Lucania

No Roman soldier had ever seen such an animal.

The name they gave it came from the region where they first met one, the Lucanian Ox.

The elephants belonged to a king from across the sea.

His name was Pyrrhus, and he ruled Epirus, a small mountain kingdom on the western edge of Greece, facing Italy over a narrow stretch of water.

The Tarentines sent to Epirus again.

Their envoys reached the court of Pyrrhus with gifts and letters, and with promises from half the peoples of southern Italy.

The Lucanians would fight, they said, and the Samnites and the Mesapians.

Together, the allies could put 20,000 horsemen in the field and 350,000 men on foot.

Odysseus consulting the shade of Tiresias.

Lucanian red-figured calyx crater, ca.

380 BC.

Musée de la BNF slash public domain.

They worked the big estates down in Campania and Apulia.

They herded sheep in the hills of Lucania, and they ground the grain in the mills outside Rome itself.

Free farmers couldn't compete with that.

A lot of them had gone off to fight in Sulla's wars.

Word spread fast.

Slaves ran off from farms all over Campania.

Shepherds walked away from their flocks in Lucania and joined up.

And poor freedmen who had their own reasons to hate Rome came in alongside them.