Interlude-Scenes From Elsewhere IV

Decimus Junius Brutus was of two minds about how the past year of the war had gone. On the one hand, he had been part of the harrowing siege of Capua and the escape from the Samnite Army, and hadn't that been all sorts of harrowing? The Southern Front had remained static for the first half of the year until suddenly the Samnites had managed to block the flow of fresh water to Capua via the aqueducts. In the middle of summer even! It hadn't even been the war season and yet the casualties were greater than they had been since the defeat at the Liturnus! Some of the lads had tried to boil seawater from the port to filter out the salt for drinking, but that hadn't done them much good.

By the time the Autumn Campaign season had come around again with the fall, half the cohorts in the army in Capua were dying of thirst. Even Volumnius had cut his water rations down. Decimus had been called into Volumnius' command post in the third week of September where he'd been commanded to take the healthy parts of the army and attempt to break out of Capua in a night attack. Volumnius must have realized it had been his Dis damned temper that had gotten them into this predicament because he had decided to stay in Capua with the troops that were wounded or sick from action and lack of water and hold off the inevitable Samnite assault for as long as he could. It was a more useful gesture than falling on his gladius anyway.

So that was what Decimus had done, he'd taken the remaining fit cohorts of the army, some fifteen thousand seven-hundred-and-fifty men, and launched a sally aiming to punch through part of the Samnite forces. His almost sixteen thousand men hit a part of the Samnite Army that was manned mostly by Daunii mercenaries that the Samnites had paid for using stolen Roman tribute from raids on various Socii tribute caravans the previous year. The Daunii were lightly armored in leathers and they fought in less disciplined formations than the Samnite maniples, forming a looser battle line with less coordination between units. He hadn't expected them to fight like the Hounds of Dis would devour them if they retreated or faltered. It had been a slaughter, but Volumnius had come to his rescue, leading a separate sally of dismounted, dehydrated, equities to take enough pressure off of his men, that Decimus was able to punch through the Daunii mercenaries with eleven thousand men and head straight north to Roma.

Capua fell to the Samnite forces in the aftermath of that action. The only reason the Samnites had not marched straight from Capua all the way to Rome was due to their need to secure their flank, as Neopolis still held out with a small garrison. By the time they had captured Neopolis and were able to march north to Rome. Decimus had made it back to the city and added his core of eleven thousand veterans to the army of forty-five thousand veterans under Quintus Fabius Rullianus. Together, they were able to turn back the Samnite army of Gellius Egnatius in a battle a day's march from Terracina in the first week of October. Unfortunately, Egnatius was as cunning as a mountain fox and he managed to withdraw in good order after losing only a scant few thousand troops. Decimus and Rullianus lost just over a thousand of their own men, making the battle tactically indecisive. It was strategically victorious, however, as Egnatius retreated back to Capua. 

Decimus had then taken twenty-five thousand men into Marsi Territory and wiped the area clean of Samnite Raiders while Rullianus did the same in Volsci territory, allowing at least some of Rome's Socii to begin sending tribute and manpower back to Rome to rebuild the shattered legions without having to rely on further foreign loans. Even with the Samnite in Capua and Neopolis, it seemed as if the war was close to reaching a turning point.

Unfortunately, the Northern Front had now been completely bungled. Sextus Julius Libo had taken forty thousand green troops into Etruscan territory after a year of training to confront the Etruscans in September, and while he had succeeded in defeating a small Etruscan force at the border and besieging and taking Tarquinia, his execution of the local Etruscan Priest of Dis Pater for blasphemy had proven catastrophic. Apparently, instead of just letting the local priests refer to Dis Pater by their local name for him, and perform their local ceremonies for the slain, Libo had insisted they perform the ceremonies the same way the Temple in Rome did. When the priests refused and instead insisted they would honor their gods their way, Libo became incensed and had them flogged to death.

That had provided the catalyst for the stiffening of resistance amongst the formerly flagging and disunited Etruscans. The Etruscan cities had elected King Marce Tute of Vulci as a sort of Primus Inter Pares for the duration of the war. This new unified resistance had been tested by Libo near the Etruscan Town of Hortanum on the banks of Lake Vadimo. Libo was hoping to repeat Rullianus' crushing victory against the Etruscans from seventeen years ago. Instead, he found himself defeated and forced to withdraw back to Tarquinia after losing six thousand men in an unusually coordinated ambush mid-battle. He held onto Tarquinia until the first week of November when he was forced to withdraw thanks to a combination of unrest within the city and concerted Etruscan attacks outside the city. He installed a garrison and withdrew back across the border to Veii. By the end of November, the Etruscans had slaughtered his garrison and taken control of Tarquinia once more. Libo had lost ten thousand men for no gains, and it all could have been avoided had he not executed those priests.

