Wars between the Sabellians and Tarentines.

Archidamus.

Alexander the Molosian.

While the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Volturnus, other conflicts agitated the south-east of the peninsula. The wealthy merchant-republic of Tarentum, daily exposed to more serious peril from the Lucanian and Messapian bands, and justly distrusting its own sword, gained by good words and better coin the help of condottieri from the mothercountry. The Spartan king, Archidamus, who with a strong band had come to the assistance of his fellow-Dorians, succumbed to the Lucanians on the same day on which Philip conquered at Chseronea (416); a retribution, in the belief of the pious Greeks, for the share which, nineteen years previously, he and his people had taken in pillaging the sanctuary of Delphi. His place was taken by an abler commander, Alexander the Molossian, brother of Olympias the mother of Alexander the Great. In addition to the troops which he had brought along with him, he united under his banner the contingents of the Greek cities, especially those of the Tarentines and Metapontines; the Poediculi (around Eubi, now Euvo), who, like the Greeks, found themselves in danger from the Sabellian nation; and lastly, even Lucanian exiles themselves, whose considerable numbers point to the existence of violent internal disorganization in that confederacy. Thus he soon found himself superior to the enemy. Consentia (Cosenza), which seems to have been the federal headquarters of the Sabellians settled in Magna Grsecia, fell into his hands. In vain the Samnites came to the help of the Lucanians; Alexander defeated their combined forces near Pæstum.