Scenes From Elsewhere (Rome) II

Decimus Junius Brutus returned to Roma in Triumph, parading the hundred Samnite Captives from Hortius Decius' Army through the streets. Upon the next session of the Senate, Decimus Junius Brutus formally laid down his Dictatorial Powers as business resumed in the Senate. The first order of business was to pacify Samnium now that Pyrrhus and his Epirotes had withdrawn from the region back into Magna Graecia and Sicily. Oddly, the remnants of the Legions found the Samnites a broken people, or at least so it appeared at the time. The years and months ahead would prove otherwise, as bands of Samnite Raiders had taken to the hills with as many Epirote Steel weapons as they could loot from the armories of Samnium before they fled.

These Raiders and their families would wind up founding various fortified villages high up in the mountains and hills. Communities there were small and not well-supplied compared to the cities in the valleys of Samnium, but functioned as an effective shadow state for those disaffected by Roman Rule that launched raids on Roman Trade Caravans and Tax Collectors over the next few years, requiring three full Legions to be garrisoned in Samnium for years to come. However, aside from these bands of raiders and their mountain villages, the urban areas of Samnium in the valleys had the fight taken out of them.

Thankfully for the Romans, the reforms of the Senate that allowed all Socii to become Citizens Sine Suffragio gave a path forward for those Samnites who would work with the Romans rather than take to the hills to join the Raiders. The Senate had seen the harsh measures of Samnicus that had only led to uprisings and ruin and offered lenient treatment and a path to citizenship for any Samnites that would cooperate with the Roman Occupation. In contrast, whenever one of the three Roman Legions caught a party of the Raiders from their shadow villages in the mountains, they would execute them all. In this way, Samnium would be pacified, with carrot and stick.

Aside from that, Latium itself needed to be reconstructed, never mind Campania. Fortunately, with Carthage busy dealing with the Epirotes, there was a temporary vacuum in trade in Western Mediteranean. This was a vacuum that Rome took full advantage of, exporting salt, timber, and marble to places such as Masillia, Narbo, and Emporion, along with exporting olive oil, garum, wine, and salted or smoked fish to the cities of Numidia and Mauretania. These exports commanded commensurate prices as Carthage turned its commercial capabilities toward fuelling war with Epirus instead of trade.

That money helped rebuild more of Rome's commercial facilities, which in turn allowed for more trade. Over the course of the next ten years, this rebuilding would continue until damage from Rome's various wars was repaired, though it would require Rome to look inward to do so, only venturing outside its borders for trade and to conduct diplomacy, in stark contrast to the bellicose actions that had been taken before the First Pyrrhic War.

The largest hurdle was, unfortunately, manpower. Rome's many wars had depleted the once-formidable manpower reserves of Italia. While slaves could cover for many of the shortcomings, they were expensive and could not be imported in too large of numbers, lest the ratio of slaves to freemen become unmanageable. This manpower hurdle would hamper the Romans for the next decade. To fix this, the Senate incentivized citizen families to have larger families with special privileges such as tax breaks during periods in which the woman of the household was pregnant. Rome soon found itself in the midst of a slight baby boom to fix its demographic crisis, though Manpower Reserves would never be equal to what they had been prior to the Third Samnite War.

All told it would take Rome a decade to rebuild from the devastation of the First Pyrrhic War and begin to expand again. Decimus Junius Brutus, who had secured for Rome the peace it needed to do so before laying down his Dictatorial Powers, as Cincinattus once had, was in a bit of a surprise to many of the more hawkish sort of senators, popular enough to be elected Consul twice after his term as Dictator was over. It was during one of those terms, in two-seventy-two that a confederation of the Cisalpine Gallic Tribes of the Boii, Lingones, Cenomanii, and Insubres had formed north of Roman Territory and begun raiding into lands formerly belonging to the Senones and Umbri that now belonged to Rome.

Decimus Junius Brutus had spent the peace tirelessly working to rebuild Rome's fortunes and he would not see that work undone at the hands of Barbarians from the Cisalpine Hills. His military reforms, along with the Senatorial Forges and Legionary Training Camps had been retained in the post-war and as the Legions had steadily increased back up to a respectable number thanks to the new wave of children and slaves being able to pick up the slack in the economy from older potential recruits as they were born or imported, they were equipped and trained from those Forges and Camps.

It was notable that Brutus' Reforms had not been truly tested, as the Bruttian Legions of the First Pyrrhic War had only fought skirmishes and one siege against rebel Samnites. Over the past decade, Brutus was curious about how they would fare in a full-scale battle. When the Gallic raids began, he wasted little time in petitioning the Senate for War with Cisalpine Gaul. This, he argued, was the right foe at the right time. The Gauls were no Pyrrhus of Epirus, they had little organization and their discipline was lacking. It was time to blood the newer legions and perhaps, seize booty and new lands that would help finish Rome's rebuilding efforts.

In this, he was supported by several more hawkish senators, including Marcus Livius Drusus, a man who absolutely despised Gauls and all things Gallic. Drusus swiftly put together a block of senators to vote for sending Legions into Cisalpine Gaul to subjugate the tribes that were raiding Roman Territory and managed to finagle command of the expedition out of the Senate. In the Spring of Two-Seventy-One, Marcus Livius Drusus would be appointed Legate of the Northern Armies and given control of six legions, or thirty-six-thousand men.

Marcus Livius Drusus would, over the course of Two-Seventy-One, not only drive the raiders out of Roman Territory but also counter-invade the Gallic Confederacy, winning key battles at Placentia and Mediolanum and subjugating the Confederacy of Four Gallic Tribes, bringing wealth and captives back to Roma and adding new provinces to the Republic for the first time since before the Pyrrhic War. He, like Decimus Junius Brutus before him, was awarded a triumph in Roma and given honors by the Senate. It had taken a decade, but Rome had finally managed to claw its way out of the hold it had been tossed into by Pyrrhus of Epirus. When Brutus' latest term as Consul was over, Drusus was elected to replace him.

Now Drusus set his sights on Magna Graecia, hoping that round two with Epirus would not be quite so traumatic as round one. That wasn't to say that Epirus had sat on its laurels, mind. It had added multiple territories to its growing empire while Rome had been forced to rebuild. To defeat them, Rome would have to be smart and might need to court allies. Drusus made his decision and got the senate behind him. By Two-Sixty-Five, the Second Pyrrhic War would be on.

That, however, is a story for later. . .

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AN: So here we see Rome. The thing is, Rome doesn't do much for a decade after being beaten into the ground, simply attempting to rebuild and rearm. It took them a long time to do so, and they had to enact multiple programs and take advantage of unique circumstances to even begin digging themselves out of the hole. Don't expect them to show up in the story again for a while. This chapter literally takes place over the next decade, so figure where Rome is in the story to be ahead of everyone else for ten years while they catch up with the narrative.

At any rate, the next chapter will have us checking in with Carthage and how they're coping with the war. Then we'll get an interlude checking in on the minor powers like Macedon, Sparta, the Aitolian League, etc, before going back to Pyrrhus.

Stay tuned. . .