The Ancients - Rise of Rome: The Fall of the Samnites

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

In the final part of our Samnite Wars episodes, Tristan is once again joined by Dr Kathryn Lomas from Durham University to find out more about these conflicts and the effect they had on the rise of Rome as an ancient superpower. With three wars between the Roman Republic and the Samnite armies, beginning in 343 BC and ending with a Roman victory in 290 BC - what happened in those 53 years?In this episode, Tristan and Kathryn cover the second and third wars, and look at the impact these fabled events had on the socio-political make up of the Italian peninsula. With Rome successfully taking control of large swathes of central and southern Italy, and the arrival of Pyrrhus, one of history's most infamous men - is this the beginning of Roman domination across the Mediterranean?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store.

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Romans and the Samnites in the mid-4th century BC, and then we delved into the detail of what we know about this quite enigmatic First Samnite War. Now we're going to be continuing the story. We're going to be talking about the Second Samnite War in a lot of detail, the Battle of the Chordine Forks, for instance, why that moment is so significant in Roman history, or infamous, shall we say. And then we continue into the third and final Samnite War, which would ultimately result in Rome gaining control of large swathes of central and southern Italy, very much paving its way to becoming the dominant power on the Italian peninsula. This is a really interesting period in ancient history for me. I think it's absolutely fascinating. Just before Pyrrhus arrives in

southern Italy, Rome is really starting to make its mark in Italy itself. You have one last hurrah as mentioned. You have Pyrrhus arriving afterwards before Rome faces off against the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars. But that is all preceded by one of the greatest rivals in Rome's earlier history, and that is, of course, the Samnites. So I really do hope you enjoy this second part with Dr Catherine Lomas, an honorary fellow at the University of Durham. And without further ado, to talk all about the Second and Third Samnite Wars, here's Catherine. If we then move on to the Second Sunlight War, this feels like a big one. How does it come about, Catherine?

Well, the basic problem is that the Treaty of 341 doesn't actually basically solve the underlying problem, which is the Sunnites and the Romans both are interested in getting their pools on the same sort of area. And in 328, Rome founds a colony, Fregeli, in the Liris Valley, which creates a permanent Roman presence in the area, and of course infringes the treaty. And that doesn't just annoy the Samnites, it also annoys Naples, Neapolis. And as a result, the Samnites encourage the Neapolitans to start harassing the Roman settlers. And Rome takes umbrage, declares war and besieges Naples, which is actually not a terribly smart thing to do because Naples obviously is a port. And Rome doesn't have the sort of navy to blockade it. It's very well defended. It has help from the Sun Knights because Naples is an ethnically mixed Greco-Oscan city by that stage, so the Sun Knights will send their troops in to

help their maids. And also Tarentum offers to help, although in the end it doesn't materialise. So what you end up is with Rome bogged down in this stalemate, trying to blockade Naples and not really getting very far with it. And in fact, the war doesn't end with the Romans defeating Naples. It ends with an intel coup within the city. The pro-Samnite governing faction is chucked out by a bunch of people who prefer alliance with Rome, and they make peace voluntarily. And Naples actually does very, very well out of it because the treaty which it negotiates is very famously advantageous.

We don't know quite what was so advantageous about it, but it's always referred to as an equissimum foidum, you know, sort of most equal treaty. So effectively, that is a sort of small freestanding sort of round one of the war, which ends with Rome actually being able to negotiate a settlement, but having to give very advantageous terms. So it sounds like it starts off well for the Romans, this taking of Naples and all of that. And does this embolden the Romans, shall we say? Do they then decide to try and take the offensive? I mean, what seems to happen now is a sort of bit of a phony war. There's about five years' worth of intermittent Roman campaigns against Sun Knight territory, but it all seems to be small scale.

I mean, Rome does seem to be the main motivator and aggressor in this, as far as we can tell. But it's all fairly small beer. It's sort of raiding rather than huge pitched battles. I think that that's actually something that's worth bearing in mind about ancient warfare. You know, a lot of it isn't about sort of big battles and grand strategy. It's about what we'd regard as sort of raids and guerrilla warfare and border skirmishes. It's about what we'd regard as sort of raids and guerrilla warfare and border skirmishes. So that basically holds sway until 231, when we suddenly get a sort of big upping of the ante with the Chordine Forks.

