(465) and with him the power of the Syracusans in Italy went
to wreck, it was too late; Samnium, weary of the thirty-seven years'
struggle, had concluded peace in the previous year (464) with the
Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus, and had in form renewed its
league with Rome. On this occasion, as in the peace of 450, no
disgraceful or destructive conditions were imposed on the brave people
by the Romans; no cessions even of territory seem to have taken place.
The political sagacity of Rome preferred to follow the path which it
had hitherto pursued, and to attach in the first place the Campanian
and Adriatic coast more and more securely to Rome before proceeding to
the direct conquest of the interior. Campania, indeed, had been long
in subjection; but the far-seeing policy of Rome found it needful, in
order to secure the Campanian coast, to establish two coast-fortresses
there, Minturnae and Sinuessa (459), the new burgesses of which were
admitted according to the settled rule in the case of maritime
colonies to the full citizenship of Rome. With still greater energy
the extension of the Roman rule was prosecuted in central Italy. As
the subjugation of the Aequi and Hernici was the immediate sequel of
the first Samnite war, so that of the Sabines followed on the end of
the second. The same general, who ultimately subdued the Samnites,
Manius Curius broke down in the same year (464) the brief and feeble
resistance of the Sabines and forced them to unconditional surrender.
A great portion of the subjugated territory was immediately taken into
possession of the victors and distributed to Roman burgesses, and
Roman subject-rights (-civitas sine suffragio-) were imposed on the
communities that were left--Cures, Reate, Amiternum, Nursia. Allied
towns with equal rights were not established here; on the contrary the
country came under the immediate rule of Rome, which thus extended as
far as the Apennines and the Umbrian mountains. Nor was it even now
restricted to the territory on Rome's side of the mountains; the last
war had shown but too clearly that the Roman rule over central Italy
was only secured, if it reached from sea to sea. The establishment
of the Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out of the
strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the northern slope
of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain, not immediately on the
coast and hence with Latin rights, but still near to the sea, and