WILHELM IHNE’S HISTORY OF ROME

 

THIRD BOOK.

THE CONQUEST OF ITALY.

CHAPTER I.

FOREIGN HISTORY FROM THE BURNING OF ROME BY THE GAULS TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SAMNITE WARS.

390-343 B.C.

 

If the obscurity of the older Roman history, as some have supposed, were to be explained entirely or even chiefly by the fact that the annals then existing were all destroyed in the Gallic conflagration, we might hope that from this time forward the character of the narrative would be essentially different. It is true, we should even yet hardly expect a full, comprehensive, and connected account of the mediately principal events; but we should at least be justified in hoping that the information, however bare, jejune, and incomplete, would be in the main trustworthy; that there would no longer be great uncertainty about times and places; that the Same transactions would no longer be related several times over; that we should find no more imaginary battles, conquests, and triumphs; and that accounts contradicting each other, or accompanied with vagueness, obscurity, inconsistency, and palpable errors— above all, that miracles and boundless exaggerations, would no longer disfigure the annals of Rome. But such a change for the better is not perceptible at this period. On the contrary, the mists of antiquity begin, it would seem, to thicken again. The accounts referring to Camillus contain more especially so much exaggeration and fiction that we are rarely conscious of treading on firmer historical ground after the Gallic conflagration, and we cannot avoid the conclusion that, even for some time after that disaster, little was done in Rome to preserve the memory of passing events from corruption and oblivion.

Immediately after the retreat of the Gauls, it is said, all the old enemies of Rome—the Etruscans, Volscians, and Aequians—were again in arms, in order to take advantage of the helpless condition of the Romans, and the threatened revolt of the Latins and Hernicans made these attacks especially dangerous. But the tried hero, Camillus, who now for the second time commanded the Roman legions as dictator, first attacked and overcame the. Volscians, and reduced them to final submission after they had carried on war with Rome for seventy years. He then vanquished the Aequians, and turned with the rapidity of lightning against the Etruscans, who, with united powers, were besieging the town of Sutrium. Unable to resist any longer, the inhabitants of Sutrium had already surrendered their town, in consideration of a free retreat, and the train of the poor homeless creatures, with their wailing wives and children, met Camillus, who was hastening to their relief. He immediately pushed forward to Sutrium, where he surprised the Etruscans as they were engaged in plundering the town, and, having regained the place, restored it to the inhabitants on the same day on which they had lost it. A well-deserved triumph crowned this ’threefold victory.

This story, wonderful enough in itself, is still more curious, because we meet with it again three years later. Again Camillus returns from a war with the Volscians, and marches against the Etruscans, who, in the meantime, had again conquered Sutrium. Again the enemy are conquest of expelled and the town is restored to its possessors. Of the two conquests of Sutrium one is clearly fictitious. We should almost be inclined to doubt the other also, because every story related of victories of Camillus is more or less suspicious. But Livy reports that, out of the sum which the sale of the Etruscan prisoners realised, three golden bowls were dedicated as consecrated gifts in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, inscribed with the name of Camillus and that these bowls were to be seen before the feet of Juno until the burning of the Capitol (383 BC), and it is, moreover, certain that Sutrium was made a Roman colony seven years after the Gallic conflagration.

The old confederation of Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, which at no time can have been very firm or mutually satisfactory, was, as we have already seen, very much weakened and modified by the long wars with the Volscians and Aequians. Many of the old confederate cities in Latium had been lost. Those which remained had become more dependent on Rome, and those which were re-conquered from the Volscians did not regain their original position as members of a confederation. From having been allied and independent states, they became more and more the subjects of Rome.

During the invasion of the Gauls, every Latin town was, it seems, thrown back on its own resources. The league was completely dissolved, since the head town was destroyed and appeared to be annihilated. We find, therefore, after the retreat of the Gauls, some Latin towns, in an isolated and independent position, as mistresses of neighbouring communities. Such towns were especially Praeneste and Tibur. At the same time these towns appear to be impatient pf the control which the Romans had hitherto exercised over them. They had found out, it seems, that Rome was seeking to take away their independence, and to sacrifice their interests to her own. They discovered that their position, relatively to the Aequians and Volscians, differed essentially from that of the Romans; that they had in the end less to fear from an alliance with these peoples than from a confederacy at the head of which was such a grasping and centralized power as Rome.