Okay, that name. We've got to talk about the Chordine Forks. So you say it's at 321 BC. This is a disaster. Tell us through it. What is this event? Because everyone seems to, of all the things Samnite and Samnite Roman, the Chordene Fork is something that many people think of. Yes, indeed. And the paradox about that is we don't actually really know what happened. I mean, there are two possibilities. Either what Livy says happened, actually happened, which was that the Roman army was lured into a trap by being lured into a defile in the mountains and then blockaded and had to surrender because the alternative was annihilation. Or that Rome had actually suffered a defeat and Livy was trying to sort of gloss a truce on condition that the Romans return to Rome and the Roman colonists from Calais and Phragela are withdrawn. and very humiliating ritual surrender known as passing under the yoke, which means that you, I mean, literally you put up a yoke

that you use for driving cattle and force people to strip off, divest themselves of all their weapons and sort of crawl under it in their tunics and, you know, then go home in disgrace. It may not have been a yoke, it may have been an arch of spears, but either way, this is the ritual that was performed. And it's a ritual of humiliation for an army. So that's why it goes down in the annals of Roman history as being this sort of horrible event. It's not so much that the army was defeated, but that it was sort of forced into this very disgraceful surrender.

And that really sort of takes aim at a lot of aspects of Roman culture and the Roman sense of self-identity as a sort of, you know, all concrete warrior people. I mean, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned those terms right there. They seem pretty harsh terms that the Romans do agree to. It seems quite important to stress those points, doesn't it? I mean, we can talk about fact and fiction about this truth versus myth. How do the Romans respond to this humiliation, Catherine? Well, again, you know, we're reliant on Liffey for this, and he's obviously got his own agenda. But according to him, the Senate tears up the agreement. It's so, so outrageous, it says, tear it up with its head. They send the generals who signed it back to Samnium in disgrace, knowing full well that

the Samnites would do horrible things to them. And then it authorises a two-year campaign, the Samnites would do horrible things to them. And then it authorises a two-year campaign, which takes place not just in Samnium, but also in northern Apulia, so in the sort of northern end of South East Italy, if you see what I mean. So they basically try to outplunk the Samnites by going round the back and attacking them on two fronts.

And that ended, it seems, according to him, ended with a defeat, a defeat after which 7,000 Samnites were rounded up and subjected to the ritual of passing under the yoke themselves to kind of wipe out this sort of stain on Roman honour. But the problem is that the details of this are very unclear. And the other weird thing about it is that if you take this as face value, it's depicting the Romans as oath breakers, which is, you know, it's an offence against religion. the Romans as oath breakers, which is, you know, it's an offence against religion. You know, you define the gods if you do that sort of thing, because the peace that breaks out after the Cordain forks is guaranteed by what's called a sponcio, which is a formal oath.

So it's not actually putting Rome in a particular good light. So again, it's a case of, you know, is this real? Because a lot of it doesn't really appear in any corroborating sources. Or is it a face-saving invention to try and sort of wipe out the stain of what happened in 321? It's not really until 316 when we really sort of pick up any sort of substantive, verifiable information about what happens that actually looks realistic.

But what does seem to have happened is that, you know, whatever the living detail, Rome does seem to have happened is that, you know, whatever the living detail, Rome does seem to have sort of spent the time building up alliances or, you know, forcing cities to, you know, building up maybe an inverted commas, you know, it may be a voluntary alliance and diplomatic negotiation, or it may have been, you know, sort of, you know, you have a Roman army on your steps, you make an alliance just in case, with Lucanians and peoples in northern Apulia. So what it's actually trying to do is sort of surround the Samnites by heading around their sort of southern and eastern borders. So basically, there is this period of sort of slightly phony war where we don't really know what's going on.

