The peace, which terminated the third Samnite war, seems to have placed the Lucanians in a more favorable position: the hostages, which Rome never took from her subjects except during transitory circumstances, must have been restored to them. Without the dissolution of this bond they would scarcely have ventured upon wars displeasing to Rome, although it does not prevent rebellion in case of direct oppression.

For upwards of forty years, since the death of Alexander of Epirus, the Lucaniaus had almost disappeared from history: according to their ancient custom they now availed themselves of the independence they had recovered, to make war against the Thurians, in the same way as after the second Samnite war they had immediately taken up arms against the Tarentines. A hundred years before, Thurii, after it had risen to an almost incredible degree of prosperity and population in scarcely sixty years from its foundation, had received a blow from the Lucanians in the battle of Laos, from which it never recovered. From that time Magna Græcia had been exhausted through the enterprises of the Sicilian tyrants, through the attacks of the Lucanians and Bruttians, and even through the wars which checkt these their hereditary foes: several Greek towns were entirely destroyed or had become barbarous: Thurii seems never to have been taken during the whole of this period, but it certainly endeavoured to save itself, like the other towns of this coast, by treaties sometimes with the tyrants of Sicily and sometimes with the Italican barbarians.