REVOLTS IN ANCIENT ROMA
By the beginning of the fifth century, the highlanders either as raiders seeking plunder, or young men looking for new homeshad begun to press on the coastal plains. In 473, the Greek cities of Tarentum and Rhegium attempted to prevent the Messapii of Apulia from sending out new settlements, and in conse¬quence they suffered what Herodotus (7.170) calls the most severe defeat ever experienced by Greeks. The cities of the west coast—Greeks, Latins, and the Etruscans of Campania also came under attack.
In Campania, a warband from the highlands of Samnium captured Etruscan Capua in 423 and Greek Cumae around 420. Much later, the historian Diodorus Siculus (12.76.4) would report that these Samnites defeated the Cumaeans in battle, besieged and captured their city, enslaved the surviving men, and took for themselves the town and its women. Farther south, Lucanians attacked Thurii (a newly founded city on the site of Sybaris) in 433, and captured Poseidonia in 410. By the end of the century, Velia and Neapolis (modern Naples) were the only Greek cities remaining on the Tyrrhenian coast. Along the southern (or Ionian) coast, the major Greek centers survived, although by now their prosperity and power were largely eclipsed.
Latium suffered too, and very severely in the case of some cities. Sabines, Volsci, and Aequi emerged from the hills that bordered Latium in an arc from northeast to southeast; archeologists have found some of their fortified hilltop refuges. Rome itself suffered from their depredations, and some Latin cities fell. Roman authors would later report battles quite close to the city, and they would claim that Rome led the other Latins in the common defense. It may well be the Romans took this kind of lead, but we still remain ignorant of how it compared to the role played by some of the greater Latin centers, such as Tibur and Praeneste. In any event, by the end of the century Rome and its Latin allies had the upper hand. Steadily, Volsci, Aequi, and Sabines were first repelled, and then pushed back. In the process, Latin cities that had fallen or been abandoned were reoccupied as colonies (coloniae, singular, colonia). Here the victors established new settlers to serve as garrisons, gave them land around the town that had been freed by the victory, and organized it as a city-state with officials of its own. Last but not least, the new foundation was assigned a recognized place as an ally of Rome and the other Latin cities.