And after all some might hint that the oldest Pontius of all was the wisest. It may be that the sage old father of Gaius knew human nature best, when he bade his son either to massacre the whole Roman army or else to let them go free without terms. It may be that the son chose a more dangerous path than either, when he took to diplomacy and middle courses. But if the earlier Pontius of Telesia should prove--though the guess is a simple guess--to be in truth two Pontii, perhaps a father and a son, no doubt seems to have fixed itself on the identity of the last Pontius at the Colline gate of Rome. The rising again of Samnite life at the last moment of all, when the war with the allies seemed to have lost itself in the deeper whirlpool of the war of Marius and Sulla, is really the most striking thing in the whole history, such as we have it, of the Samnite people. We are taken by surprise when, in days when Rome already seems the fully established head, not only of Italy, but of all the Mediterranean world, her power, her very being, is threatened by the leader of a nation which seemed to have been dead and buried for some centuries. But, just like the Volumnian tomb in one way, so the Samnite resurrection in another way is a witness to the real life which the other states of Italy kept on under a form of Roman dominion which made them externally dependent, which threw its influence into the scale of oligarchy in their external affairs, which ever and anon subjected them to some irregular demand, but which left the general course of their lives to be whatever they themselves chose it to be. In the days of Marius and Sulla, Etruscans and Samnites were still Etruscans and Samnites; they had not become Romans, nor had they merged their being in any common name of Italians. The Social War itself was the first attempt at forming a general Italian nationality. But the last campaign of the last Pontius shows how deep, in Samnite hearts at least, was the earlier feeling, the feeling which knew no greater whole than the federal union of Etruria or Samnium. It shows too how specially deep was the feeling of hatred for the single city which had brought down so many cities and leagues to become its helpless dependents. Against Pontius at the Colline gate Rome fought for life, as she had never fought since the old days when she had to guard herself against enemies who lived within sight of her capitol. Foreign invaders, Pyrrhos, Hannibal himself, did not come with the same fixed purpose of rooting up the wood which sheltered the wolves of Italy. We can hardly doubt that it is the hand of Sulla which from that day to this has hindered the south of Italy from being like the north. But the blow which crushed the Samnite people as the other nations of Italy were not crushed, was vengeance taken for a moment when it once more became a question whether Rome should rule over Italy, whether Rome should exist at all.