It was
natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new burgesses
which had not yet passed over should continue their resistance with
the utmost obstinacy. In the Latin town of Norba for instance,
when Aemilius Lepidus got into it by treason, the citizens killed
each other and set fire themselves to their town, solely in order
to deprive their executioners of vengeance and of booty. In Lower
Italy Neapolis had already been taken by assault, and Capua had,
as it would seem, been voluntarily surrendered; but Nola was only
evacuated by the Samnites in 674. On his flight from Nola the last
surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the
insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned
by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had
hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the
door of his own house. As to the Samnites, the dictator declared
that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed, and that
the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated from the earth; and,
as he verified these words in terrible fashion on the prisoners
taken before Rome and in Praeneste, so he appears to have also
undertaken a raid for the purpose of laying waste the country,
to have captured Aesernia(16) (674?), and to have converted that
hitherto flourishing and populous region into the desert which it
has since remained. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed
by Marcus Crassus. A longer resistance was offered in Etruria
by Populonium and above all by the impregnable Volaterrae, which
gathered out of the remains of the beaten party an army of four
legions, and stood a two years' siege conducted first by Sulla
in person and then by the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother
of the democratic consul, till at length in the third year after
the battle at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on
condition of free departure. But in this terrible time neither
military law nor military discipline was regarded; the soldiers
raised a cry of treason and stoned their too compliant general; a
troop of horse sent by the Roman government cut down the garrison
as it withdrew in terms of the capitulation. The victorious army
was distributed throughout Italy, and all the insecure townships
were furnished with strong garrisons: under the iron hand of the
Sullan officers the last palpitations of the revolutionary and
national opposition slowly died away.