19.  The name itself is very ancient; in fact it is the most ancient indigenous name for the inhabitants of the present Calabria (Antiochus, Fr. 5.  Mull.).  The well-known derivation is doubtless an invention.

20.  Perhaps no section of the Roman annals has been more disfigured than the narrative of the first Samnite-Latin war, as it stands or stood in Livy, Dionysius, and Appian.  It runs somewhat to the following effect.  After both consuls had marched into Campania in 411, first the consul Marcus Valerius Corvus gained a severe and bloody victory over the Samnites at Mount Gaurus; then his colleague Aulus Cornelius Cossus gained another, after he had been rescued from annihilation in a narrow pass by the self-devotion of a division led by the military tribune Publius Decius.  The third and decisive battle was fought by both consuls at the entrance of the Caudine Pass near Suessula; the Samnites were completely vanquished—­forty thousand of their shields were picked up on the field of battle—­and they were compelled to make a peace, in which the Romans retained Capua, which had given itself over to their possession, while they left Teanum to the Samnites (413).  Congratulations came from all sides, even from Carthage.  The Latins, who had refused their contingent and seemed to be arming against Rome, turned their arms not against Rome but against the Paeligni, while the Romans were occupied first with a military conspiracy of the garrison left behind in Campania (412), then with the capture of Privernum (413) and the war against the Antiates.  But now a sudden and singular change occurred in the position of parties.  The Latins, who had demanded in vain Roman citizenship and a share in the consulate, rose against Rome in conjunction with the Sidicines, who had vainly offered to submit to the Romans and knew not how to save themselves from the Samnites, and with the Campanians, who were already tired of the Roman rule.  Only the Laurentes in Latium and the -equites- of Campania adhered to the Romans, who on their part found support among the Paeligni and Samnites.  The Latin army fell upon Samnium; the Romano-Samnite army, after it had marched to the Fucine lake and from thence, avoiding Latium, into Campania, fought the decisive battle against the combined Latins and Campanians at Vesuvius; the consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus, after he had himself restored the wavering discipline of the army by the execution of his own son who had slain a foe in opposition to orders from headquarters, and after his colleague Publius Decius Mus had appeased the gods by sacrificing his life, at length gained the victory by calling up the last reserves.  But the war was only terminated by a second battle, in which the consul Manlius engaged the Latins and Campanians near Trifanum; Latium and Capua submitted, and were mulcted in a portion of their territory.