So yes, on the one hand, the war could be going much better. On the other, however, Rullianus had backed Decimus for Consul based on Decimus' Conduct so far, along with Rullianus' son, Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges. Gurges was a strange man. A former hedonist, Gurges had set aside his multitude of vices when his father had forced him to begin his path up the Cursus Honorum. He had served as an aedile as his first task, levying fines on adulterers, a cognomen he had once possessed back during his hedonist days. The war cut short his tenure as aedile due to the need for officers of proper standing. Gurges had made the lateral career move of becoming broad striped tribune in Rullianus' Army, which was where Decimus had met him.

As the new year approached and elections were called, Decimus found his sense of optimism was outweighing his sense of pessimism about how the war was going, simply due to the fact that it seemed that at the very least the near constant shattering of legions by the enemy was clearing out some of the dead weight that had accumulated at the top of the command structure since the last big shakeup after the Battle of the Caudine Forks almost twenty-five years ago. If nothing else, the Samnites provided a way for young men of talent to climb the ranks simply by killing the older officers who would not adapt every so often.

Eventually, all the votes were tabulated and all was in order. The new consuls were announced to be Decimus and Gurges. Decimus was to head north to relieve Libo of command of his army for incompetence while Gurges was to take command of the new army forming from the thirty thousand Marsi and Volsci troops who had arrived from the recently liberated Socii. Gurges was to head east from Marsi lands with his army and wipe the lands of the Vestini, Marricini, and Frentani clean of Samnite Raiders before moving north into Picnum and doing the same there. 

Meanwhile, Decimus was to try and break the newly forged Etruscan Coalition with the army he would relieve Libo of command from. Decimus thought that would be easier said than done thanks to recent events. Fortunately, he would not have to go it alone. Once Picenum was clear of Samnite Raiders, Gurges could march through Umbrian lands and into Etruria to reinforce him. If all went according to plan, they would secure the north in no more than two years of campaigns.

Then the full might of Rome could be turned on the Samnites. . .

XXXX

AN: So yeah, this interlude is just covering the Samnite War because a lot happened.

The thing with Libo executing priests could actually happen if someone with his temperament saw how the Etruscans depicted Orcus, their god of the dead. The Romans conflated him with Dis Pater, who is a Romanized version of Hades. But the Etruscans depicted Orcus as a hairy, naked, one-eyed, fanged, giant. Meanwhile, the Romans identified Dis Pater as more of a patrician type. It would come across as blasphemy to a Jingoistic asshole like Libo.

Also yes, the Samnites did manage to take Capua, they did this by destroying part of the Aqueducts that feed the city water from the mountains and blocking their access to the Volturno with siegeworks. Essentially making the defenders die of thirst. This sort of thing would be used to great effect against Rome itself hundreds of years later during Geisaric's Sack of Rome in 455. It is absolutely a valid tactic to win a siege. Neopolis couldn't possibly hold out on its own after Capua fell, so resisted just long enough for honor to be satisfied.

Of course, now Rome is actually starting to get her tributes and outlying manpower back online so it's just a matter of time. Of course, Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges famously bungled a military campaign during his first consulship IOTL against the Pentri that would have seen him stripped of his rank by the Senate had Rullianus not intervened and demanded his son be given a chance to redeem himself first. With Rullianus' help, Gurges did redeem himself with a successful campaign but wasn't considered for consul again for another decade and a half.

You'll have to keep reading to see if the same holds true IOTL.

Decimus Junius Brutus is an ancestor of Marcus Junius Brutus of stabbing Caesar to death fame. I felt the poetry of Caesar's ancestor being relieved of command by Brutus' ancestor was too good to pass up, and Decimus was a consul during the war IOTL, though we don't know much about him compared to Rullianus and Gurges.

Still got a few more years of war to go for Rome, no matter what Gurges and Decimus' plan says. Stay tuned. . .