, whose internal union
had been tried and attested by the peril which, notwithstanding
isolated instances of wavering, it had surmounted on the whole in
faithful fellowship; and to depress still further the non-Latin or
non-Latinized Italians, particularly the Etruscans and the Sabellians
of Lower Italy. The heaviest punishment or rather vengeance was
inflicted partly on the most powerful, partly on those who were at
once the earliest and latest, allies of Hannibal--the community of
Capua, and the land of the Bruttians. The Capuan constitution was
abolished, and Capua was reduced from the second city into the first
village of Italy; it was even proposed to raze the city and level
it with the ground. The whole soil, with the exception of a few
possessions of foreigners or of Campanians well disposed towards Rome,
was declared by the senate to be public domain, and was thereafter
parcelled out to small occupiers on temporary lease. The Picentes on
the Silarus were similarly treated; their capital was razed, and the
inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages. The doom
of the Bruttians was still more severe; they were converted en masse
into a sort of bondsmen to the Romans, and were for ever excluded from
the right of bearing arms. The other allies of Hannibal also dearly
expiated their offence. The Greek cities suffered severely, with the
exception of the few which had steadfastly adhered to Rome, such as
the Campanian Greeks and the Rhegines. Punishment not much lighter
awaited the Arpanians and a number of other Apulian, Lucanian, and
Samnite communities, most of which lost portions of their territory.
On a part of the lands thus acquired new colonies were settled. Thus
in the year 560 a succession of burgess-colonies was sent to the best
ports of Lower Italy, among which Sipontum (near Manfredonia) and
Croton may be named, as also Salernum placed in the former territory
of the southern Picentes and destined to hold them in check, and above
all Puteoli, which soon became the seat of the genteel -villeggiatura-
and of the traffic in Asiatic and Egyptian luxuries. Thurii became
a Latin fortress under the new name of Copia (560), and the rich
Bruttian town of Vibo under the name of Valentia (562). The veterans
of the victorious army of Africa were settled singly on various
patches of land in Samnium and Apulia; the remainder was retained as
public land, and the pasture stations of the grandees of R