The Samnites

Abstract In the fourth century BCE, the Samnites were the only nation able to resist Roman expansion into central-southern Italy. This chapter seeks to elucidate their history by examining several issues in depth: the question of royalty in the Italic world; the path of a Samnite military commander to Roman citizenship, virtutis causa, for his heroic opposition to Hannibal; the nature of their settlements; a proposal for the reconstruction of the missing sections of Festus’s description of the vici; the design of their sanctuaries, and the brief flourishing of the temple-theater complex in central Italy; the cult of the Italic goddess Mefitis, and especially her connection to Isis; and, finally, the political structure of the Samnite communities, the Pentri in particular.