Praeneste was the first to venture (382 BC) on open war. The subjection of this great, fortified, and at that time impregnable town to the dominion of Rome is especially important, because it is alleged to be proved by an historical monument and a written record. If these are genuine, they leave no doubt of the fact, and may tend moreover to raise in our eyes the character also of other annalistic statements which are not borne out by any documentary evidence. But, unfortunately, the reports concerning this monument and this record are of such a kind that, by their contradictions, they warrant grave doubts of the trustworthiness of the old collectors of documentary evidence. According to Livy, the dictator T. Quinctius Cincinnatus defeated the Praenestines on the Allia, 380 BC, took eight towns which were subject to them, as well as the town of Velitiae, by force, compelled Praeneste to surrender, conveyed from thence to the Capitol the statue of Jupiter Imperator, and placed it between the shrines of Jupiter and Minerva, furnished with an inscription which declared that ‘Jupiter and all the gods had permitted the dictator T. Quinctius to conquer nine towns.’

The first thing that strikes us in this account is, that the statue of the supreme deity was carried away from a town, not taken by force and destroyed, but surrendered by treaty on condition of retaining her liberty. The removal of the statue from Praeneste to Rome would have been the sign and symbol of the annihilation of the former town as a political community, just as the carrying away of the statue of Juno from Veii denoted and sealed the total overthrow of the Veientine state. But Praeneste continued to exist as a Latin town with undiminished power. In the following year she even renewed the war with Rome, and, according to an entirely trustworthy report of Diodorus,  made peace or concluded an armistice with Rome only in the year 354 BC. These considerations and doubts have still more weight if we compare other circumstances. Cicero also mentions a statue of Jupiter in the Capitoline Temple, but he says that it was brought by T. Quinctius Flamininus from Macedonia. As it is not likely that two statues of Jupiter Imperator were placed in the Capitoline Temple, each by a T. Quinctius, as war trophies; as moreover Cicero could hardly be misinformed about a statue brought to Rome after the Macedonian war, we cannot hesitate to condemn the-story which would make the statue in question about 200 years older. But if the statue of Jupiter Imperator was not brought to Rome by T. Quinctius from Praeneste, the inscription quoted by Livy could have no reference to it. Livy' says that it was engraved on a tablet, not on the pedestal or the body of the statue. Such a tablet may easily have been put in a wrong place. The object to which it originally belonged is indicated by Festus, who mentions an inscription in which the ‘dictator T. Quinctius consecrated a golden crown to Jupiter, two pounds and a third in weight, because in nine days he conquered as many towns, and Praeneste as the tenth.’ There can be no doubt whatever that Festus and Livy quote the same inscription, though both quote it inaccurately. Tet they agree in the main as to the substance of its purport, and them testimony leaves no doubt that such an inscription and a golden crown were dedicated in the temple of Jupiter in commemoration of some signal victories of T. Quinctius Cincinnatus over the Praenestines. It is, however, by no means certain at what time the offering was made and the inscription composed. If it were contemporary with the event, it would be the oldest Latin inscription authentically preserved. But it is quite as likely that it was composed by a descendant of T. Quinctius many years later. 

The references even to such sources of information as statues with inscriptions cannot therefore be trusted without the most careful investigation, as unfortunately the Roman antiquarians were most credulous, and, moreover, inaccurate and superficial. At the same time we gain the conviction that we now meet in the Roman history with events which, though not cleaned up in every particular, are still no longer mere illusions and fictions.

The example of Praeneste was followed by several Latin towns. Some are described as secretly assisting the Volscians. Lanuvium is hostile; then the Latins generally are in open war with Rome. The Hernicans likewise are hostile, 396 B.C. and Tibur carries on a lengthy war, in conjunction, as it appears, with Praeneste, long after the time when, according to the boast of the Romans, Praeneste had been humbled by T. Quinctius.