It's possible that Rome didn't manage some sort of retaliation. On the other hand, it may have been just doing a sort of encircling act to try and corral the Samnites. And it's only really with 316 that we actually pick up any sort of coherent narrative again. I mean, I'm guessing that it's no surprise that when we do pick up this coherent narrative again at that time, that conflict is renewed, is it Catherine? Yes, it is. Yes. One of the things about the Samnite War is that it seems that rather than being a sort of single series of coherent conflicts, it seems to be very episodic. And so it's something that Livy is sort of taking to a lot of sort of quite episodic bits and pieces

and trying to weld them into a coherent narrative. But between 316 and 312, we do have a bit more detail. And basically what we have is Roman besieging Serticula, which is a small centre in Samnium. The Samnites go on the rampage as well. They attack southern Latium and get as far as Terracina on the coast and have quite a lot of success. And interestingly, that seems to be, as far as we can tell,

they're only real unprovoked offensive. Most of the time it seems to be Rome sort of kind of poking them with a stick and then reacting. But this actually does seem to be them moving independently. And of course, that's as it would have to, given that that's in Rome's backyard, provokes a Roman retaliation. It wins back its territory. It is really quite punitive towards the any any communities which had supported the

samnite and some of the allies in southern southern latium seem to have changed sides and those are sacked and heavily suppressed and it re-establishes frageli and not just frageli but a whole string of other colonies in the lyris valley so it's it's really attempting to sort of stamp its control on that territory at this point. It also found a couple of colonies in northern Apulia. So again, it's looking to have a permanent Roman presence rather than just sort of raid and counter raid. And then in the end, they launch a major Roman attack on the very heart of Samnium. And they get as far as Baviana, which is significant because that's very close to Pietro Bandante, which is the main Samnite sanctuary and the area where we think is the headquarters of the Samnite League.

So it's really going for the Samnite heartland at this stage. But it does seem that those four years were a sort of turning up of the heat and a much more coherent, consistent campaigns on both sides. Turning up of the heat, and it just gets hotter in the years following, I'm presuming, to the end of the Samnite War itself. Well, again, the problem is that it all gets a bit sporadic going down to 312 to 304. We know that there was a Roman victory in 310, that the Samnites attacked Campania in 307, 306. But again, it all gets a bit sort of bitty and sporadic.

Again, it all gets a bit sort of bitty and sporadic. It's also, by this stage, not just a Samnite war, because Rome is also fighting ongoing campaigns in Etruria and Umbria. And at this point, Rome has a resurgence of conflict with some of the Etruscan cities. So it's got a war on two fronts as well. The southern Etruria wasn't so much of a problem with Rome at this date, but the northern Etruscan cities of places like Eretium, Modena Renso, Perusia, Perugia now, Clusium, are still very powerful. And they're quite a threat to Rome's sort of interest north of the Tiber. So what seems to happen here is, according to Livy, the Etruscans attack a Roman colony which had been founded at Sutrium in 311.

That triggers a series of Roman reprisals in the couple of years following. And then in 308, an alliance of Etruscans and Umbrians put together a joint army to march on Rome, which forces Rome to take its forces, pull some of its forces back from Samnium to deal with it. But this sort of peters out. Eventually, Romans defeat this force. They force the Umbrians to make an alliance with Rome. And that really gives them control of that area of Italy. And the upshot of that is it's able to consolidate its control of the Tiber Valley. So it really has consolidated its northern frontier at that point. But then they switch back to Samnium and invade Samnium in 306. And there's two years worth of campaigning then, during which Bohianum, Sura and Aquinum, which are key Samnite centres, are sacked.

The Samnite army is heavily defeated. And then in 304, the Samnites are forced to sue for peace and the treaty with Rome is reinstated. And again, we don't know an awful lot about the terms, but we do know that that draws a line under that particular conflict. Wow. Okay. Very much the Romans emerged as victors at the end of that. It's an intermittent war, isn't it? That Second Samurai War. It seems really significant in the story. So thank you for explaining all of that. I mean, one thing which I found really fascinating that you were talking about then was we go back to this idea of colonies of roman colonies not just in the north but in the south

