LW-40 Samnium

The late province revived an old regional name within a new administrative structure. It did not restore the independent Samnite peoples of the Republican conquest. Farming, livestock, seasonal movement, local markets, and road connections sustained communities whose landscape differed from the nearby Campanian plain.

Earthquakes and other disruptions affected particular towns, while Christian institutions increasingly organized regional authority. Gothic, Eastern Roman, and Lombard warfare later changed control across the uplands. The province’s fragmentation reflects the difficulties and strategic importance of interior communication, not the absence of settled life or the survival of an untouched pre-Roman society.