Ab urbe condita

The whole of the country through which he passed was peaceably disposed, an attitude which was due more to the injuries inflicted by the Samnites than to any services which the Romans had rendered.

For the Samnites used to live at that day in open hamlets among the mountains, and they were in the habit of making marauding incursions into the low country and the coastal districts. Living the free open-air life of mountaineers, themselves they despised the less hardy cultivators of the plains who, as often happens, had developed a character in harmony with their surroundings.