are mentioned with the same praise as the Marsians. If we had Livy’s
work complete, we should know more of their valour than what is related
about the Pelignian cohort in the second Samnite war. As it is, their
greatest glory consists in having produced Ovid, not to acknowledge
whose merits as a poet would be a sign of narrowmindedness or prejudice.
He was a native of SULMO, which he calls _Peligni pars tertia ruris_.
It would, therefore, seem that, as elsewhere in Italy the towns of the
same tribe formed one community, so each country contained a number of
places, representing a similar division. The country of the Pelignians
accordingly was divided into three parts. The second town was CORFINIUM,
which, in the Marsian war, became the capital of the Italicans under the
name of _Italica_. It has now disappeared, but Sulmo still exists under
the name of Sulmona.
The capital of the MARRUCINIANS was TEATE, which is at present only a
small insignificant place; in ancient times it was great, as we must
infer partly from statements in ancient authors, and partly from its
ruins. The Teatine monks derive their name from the circumstance that
their monastery was at Teate. We have a tolerable number of coins of
this town. The family of the Asinii, especially Asinius Pollio, the most
celebrated of them, were Marrucinians.
The VESTINIANS had no towns of any name, and seem to have been the
weakest among the four tribes; it is either for this reason that they are
least spoken of, or because they were inferior to the others in character
and moral worth.
THE SAMNITES.
The real name of this nation in Oscan was _Sauini_ or _Savini_. On the
denarii which were coined during the Social War, we read on the one side
_Safinim_, a genitive plural, and on the other _C. Papi Mutil_, the
name of the celebrated Samnite commander. The Papii were as important
a Samnite gens as the Cornelii among the Romans. I will not decide
whether the name _Safinim_ applies to the Samnites alone or to the whole
Sabellian race, as all the Sabellian tribes took part in the insurrection
of the Social War. In Greek they are called Σαυνῖται, and their country
Σαύνιον, formed from the same root as the Oscan name. Scylax of Caryanda,
who, as you remember, lived at the time of Philip of Macedonia, says of
the Samnites: διήκουσιν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης εἰς θάλασσαν, that is, from the
upper to the lower sea. On the upper sea we find the Frentanians whom
Strabo reckons among the Samnites; Samnites also were the ruling people
in the country about Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the cape of Minerva as
far as the frontiers of Lucania. If we follow the traces which occur in
Livy, the country of the Samnites is more extensive also in the north
and south than we find it in our maps, even those of D’Anville. It here
becomes very manifest how insufficient a single map is to form correct
boundary lines. Thus Samnium, in the map of D’Anville, whom I name here
only _honoris causa_, is quite unsatisfactory; there ought to be a whole
series of Maps to show the different boundaries at different times.
The geography of towns, however, may be studied from a single map. It
is utterly impossible for a man attentively studying ancient history
with D’Anville’s map before him, to form a clear notion of Samnium. Its
extent in that map does not refer to any particular time at all, though
it answers most to the Augustan region of that name, but it does not
it exactly represent either. According to Livy, the Apulians, when
pressed by the Samnites, threw themselves into the arms of the Romans;
the Samnites had captured Luceria and conquered several places in the
Apulian high lands, nay, they had extended their possessions as far as
Venusia and Acheruntia, but were repelled by the victorious Romans. In
the west, too, we meet with Samnites; Fregellae had been taken by them
from the Volscians, but was afterwards likewise taken possession of by
the Romans. In like manner we find Sora, and even Casinum, in the hands
of the Samnites. The case of the latter town is mentioned by an author in
whose work we should hardly look for it, and yet it is a statement which
ought not to escape the notice of an historian. The historical inquirer
must also examine the grammarians whose works contain facts of the
greatest historical importance in fragments and accidental quotations.
Such is the case, e.g., in the commentary of Servius and the scholiast
on Juvenal;[51] it is, however, not only in writers of this class and in
Festus that we may expect historical statements, but we find them in the
authors of real grammars, such as Nonius, Diomedes, and Priscian; they
contain much that is of value and ought not to be despised. Such also is
the case here, for it is Varro who, in his work “De Lingua Latina,”[52]
states, that Casinum was inhabited by Samnites. Hence we see that they
extended as far as the neighbourhood of Arpinum and Monte Cassino, and
that they had subdued the whole district between the upper Vulturnus and
the upper Liris. It was, therefore, for the purpose of extending their
dominion in that part, that they undertook the war against the Sidicines.