for gali and the like and also like near these river valleys and everything and the importance of colonies at this time for rome for expanding extending its influence how important are they because it seems like the romans are to further their influence, they're setting up all these new little bastions of Rome, outposts of Rome, further and further afield. Yeah, and colonists are interesting for several reasons. They place, as you say, a permanent Roman presence in strategic areas. They come in various shapes and sizes and legal statuses. So it's kind of quite difficult to get a sort of overarching narrative colonisation. And sometimes they're really quite small, just a few hundred people, and they're parked

in an existing community. You know, typically, if Rome conquers a community, it'll kick out the people who oppose Rome, it'll confiscate their property, and it'll dish this property out to colonists as a reward. And a lot of those have the status of Roman citizens, so that the community becomes a community of Roman citizens. And that obviously ties it very closely legally and culturally to Rome. Others are bigger, don't have citizen status. They tend to be given Latin rights, which are a package of civil rights, which are a bit more than the rest of the Italians have, but not up there with Roman citizenship. And some of those can be used to really create, you know, Roman forms of urbanism in non-urban areas

or, you know, found cities in places where Rome really wants to take a firm grip. The other thing that colonies do is act as a vector for the spread of Roman culture. So they can, you know, promote the spread of Latin language, Roman administrative norms. They can promote the spread of Latin language, Roman administrative norms. They also have quite a lot of military importance because, as I said earlier, all Roman allies and colonies have a duty to supply troops to the Roman army. Colonies which have the status of Roman citizen communities send troops to the legions. The rest just fight in their local contingents. But this is important, essential, because it gives Rome access to a vast pool of manpower.

I mean, the Greek historian Polybius says there was a full census of manpower available to Rome in 225 when the Gauls re-invaded. And the answer was somewhere in the region of 650,000 troops. And that's not counting the Roman legions themselves. So they've got immense amounts of troops if you aggregate colonies and allies. But the colonies, both citizen and Latin, are really the core of that alliance because they have this much closer relationship with Rome. There's a telling moment at the height of the Hannibalic War when some of the Latin colonies say they're absolutely exhausted,

they haven't any more troops to give, and the Senate sort of panics because they think this is the core of the alliance crumbling. The problem with colonization is that there's been a vast sea change in recent years in how scholars understand this. Because ancient sources tend to describe colonization as a very structured process. You know, the Senate says, you know, where it's going to be found and how many men, who from, where from, who led by. where it's going to be found, how many men, who from, where from, who led by. And the assumption is, for a long time, based on the Roman essay of Stalvis Gellius,

is that what effectively is happening is you're setting up a sort of clone, sort of mini-Romes around the place, pushing Roman culture, particular visions of Roman urbanism, all with the same urban template. But in fact, more recent excavation and reassessment of what's going on is that it's a much more ad hoc process than that suggests. What you get are mainly male colonists being sent, then they intermarry into the community, added to existing settlements, and that things like Roman cults, Roman civic organisation,

Roman town planning is something that only gradually evolves later. You know, so you've got things like the colony of Cosa, which was founded in 273 in northern Etruria, is often thought to be an absolute archetype of a Roman town. But recent excavation has shown that the sort of earliest phases don't really look anything like a Roman town. The main cult, you know, doesn't Romanise. It's a local cult.

You know, the Roman cult is a later import. You know, the forum doesn't look like a forum until quite a bit later on. So the whole idea of this sort of colonisation as a very structured process is now sort of very much under re-evaluation. Millions dead. A higher proportion of civilian casualties than in the Second World War. America, Britain, Russia and China all involved in a conflict that technically remains active

to this day. So why is the Korean War of 1950-53 called the Forgotten War. This July, we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out what this unique conflict was all about. Join me, James Rogers, throughout July on the Warfare podcast from History Hit, as we remember the war the world forgot. there you go and it will continue to be under re-evaluation won't it so all the importance these things to stress is that sometimes, well, opinions are constantly changing as more evidence comes about and new theories emerge. Let's therefore move on, onto the third and final Samnite War.

