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the Samnites
If you head into the rugged terrain east of Naples, to Benevento, you enter an area called Safinim by its Oscan-speaking inhabitants of 500 b.c. and Samnium by Latin-speaking neighbors a few hundred miles to the north. Today, you will notice something very interesting on the tower in the main street. On one side there is a map of the Duchy of Benevento, the Lombard state that lasted from the fall of the Roman Empire to the coming of the Norman Kingdom of Naples in the 11th century. On the other side of the tower is a map of pre-Roman Samnium. There is nothing, whatever, to tell us that the area was ever part of anything called The Roman Empire. This "oversight" is, perhaps, a holdover from enmity that led to long bloody wars and even genocide, before this tough race of mountain warriors, the Samnites, in their stand against Rome, eventually went the way of the Etruscans, Greeks, and Carthaginians. The Samnites were immigrants to the area, replacing the Opici (or Osci—Oscans), who, however, have given their name to the large family of languages spoken by many Indo-European inhabitants of Italy at the time, including the Samnites, the Sabines to the north of Rome, and the Campanians of this area. Oscan was related to Latin as, approximately, Spanish is to Italian, or English to German. The Samnites, themselves, had no written language until 425, when they penetrated western Campania and came in contact with the Greeks of Neapolis and subsequently adopted—and adapted—the Greek alphabet. Setting aside the special cases of the earlier Etruscans and Greeks, 400 b.c. marks the beginning of various attempts by competing peoples in Italy to gain an upper hand. At that time, Samnium was already made up of a Samnite League of four peoples, the Caudini, Hirpini, Caraceni and Pentri, and their territory was bigger than any other contemporary state in Italy. (Names of other tribes generally held to be of Samnite origin, such as the Frentani, along the Adriatic coast, also crop up in sources about Samnium.) Although these people were generally landlocked between the mountains in today's eastern Campania and the plains of Puglia on the other side of the peninsula, at the point of their maximum expansion they actually controlled coastlines on both sides. They were bounded by Lucania in the south and Latium in the north. The first official dealing between the Samnites and Romans that we know of was a treaty they signed in 354 b.c., most likely a pact in the face of what were still formidable threats from the Etruscans as well as the ferocious Celts, who had sacked Rome a few years earlier. By the middle of the 4th century the Romans were already enjoying some local success at consolidation. In 338 they had dissolved the Latin League, making other member peoples part of the Roman state in what had now become a Greater Latium of sorts. To the south, however, they were totally unable to play the sister peoples of Samnium off against one another. The Samnites were resistant to the outside world and content to hole up in the mountains, building their characteristic polygonal fortifications on the heights and living in a social system based on tribal communities. They hunted and herded, existing—subsisting—on the sparse soil and by barter. As warriors, their army was organized into cohorts and legions, much like the Romans, and they also used cavalry. Some speculate that the Romans borrowed the idea of those gruesome gladiatorial fights to the death from the Samnites, who at the time of their first face-offs with Rome already had the reputation of being merciless fighters who took no prisoners. These were two stubborn peoples on a collision
course. In retrospect, the Romans were more expansive
(the irresistible force) and the Samnites more
interested in digging in (the immovable object).
