Samnium Sentence Examples

Farther south no very lofty summits are found till we come to the group of Monti del Matese, in Samnium (6660 ft.), which according to the division here adopted belongs to Southern Italy.

The whole of the district known in ancient times as Samnium (a part of which retains the name of Sannio, though officially designated the province of Campobasso) is occupied by an irregular mass of mountains, of much inferior height to those of Central Italy, and broken up into a number of groups, intersected by rivers, which have for the most part a very tortuous course.

Proceeding south from the Trigno, already mentioned as constituting the limit of Central Italy, there are (1) the Biferno and (2) the Fortore, both rising in the mountains of Samnium, and flowing into the Adriatic west of Monte Gargano; (3) the Cervaro, south of the great promontory; and (4) the Ofanto, the Aufidus of Horace, whose description of it is characteristic of almost all the rivers of Southern Italy, of which it may be taken as the typical representative.

The second region included Apulia and Calabria (the name by which the Romans usually designated the district known to the Greeks as Messapia or lapygia), together with the land of the Hirpini, which had usually been considered as a part of Samnium.

Only the Samnites, who were as yet without the Roman franchise, remained his enemies, and it seemed as if the old war between Rome and Samnium had to be fought once again.

In the Second Punic War it thrice bade defiance to Hannibal; but in the Social War it was betrayed into the hands of the Samnites, who kept possession till Marius, with whom they had sided, was defeated by Sulla, who in 80 B.C. subjected it with the rest of Samnium.

To the north it adjoined Campania, Samnium and Apulia, and to the south it was separated by a narrow isthmus from the district of Bruttii.

The main ridge approaches the western sea, and is continued from the lofty knot of mountains on the frontiers of Samnium, nearly due south to within a few miles of the Gulf of Policastro, and thenceforward is separated from the sea by only a narrow interval till it enters the district of the Bruttii.

The Lucanians gradually conquered the whole country (with the exception of the Greek towns on the coast) from the borders of Samnium and Campania to the southern extremity of Italy.

This view is strengthened by what we can gather of the conditions obtaining in such districts as Aetolia, Acarnania and Samnium, as in modern times among primitive peoples and tribes.

It is certain from the symbols which they develop or drop that the people of Campania and Samnium borrowed their alphabet from the Etruscans, who held dominion in Campania from the 8th to the 5th century B.C. Previous to the Punic wars Campania had reached a higher stage of civilization than Rome.

The man who brought the grain from Africa to the public stores at Ostia, the baker who made it into loaves for distribution, the butchers who brought pigs from Samnium, Lucania or Bruttium, the purveyors of wine and oil, the men who fed the furnaces of the public baths, were bound to their callings from one generation to another.

His son of the same name, also a distinguished general, completed the subjection of Samnium (272).

How far also the language or languages spoken in Bruttium and at certain points of Lucania, such as Anxia, differed from the Oscan of Samnium and Campania there is not enough evidence to show (see BRUTTII).