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Rh of Umbria rendered them as valuable to Rome as the Apulians had proved farther south.

Fourteen years had passed since the battle on the Vadimonian Lake, when the Samnites appeared on the borders of Etruria and called on the peoples of northern Italy to rise against the common enemy. Their appeal, backed by the presence of their troops, was successful. The Etruscans

found courage to face the Roman legions once more; a few of the Umbrians joined them; but the most valuable allies to the Samnites were the Celts, who had for some time threatened a raid across the Apennines, and who now marched eagerly into Umbria and joined the coalition. The news that the Celts were in motion produced a startling effect at Rome, and every nerve was strained to meet this new danger. While two armies were left in southern Etruria as reserves, the two consuls, Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus and P. Decius Mus the younger, both tried soldiers, marched northwards up the valley of the Tiber and into Umbria at the head of four Roman legions and a still larger force of Italian allies. At Sentinum, on the further side of the Apennines, they encountered the united forces of the Celts and Samnites, the Etruscans and Umbrians having, it is said, been withdrawn for the defence of their own homes. The battle that followed was desperate, and the Romans lost one of their consuls, Decius, and more than 8000 men. But the Roman victory was decisive. The Celts were annihilated, and the fear of a second Celtic attack on Rome removed. All danger from the coalition was over. The Etruscan communities gladly purchased peace by the payment of indemnities. The rising in Umbria, never formidable, died away, and the Samnites were left single-handed to bear the whole weight of the wrath of Rome. During four years more, however, they desperately defended their highland

homes, and twice at least, in 293 and 292, they managed to place in the field a force sufficient to meet the Roman legions on equal terms. At last, in 290, the consul M’.Curius Dentatus finally exhausted their power of resistance. Peace was concluded, and it is significant of the respect inspired at Rome by their indomitable courage that they were allowed to become the allies of Rome, on equal terms and without any sacrifice of independence.

Between the close of the Third Samnite War and the landing of Pyrrhus in 281 we find Rome engaged, as her wont was, in quietly extending and consolidating her power. In southern Italy she strengthened her hold on Apulia by planting on the borders of Apulia and Lucania the

strong colony of Venusia. In central Italy the annexation of the Sabine country (290) carried her frontiers eastward to the borders of her Picentine allies on the Adriatic. Farther east, in the territory of the Picentes themselves, she established colonies on the Adriatic coast at Hadria and Castrum (285–83). North of the Picentes lay the territories of the Celtic Senones stretching inland to the north-east borders of Etruria, and these too now fell into her hands. Ten years after their defeat at Sentinum (285–84) a Celtic force descended into Etruria, besieged Arretium and defeated the relieving force dispatched by Rome. In 283 the consul L. Cornelius Dolabella was sent to avenge the insult. He completely routed the Senones. Their lands were annexed by Rome, and a colony established at Sena on the coast. This success, followed as it was by the decisive defeat of the neighbouring tribe of the Boii, who had invaded Etruria and penetrated as far south as the Vadimonian Lake, awed the Celts into quiet, and for more than forty years there was comparative tranquillity in northern Italy.

In the south, however, the claims of Rome to supremacy

were now to be disputed by a new and formidable foe. At the close of the Third Samnite War the Greek cities on the southern coast of Italy found themselves once more harassed by the Sabellian tribes on their borders,

whose energies, no longer absorbed by the long struggles in central Italy, now found an attractive opening southward. Naturally enough the Greeks, like the Capuans sixty years before, appealed for aid to Rome (283—82), and like the Capuans they offered in return to recognize the suzerainty of the great Latin Republic. In reply a Roman force under C. Fabricius Luscinus marched into south Italy, easily routed the marauding bands of Lucanians, Bruttians and

Samnites, and established Roman garrisons in Locri, Croton, Rhegium and Thurii. At Tarentum, the most powerful and flourishing of the Greek seaports, this sudden and rapid advance of Rome excited the greatest anxiety. Tarentum was already allied by treaty (301) with Rome, and she had now to decide whether this treaty should be exchanged for one which would place her, like the other Greek communities, under the protectorate of Rome, or whether she should find

some ally able and willing to assist in making a last stand for independence. The former course, in Tarentum, as before at Capua, was the one favoured by the aristocratic party; the latter was eagerly supported by the mass of the people and their leaders. While matters were still in suspense, the appearance, contrary to the treaty, of a Roman squadron off the harbour decided the controversy. The Tarentines, indignant at the insult, attacked the hostile fleet, killed the admiral and sunk most of the ships. Still Rome, relying probably on her partisans in the city, tried negotiation, and an alliance appeared likely after all, when suddenly the help for which the Tarentine democrats

had been looking appeared, and war with Rome was resolved upon (281–80).

King Pyrrhus, whose timely appearance seemed for the moment to have saved the independence of Tarentum, was the most brilliant of the military adventurers whom the disturbed times following the death of Alexander the Great had brought into prominence. High-spirited, generous and ambitious, he had formed the scheme of rivalling Alexander’s achievements in the East, by winning for himself an empire in the West. He aspired not only to unite under his rule the Greek communities of Italy and Sicily, but to overthrow the great Phoenician state of Carthage—the natural enemy of Greeks in the West, as Persia had been in the East. Of Rome it is clear that he knew little or nothing; the task of ridding the Greek seaports of their barbarian foes he no doubt regarded as an easy one; and the splendid force he brought with him was intended rather for the conquest of the West than for the preliminary work of chastising a few Italian tribes, or securing the submission of the unwarlike Italian Greeks. He defeated the Roman consul, M. Valerius Laevinus, on the banks of the

Liris (280), and gained the support of the Greek cities as well as that of numerous bands of Samnites, Lucanians and Bruttians. But, to the disappointment of his new allies, Pyrrhus showed no anxiety to follow up his advantage. His heart was set on Sicily and Africa, and his immediate object was to come to terms with Rome. But though he advanced as near Rome as Anagnia (279), nothing could shake the resolution of the senate, and in the next year

(278) he again routed the legions at Asculum (Ascoli), but only to find that the indomitable resolution of the enemy was strengthened by defeat. He now crossed into Sicily, where, though at first successful, he was unable to achieve any lasting result. Soured and disappointed, Pyrrhus returned to Italy (276) to find the Roman legions steadily moving 476 southwards, and his Italian allies disgusted by his desertion of their cause. In 275 the decisive battle of the war

was fought at Beneventum. The consul, M'. Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of Samnium, gained a complete victory,