the islands of Ænaria, and the Pithecusæ, they afterwards ventured to transfer their settlement to the continent. This state, relying both on their own strength, as well as on the treacherous nature of the alliance of the Samnites with the Romans; or, encouraged by the report of a pestilence having attacked the city of Rome, committed various acts of hostility against the Romans settled in the Campanian and Falernian territories. Wherefore, in the succeeding consulate of Lucius Cornelius, and Quintus Publilius Philo a second time, heralds being sent to Palæpolis to demand satisfaction, when a haughty answer was returned by these Greeks, a race more magnanimous in words than in action, the people, in pursuance of the direction of the senate, ordered war to be declared against the Palæpolitans. On settling the provinces between the consuls, the war against the Greeks fell to Publilius. Cornelius, with another army, was appointed to watch the Samnites if they should attempt any movement; but a report prevailed that they, anxiously expecting a revolt in Campania, intended to march their troops thither; that was judged by Cornelius the properest station for him.
The senate received information, from both the consuls, that there was very little hope of peace with the Samnites. Publilius informed them, that two thousand soldiers from Nolæ, and four thousand of the Samnites, had been received into Palæpolis, a measure rather forced on the Greeks by the Nolans than agreeable to their inclination. Cornelius wrote, that a levy of troops had been ordered, that all Samnium was in motion, and that the neighbouring states of Privernum, Fundi, and Formiæ, were openly solicited to join them. When in consequence it was thought proper, that, before hostilities were commenced, ambassadors should be sent to the Samnites, an insolent answer is returned by them; they even went so far as to accuse the Romans of behaving injuriously towards them; but, nevertheless, they took pains to clear themselves of the charges made against them, asserting, that "the Greeks were not assisted with either counsel or aid by their state, nor were the Fundanians or Formians tampered with by them; for, if they were disposed to war, they had not the least reason to be diffident of their own strength. However, they could not dissemble, that it gave great offence to the state of the Samnites, that Fregellæ, by them taken from the Volscians and demolished, should have been rebuilt by the Romans; and that they should have established a colony within the territory of the Samnites, to which their colonists gave the name of Fregellæ. This injury and affront, if not done away by the authors, they were determined themselves to remove, by every means in their power." When one of the Roman ambassadors proposed to discuss the matter before their common allies and friends, their magistrate said, "Why do we disguise our sentiments? Romans, no conferences of ambassadors, nor arbitration of any person whatever, can terminate our differences; but the plains of Campania, in which we must meet; our arms and the common fortune of war will settle the point. Let our armies, therefore, meet between Capua and Suessula; and there let us decide, whether the Samnite or the Roman shall hold the sovereignty of Italy." To this the ambassadors of the Romans replied, "that they would go, not whither their enemy called, but whither their commanders should lead." In the mean time, Publilius, by seizing an advantageous post between Palæpolis and Neapolis, had cut off that interchange of mutual aid, which they had hitherto afforded each other, according as either place was hard pressed. Accordingly, when both the day of the elections approached, and as it was highly inexpedient for the public interest that Publilius should be called away when on the point of assailing the enemy's walls, and in daily expectation of gaining possession of their city, application was made to the tribunes, to recommend to the people the passing of an order, that Publilius Philo, when his year of office should expire, might continue in command, as pro-consul, until the war with the Greeks should be finished. A letter was despatched to Lucius Cornelius, with orders to name a dictator; for it was not thought proper that the consul should be recalled from the vigorous prosecution of the war now that he had entered into Samnium. He nominated Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who appointed Spurius Postumius master of the horse. The elections, however, were not held by the dictator, because it became a question whether he had been appointed under an irregularity; and the augurs being consulted, pronounced that it appeared that the dictator's appointment was defective. The tribunes inveighed against this proceeding as dangerous and dishonourable; "for it was not probable," they said, "that such defect could have been discovered, as the consul, rising in the night, had nominated the dictator while every thing was still;[172] nor had the said consul in any of his letters, either public or private, made any mention of such a thing to any one; nor did any person whatever come forward who said that he saw or heard any thing which could vitiate the auspices. Neither could the augurs sitting at Rome divine what inauspicious circumstance had occurred to the consul in the camp. Who did not plainly perceive, that the dictator's being a plebeian, was the defect which the augurs had discovered?" These and other arguments were urged in vain by the tribunes: the affair however ended in an interregnum. At last, after the elections had been adjourned repeatedly on one pretext or another, the fourteenth interrex, Lucius Æmilius, elected consuls Caius Pætelius, and Lucius Papirius Mugillanus, or Cursor, as I find him named in some annals.
