012 - The First Samnite War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. In a single generation, Rome had recovered from the devastation of the Gallic sack and regained its dominant position within the region. The plebes had demanded and received greater political power, culminating with the election of the first plebe consul in 366 BC, the year after Camilla shepherded the Licinian law through the senate. I did not mention this last week, but the admittance of plebes into the consulship also saw the end of military tribunes with consular power as one of the highest offices of state. The dual consulship was reinstated for good, and the obsolete office of military tribune was never revived. Subsequent years would see other plebe firsts, including the first plebe dictator in 356 BC and the first plebe censor in 351 BC. Both feats achieved by a single man, Gaius Martius Rutulus, who, over the course of his illustrious career, would also be elected consul four times.

By 343 BC, the Romans were once again seen as the great force in central Italy, and, as we are about to see, this meant that their neighbors forever sought to involve them in squabbles that had nothing to do with Rome or Roman interests. The Romans were the big kid on the block every other kid wanted on their side. As I did last time, I would like to open this week with a quote from Livy, discussing the year hostilities began with the Samnites and its significance in the greater arc of Roman history. From now on, the wars described will be of greater importance. Our enemies were more powerful, and campaigns lasted longer and were mounted in remote areas. For this was the year when an attack was launched against the Samnites, a people who were strong both in resources and in arms. After the Samnite War, which was inconclusive, Pyrrhus was the enemy, and after him the Carthaginians. What a series of momentous events! How often we were in mortal danger, to enable us to raise up our empire to its present heights of grandeur, where only with difficulty it is sustained. Rome was on the precipice of its rise to greatness.

The Samnites, as I have said previously, were a semi-nomadic tribe from the south-central section of the Apennines, called Samnium. Starting in the 300s BC, the Samnites, along with a number of other hill tribes, began to come down out of the hills and onto the plains that lay between the mountains and the coastline. Some moved south and began to encroach on the Greek cities of Magna Graecia. Others, like the Samnites, began to move west and came down to a land known as Campania, which lay southeast of Rome. The Greeks in the south sent envoys across the Adriatic to beg for assistance in fighting off the hill tribes, and were answered by Alexander of Epirus, who sent an army to help rid the Greeks of the encroaching menace. As we will see later, this introduction of an army from Epirus would have far-reaching consequences for the Romans. Sixty years later, an army from Epirus would again answer Greek calls for aid, only this time not to battle nomadic hill tribes, but rather the growing power of Rome. But we still have a ways to go before we get to that.

The largest and most important city in Campania, where the Samnites were setting up shop, was Capua. Known for its rich soil and soft lifestyle, Capua was no match for the hardened Samnite warriors, so, like the Greeks, they cast about for a savior. Envoys were sent to the largest and strongest power in the region, Rome, to beg for aid. The Romans, however, turned the envoys away. Rome had already concluded a treaty with the Samnites and could not in good conscience break it. They had, after all, sworn oaths before the gods. The desperate Capuans then took an extraordinary step. They formally surrendered Capua, its land, and citizens to Rome, willingly making themselves subjects of Rome. The Senate could not look this massive gift horse in the mouth. The land controlled by Capua was some of the best in Italy, and the food it could provide would put the days of grain famine in the rear-view mirror forever. The Romans accepted the surrender and sent their own envoys to Samnium, where they explained that Capua was now Roman territory and, as per their treaty, the Samnites must desist all attacks. The Samnites would have none of this and scoffed at the Roman envoys, taking the insulting step of ordering a raid into Campania right in front of the Roman legates. The Romans, offended by this obvious breach of protocol, felt they had no choice at this point but to declare war. And so the First Samnite War began.

The two consuls for that year, 343 B.C., by our reckoning, were Aulus Cornelius Causus, a capable but forgettable leader, and Marcus Valerius Corvus, a true blue member of the legendary Roman Heroes Club. He was a member of the prominent Valerian family, whose famous ancestral patriarch was Publius Valerius Publicola himself. The surname Corvus, or Raven, was earned as a young man while serving in the army. The legions were squaring off against an army of Gauls, when a huge Gallic fighter stepped forward and challenged any Roman to single combat. Young Marcus Valerius, all of twenty-two, stepped forward and accepted the challenge. As he approached the Gaul, a raven landed on his shoulder, a sign that the gods favored him. The Gaul was worried by this clear omen but proceeded with the fight anyway, and the raven, far from leaving when the clash began, actually joined in, pecking at the Gaul's eyes while Valerius ran him through with his sword. Valerius triumphant, the raven flew off. The legions then swept into the Gallic line and defeated them almost without resistance, and auspicious, if obviously embellished, beginning to a career to say the least. Corvus would be elected consul for the first time the very next year, at the unprecedented age of twenty-three. Before dying at the also unprecedented age of a hundred, he would be elected consul five more times and named dictator twice.