It's 298 BC, take it away, what happens? How does it go? How does it progress? Well, again, it's a sort of third party that draws the conflict because by this stage, the Romans have an alliance with the Lucanians, and they request protection because they say the Samnites have attacked them. Now, that's how alliances are supposed to work, you know, that sort of somebody attacks Rome, the Allies come to help, you know, somebody attacks an ally, Rome goes to protect them. And Rome responds by raiding into Samnium, and in fact, the fasti,

them. And Rome responds by raiding into Samnium. And in fact, the fasti, the list of triumphs kept, show that there were triumphs for actions in Samnium and De Truria at this date. So clearly they're having some success at this date. And it basically seems to be sort of quite small beer, but was fairly successful until 296. And what happens then is that for the first time Rome's enemies try to form a coalition again a sort of anti-Roman grand coalition which involves Etruscans, Umbrian, Samnites and possibly even Gauls and between them they manage to assemble an absolutely vast army based in Umbria not Samnium and what that does is force Rome to withdraw from Samnium because unusually it actually consolidates both its armies. At this date, there were sort of two armies in the field at any given time, one under each consul, and they tended to fight

separately. But the threat was obviously so big that they actually withdrew the army from Samnium and sent them both to Umbria to face off against this vast coalition in 296 and 295. So I'm guessing the writing seems to be on the wall here, that we are leading to a battle unlike that seen before on the Italian peninsula in terms of its size. Yeah, the battle of Santinum in 295, which this led to, is something that virtually all the sources say was you know an absolutely mega event even by the standards of ancient warfare and the trouble really is that assessing the reliability of military statistics in ancient sources is a real mug's game and so

they're not reliable but it had the reputation of being one of the biggest battles ever fought and modern scholars have estimated that Rome may have had anything between 36 and 40,000 troops at the battle and that the coalition army was even bigger so it is huge. I mean, you know, I'd advise taking it, taking specific figures with a pinch of salt but it's big, you know, I think you can safely say that. The other thing it's notable for is a very famous, iconic Roman myth. What seems to have happened is that there were a couple of days worth of standoff when the armies met at Centinum. And then there was a battle in which the Roman

consuls adopted two different tactics. One of them, Quintus Fabius, fought quite conservatively. His idea was that he'd wear the opposing army down and picked them off. But the other guy, Publisticus Mus, was actually quite aggressive and he charges the enemy lines, nearly brings, initially with some success, but then it was a counterattack and it nearly involves disaster.

And his response to this, which is why it's such an iconic thing, is that he commits an act of what the Romans called devotio, which is devoting, it's basically a suicide attack. You devote your life to the gods in return for victory. So he basically led this sort of, you know, complete kamikaze suicide attack on the enemy lines and sacrificed himself to rescue the position. And that sort of inspired the Romans

so much that they then roared on to victory. The interesting thing about Decius Mus is that he's not the only Decius to go around doing this sort of thing, because his father is said to have done the same thing in 340 as part of the First Sunlight War, the battle in Vesuvius. I mean, that raises two questions. First is, is it a family tradition that Dicius become known for this sort of thing, so they replicate this? Or is it it going back to what i said about the possibility of the first sunlight war being an invention one of the reasons why people question that war is you know is it plausible that father and son both did this or is livy basically taking the later dickies and pushing it forward into the first war and simply misunderstanding but it is one of those

things that becomes a sort of iconic part of the roman sort of myth stroke history i mean that's so interesting as well because if i remember correctly there's a deacius who fights pyrrhus as well at asculum or whatever later and i can't remember if it's correct or not please comment if i'm wrong you're the expert here but i think that deacius is prevented from doing something similar according to one of the traditions by following in the footsteps of his ancestors as it were that would be a very roman thing to do you know if your ancestors did it you know they're white you know and got got fame and glory by doing it then why not try it yourself trying to trying to reign them in that doesn't entirely surprise me

it is sort of very roman this little mindset it does definitely seem to be, doesn't it? I mean, OK, so the Battle of Centinum, what happens after? Why is this battle so significant following the Roman victory that ensues from it? Well, mainly because it smashes the coalition. I mean, as I said, the idea of sort of peoples banding together in military coalitions sort of is kind of there at the level of sort of the individual local league, but it's not really a big thing beyond that. This attempt to do it, you know, was on the grand scale and it didn't work, you know, it really dismantled the coalition. And that means that the Samnites are now isolated again, because Rome is able to then, you know, separate out the forces and start picking people off. There seems to be a fierce fighting throughout Etruria and

Umbria as well as Samnium at this state. So clearly the component bits of the coalition aren't sort of lying down and going away. And that seems to have continued down until 293 when the Samnite army was finally and very decisively defeated at the Battle of Aquilonia. But what Centenum does is really break up the coordinated opposition to Rome and let Rome go back to sort of picking off each area individually. It doesn't mean it was easy because Etruria isn't finally subdued until some years after this. But it does mean that you're back to the sort of fragmented local wars. You don't have the big sanctum's battle. So that really is sort of the end of the coordinated opposition to Rome.

