The Italians were not a barbarian people easily outmanoeuvred and out-fought by superior Roman army and logistics. Nor could the Roman army rely on the contempt the legionaries felt for ‘Graeculi’ (little Greeks) or decadent ‘orientals’. In foreign wars this feeling, however misplaced, had translated to a real advantage of morale on the battlefield. But the legionaries knew the Samnites and Marsi from fighting alongside