The Samnites, as we have seen, did not form a compact nation, they were
not united by one capital, they had no permanent government to keep
the whole together, and they formed no _civitas_, but a _populus_,
not a πόλις, but an ἔθνος. They consisted of four or five different
tribes, which were not more closely united with one another than the
Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, or even not more closely than the Romans,
Latins, and Volscians of Ecetrae were at various times. Thus it happened
that the Frentanians, though a Samnite people, concluded, during the
second Samnite war, a separate peace with Rome and allowed her armies a
passage through Abruzzo into Apulia. Velleius Paterculus states, that
on one occasion the Romans were defeated by the Caudines alone, and in
the Triumphal Fasti we read, that a general triumphed _de Samnitibus
omnibus praeter Pentros_. So long as the Romans stood on a footing of
equality with the Latins and Hernicans, the Samnites were able to keep
them within due bounds; but when they themselves had assisted the Romans
in reducing the Latins to the condition of subjects, the compactness
of the Roman state was against them, and they were no longer equally
matched. No wonder, therefore, that they succumbed to the Romans; but
it is surprising to find that, after all, they were able to hold out in
a struggle like the second Samnite war, which lasted twenty-four years
and a half. And notwithstanding this, they rose again with the force of
despair, which hopes for nothing and destroys its own existence.
We must conceive each Samnite tribe to have had its own senate, from
which deputies were elected to deliberate on common affairs, as the
Romans and Latins did at the Feriae Latinae. In this manner the Samnite
praetors and imperators met, perhaps with deputies and the heads of the
senate (_decem primi_).
Samnium, in this extended sense, is a country presenting very different
aspects. The part extending on the coast from Herculaneum as far as the
Silarus, belongs, according to its physical features, most decidedly
to southern Italy; I will not say that it is essentially a Hellenic
country, but it is like a Hellenic, it is a Tyrrhenian country. It
had originally a Tyrrhenian population, though it was governed by
Samnites, and at an earlier period probably by Oscans. In the interior,
we have the Apennines, a very beautiful mountain country with some very
fertile valleys, and on the whole such as we generally understand by a
mountainous region. The hills nowhere rise to the height of the Abruzzi,
and nowhere beyond the limits of vegetation; they are woody mountains,
and the forests are for the most part still preserved. The country of the
Frentanians is hilly, and in no way remarkable.
The Samnite tribes were distributed in the following manner:—The
FRENTANIANS dwelt on the other side of the Apennines as far as the
Adriatic. The PENTRIANS were the northernmost tribe in the interior,
between the country of the Pelignians and the neighbourhood of
Beneventum; their capital was Bovianum. In the south of them we have the
CAUDINES, who unquestionably possessed the whole district about the river
Calor, a tributary of the Vulturnus, and Beneventum. The HIRPINIANS dwelt
still farther south, between the Caudines, Lucanians, and Apulians. On
the south-west of the Hirpinians the coast district extended from mount
Vesuvius to the river Silarus; the Samnites of this last district, as
I have already observed, are not known to us under any certain ethnic
name, though it is probable that they may have been called _Alfaterni_ or
_Alfaterini_.
In maps you will find in that district where Salernum was situated,
the name _Picentia_ or _Picentini_; but this name does not belong to
the early times. Strabo says that they were transplanted thither as
an ἀποδασμὸς of the Picentini on the upper sea. This must have taken
place before the Hannibalian war, for at that time the Picentians were
among the nations which rose against Rome. This is not the place for
entering into minute discussions, I will only state, as the result
of my inquiries, that this happened after the Samnite wars. When the
Romans conquered that district and found it greatly depopulated,
they transplanted the Picentini thither for the purpose of preventing
the communication of the Samnites with the lower sea; for they might
obtain assistance from the Tarentines, with whom they were on terms of
friendship. By the same means, the very enterprising Agathocles, who
would have liked to gain a firm footing in southern Italy, was kept
away from that coast. The communication with the Lucanians, who were
allied with Rome during the second and third war, also was kept open in
this manner; and it was of great importance to Rome to maintain this
connection.
Among the Frentanians there is no town worth mentioning.
