

THE BRIGANDS OF APULIA. 



On my return from an excursion in Sicily, in the Autumn of 

 1831, and carried away by some old classical recollections,, I resolved 

 to explore that portion of the kingdom of Naples, seldom honoured 

 by the presence of our English tourists. Accordingly, instead of 

 proceeding direct from Palermo to Naples, I crossed over from 

 Messina into Calabria, and after sojourning some weeks amid its 

 savage beauties and lawless inhabitants, I at length reached the 

 object of my wanderings, the ancient Samnium the grave of old 

 Italian liberty. 



The modern province of Molise is the ancient Samnium, and is 

 one of the most neglected and the least known districts of the 

 kingdom of Naples. Confined between La Puglia and Abruzzo, cut 

 in two by the river Biferno, it is commanded on one side by the 

 formidable chain of the Motese, and washed on the other by the 

 Adriatic. The soil is sterile, notwithstanding the Motese is of 

 volcanic formation, and which, although extinguished at a period 

 long anterior to the earliest traditionary records we are in possession 

 of, still reveals its former power by frequent earthquakes. Hence 

 the name of " Terra Tremente," which the province has, in conse- 

 quence, acquired. 



It is here, in this narrow mountain space on those naked rocks 

 on those plains, ploughed up by so many catastrophes of nature 

 that was born, flourished and expired, the republican Confederation 

 of the Samnites. Gifted, like the modern Swiss, with a stern and 

 persevering nature, they alone made head against Rome they were 

 the true Guerillas of antiquity, who sustained for two hundred years 

 without armies, allies or chiefs, as they themselves told Hannibal, 

 the glorious struggle of Italian independence against Roman centrali- 

 zation. With them perished all that remained of nationality in the 

 ancient Peninsula ; the downfall of the Samnite Confederation was 

 for Italy what a later period was for Greece the dissolution of the 

 Achaian League. 



We are acquainted with the great drama of Samnite resistance 

 but through Livy ; our knowledge of it is, therefore, most super- 

 ficial, for the historian of the victories and conquests of the Roman 

 empire dwells but cursorily on a struggle in which the Roman 

 legions cut so frequently a sorry figure. 



Full of the glory of the ancient Samnites, I wandered forth to 

 seek the tombs of the brave in the ancient Samnium, after having 

 raised up the shade of Spartacus in the forests of Lucania, and that 

 of the Lucanian Deucotius upon the mountains of Sicily. 



But here I was disappointed in my hopes. The Roman empire 

 has passed over Samnium, as she has done over Lucania and Sicily, 

 bearing every where traces of her profound impression. On the 

 ruins is her name alone to be found. In vain did I seek amid the 

 ruins of the heroic Sepinum those of Herenius and of Talesius, I 

 found in their stead the names of Claudius and of Constantine not a 



