10.31
In
spite of these defeats neither the Etruscans nor the Samnites remained quiet.
After the consul had withdrawn his army the Perusians recommenced
hostilities, a force of Samnites descended into the country round Vescia and
Formiae, plundering and harrying as they went, whilst another body invaded
the district of Aesernum and the region round the Vulturnus. Appius
Claudius was sent against these with Decius' old army; Fabius, who had
marched into Etruria, slew 4500 of the Perusians, and took 1740 prisoners,
who were ransomed at 310 ases per head; the rest of the booty was given to
the soldiers. The Samnites, one body of which was pursued by Appius
Claudius, the other by L. Volumnius, effected a junction in the Stellate
district and took up a position there. A desperate battle was fought, the one
army was furious against those who had so often taken up arms against
them, the other felt that this was their last hope. The Samnites lost 16,300
killed and 2700 prisoners; on the side of the Romans 2700 fell. As far as
military operations went, the year was a prosperous one, but it was rendered
an anxious one by a severe pestilence and by alarming portents. In many
places showers of earth were reported to have fallen, and a large number of
men in the army under Appius Claudius were said to have been struck by
lightning. The Sacred Books were consulted in view of these occurrences.
During this year Q. Fabius Gurges, the consul's son, who was an aedile,
brought some matrons to trial before the people on the charge of adultery.
Out of their fines he obtained sufficient money to build the temple of Venus
which stands near the Circus.
The Samnite wars are still with us, those wars which I have been
occupied with through these last four books, and which have gone on
continuously for six-and-forty years, in fact ever since the consuls, M.
Valerius and A. Cornelius, carried the arms of Rome for the first time into
Samnium. It is unnecessary now to recount the numberless defeats which
overtook both nations, and the toils which they endured through all those
years, and yet these things were powerless to break down the resolution or
crush the spirit of that people; I will only allude to the events of the past
year. During that period the Samnites, fighting sometimes alone, sometimes
in conjunction with other nations, had been defeated by Roman armies under
Roman generals on four several occasions, at Sentinum, amongst the
Paeligni, at Tifernum, and in the Stellate plains; they had lost the most
brilliant general they ever possessed; they now saw their allies -Etruscans,
Umbrians, Gauls -overtaken by the same fortune that they had suffered; they
were unable any longer to stand either in their own strength or in that
afforded by foreign arms. And yet they would not abstain from war; so far
were they from being weary of defending their liberty, even though
unsuccessfully, that they would rather be worsted than give up trying for
victory. What sort of a man must he be who would find the long story of
those wars tedious, though he is only narrating or reading it, when they
failed to wear out those who were actually engaged in them?