How is it that when things are settled to a peaceful and generally good time is had by all, always something happens to spoil the moment. With Rome, after the Samnite wars, everyone could exhale and turn attention to what is going on in the law courts, or should we accept all those immigrants and there are not enough wells, and other such mundane, but important things. It was rather like the 90-ties. Cold War over, globalisation making poor people richer, no enemy on the horizon.
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| Pompeii Fresco of Samnite warriors |
The Third Samnite War.
In 298 BC the Samnites judged that
they are strong enough to start another war with the Romans. However, they did
not make a mistake of haphazard alliance with other enemies of Rome like
before. This was one strong alliance, when the Etruscans and the Gauls to the
north and the Samnites to the south decided to coordinate their efforts of
bringing Rome down once and for all.
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| Peter is contemplating the original she-wolf of Rome |
This pious intention started as
usual in the plain of Campania. Until then, the Romans defeated their enemies
piecemeal, but this one was a real threat to their very existence. The new
highway, Via Appia, was put to good use. The Roman army swiftly moved to
Campania and defeated the southern Samnite army. The battle for Italy took
place in the north of Rome at Sentium in Umbria, where Etruscans and Gauls
joined against the Roman army. The Consul Publius Decius Mus inspired his
troops by dedicating himself to the gods and purposely exposing himself to
death at enemy hands.
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| One version of the war chariot |
As usual, Samnium was not pillaged,
burned, or Samnites enslaved even though after three wars one would expect some bitterness. They got a treaty of alliance
(well, it was either that or pillaging, burning and enslaving) with different
degrees of closeness to Roman citizenship, which effectively ended their
cyclical surge of anti Roman sentiment for the rest of Roman history. This
battle also caused the southern Greek and Campanian city-states to see the
light and to become swiftly undisputed Roman allies with varying degrees of
independence.
The Gauls and the Etruscans kept
fighting, and it took two more defeats for the Gauls to ask for terms in 282.
The Etruscans, annoyed that the city state where long time ago an Etruscan king
ruled is ruling them, fought on. But the Romans were kind. They defeated the
Etruscans, but gave them very moderate terms and annexed only some of the territory of the Etruscan city of Caere.
To show themselves the cruel taskmasters, they punished Caere by giving them
Roman citizenship without the right to vote in Roman elections. Probably
causing huge despair around annual election time, when Caereans moaned ‘if we only had the right to vote,
this idiot would never have become a consul !”
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| Republican Rome and the course of Aqua Appia |
In Rome, during the Samnite wars,
time did not stand still for politics and for building up the city. The Circus
Maximus, first mentioned as being set up by Romulus and his band of girls
kidnappers, got handsome stands and a face lift with new horse stalls and
starting gates 329 BC. In 312 BC not
only the maverick Appius Claudius pushed through his Via Appia project, but the
first of the Roman aqueducts, the Aqua Appia, was built. The wells and the
Tiber were not enough to supply the growing population with potable water. Not
to mention that the same growing population used the Great Sewer as well, and
the Great Sewer dumped its content into the Tiber river, so another source of
drinking water was urgently needed.
Amazingly, after all these wars,
Rome’s population was growing and it held approximately 90 000 people which
made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean . In addition, with the Roman invention of
giving out citizenship to people who were not born in Rome, were not born of
Roman parents and never even traveled to Rome, there were tens of thousands of
Roman citizens strewn across Italy. There were more hundreds of thousands who held Latin
Rights and Allied status and who kept peace and quiet because it meant that
they might receive citizenship sometimes in the future, if they behaved well.
Looking around Italy around 280 BC,
the Romans could be happy. Where their gaze fell, they had an Ally, or a Latin
Rights community, and close to Rome, the former deadly enemies became Roman citizens
and competed in the Roman elections and for Roman public contracts to build Via
Valeria. The Gauls in the Po valley in the north did not see it that way yet
and neither did some Greek holdouts in the south, like the city-state of
Tarentum, but the Roman Senate and People did not fret about them.
They should have, because while Romans were fighting and building alliances, roads and aqueducts, they attracted
attention of other regional powers, first the Hellenistic ones and later the
Carthaginians.
Dear Eva: do I understand from your the last posting about the third Samnite war, that it did not matter how hard Romans tried to appease their neighbours, they always were challanged? Does it mean (for our times) that overpowering millitary strength is the only deterrent not to be attacked? Or as Roman saying goes: If you want peace, get ready for war? Love your blog! (the longer I follow your wonderful writing,the less courage I have to give you my name.)
ReplyDeleteThe neighbours of the Romans were decidedly dedicated to destroy them. They lost, but a few times they came close. Since the Gallic sack of Rome, the Romans were always ready for war. This meant that they became the leaders of central Italy without anybody from the neighbourhood challenging them. But - there is always 'but' - they stayed leaders of central Italy, only because they stayed armed and as they said: 'Si vis pacem, para bellum' - If you want peace, prepare for war.
ReplyDeleteWonderful answer, but in present Obama's administration it looks like their knowledge of roman times is zero; and it worries me a lot. But your writing about it is magnificent. Thanks a million!
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