How Rome was able to defend herself against the Volscians, in spite of the hostility of many of the Latins and Hernicans, it is impossible to say. Apart from the indomitable courage and perseverance which distinguished the Roman nation, whether in council or in the field, the circumstance that Rome, as a united state, stood opposed to a coalition was especially favourable to her. Rome always knew very well how to make use of dissensions among her enemies. The senate, led by the most tried politicians of the republic, doubtless displayed already that dexterity and firmness in its foreign policy which greatly distinguished it at a later time. It is significant that during these wars a league of the Romans with the Samnites is mentioned (354 BC). The Samnites dwelt in the rear and on the flank of the Volscians, and they appear just at this time to have come into hostile contact with the Ausonian tribes to which the Volscians belonged. However this may be, it is certain that the Romans, in spite of many vicissitudes, in the end, had the advantage at all points. The Latins were compelled to return to their former subordination as the confederates of Rome. The Volscians were driven back, and in 358 B.C. two new tribes were added to the Roman territory, a circumstance which furnishes better evidence of the superiority of the Romans than we can have in any reports of Roman conquests and triumphs. This addition to the territory of the republic, the first important one which took place on the side of Latium, indicates a marked and very decisive success of the Roman arms. Undoubtedly the conquered and now incorporated territory was taken from the Volscians, and was originally a part of old Latium. Instead of being restored to the Latins, it was added to the territory of Rome, and this shows plainly how completely the Romans regarded themselves as masters of Latium. We hear of no opposition of the Latins against the incorporation of the two new tribes. On the contrary, it is reported of —the same year (358 BC) that peace with the Latins was  restored, and that the latter again placed their contingent at the disposal of the Romans. In the same year the Hernicans were reduced to submission. Possibly the reports of Roman victories are boastful and exaggerated, and the renewal of the old confederacy was brought about more by persuasion and peaceable means than by force of arms; still the advantage was not less decisively on the side of the Romans. The Latins and Hernicans resigned themselves to that which they found was unavoidable. Only such towns as Praeneste and Tibur, relying on the strength of their walls, could venture to hold out still longer against Rome, and yet they also were in the end compelled to submit, 354 BC. But the Latins retained a deep-seated grudge against their imperious and ungenerous allies, who had become their masters. They considered themselves in every respect equal to the Romans. They had fought innumerable battles side by side with them, and had helped to gain many a Roman victory. They formed the barrier against the Aequians and the Volscians, and through their troubles and losses Rome had become great. Now they saw that the prize of victory was carried off by the Romans. If discontent and rancour filled their hearts, the Romans had sown the seed. Fourteen years after the submission of Tibur, the great Latin war broke out (340 BC), which more than any other threatened the existence of Rome.

 On the north of the Ciminian mountains, which separate southern from central Etruria, lay Tarquinii, one of the oldest and most powerful of the Etruscan towns. After the destruction of Veil, this had become the immediate neighbour of Rome. The Tarquinians might consider themselves safe from a hostile collision with Rome, partly on account of the distance, and partly because they were protected by the natural boundary of the Ciminian forest, which was at that time a wild and inhospitable mountain tract. Yet it was inevitable that quarrels should arise among the neighbours, which at any time might give occasion for wars. The Roman citizens who had settled in the four tribes formed out of the conquered Veientine territory, especially the colonists in the border fortresses, Sutrium and Nepete, behaved probably much after the fashion of the advanced posts of a conquering people generally, and encroached upon their Etruscan neighbours. But it was not before the year 358 BC, when, as it seems, the disputes between Rome and the Latins had been settled and the old confederation was re-established, that the Romans found it advisable to declare war in due form against the Tarquinians. This war, which lasted, according to Livy’s account, eight years, was carried on with great animosity and under many vicissitudes of fortune, and it ended by no means in a complete overthrow of the Tarquinians, but in a peace of forty years, which left the independence of Tarquinii untouched and the Roman boundary unchanged. Caere and Falerii, it is said, took part in the war against Rome, by sending volunteers, and when peace was concluded the people of Caere were compelled to accept the Roman citizenship without, the full franchise, i.e. to become subjects of Rome. They shared in the burthens, but were not admitted to the honours and privileges of Roman citizenship, and the name of the Caerites was ever afterwards applied to designate citizens of this class.