It has been recorded, that in this year Alexandria in Egypt was founded; and that Alexander, king of Epirus, being slain by a Lucanian exile, verified in the circumstances of his death the prediction of Jupiter of Dodona. At the time when he was invited into Italy by the Tarentines, a caution had been given him, "to beware of the Acherusian waters and the city Pandosia, for there were fixed the limits of his destiny." For that reason he made the greater haste to pass over to Italy, in order to be at as great a distance as possible from the city Pandosia in Epirus, and the river Acheron, which, after flowing through Molossis, runs into the lakes called Infernal, and is received into the Thesprotian gulf. But, (as it frequently happens, that men, by endeavouring to shun their fate, run directly upon it,) after having often defeated the armies of Bruttium and Lucania, and taken Heraclea, a colony of the Tarentines, Consentia and Metapontum from the Lucanians, Terina from the Bruttians, and several other cities of the Messapians and Lucanians; and having sent into Epirus three hundred illustrious families, whom he intended to keep as hostages, he posted his troops on three hills, which stood at a small distance from each other, not far from the city Pandosia, and close to the frontiers of the Bruttians and Lucanians, in order that he might thence make incursions into every part of the enemy's country. At that time he kept about his person two hundred Lucanian exiles, as faithful attendants, but whose fidelity, according to the general disposition of people of that description, was ever ready to follow the changes of fortune. When continual rains spread such an inundation over all the plains, as cut off from the three separate divisions of the army all means of mutual aid, the two parties, in neither of which the king was present, were suddenly attacked and overpowered by the enemy, who, after putting them to the sword, employed their whole force in blockading the king himself. From this place the Lucanian exiles sent emissaries to their countrymen, and stipulating a safe return for themselves, promised to deliver the king, either alive or dead, into their power. But he, bravely resolving to make an extraordinary effort, at the head of a chosen band, broke through the midst of their forces; engaged singly, and slew the general of the Lucanians, and collecting together his men, who had been scattered in the retreat, arrived at a river which pointed out his road by the ruins of a bridge which had been recently broken by the violence of the flood. Here, while the party was fording the river on a very uneven bottom, a soldier, almost spent with fatigue and apprehension, cried out as a reflection on the odious name of it,—"You are justly named Acheros (dismal):" which expression reaching the king's ears, and instantly recalling to his mind the fate denounced on him, he halted, hesitating whether he should cross over or not. Then Sotimus, one of the royal band of youths which attended him, asking why he delayed in such a critical moment, showed him that the Lucanians were watching an opportunity to perpetrate some act of treachery: whereupon the king, looking back, and seeing them coming towards him in a body, drew his sword, and pushed on his horse through the middle of the river. When he had now reached the shallow, a Lucanian exile from a distance transfixed him with a javelin: after his fall, the current carried down his lifeless body, with the weapon sticking in it, to the posts of the enemy: there a shocking mangling of it took place; for dividing it in the middle, they sent one half to Consentia, and kept the other, as a subject of mockery, to themselves. While they were throwing darts and stones at it, a woman mixing with the crowd, who were enraged to a degree beyond the credible extent of human resentment, prevailed on them to stop for a moment. She then told them with tears in her eyes that she had a husband and children, prisoners among the enemy; and that she hoped to be able with the king's body, however disfigured, to ransom her friends: this put an end to their outrages. The remnants of his limbs were buried at Consentia, entirely through the care of the woman; and his bones were sent to Metapontum to the enemy, from whence they were conveyed to Epirus to his wife Cleopatra and his sister Olympias; the latter of whom was the mother, the former the sister, of Alexander the Great. Such was the melancholy end of Alexander of Epirus; of which, although fortune did not allow him to engage in hostilities with the Romans, yet, as he waged war in Italy, I have thought it proper to give this brief account. This year, the fifth time since the building of the city, the lectisternium was performed at Rome for procuring the favour of the same deities to whom it was addressed before.
When the new consuls had, by order of the people, sent persons to declare war against the Samnites, and they themselves were making all preparations with greater energy than against the Greeks, a new accession of strength also came to them when expecting no such thing. The Lucanians and Apulians, nations who, until that time, had no kind of intercourse with the Roman people, proposed an alliance with them, promising a supply of men and arms for the war: a treaty of friendship was accordingly concluded. At the same time, their affairs went on successfully in Samnium. Three towns fell into their hands, Allifæ, Callifæ, and Ruffrium; and the adjoining country to a great extent was, on the first arrival of the consuls, laid entirely waste. Whilst the war on this side was commenced with so much success, so the war in the other quarter where the Greeks were held besieged, now drew towards a conclusion. For, besides the communication between the two posts of the enemy being cut off, by the besiegers having possession of part of the works through which it had been carried on, they now suffered within the walls hardships far more grievous than those with which the enemy threatened them, and as if made prisoners by their own garrison, they were now subjected to the greatest indignities in the persons of their wives and children, and to such extremities as are generally felt on the sacking of cities. When, therefore, intelligence arrived that reinforcements were to come from Tarentum and from the Samnites, all agreed that there were more of the latter already within the walls than they wished; but the young men of Tarentum, who were Greeks as well as themselves, they earnestly longed for, as they hoped to be enabled by their means to oppose the Samnites and Nolans, no less than to resist their Roman enemies. At last a surrender to the Romans appeared to be the lightest evil. Charilaus and Nymphius, the two principal men in the state, consulting together on the subject, settled the part which each was to act; it, was, that one should desert to the Roman general, and the other stay behind to manage affairs in the city, so as to facilitate the execution of their plan. Charilaus was the person who came to Publilius Philo; he told him that "he had taken a resolution, which he hoped would prove advantageous, fortunate, and happy to the Palæpolitans and to the Roman people, of delivering the fortifications into his hands. Whether he should appear by that deed to have betrayed or preserved his country, depended on the honour of the Romans. That for himself in particular, he neither stipulated nor requested any thing; but, in behalf of the state, he requested rather than stipulated, that in case the design should succeed, the Roman people would consider more especially the zeal and hazard with which it sought a renewal of their friendship, than its folly and rashness in deviating from its duty." He was commended by the general, and received a body of three thousand soldiers, with which he was to seize on that part of the city which was possessed by the Samnites; this detachment was commanded by Lucius Quinctius, military tribune.