Benevento Campania Italy

The Roman armies have been so successful in the first years of the Second, or Great, Samnite War, that the Samnites sue for peace in 321 BCE, but the terms offered are so stringent that they are rejected and the war continues.

The Samnites are more comfortable fighting in mountainous terrain their Roman opponents.

In the same year, Romes’s two consuls, leading an invading force into Samnium, are trapped in a narrow mountain pass known as the Caudine Forks, near present Benevento, Campania, where they can neither advance nor retreat, and after a desperate struggle would have been annihilated if they had not submitted to the humiliating terms imposed by the Samnite victor Gaius Pontius.

In a major humiliation for the proud northerners, the troops are disarmed and compelled to pass 'under the yoke', man by man, as a foe vanquished and disgraced.

This ancient ritual is a form of subjugation by which the defeated have to bow and pass under a yoke used for oxen.

(In this case, it is a yoke made from Roman spears, as it is understood to be the greatest indignity to the Roman soldier to lose his spear).

Six hundred Equites have to be handed over as hostages.

Meanwhile, the captive consuls pledge themselves to a five-year treaty on the most favorable terms for the Samnites.

( Later Roman historians, however, will try to deny this humiliation by inventing stories of Rome's rejection of the peace and its revenge upon the Samnites.)

Pyrrhus, after suffering heavy losses in a battle against Rome at Beneventum (Benevento) in 275, returns to Greece, while Rome puts down resistance in southern Italy.

The Arch of Trajan, a triumphal arch in Benevento, southern Italy, is erected between 114 and 117 CE to celebrate emperor Trajan across the Via Appia, at its entrance in the city.

The arch has a single, barrel-vaulted archway, and is 15.60 meters high and 8.60 meters wide.

Each façade has four semicolumns in correspondence of the two side pillars, supporting an entablature.

Above the architraves is an attic which, like the latter, juts out above the archway.

The arch is built in limestone covered by opus quadratum with Parian marble slabs.

It has a rich sculpted decoration on the two main façades.

The attic features a dedicatory inscription and, at the sides, two base-relief panels: the left one on the external sides, not entirely preserved, represented the homage the provincial countryside divinities, while the right one the deduction of provincial colonies.

On the internal side, on the left, is the depiction of Trajan welcomed by the Capitoline Triad and, on the right, Trajan in the Forum Boarium.

The frieze of the entablature portrays the triumph of Trajan against Dacia.

On each of the pylons, between the angular semicolumns, are two superimposed panels with scenes and allegories of imperial activities (advent of Trajan, the concession of Roman citizenship to the auxiliaries, Trajan welcomed by the Senate, the Roman People and the Equestrian order and others).

They are separate by lower decorative panels with Victories during sacrifices of bulls in the center and Amazons at the top.

The pendentives of the archway depict personifications of the Danube and of Mesopotamia in the external side, and the Victory and Military Loyalty on the city one, accompanied by the genii of the Four Seasons.

In the arch's keys are other personification: Fortune on the external, and Rome on the city side.

The internal side of the archway has two wide sculpted panels, portraying scenes of Trajan in Benevento: on the left (from inside the city) is the Sacrifice for the opening of the Via Traiana, with the emperor sided by lictors; on the right is instead the institution of the alimentaria (a beneficent institution created by Trajan to help children in Roman Italy), symbolized by pieces of bread on the table in the center, with personifications of Italic cities with children.

The vault has a coffered ceiling, with, in the center, a personification of the emperor crowned by a Victory.

Bypassing Rome, Totila begins his expedition in southern Italy.

He captures Beneventum and receives the submission of the provinces of Apulia, Lucania and Bruttium.

Totila besieges the city of Naples in Campania.

An imperial relief force from Sicily is intercepted and almost destroyed by Gothic warships.

…Benevento, have by late 569 conquered all the principal cities north of the Po River …

…the Duchy of Benevento, which is ruled by Zotto.

As these duchies are geographically cut off from the kingdom in the north by the imperial territories that range from Adriatic to Tyrrhenian Seas—the Rome-to-Ravenna corridor kept open by the Empire—this exacerbates the problem of Lombard unity.

Arechis I, duke of Benevento, had conquered Capua and Venafro in the Campania and areas of the Basilicata and Calabria.

He had failed to take Naples after a siege (his predecessor Zotto had failed likewise), but he took Salerno by the late 620s.

He has spent the last years of his reign establishing good relations with the Roman Catholics of his duchy and making his son his successor.

He dies after a fifty-year reign and is succeeded by his son Aiulf I, who is, however, mentally unstable; his adoptive brothers Radoald and Grimoald, the younger sons of the late Gisulf II of Friuli, are regents for him.

Gregory seeks the support of the Lombard dukes of Benevento and …

...Benevento into his kingdom in 742.