At the Battle of Sentinum, the Romans faced a large group of enemies (‘alliance’ may be too formal a word for it): the Samnites themselves, as well as Etruscans and Gauls from the far north of the peninsula. The sheer number of combatants seems to have attracted the attention of Duris of Samos, who recorded a vast but implausible total of 100,000 Samnite and allied casualties. Roman writers saw this as a particularly heroic victory.
