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 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.