The Rise of Rome

Lucania in the foot of Italy, thus opening up a second front. In 315, a Roman consul captured the key town of Luceria on the far side of Samnium, near the Adriatic coast, a potential third front. The enemy counterattacked in the west, threatening Latium. They successfully pushed down the river Liris valley—and took Fregellae, the cause of all the trouble. They reached the coast, where they inflicted a heavy defeat on the Romans near the seaside city of Tarracina. The road to Rome lay open, and it may be that only the new walls dissuaded the Samnites from marching up to it.

The important city of Capua revolted, and other Campanian towns wavered. The Republic was shaken but unbowed. The wisdom of its generous Latin settlement now became clear, for no Latin community changed sides. They remained loyal to their conqueror. In the following year, the legions regrouped and doggedly went on the offensive. A second hard-fought battle was waged near Tarracina. One Roman wing was nearly put to flight but was rescued by the prompt arrival of the other. This time the Romans gained a famous victory and, according to tradition, thirty thousand Samnites were killed or captured—almost certainly an exaggeration, but a sign of the importance of the engagement.

The first stretch of Appius Claudius’s great strategic road, 132 miles long, from Rome to the gates of Capua, was completed; rapid communication was now ensured between the capital and any recrudescence of trouble in Campania.

The Samnite moment had come, and now it had gone. Capua was brought to heel, and Fregellae resettled. Perhaps inspired by their new Greek friends in Naples, the Romans created a small sea squadron, but they did not really understand ships and fighting at sea, so little came of the experiment. Nevertheless, all things considered they had seized back the initiative.

For many years, little had been heard from the Etruscans, now in a condition of decay. Veii, of course, had been lost and the Celts were harrying the northern outposts of their empire. They had contentedly watched the conflict between Rome and Samnium from the sidelines. They had little sympathy with the latter, who had, after all, driven them out of Campania a hundred years earlier. However, the apparently irresistible growth of Roman power was alarming. Taking advantage of the fact that a forty-year truce between Rome and the Etruscan city of Tarquinii had expired, they threw in their lot with the Samnites.

To dampen down this fire, in 310 a Roman consul boldly forced his way through the unbroken, primeval Ciminian Forest into central Etruria. A natural barrier between the two nations, this trackless wilderness was believed to be impassable, and the news alarmed public opinion at home. Another Caudine Forks was predicted. In fact, the consul won a battle, Etruscan towns made peace, and the treaty with Tarquinii was renewed.

The struggle with the Samnites dragged interminably on. In 305, they launched an attack on the wine-rich ager Falernus, in northern Campania. They were repulsed and a relieving army was defeated. By the next year, after further setbacks, the Samnites had had enough and accepted not ungenerous terms. They were made to withdraw into their own territory. Their onetime allies were to transfer their allegiance to Rome, and would lose some of their land. Rome made solid but not spectacular gains, winning a number of frontier towns and completing its hold over Campania. But one thing was clear beyond any doubt. The Republic was now the first state in Italy and, it followed, a power to be reckoned with on the Mediterranean political stage.

At the beginning of the war, Livy had made a Samnite ambassador tell his Roman counterparts, “Let us pitch camp facing each other, and determine whether the Samnite or the Roman shall govern Italy.” That question had now been settled, except for the awkward fact that it was not in the former’s character to accept the decision of history. When he said pax, he plotted war.

In 298, Roman attention was distracted by a new Celtic incursion, probably only marauding bands and mercenaries but dangerous nonetheless. The Samnites indulged themselves with one last throw of the dice. They attacked a new Roman ally, the Lucani, on their southern border. During this third war, the legions did not linger on the edges of Samnium but marched directly into enemy territory.

Nothing daunted, the Samnite commander-in-chief, Gellius Egnatius, assembled a remarkable pact. Its members had little in common, apart from fear and hatred of Rome and a sense that this would be their last chance to destroy the monster before it grew too great ever again to be suppressed. Egnatius’s bold plan was to join forces with the Etruscans, the Umbrians (a long-standing enemy), and the Celts in the north and launch a combined attack against the irrepressible Republic.

