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Member Article: The Second Samnite War
by Gordon Davis
Between 343 BC and 290 BC the Romans and Samnites engaged in a series of fierce wars throughout central Italy. The two peoples, along with the Celts of the Po Valley to the north, were ascendant powers at this time, eclipsing older power blocks such as Hellas Megale and the Etruscan city-states. The fighting of 327 – 321 BC between Rome and Samnium was the opening phase of the second war between these two states and it was far more intense in both the breadth of territory covered and the number of battles fought than the first war of 343 – 341 BC.
Member Article: The Savage Interlude:
War and Conquest in Southern Italy - 342 - 327 BC
by Gordon Davis
Before the conclusion of the First Samnite War in 341 BC, the Roman republic and Samnite confederation found themselves seriously confronted with uprisings and wars beyond the scope of their immediate struggle for Campania. Indeed, rather than there being any sort of a real ‘end' to the First Samnite War, there was in reality only a transition to an even more complex phase of anarchy. No people or state in the region was left at peace, as all were forcefully drawn into a wider war of even greater significance than its immediate predecessor. The results of this period of strife were remarkable and far-reaching: whereas Tyrrhenian Italy existed in 342 BC as a hodgepodge of smaller states and peoples, sandwiched uncomfortably between the two growing powers, by 327 BC these had been largely swept away and incorporated into the hegemonic blocks of Samnium and Rome. This evolution was anything but peaceful. There were great campaigns of manoeuvre across mountain and plain. Cities were besieged and territories plundered into waste. The smaller political entities of the region, faced with the terrible onslaught, made every effort to maintain their old ancestral freedom, forging new innovative alliances and putting large armies in the field to back them up. To the south, the ongoing conflict between the larger Sabellian diaspora, including the Samnites, Lucani and Bruttii and the Greek city-states of Maegna Graecia, continued to be waged un-remittingly. Foreign condotierri in the employ of Taras engaged in a series of fierce campaigns, taking war deep into the Apennines and eventually even up to the borders of Campania and Samnium proper. By doing so, the Greeks, Lucani and Bruttii also played an important part in Tyrrhenian affairs of this period. Rather be than kept separate, events in southern Italy must be included to gather a full understanding of the events and eventual outcomes.
Member Article: An Imperial Roman Army Field Manual: Frontinus and the Haunting Vestiges of Republicanism
by Daniel Blanchard
Sextus Iulius Frontinus in his fourth book of the Stratagemata outlined, in the classic fable-style, the great role and importance of discipline on armies in warfare and the lasting effects of discipline on soldiers in the crisis of combat. Frontinus knew well of what he wrote. He campaigned aggressively with Domitian in Northern Germany in 70 CE against the Batavian rebel Civilis and served as a pivotal governor of Britain from 76-78 CE. Throughout his service Frontinus acquired a wealth of practical experience in commanding Imperial armies in the field, most notably in Wales against the Silures, which he destroyed and the Ordovices whose lands he garrisoned. It was during the interlude between his governorship and his third consulship in 100 CE that he wrote the
Strategemeta which, most appropriately, appeared during the turbulent, if not militarily disastrous, reign of Domitian.
Member Article: The First Samnite War
by Gordon Davis
The First Samnite War is an event of great importance to the history of Italy and of Rome. Although of short duration it was the significant opening act in a wider conflict which eventually drew in all of the contemporary powers of Italy and within seventy years decided who was to be the mistress of the peninsula. The war provides a study of two almost equally powerful but fundamentally different peoples: one a well-organized and centralized city-state; the other a confederation of fierce mountain tribes, much less possessed of higher civilization but fully gifted and successful in the art of war. The First Samnite War was the opening round of almost many decades of brutal conflict between the two belligerents and within its details exists some of the reasons for Rome’s success in the wider struggle for Italy and in later times: its great martial instincts and capabilities, its superior ability to bring its abundant man-power and resources to bear and its stubborn cunning and resolve to win, despite any setback.
Member Article: An Analysis of the Roman Army’s Punitive
Expeditions into Dacia, 86-88 CE
by Daniel Blanchard
The Roman Army’s punitive campaigns into Dacia in 86 CE and 88 CE were part of a frightful and grueling tutorial which bore few victories at the expenditure of tens of thousands of casualties while bringing instability to the entire northern frontier and the near collapse of the Moesian frontier. Both campaigns were the culmination of a grim and lengthy learning process that had begun in the late winter of 67/68 CE when the Rhoxolani crossed the Danube and annihilated two cohorts of
auxilia.
Member Article: The Muslim Horde's Easy Invasion of Iberia
by Robert C. Daniels
After a short foray in July of 710 AD, Muslim forces from North Africa invaded
the Christian Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal) in the spring
of 711, and within two years, with the exception of the extreme northwestern
portion of the peninsula, had successfully overpowered and conquered the
Visigothic Christian realms of Iberia.[1] Not only did it take the Frankish
forces under Charles Martel to stop the Muslim horde at the battle of Poitiers
in 732 from further intrusions into Western Europe, it would take nearly eight
centuries for the Iberian Christians to re-take the peninsula from the Muslims.
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