In like manner the dominion of Rome was established and confirmed in the south Volscian and Campanian territories.  Fundi, Formiae, Capua, Cumae, and a number of smaller towns became dependent Roman communities with self-administration.  To secure the pre-eminently important city of Capua, the breach between the nobility and commons was artfully widened, the communal constitution was revised in the Roman interest, and the administration of the town was controlled by Roman officials annually sent to Campania.  The same treatment was measured out some years after to the Volscian Privernum, whose citizens, supported by Vitruvius Vaccus a bold partisan belonging to Fundi, had the honour of fighting the last battle for the freedom of this region; the struggle ended with the storming of the town (425) and the execution of Vaccus in a Roman prison.  In order to rear a population devoted to Rome in these regions, they distributed, out of the lands won in war particularly in the Privernate and Falernian territories, so numerous allotments to Roman burgesses, that a few years later (436) they were able to institute there also two new tribes.  The establishment of two fortresses as colonies with Latin rights finally secured the newly won land.  These were Cales (420) in the middle of the Campanian plain, whence the movements of Teanum and Capua could be observed, and Fregellae (426), which commanded the passage of the Liris.  Both colonies were unusually strong, and rapidly became flourishing, notwithstanding the obstacles which the Sidicines interposed to the founding of Cales and the Samnites to that of Fregellae.  A Roman garrison was also despatched to Sora, a step of which the Samnites, to whom this district had been 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