The offensive in this thoroughly desultory war was on the whole on the side of the Romans, but was nowhere decisively assumed even on their part.  It is surprising that the Romans did not collect their troops for the purpose of attacking the insurgents with a superior force, and that the insurgents made no attempt to advance into Latium and to throw themselves on the hostile capital.  We are how ever too little acquainted with their respective circumstances to judge whether or how they could have acted otherwise, or to what extent the remissness of the Roman government on the one hand and the looseness of the connection among the federate communities on the other contributed to this want of unity in the conduct of the war.  It is easy to see that with such a system there would doubtless be victories and defeats, but the final settlement might be very long delayed; and it is no less plain that a clear and vivid picture of such a war—­which resolved itself into a series of engagements on the part of individual corps operating at the same time, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination—­cannot be prepared out of the remarkably fragmentary accounts which have come down to us.

Commencement of the War
The Fortresses
Caesar in Campania and Samnium
Aesernia Taken by the Insurgents
As also Nola
Campania for the Most Part Lost to the Romans

The first assault, as a matter of course, fell on the fortresses adhering to Rome in the insurgent districts, which in all haste closed their gates and carried in their moveable property from the country.  Silo threw himself on the fortress designed to hold in check the Marsians, the strong Alba, Mutilus on the Latin town of Aesernia established in the heart of Samnium:  in both cases they encountered the most resolute resistance.  Similar conflicts probably raged in the north around Firmum, Atria, Pinna, in the south around Luceria, Beneventum, Nola, Paestum, before and while the Roman armies gathered on the borders of the insurgent country.  After the southern army under Caesar had assembled in the spring of 664 in Campania which for the most part held by Rome, and had provided Capua—­with its domain so important for the Roman finances—­as well as the more important allied cities with garrisons, it attempted to assume the offensive and to come to the aid of the smaller divisions sent on before it to Samnium and Lucania under Marcus Marcellus and Publius Crassus.  But Caesar was repulsed by the Samnites and Marsians under Publius Vettius Scato with severe loss, and the important town of Venafrum thereupon passed over to the insurgents, into whose hands it delivered its Roman garrison.  By the defection of this town, which lay on the military road from Campania to Samnium, Aesernia was isolated, and that fortress already vigorously assailed found itself now exclusively dependent on the courage and perseverance of its defenders and their commandant Marcellus.  It is true that an incursion, which Sulla happily