t result, political causes may have been at work along with the
military in producing the singularly rapid fall of the power of the
insurgents; the law of Silvanus and Carbo may have fulfilled its design
in carrying defection and treason to the common cause into the ranks
of the enemy; and misfortune, as has so frequently happened, may
have fallen as an apple of discord among the loosely-connected
insurgent communities.

Perseverance of the Samnites

We see only--and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia,
that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions--that
the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo
who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the
capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring
people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their
own land, and, after "Italia" was vanquished, undertook to continue
the struggle as "Safini" or Samnites.(18) The strong Aesernia was
converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat
that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was
said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the
manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were
placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to
him. With astonishment men saw the Samnite wars beginning anew after
a pause of two hundred years, and the resolute nation of farmers making
a fresh attempt, just as in the fifth century, after the Italian
confederation was shattered, to force Rome with their own hand to
recognize their country's independence. But this resolution of the
bravest despair made not much change in the main result; although the
mountain-war in Samnium and Lucania might still require some time and
some sacrifices, the insurrection was nevertheless already
substantially at an end.

Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

In the meanwhile, certainly, there had occurred a fresh complication,
for the Asiatic difficulties had rendered it imperatively necessary
to declare war against Mithradates king of Pontus, and for next year
(666) to destine the one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor.
Had this war broken out a year earlier, the contemporary revolt of
the half of Italy and of the most important of the provinces would have
formed an immense peril to the Roman state. Now that the marvellous
good fortune of Rome ha