CHAPTER FOUR
Pre-Roman Italy, Before and
Under the Romans
Olivier de Cazanove
Sentinum and the Impossible Religious Unity of
the Italian Peninsula
Pre-Roman Italy, broadly understood, cannot be said to have been unified in any
meaningful sense, not least in the field of religious representations and practices. One
episode is emblematic of this situation: all the people of Italy actually formed an
alliance together on only one occasion, to counteract the imminent rise of Rome.
Nevertheless, the event reveals their habitual disunity, their lack of common foun-
dations, including common religious rites. In 295 bc in Sentinum, in Umbria,
the Samnites, Gauls, Etruscans, and Umbrians met to face the Roman armies. This
battle represents to some extent the climax of the Roman conquest of Italy. Its
perceived importance at the time is confirmed by the fact that it became the theater
of completely exceptional divine signs and rites. First a double sign (omen): a hind
pursued by a wolf appears between the two armies (Livy 10.27). The hind moves
toward the Gallic lines, the wolf toward the Roman lines. The latter open in front
of it, while the Gauls kill the hind. By killing the animal dedicated to Diana, as a
Roman soldier called out, they called down judgment upon themselves in the form
of forced retreat and the destruction of their army. In contrast, the wolf of Mars left
the confrontation victorious and unscathed, reminding the Romans that they were,
they and their founder (Romulus), worthy descendants of Mars.
The lesson to be learnt from this episode is that the Romans have a well-defined
legendary identity, well known also to their enemies. Two centuries later (in 82 bc),
Pontius Telesinus, the chief of the Samnites, the last Italic to raise arms against the
Romans, would compare Rome, which he wanted to demolish, with a den of wolves
which had ravished the freedom of Italy. On the contrary, the hind cannot functionACTC04 25/04/2007 09:26 AM Page 43