The existence of this alliance became a matter of common knowledge in 296 and caused a panic at Rome. One of the consuls, the democratic reformer Appius Claudius Caecus, was in command of an army commissioned to keep a watch on the Etruscans, and he warned the Senate to take the threat posed very seriously. Every category of men was called up, even former slaves, and special cohorts of older citizens were formed. The two consuls for the following year commanded an army of four legions, and a special force of two legions guarded Campania from Samnite incursions. If they were at full strength, that added up to 25,200 legionaries, as well as a strong contingent of cavalry. Also, two legions were dispatched to ravage the Etruscan countryside, to discourage the Etruscans from marching to Egnatius. This wasn’t all. The citizen legions were accompanied by a greater number of troops contributed by the allies and the Latins—further witness, if it were needed, of the success of the Latin settlement. In total, this was the largest force Rome had ever assembled.

The consuls hurried to prevent the Celts from joining up with the Samnites. But they arrived too late and their advance guard was badly mauled. However, the Etruscans and the Umbrians were absent and, when the two armies met for a full-scale battle at Sentinum (near the modern town of Sassoferrato, in the Marche), they were probably evenly matched.

The hour of reckoning had arrived and, to mark it, a portent occurred. A female deer was chased by a wolf across the open space between the front lines. Then the animals veered off in opposite directions. The wolf ran toward the Romans, who opened a pathway for it to pass through. The deer rushed into the arms of the Celts, who struck it down. A Roman front ranker made the obvious connection. “On that side lies flight and slaughter,” he shouted. “The deer, the goddess Diana’s beast, is dead, but here on this side the wolf is the winner, whole and untouched. He reminds us of our descent from Mars, god of war, and of Romulus our founder.”

It does not matter much whether or not this incident is a historical event, for, one way or another, it is evidence that the Romans saw this day as a turning point in their history. The battle at Sentinum, like Waterloo, was the “nearest run thing.” The Roman left, commanded by Publius Decius Mus, the son of the commander who had “devoted” himself during the Latin war, was hard-pressed by the Celts and their chariots. In a bid to redeem the situation, Mus followed his father’s example. After saying the ritual prayers, he galloped on his horse into the Celtic lines, to his death. The army’s priest cried out that the Romans had won the day, now that they were freed by the consul’s fate. Meanwhile, the Roman right wore down and eventually routed the Samnites. They then turned back and smashed the Celts from the rear.

Victory was complete, but it came at a cost. According to Livy, 25,000 of the enemy were killed and 8,000 taken prisoner, while the Romans lost 8,700 men. The decision of Sentinum was permanent: Egnatius’s grand alliance was broken for good, and its inventor lay dead on the field of battle.

The Samnites still would not give up. Even the ultra-patriotic Livy acknowledged their stamina. He wrote:

They could carry on no longer, either with their own resources or with outside support, yet they would not abstain from war—so far were they from tiring of freedom even though they had not succeeded in defending it, preferring to be defeated rather than not to try for victory.

Fighting continued for a few years, and finally Samnium was penetrated by Roman forces and ravaged from one end to the other. Resistance was no longer possible. To judge by the amount of loot seized and the number of captives enslaved, little mercy was shown: auctions of booty and prisoners raised more than three million pounds of bronze—a windfall that funded the Republic’s first ever issue of coinage. For the fourth time, the Samnites signed a treaty with their conqueror. They became “allies” of the Republic—in other words, a vassal nation liable to send its young men not to fight its conqueror but to help it win its future wars.

The struggle had lasted half a century. The Samnites were down, but even now they refused to be counted out. Sullen, resentful, and subjugated, they nursed their grievance against Rome and awaited an opportunity for revenge.

FOR AN INDIVIDUAL Roman soldier, a battlefield was a narrow and constricted place, electric with fear and