ABSTRACT
The wars against the Samnites are often described by ancient sources and modern scholars as a crucial stage in the Roman conquest of Italy. The Samnites are traditionally considered the fiercest and most stubborn enemies of Rome, the representatives of a culture and lifestyle that were radically “other,” a people that pursued their own alternative project of expansion. There are, however, scholars who doubt that the “Samnite Wars” were a coherent conflict between two powers whose conscious objective was Italian hegemony, as explicitly declared by some ancient authors. The wars may have been a more haphazard series of conflicts that unfolded between Rome and Samnite communities which were themselves much less culturally unified and politically cohesive than Roman sources have represented them.
