from the Volscians, but was afterwards likewise taken possession of by the Romans. In like manner we find Sora, and even Casinum, in the hands of the Samnites. The case of the latter town is mentioned by an author in whose work we should hardly look for it, and yet it is a statement which ought not to escape the notice of an historian. The historical inquirer must also examine the grammarians whose works contain facts of the greatest historical importance in fragments and accidental quotations. Such is the case, e.g., in the commentary of Servius and the scholiast on Juvenal;[51] it is, however, not only in writers of this class and in Festus that we may expect historical statements, but we find them in the authors of real grammars, such as Nonius, Diomedes, and Priscian; they contain much that is of value and ought not to be despised. Such also is the case here, for it is Varro who, in his work “De Lingua Latina,”[52] states, that Casinum was inhabited by Samnites. Hence we see that they extended as far as the neighbourhood of Arpinum and Monte Cassino, and that they had subdued the whole district between the upper Vulturnus and the upper Liris. It was, therefore, for the purpose of extending their dominion in that part, that they undertook the war against the Sidicines. The Samnites, as we have seen, did not form a compact nation, they were not united by one capital, they had no permanent government to keep the whole together, and they formed no _civitas_, but a _populus_, not a πόλις, but an ἔθνος. They consisted of four or five different tribes, which were not more closely united with one another than the Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, or even not more closely than the Romans, Latins, and Volscians of Ecetrae were at various times. Thus it happened that the Frentanians, though a Samnite people, concluded, during the second Samnite war, a separate peace with Rome and allowed her armies a passage through Abruzzo into Apulia. Velleius Paterculus states, that on one occasion the Romans were defeated by the Caudines alone, and in the Triumphal Fasti we read, that a general triumphed _de Samnitibus omnibus praeter Pentros_. So long as the Romans stood on a footing of equality with the Latins and Hernicans, the Samnites were able to keep them within due bounds; but when they themselves had assisted the Romans in reducing the Latins to the condition of subjects, the compactness of the Roman state was against them, and they were no longer equally matched. No wonder, therefore, that they succumbed to the Romans; but it is surprising to find that, after all, they were able to hold out in a struggle like the second Samnite war, which lasted twenty-four years and a half. And notwithstanding this, they rose again with the force of despair, which hopes for nothing and destroys its own existence.