n left by the
treaty, complained with reason, but in vain. Rome pursued her purpose
with undeviating steadfastness, and displayed her energetic and
far-reaching policy--more even than on the battlefield--in the securing
of the territory which she gained by enveloping it, politically and
militarily, in a net whose meshes could not be broken.

Inaction of the Samnites

As a matter of course, the Samnites could not behold the threatening
progress of the Romans with satisfaction, and they probably put
obstacles in its way; nevertheless they neglected to intercept the new
career of conquest, while there was still perhaps time to do so, with
that energy which the circumstances required. They appear indeed in
accordance with their treaty with Rome to have occupied and strongly
garrisoned Teanum; for while in earlier times that city sought help
against Samnium from Capua and Rome, in the later struggles it appears
as the bulwark of the Samnite power on the west. They spread,
conquering and destroying, on the upper Liris, but they neglected
to establish themselves permanently in that quarter. They destroyed
the Volscian town Fregellae--by which they simply facilitated the
institution of the Roman colony there which we have just mentioned
--and they so terrified two other Volscian towns, Fabrateria (Ceccano)
and Luca (site unknown), that these, following the example of Capua,
surrendered themselves to the Romans (424). The Samnite confederacy
allowed the Roman conquest of Campania to be completed before they in
earnest opposed it; and the reason for their doing so is to be sought
partly in the contemporary hostilities between the Samnite nation and
the Italian Hellenes, but principally in the remiss and distracted
policy which the confederacy pursued.

Notes for Book II Chapter V

1. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

2. The original equality of the two armies is evident from Liv. i. 52;
viii. 8, 14, and Dionys. viii, 15; but most clearly from Polyb. vi. 26.

3. Dionysius (viii. 15) expressly states, that in the later federal
treaties between Rome and Latium the Latin communities were interdicted
from calling out their contingents of their own motion and sending them
into the field alone.

4. These Latin staff-officers were the twelve -praefecti sociorum-,
who subsequently, when the old phalanx had been resolved into the
later legions and -alae-, had the charge of the two -alae- of the
federal contingen