HKB
Picentini (455).[201] Rome treated with Tarentum on a footing of equality, and engaged not to let her fleet pass the Lacinian Promontory to the south of the Gulf of Tarentum.[202]
Thus, on the one hand, the territories shared among the Roman citizens; on the other, the number of the municipia were considerably augmented. Further, the Republic had acquired new allies; she possessed at length the passages of the Apennines and commanded both seas.[203] A girdle of Latin fortresses protected Rome and broke the communications between the north and south of Italy; among the Marsi and the Æqui, there were Alba and Carseoli; Sora, towards the sources of the Liris; and Narnia, in Umbria. Military roads connected the colonies with the metropolis.
[Sidenote: Fourth Samnite War. Second coalition of the Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls (456-464).]
VII. Peace could not last long: between Rome and the Samnites it was a duel to death. In 456, these latter had already sufficiently recovered from their disasters to attempt once more the fortune of arms.[204] Rome sends to the succour of the Lucanians, suddenly attacked, two consular armies. Vanquished at Tifernum by Fabius, at Maleventum by Decius, the Samnites witness the devastation of their whole country. Still they do not lose courage; their chief, Gellius Egnatius, conceives a plan which places Rome in great danger. He divides the Samnite army into three bodies: the first remains to defend the country; the second takes the offensive in Campania; the third, which he commands in person, throws itself into Etruria, and, increased by the junction of the Etruscans, the Gauls, and the Umbrians, soon forms a numerous army.[205] The storm roared on all sides, and, while the Roman generals were occupied some in Samnium and others in Campania, despatches arrived from Appius, placed at the head of the army of Etruria, announcing a terrible coalition formed in silence by the peoples of the north, who were concentrating all their forces in Umbria for the purpose of marching upon Rome.
The terror was extreme, but the energy of the Romans was equal to the danger. All able men, even to the freedmen, were enrolled, and ninety thousand soldiers were raised. Under these grave circumstances (458), Fabius and Decius were, once again, raised to the supreme magistracy, and gained, under the walls of Sentinum, a brilliant victory, long disputed. During the battle, Decius devoted himself, as his father had done before. The coalition once dissolved, Fabius defeated another army which had issued from Perusia, and then came to receive the honour of a triumph in Rome. Etruria was subdued (460), and obtained a truce of forty years.[206]
The Samnites still maintained an obstinate struggle of mingled successes and reverses. In 461, after having taken an oath to conquer or die, thirty thousand of them were left on the field of battle of Aquilonia. A few months later, the celebrated Pontius, the hero of Furcæ Caudinæ, re-appeared, at the end of twenty-nine years, at the head of his fellow-citizens, and inflicted upon the son of Fabius a check, which the latter soon retrieved with the assistance of his father.[207] Finally, in 464, two Roman armies re-commenced, in Samnium, a war of extermination, which led for the fourth time to the renewal of the ancient treaties and the cession of a certain extent of territory. At the same epoch, an insurrection which broke out in the Sabine territory was put down by Curius Dentatus. Central Italy was conquered.
The peace with the Samnites lasted five years (464-469). Rome extended her frontiers, and fortified those of the peoples placed under her protectorate; and at the same time established new military forts.