Short Rounds

Scorecard: The Samnite Wars

Although the Romans fought many enemies during their long history, perhaps the toughest, and certainly the most persistent, were the Samnites.  A loose federation of several tribes, the Samnites spoke Oscan, a language akin to Latin, and had a similar cultural background, though preferring rural life to urban.  From at least as early as 600 B.C., the Samnites dominated much of Italy to the southeast of Roman territory and eastward from Naples, from the Apennines to the Adriatic.  A good case can be made that no people came closer to defeating Rome than the did the Samnites, nor resisted longer; at least 29 Roman generals celebrated triumphs for victories over the Samnites, more than those earned fighting any other enemy.

The Romans fought the Samnites repeatedly until they were finally crushed in the early first century B.C. 

• The First Samnite War (343-341 B.C.).  Around the middle of the fourth century B.C. the Samnites began making incursions into Campania.  In 343 B.C., they were threatening Capua, the principal city of the region, and the Campanians appealed to Rome.  After an embassy was treated badly by the Samnites, the Romans declared war.  The war went well for the Romans, who gained several victories, despite the need to put down a revolt among some of their Latin allies.  To their surprise, the Campanians found themselves safe from the Samnites, but now subject-allies of the Romans (never ask someone else to help fight your wars). 
• The Second or "Great" Samnite War (326-304 B.C.).  In 327 B.C. the Samnites again began pressuring the Campanians, and even took control of Naples.  The Romans intervened in 326.  The war went well for them, and in 321 the Samnites sued for peace.  But the Romans terms were very severe, and the Samnites resumed the fight.  Later that year the entire Roman Army fell into a trap at a mountain pass known as the Caudine Forks.  The Samnites forced the Romans to surrender their arms and to pass "under the yoke," symbolizing their utter defeat and disgrace. [See "Gaius Pontius' Dilemma"].  A five year truce resulted on terms favorable to the Samnites.  During the truce both sides rebuilt their forces (the Romans apparently later fabricated a bogus victory in 319 to make up for the Caudine Forks disaster).  When the war resumed, in 315 the Romans found themselves repeatedly defeated, and in 311 the Etruscans, to Rome's north, joined the Samnites.  Surprisingly, this potentially disastrous development seems to have strengthened Roman resolve, and things began to go their way.  The Etruscans dropped out of the war in 308, and the Samnites quit in 304.  Rome imposed a stern peace, which included what may have been the first disarmament inspections. 
• The Third Samnite War (298-290 B.C.).  Allied with the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls, the Samnites resumed the war.  Although the Romans had to fight on several fronts, they juggled forces back and forth, beating off their various enemies, and then in 295, at Sentinum in Umbria, in the largest battle yet fought in Italy, defeated a combined Gallo-Samnite force.  The war then began going Rome's way, and the Samnites sued for peace in 290, receiving surprisingly generous terms. 
• The end of the Third Samnite War didn't end the struggle between Romans and Samnites, it did, however, mark the end of the Samnites as a major power.  Although they disdained joining King Pyrrhus of Epirus in his war against Rome (280-275 BC), the Samnites allied themselves with Hannibal when he invaded Italy (218–203 B.C.), took part in the Social War (90-88 B.C.), during which Rome's subject-allies attempted a massive secession, and took up arms in support of the popular party during the Second Roman Civil War (82–81 B.C.), only to meet total disaster when Lucius Cornelius Sulla massacred their last army outside the gates of Rome on October 26, 81 B.C.

How Much is that in English?

For many centuries it was common to designate cannon caliber by the weight of the projectile.  So we hear of a "12-pounder" or a "32-pounder," which tells us that the gun fired a round of approximately the indicated weight.  Now that sounds reasonable, until one recalls that it was rare for the word "pound" to mean the same thing in two different countries.

To give some idea of the differences, consider the comparative weight in English measure of the 24 pounder cannon ball of each of the principal naval powers in the period 1790-1815:

Surprisingly, it's a rare historian who takes into account the differences in weight between the apparently identical gun poundage of opposing forces, which could reach significant proportions when dealing which major warships such as frigates (carrying anywhere from 28 to 44 guns) or ships-of-the-line (with 64 to 120 guns).  In fact, for the age of sail, only William M. James (1780-1827), author of the six volume A Naval History of Great Britain: During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Vol. 1: 1793-1796 addressed the question directly.  When preparing accounts of engagements, James carefully converted gun weights into English measure to more accurately reflect comparative firepower.