Rendición o Resistencia?: El primer discurso latino

Abstract

In the second 4th century half b.C., Rome occupies central Italy and orientates to the territorial possesion of the southern region in possible conflict with Greeks and Carthaginians; her influence spreads out even to the Ionic, when several Magna Graecia cities requests her protection, except Tarento, that, when aRoman fleet anchored in her harbor, reacted attacking the ships and aRoman neighbor military campo. In view of an unavoidable war, Tarento required help to Pyrrhus, king of Epire. who saw the opportunity for expand toward the west the conquests that Alexander the Great did not consummate; his entrance by force produced a strong endurance, but it did not obstruct expensive victories neither his advance toward north; then he proposed by an emissary the submission and onerous stipulations by whom the Romans almost cede. Then appears Appius Claudius the Blind, an old retired senator, who, with a short, concise and very effective speech, produced the turn in the patrician's decisions. We analyze the speech preserved by Plutarch in the Purrhus' lioes and we place it inside his historical and politic context; by him Rome keeps her Italic frontiers and makes ready her future expansiono