Among the Pentrians we have BOVIANUM, which appears in Roman history at
first as a great place; but all Samnite towns of the interior had this
feature in common, that they were, properly speaking, not fortified. This
circumstance has led to a foolish assertion which occurs in the writings
of some of the ancients, though men like Strabo did not believe it. The
friendship subsisting between the Samnites and Tarentines gave rise to
a wish among the former to be regarded as kinsmen of the Tarentines,
and hence the fancy that the Samnites were a Lacedaemonian colony. This
singular notion was then supported by accidental circumstances, as for
example, by the fact that the Samnite towns were open places. There is in
reality no trace of a truly fortified town in all Samnium; but the case
of those towns which the Samnites conquered beyond their own frontiers
is of course different. The Samnite towns were situated on hills, the
sides of which were cut precipitously; and such a situation may at first
have been sufficient; but it was of no avail against bold and daring
enemies like the Romans, who attacked a place, _cingebant corona_, and
then stormed it by means of ladders. The consequence was, that Bovianum
and other towns, when the Romans were masters of the country around,
offered no resistance, but were scaled and devastated. But they soon
rose again, though with smaller houses and of less extent. During the
Samnite wars, Bovianum was destroyed three or four times in the course
of a few years; and hence we may form some idea as to the condition in
which it must have been. But notwithstanding all this, we again find it
as a respectable town at the period of the Hannibalian war; in that of
Sulla it was entirely destroyed; and he sent a military colony into the
place, because he wanted to punish it, but did not rebuild it on its
ancient site; the new town he founded in the neighbourhood of the old one
was called _Bovianum Undecumanorum_. In like manner, he did not restore
Faesulae, but founded Florentia, at some distance on the river Arnus. At
Arretium he followed the same system. At present, Bovianum is quite an
insignificant place; it occupies the site of the Roman and not of the
Samnite town. From this one example, you may infer the fate of all the
Samnite towns: many of them, the conquest of which is mentioned by Livy
in his ninth and tenth books, entirely disappear from the earth, so that
they are not mentioned either by Pliny or by Ptolemy. The country is
at present full of towns and villages, but very few of their names are
indicative of their ancient origin. In all Samnium there is not a single
ruin belonging to the period preceding the Roman dominion. I have not
been there, but Count Zurlo, a Samnite by birth, who has examined his
own country very carefully, has assured me that, with the exception of
the few Samnite denarii and some copper coins, no antiquities older than
the Roman dominion are found in all Samnium, from the extreme frontier
of the Pentrians to that of the Hirpinians; nor are there any tombs
which are of such frequent occurrence in Campania. But it could not
have been otherwise, for the Romans systematically destroyed everything
in that country; otherwise such an utter disappearance of everything
would be unaccountable: both during the third Samnite war and in that of
Sulla, the Romans attempted to extirpate the whole nation. Strabo says
that only ἴχνη πόλεων ἀμαυρὰ were left; and as the nation so also its
language disappeared. Such was the revenge Sulla took for the battle at
the Colline gate! He not only butchered the prisoners of war, but after
having become master of Italy, he rooted out the whole population.
In the country of the Pentrians, there are a few places, especially on
the west of the Vulturnus, concerning which it is doubtful whether they
were properly Samnite, that is, belonging to the Pentrians, or whether
they were Oscan towns conquered by the Samnites. Places of this kind are
ALLIFAE and AQUINUM[53], a large town on the Via Latina and a praefectura
Romana, that is, it had the Roman franchise before its being conferred
upon all the Italians, but the administration was in the hands of a Roman
praefectus. Aquinum was the birth-place of the great poet Juvenal. A
third town was AESERNIA, which, after the third Samnite war, became a
Roman colony.
Previously to the second Samnite war, the dominion of the Samnites
extended over the whole district between the upper Liris and the
Vulturnus. They had occupied Casinum and Fregellae, and the second war
broke out, because the Romans wanted to fortify Fregellae for the purpose
of protecting their own frontier against the Samnites. The letter of the
treaty in this instance was at variance with reason, for the Samnites in
possession of Fregellae might have become dangerous to Rome herself.
BENEVENTUM was the most important place in central Samnium, although
there can be no doubt that Caudium gave its name to the people. The
Romans changed the name of the town because of its ominous meaning; for
it is said to have formerly been called _Maleventum_. But Maleventum or
Maluentum is not a Latin word at all, but has its origin in the Greek
Μαλοῦς, Μαλόεις, Apple-town. This name too, therefore, shows that Itali
(Siculi) dwelt there before the Oscans. Salmasius, in his “Exercitationes
Plinianae” (a book of which we may well say, φάρμακα πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ
μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά), first drew attention to the etymology of
Maleventum. The whole plan of that book is beneath criticism; it is a
real chaos, and we cannot help being vexed at the careless haste with
which he has put together the most erroneous opinions. But it contains
much information culled from writers which are otherwise not often read.