But getting back to the war with the Samnites, Corvus was sent to protect Campania, and his colleague Cassus was sent to invade Samnium. Between the two, they figured to have the Samnites at heel in no time. Corvus was the first to meet the enemy, and after a fierce battle at the base of Madgaris, fiercer than the Romans expected, the Samnites were routed. It was not an easy victory, and put the Romans on notice that they were not fighting Molshin raiders anymore. Cassus, in Samnium, almost blundered his way into the destruction of his own army, but was saved by one of his tribunes. The consul had led his army into a ravine, and noticed only too late that the Samnites had taken up a position on the ridge and stood ready to shower them with projectiles. One of his tribunes, Publius Decius, noticed that the Samnites were positioned in the shadows of a steep hill, and if a company of Romans could take the hill, then they would be able to pin down the Samnites, allowing the legions to escape. Cassus immediately ordered Decius and a detachment of volunteers to execute the plan. Decius slipped up and took the hill before the Samnites realized what was going on, and immediately began pelting the Samnites with missiles. In the confusion, Cassus was able to withdraw his army to safety, but Decius was left on the hill, surrounded by an army of angry Samnites who had just been denied an easy victory.

Secure on the high ground, the Roman detachment was able to hold out until nightfall, at which point, recognizing their hopeless position, they decided to risk death by sneaking through the Samnite army, rather than remaining on the hill and safely starving to death. They had gone about halfway through the camp when one of the soldiers dropped his shield on a sleeping Samnite. Decius immediately began yelling at his men to attack anything that moved. The Samnites, half asleep and panicked by the sudden violent commotion, did not know what or who to attack. Decius and his men made a break through the army, killing everything in their path. When they emerged on the other side, Decius took a head count and realized to his great pleasure that of the company of men he had led on a sure suicide mission, he had not lost a single man. In the morning they made their way to the Roman camp and were greeted with thunderous applause. Causas was about to launch into a speech praising Decius when the tribune cut him off, saying that the Samnites were in complete disarray and the time to finish the job was now. Causas took the advice and sent his army out. The Romans found the Samnites exactly as Decius had described, in confused disarray, attacked them immediately, and won easily.

The Romans had now won their first two engagements with the Samnites, but the first had been an unexpectedly hard slog, and the latter would have been a disaster had it not been for the tactical blunder the Samnites had committed by not immediately falling on Causas' legions. The third and final battle of the war was fought at Susula, near the border between Campania and Samnium. Envoys from that city came to Marcus Corvus with news that the army he had driven off was regrouping and planning to re-invade. Corvus ordered his army forward with all haste, leaving behind all non-essential personnel and gear, marching only with his infantry, cavalry, and what could be carried on their backs. This decision to pack light would prove, unexpectedly, to be the decisive factor in the coming fight. When Corvus arrived at Susula, he ordered a camp built. Due to the paucity of men and material, the camp turned out to be physically much smaller than the Samnites were used to seeing the Romans build. They assumed this meant that a smaller force was encamped, and all their strategic decisions flowed from this faulty assumption. They decided that the best course would be to starve the small Roman garrison out and began preparing for a siege. The Samnite commanders, rather than keeping their army together, ordered foraging parties out across the countryside for supplies to sustain their army while they waited for the Romans to surrender. Corvus caught wind of the Samnite activities and, as soon as the bulk of the army was scattered, he ordered his men to attack. The Samnites were shocked when the whole of the legions came pouring out of the small camp, not the minor detachment they had supposed they were dealing with. Corvus's army took the Samnite camp almost without a fight, and then spent the rest of the afternoon rounding up the dispersed Samnite foraging parties. The Battle of Susula was over before it had really begun.

This victory marked the end of the First Samnite War. Corvus and Causas were both awarded triumphs, and Decius was given the grass crown for his heroics. The grass crown was the most prestigious and rarely given military honor, the highest decoration a Roman soldier could receive. It was given to an individual who single-handedly, or nearly single-handedly, saved an entire legion from destruction. It was a rare honor because it was granted only by a vote of the saved legionaries themselves, and it took extraordinary circumstances for proud Roman soldiers to admit that they had to be rescued. But in this case it was universally understood that Decius had saved their butts, so Decius got the grass crown.