And that means that, unfortunately, the final years of the war are very much less easy to reconstruct, partly because it is all fragmented and partly because by this stage we're getting down to the point where we don't have the narrative of Livy except in short summaries. He doesn't quite go right down to 290 when the war ends.

But as far as we can work out, Rome overruns large areas of Samnium after this. The Samnite resistance is really broken because of the very heavy casualties and in the end in 290 the Samnites are forced to make peace again and that's that's basically it for the Samnite wars. Well I mean that's it it's a 290 BC it's so interesting to think though that it's been 50 years since the Lyris River and all of that. I know the first Semlite War was a little debated now whether it happened. But it's so interesting to see the rise of Rome in this period.

I mean, your mind goes back to something like Polybius saying how Rome was able to conquer so much east within 50 years or so. But this seems a similar kind of thing. How much Rome has been able to expand within these 50 years between the well, in the latter half of the fourth century B.C. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that the ancient world and particularly the Greeks and, you know, obviously Polybius passage you quoted were absolutely rocked back on their heels by was just understood by was just how quickly Rome was able to expand. just how quickly Rome was able to expand. Because by the end of the Samnite Wars, effectively Rome controls most of central and southern Italy, and it's well on the way to controlling the bits further north as well.

And it barks on a process of consolidation. Quite a lot more colonies founded at the state, although most cities actually do become allies, tying them by treaty. But also it starts dismantling any other structures that could provide an alternative power base to Rome. So the Latin League's already gone in 338. The Samnite League is dismantled. Various leagues of state, senatorial and campaigner are broken up. So really it is very much divide and rule. Even though the rule is sort of arm's length, the divide bit is still very much there. So yeah, I mean, at that stage, Rome actually controls the vast majority of Italy. And as you say, it's got there really

quite quickly. Is there anyone still at this stage who could still realistically challenge Rome and its dominance in Italy by this time? Yeah, there is one last man standing, and that is Tarentum, or perhaps more accurately, the Greek states of Italy, because they were organised in a league, the so-called Italiot League, which Tarentum by this stage was the leader. Now Tarentum was very much up there with Rome in terms of size and power. It was very rich. It had huge naval power. I mean, it's got this really spectacular harbour. And of course, the one area in which Rome is notably weak huge naval power. I mean, it's got this really spectacular harbour. And of course,

the one area in which Rome is notably weak is naval power. It doesn't really have that much. So it has, and it has quite a strong land army as well. But it also has a network of diplomatic connections in the Greek world, which means that increasingly, as it comes under pressure in the later fourth century from people like Lucanians and Bruttians and the sort of people of that sort, it's able to call on allies in the Greek world to come and support it. So it has a sort of military hinterland, if you like, which enables it to give it extra resources. And really the final, you know, the sort of last stand of non-Roman Italy is the Pyrrhic War of 281 to 275, in which Rome takes on the Greeks and their allies led by Tarentum. And that includes Pyrrhic War of 281 to 275, in which Rome takes on the Greeks and their allies led by

Tarentum. And that includes Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who is a Tarentine ally. They invite him to come and sort of lead their army and bring some of his own, you know, generally sort of participate. And he is absolutely the star general of his era. And he accepts with open arms because he's a relative of Alexander the Great. And what he really fancies is an Alexander-style empire in the West to rival Alexander in the East. So it's very much reputation building.