Salmasius is unfortunate in his emendations, in mythology and grammar he
is bad, though sometimes he makes a very good remark, as e.g., on the
subject now under our consideration. In the history of the Samnite wars,
Beneventum is but rarely mentioned, whence it would seem that it was then
still an insignificant place. But the Romans conquered it, and after the
third Samnite war established a colony there, as they generally did _in
locis opportunis_; and by means of this colony they in reality broke the
power of Samnium. After this time Beneventum maintained itself by the
side of the sinking Samnite towns, and was of great importance to the
Romans in the Social War. Under the empire it was a very considerable
provincial town, whence there are few places of which such splendid ruins
are extant; among others we there have a triumphal arch of Trajan.
CAUDIUM, on the road from Capua to Beneventum, must once have been a
considerable town, because it gave its name to the people. As a town,
however, it is scarcely mentioned, and only Horace in his journey to
Brundusium speaks of _Caudi cauponae_. This is one of the instances which
we have seen before in the case of Gabii, Fidenae, and others: on the
site of destroyed places afterwards new ones arose out of inns which were
built at stations on the high-roads. Several Samnite places, which are
mentioned in Livy, but of which the sites cannot be ascertained, may have
been situated there. We can scarcely form conjectures about them.
The third Samnite tribe, or, including the Frentanians, the fourth, are
the HIRPINIANS, in the district of the modern Avellino, inhabiting one
of the most beautiful hilly countries, between Beneventum, Lucania, and
Salernum. It possesses extraordinary advantages over the northern part
of the territory of Naples in regard to climate, for it is a perfectly
southern country, although its heights are not inconsiderable: its
capital was COMPSA, about which I have nothing particular to relate;
it was one of the towns that joined Hannibal, and after having already
suffered greatly during a previous conquest, it was completely razed
to the ground somewhere between the seventh and tenth year of the war.
But as it was afterwards rebuilt, the Romans nevertheless restored its
independence. During the Social War it made common cause with the Samnite
nation.
The really Greek portion of the Samnite territory is about the cape
of Minerva from Surrentum to Salernum. On the ridge of this part,
between mount Vesuvius and Salernum, we have NUCERIA, a very large and
flourishing town, the wealth and character of which are attested by its
extremely beautiful silver coins, which are in no way inferior to those
of Greece.
I have already mentioned _Pompeii_ and _Herculaneum_ in speaking of
Campania. SURRENTUM is well known as one of the most enchanting places
on the whole face of the earth. Although the ancients were not as
enthusiastic in their admiration of beautiful scenery as the moderns,
still even among them it was celebrated as a place of indescribable
charms.
The coast on the bay of Salernum was occupied by the PICENTINI, whom I
have already mentioned, and whom the Romans had transplanted thither from
Picenum after the Samnite wars. In the earliest times, a great number
of Tyrrhenian places existed on that bay, from which it is evident that
there was in that part a considerable Pelasgian population, which, though
subdued, maintained itself for a long time.
SALERNUM was not a place of great importance in antiquity, but in the
history of the middle ages it is celebrated as the place of residence
of the Lombard kings. Until the Hannibalian war, Salernum and the
surrounding country belonged to the Campanians, for the Romans appeased
their allies of those places on which they had conferred the franchise
without the suffrage, by ceding domain lands to them. Afterwards Salernum
became a Roman colony. The river Silarus formed the boundary between that
part of Samnium and Lucania.
On the coast of the most southern part of Samnium, AMALFI arose as a
flourishing republic at an early period of the middle ages, during the
time of the Lombards. The local belief is, that Amalfi was a Roman colony
of the imperial period. For reasons which we can easily imagine, the
opinion became established, that Constantine had led a Roman colony to
Constantinople; and at Amalfi a tradition sprang up, that a fleet with
Roman colonists, destined for Byzantium, was wrecked on that coast,
or compelled by adverse winds to land, and that the colonists then
established themselves there. This whole story is neither more nor less
credible than so many others about colonies which were said to have
been founded by the heroes returning from Troy. Amalfi is never before
mentioned, and became important at the time when the Lombards conquered
the interior of the country, and pushed the inhabitants towards the
coast; the people naturally called themselves Romans as opposed to
Lombards and barbarians. The town, like Naples, was under the direct
protection of Constantinople, and was altogether non-barbarian; it
belonged to the class of free cities, which had preserved a free Roman
municipal constitution, and was very different from the free cities which
arose under German laws.
APULIA.