Steele Brand

Because there's a lot of give and take, a lot of back and forth, a lot of movement in and out of a battle.

Because you're – it's a missile battle.

Most of the battle is a missile battle until they come to close.

So, I mean, it's really hard to say what the Samnites would have done.

I almost just think that we should kind of consider the Samnites are already conquered or the Samnites –

They're going to resist Alexander, in which case he's going to have to deal with them before he even gets to the Roman Republic.

Or if we're thinking along the lines of if he's coming in the 320s, it's also pretty logical to think the Romans have an alliance with the Samnites in the 350s.

They renew that alliance after the first Samnite war in the 340s.

I think it stands to reason that in the face of a grave threat, the Samnites and the Romans are going to set aside their differences.

They're going to reforge that alliance, which they've had for decades.

And I think that's going to present a problem for Alexander because he's going to have to deal with the buffer of the Samnites before he gets to the Roman Republic.

Now, if he's coming later, after the Second Samnite War, when Rome is clearly won and it's over, he's going to have the Samnites as allies.

And this is the situation that Hannibal Barca finds himself in when he goes into Italy about a century later.

So if he attacks before the Second Samnite War, I think the Samnites join with Rome.

If he attacks after the Second Samnite War, I think the Samnites probably join with Alexander.

But by this point in time, Rome is, gosh, they're battle-tested in their own way just as much as Alexander has been, and they've got more alliances throughout all of Italy, so they're in a stronger position as well.

Yeah, this is Titus Livy.

So my wife calls him the angel on my shoulder.

She calls Polybius the devil on my shoulder, because one of them is a bookish nerd who hangs out in the libraries during the time of Augustus, and then the other is this swashbuckling adventurer who thinks that you should be a Homeric hero, and that's Polybius.

But Livy probably asks the first alternate history in history, and that's exciting.