After the fighting ended, however, the Romans were forced to deal with trouble from an unexpected source, their own legions. During the winter of 342-341 BC, the legions were garrisoned across Campania to keep an eye out for further Samnite aggression. The largest garrison was outside of Capua, the city famous for its soft, easy living, and detrimental effect on military discipline. Indeed, as we would later see, some note a marked change in the power and endurance of Hannibal's army after spending the winter in Capua during the Second Punic War. The Roman garrison, cooped up for the winter in camp, looked on at the comfortable Capuans and began asking themselves why a people who could not even defend themselves were allowed to have so much when they, the soldiers who would secure the peace, were given so little. The consuls for that year began to hear mutinous rumors coming from the Campanian legions and took steps to nip the conspiracy in the bud, but the move backfired. Their plan was to quietly reassign the men identified as conspirators and shuffle groups of soldiers around so no hard plans could be laid. But the conspirators quickly caught on and, rather than reporting to their new assignments, they collected at an arranged point and began to actively plot a rebellion. They were soon strong enough numbers-wise, but lacked a leader to make them a cohesive unit. In a classic display of counterproductive ego and pride, nobody was willing to submit to the command of anyone else, so they remained a body without a head.

As they brainstormed for ways out of their dilemma, it was noted that an ex-general, Titus Quintius, lived in the area. Quintius had retired fully from public life, despising the backstabbing intrigue of Roman politics, and the conspirators decided he was the perfect choice to lead them. A company of men was sent to persuade the old man to join their cause. Quintius, however, wanted nothing to do with the mutinous rabble, but was persuaded when the men threatened to kill him and his whole family if he did not come along. Having successfully hijacked a leader, the revolt moved forward, and the men marched towards Rome, though what exactly they hoped to accomplish is unclear. They probably wanted to secure land grants in Campania, but how they thought the Senate or the people of Rome would simply give them what they wanted and then go on as if nothing happened is a mystery. The rebellion had taken on an irrational inertia all its own.

Upon hearing the news that a rebellious army was marching on Rome, the Senate immediately named Marcus Corvus to the first of his two dictatorships, and he rode off at the head of a legion to stop the mutinous army. They met each other at the Alban Mount, near the birthplace of Romulus and Remus, but neither side was destined to draw their swords in anger. Instead the occasion was defined by reconciliation, and secured Corvus' place in the history books not just as a great warrior, but also a wise and compassionate leader of men. He was loved not just by the men he led that day, but also by the mutineers, most of whom had fought with him against the Samnites. Corvus implored them to put down their swords and not draw the blood of their fellow citizens. Quintus, the hijacked general, who wanted no part of the rebellion anyway, ordered his men to stand down, and the combined weight of these two towering figures compelled them to give up. Corvus then led a combined force back into Rome, where he famously asked for and received clemency for the rebellious soldiers. Corvus did not want the affair to remain a thorn in the side of Roman solidarity, and he made sure no soldier was cast off the census rolls or in any other way penalized for his actions. It was a singular case of leniency toward mutinous soldiers, and, though Corvus was hailed forever as a great man for securing the leniency, his example was rarely followed by later generations who treated any hint of mutiny quickly and without mercy.

Soon after the abortive rebellion, a truce was formalized with the Samnites. The Campanians, however, were in no mood for peace, and allied themselves with a combined Latin army that took the fight into Samnium as a punitive response to the Samnite invasion of Campania. The Latin communities hoped to grab some Samnite land and enhance their own power in the region, hopefully securing better terms of alliance with Rome. The Samnites immediately appealed to the Romans to halt the attacks. The Romans agreed to order the Campanians, who were now their subjects, to halt, but the claim their treaty with the Latins granted them no authority over their own internal military decisions. This decision had two effects. For one, it offended the Samnites, who thought the Romans were just hiding behind legalese and directing the Latins, subjects to Rome in all but name, to keep fighting illegally after the treaty had been established. Second, it perked the ears of the Latins, who took the Roman decision to mean that the Romans did not believe they could stop the Latins from what they were doing. When the time was ripe, the Latins decided to renegotiate their status with Rome. For over a hundred years, they had sent men and money to fight Roman wars and were consistently given only a pittance of the spoils in return. Full equality, they decided, was theirs for the taking and, turning away from the Samnites, they set their sights on Rome itself. Having just concluded one war, the Romans were about to be embroiled in another, the Latin War, which would not turn out exactly as the Latins planned, resulting in not full equality, but full subservience to Roman rule, and an end even to the appearance of independence.

The First Samnite War would prove to be mere foreplay between the Samnites and Romans. The Romans had gotten the upper hand, but it could have just as easily gone the other way. The Second, or Great Samnite War, would start twenty years later and not last for two years, but twenty-two years. In that war, the Samnites would hand the Romans some of their greatest and most humiliating defeats. The Romans had, since their founding, used the Greek phalanx system for their army, but soon found it unsuited for the mountainous terrain of Samnium, the Samnite cavalry and light infantry were able to easily outmaneuver the heavy Roman phalanx, forcing the Romans to completely overhaul their military structure before they could beat the Samnites in the field. But that war was still a generation away. Next week, the Romans will follow the old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and join forces with the Samnites to quash forever Latin dreams of independence.