So basically having Rome sort of rather and wisely picks a naval battle with Tarentum. Tarentum absolutely squashes the Roman navy flat and Rome obviously takes Umbridge and declares war and the Tarentines bring in this sort of huge state-of-the-art Hellenistic army from the east to face them off and it does give Rome a very very close run for its money I mean the proverbial Pyrrhic victory is the battle after which the Romans send they basically the two the two sides afforded it afforded each other to a stand, so they weren't able to capitalise on it.

But in the end, the war itself ended with a narrow Roman victory and the extension of Roman power right to the rest of Italy. That is a very intriguing epilogue, which also includes some operations in Samnium. So, you know, in some ways you could actually say, you know, is that a false Samnite war? And finally, quick tangent, this personal thing from me, because we're talking about Tarentum before we really wrap up. tarentum's not given a nice time in the sources that survive and maybe

i'm going a bit too far on this but could you would you say that it's probably one of the most maligned most derided cities of antiquity just because you read the source material how they describe tarentum and it's pretty dire that the sources survive. Yes, coincidentally, I've just written a research paper about that. So, I mean, it's absolutely a hatchet job. And part of the problem there is you're dealing with very much later sources, which are, you know, clearly cherry picking earlier traditions for, you know, things which justify what Rome did, which Rome was very clearly the aggressor. It broke a treaty, it sailed into the Gulf of Tarenta, it threw its weight around when the Tarentines

not unnaturally put out its fleet and drove them off. But yeah, the outbreak of war is sort of every last sort of unflattering stereotype that you could mention. And I mean, some Roman authors do have this about Greeks in general. I mean, Livy refers to the Greeks of Italy as what he terms of anissimum gentem, you know, the most vain and insubstantial of people, you know, sort of more words than deeds, you know, talk a good game, but they're basically

in a bunch of ineffectual windbanks is how he portrays them. But yeah, I mean, there's a huge set pieces to be with the outbreak of war where the the roman envoys turn up at the dionysia the festival of dionysus and of course everyone's roaring drunk you know and people grotesquely insult them and sort of you know peel their togas and laugh at their accents and things like that and you know the romans depart in great indignation saying you will wash out this stain with your blood. You know, it's a real sort of all-air movement. But also when Pyrrhus arrives, it's said that, you know, the Tarentines are such a bunch of sort of luxurious sort of decadent layabouts that he has to close all the gyms and theatres to get them to

do military training. And the fact that Pyrrhus has turned up is sort of and they have this policy of employing generals from Greece is always interpreted as a sign that the Tarentines are militarily weak and decadent and hopeless and useless and can't defend themselves I mean the Tarentines actually had a pretty effective army and an even more effective navy so you know if you set the sort of the image against the reality you know you get a very strong sense of the yawning gap. I think, yeah, as mentioned, this could be another podcast in itself to wrap up. Don't believe everything

you read in the ancient historians that survive, especially regarding Tarenta. Catherine, this has been a great chat. Last but certainly not least, your book on this period, stretching much further than that, The Samnites, Pyrrhic War, Punic War

and more it is called The Rise of Rome is the most recent one charting Rome really from sort of the foundation through to the outbreak of the Punic Wars Well there you go The Rise of Rome. Catherine, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today No problem, welcome

Well there you go. There was Dr Catherine Lomas finishing the story of the Samnite Wars, the fall of the Samnites. I hope you enjoyed the episode. It's such an extraordinary period of ancient history in the story of the rise of Rome. We're going to have to do Pyrrhus next sometime soon.

He is the next man in this story. So stay tuned. I do like that figure a lot. own we're going to have to do pyrrhus next sometime soon he is the next man in this story so stay tuned i do like that figure a lot i actually did my dissertation all about pyrrhus so many years ago now so we will have to get that man on the podcast in the near future don't you worry i am on it now that's enough from me as i mentioned i hope you enjoyed the episode the last thing as you all know by now if you would like more ancients content in the meantime well you know what you can do you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below every week i write a bit of a blurb that newsletter explaining what's been

happening in the ancient history hit world that week and of course if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on either spotify or apple podcasts the whole team at the ancients where we greatly appreciate it as we continue to share these stories from the ancient world and give them the limelights that they really do deserve that's our mission and it looks like we're very much getting there but that's enough from me and i will see you in the next episode