Rome's Third Samnite War, 298–290 BC by Mike Roberts

Author:Mike Roberts [Roberts, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / Military / Ancient
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Published: 2020-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

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It was in the fabric of the city life rather than on the battlefield that the legacy of this controversial and complex man lay and this showed again in 307 when for the first time he achieved the consulship. There is a suggestion that he had run for consul when censor, only to be stymied by a tribune of the plebs who contended that he couldn’t stand until he had resigned his office. Yet when he finally occupied the consular chair, unlike so many of his peers he made no attempt to prove his mettle in the usual way. So often the route was for a successful military man to entrench himself as a heavyweight political competitor but he on this, his first incumbency, rejected the opportunity. There was enough business on hand: a campaign against the Sallentines, tenants of the Italian heel, was available that he might have tried for, but he proved happy to allow his colleague, Volumnius Flamma Violens, to deal with these truculent southerners. This ‘new man’, a plebeian with no tradition of officeholding in the family, was the first of his line to reach the consulship, but this was not the only time he personally had occupied the curial chair. He had a reputation as a glad hand with his men and more than just having the common touch, he was capable too. However, his wife may not have been to traditional Roman taste as they liked their women to keep in the background and she created something of a cause célèbre when, despite herself being of patrician stock, because of her husband she was refused access to a ceremony of patrician ladies to honour female virtue, so set up an alternative altar in her own home for plebeian women. This colleague of Appius Claudius showed himself capable, winning victories, taking cities and distributing spoils to his men while he stayed content to remain in Rome, ensuring he was constantly in the thoughts of his fellow citizens, able to build on the popularity he had gained as censor.

In 296, as eyes swung north towards an imminent threat, this pair from seven years before were again elected to the consulship, this despite the fact that many wanted Fabius Rullianus to stand again. However, quite such an arrant flouting of the law that forbade consuls being elected until ten years had passed meant that putting him in on consecutive years could not be countenanced, even if this tenet had been bent so often in the past. Indeed, the two consuls of 297 would be in harness again in just over a year’s time and even in Appius Claudius’ consular year the need for their talents could not be gainsaid as they were kept on for six months to progress the war in Samnium. However, if the increasing need for continuity of command in this conflict was advertised by these prorogations, it was by no means all that the year 296 would bring. Something else was happening, of which the antecedents had been touted even earlier.

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