Eleven years after the signing of the treaty, the
first Samnite War broke out. It was over land in
Campania. After two years of fighting it was a
standoff, and the combatants agreed to renew their
earlier pact. Rome, however, had gained northern
Campania in the deal and become as big as Samnium. Samnite
archaeological site
The Romans spent the next five years signing treaties
with southern Italian peoples, such as the Lucani,
ensuring that in future conflicts Samnium would be
surrounded. The Romans also rearmed, and hostilities
in this Second Samnite War resumed in 316. Samnium
thrust towards Rome, putting that city, itself, under
threat of invasion. This was more or less the
highwater mark of Samnium. Their attention was
diverted, however, by Roman victories in the south and
by a no-show on the battlefield by Samnium's potential
allies from the north, the Etruscans. Peace broke out
in 304. The Samnites returned to their mountain
fortress, but they remained very powerful and
unyielding foes. Samnite
archaeological site
at Pietrabbondante
What is commonly called the "Pyrrhic War" was also a
fourth Samnite War. It lasted from 284 to 272 and
entailed Pyrrhus of Epirus coming to Italy to protect
the enclaves of Magna Grecia from the ambitious
Romans. The Romans, themselves, viewed the affair as
more than just another Samnite war because now other
peoples on the peninsula were resisting the looming
Roman hegemony. The Samnites sided with Pyrrhus, who,
however, went home after paying a prohibitively high
price for a victory at Beneventum. He has left us the
expression "Pyrrhic victory," shorthand for, "With
victories like this, who needs defeats?!" He also left
the Samnites holding the bag. Their league was
dismembered and they were made officially "allies of
Rome," itself Roman shorthand for, "We don't trust you
enough to make you Roman citizens, but you belong to
us." The mountain warriors were now rapidly heading
for the footnotes of history. Samnite
archaeological site
In the year 82 b.c. the history of the Samnites as a historically distinct people came to an end at the battle of the Colline Gate, the northernmost gate in the Servian Wall, a defensive barrier around the city of Rome. The battle marked the end of the Social War. In the struggle, the Samnites had allied themselves with other members of the anti-Roman faction to take part in an invasion of the city of Rome, itself. They were stopped and defeated by Sulla's forces in a ferocious battle in which the existence of Rome, itself, was at stake since the invaders had sworn to raze the city. Some sources claim that 50,000 soldiers on each side died in the battle. When it was over, Sulla had all the Samnite prisoners put to the sword, slaughtered within earshot of Roman senators who had assembled nearby. The remaining inhabitants of Safinim were dispersed. As a historical curiosity, plays in the language of
the Samnites, Oscan, were still put on in Rome as late
as the first century a.d. Also, Oscan writers are said
to have strongly influenced the great flair for satire
in Latin literature. There are, today, even some
apparent Oscan influences in modern Italian. There is
a Samnite museum in Benevento and a formidable
archaeological site at Pietrabbondante, still a remote town
on the northern heights. But it isn't much, really, to
remind us of a people who once gave the future Caesars
a real run for their money, and of whom the Roman
historian Livy respectfully wrote, "only death could
conquer their resolution". to history portal
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The real struggle for the
future of the peninsula began in 327 when the Samnites
took over Naples with the help of an internal Samnite
faction. The ensuing treaty between Naples and the
Samnites swiftly brought the future empire builders
into the fray, and for six years the second war
between Rome and Samnium see-sawed back and forth in a
series of indecisive border raids. In 321 the Romans
tried to break the stalemate by heading into the heart
of Samnium towards its most important city, Malventum
(later rechristened "Beneventum" by the Romans,
changing the name of the town, thus, from "ill wind"
to "good wind"). They marched straight into an ambush
of sorts; there was, according to Roman historian,
Livy, no real fighting although one does read and hear
of the 
Round 3 began a few years
later. The last great threat to potential Roman
domination of the peninsula came at the battle of
Sentinum, near modern Ancona, in 295. Again, the
allies of Samnium were elsewhere when it counted—yet
the Samnites came close. It was a massive battle, in
which a Samnite victory might have changed the history
of Western civilization. "Coming close," however,
counts in horseshoes—not at Marathon or Gettysburg.
After 290, the Samnites were never again a match for
the Romans, and that date traditionally marks the
beginning of true Roman expansion.
When Hannibal invaded Italy,
the Samnites were split among themselves on whether or
not to help him help them get rid of the Romans.
Indeed, the first defeat of Hannibal on Italian soil
was actually inflicted by an army of Samnite soldiers
in 217; yet, Samnium continued to be regarded by the
Romans as hostile, and potential trouble. The Samnites
later confirmed this by joining all the wrong sides in
the Social War, the enormous civil disorders at the
beginning of the first century b.c., a series of
conflicts between the Roman Republic and a number of
members of the so-called Italic Confederation. As with
Hannibal and Pyrrhus, the Samnites had again picked
losers, and in doing so incurred the wrath of the
winners, principal of whom was the Samnite-hating
Roman general,