The national hatred with which the war between the Romans and the Etruscans was carried on, showed itself, in the very beginning, by a bloody deed, which even the ship, cruel code of war of antiquity could not justify. The consul C. Fabius Ambustus was beaten by the Tarquinians, and 307 Roman prisoners fell as victims on the altars of the Etruscan gods. Religious fanaticism, from which the Greeks and Romans were tolerably free, and which we meet only among Asiatic nations and among the Celts in Europe, appears to have stimulated the patriotism of the Etruscans into madness. This appears also from the part which the Etruscan priests took in the battle. As in a religious war, they rushed on before the combatants, with burning torches in their hands and serpents in their hair. The courage of the Etruscans became fury, and the Roman soldiers, not prepared for such terrors, gave way. The Roman territory on the right bank of the Tiber was abandoned to the invasion and devastation of the enemy. It was necessary to appoint a dictator, and for the first time a plebeian, C. Marcius Rutilus, was raised to this post. At last, in the year 353 B.C., the defeat of the Romans was avenged, and now bloody reprisals were taken on the Etruscan prisoners. Three hundred and fifty-eight of the noblest of them were scourged on the Roman Forum and beheaded. The Romans succeeded in keeping off the Etruscans, but they could boast of no great success, and the peace which was concluded in the year 351 BC  was, as we have already seen, only a truce of forty years.

The predatory invasions of the Gauls in the central and southern parts of Italy were repeated as long as the spoil was attractive and the opposition not too vigorous. Of their invasions into the Roman territory we have two accounts, materially differing from one another—that of Polybius, who appears to give the oldest and simplest tradition, and, on the other side, that of Livy and the other historians, who describe a great number of battles and victories with a mass of detail. We give first the story of Polybius, which appears to us the most credible, because it is less flattering to Roman pride.

For thirty years after their first invasion, the Gauls remained quiet. Then they appeared suddenly at Alba, and the Romans were so surprised and so unprepared that they did not dare to march against them. But when the Gauls made another invasion twelve years later, they found the Romans, with their allies, armed and ready for battle, and they returned in haste back to their own country. Now, when they had learnt that the Romans had become strong, they concluded, thirteen years later, a treaty of peace with Rome.

Out of these few collisions with the Gauls, which were neither eventful nor glorious, the patriotic writers from whom Livy draws his information have made a series of six great wars and victories, in which the heroic deeds of T. Manlius Torquatus and M. Valerius Corvus stand out prominently. Already in the year 367 BC, twenty-three years, therefore, after the burning of Rome, the Gauls, according to this account, appeared in the neighbourhood of Alba. Camillus, who had once deprived them of their spoils, and had driven them with victorious hand out of Rome; was still living, and had reached the advanced age of fourscore years. He was now, for the fifth time, named dictator, and displayed, as he had always done, his greatness as a warrior. He totally defeated the barbarians, and celebrated a glorious triumph in that same year in which he had contributed towards settling the internal disputes which ended with the passing of the Licinian laws.

The second invasion of the Gauls took place six years later, in 361 BC. They advanced as far as the Anio, a few miles from Rome. Here it was that a gigantic Gaul challenged the best man among the Romans to single combat, and was vanquished by the young T. Manlius, who stripped the barbarian of his golden necklace (torques) and thus gained the surname Torquatus. Terror seized the army of the enemy. They fled under the cover of night.

The third invasion of the Gauls took place in the following year, 360 BC, the thirtieth after the burning of Rome, i.e. the same year in which, according to Polybius, the Gauls returned for the first time. But while Polybius knows of no engagement during this year, and only says that the Romans did not venture to march against their enemies, Livy tells of a victory of the dictator Q. Servilius and of a triumph of the consul C. Poetelius over the Gauls and Tiburtines. Two years later, 368 BC, the Gauls were again beaten at Pedum, and the dictator C. Sulpicius triumphed. The same story is repeated in the year 350 B.C., under the consul M. Popilius Lamas. At last, in the year 349 BC, the son of Camillus, L. Furius Camillus, gains a decisive victory over the Gauls, after which they do not renew their attacks. The pretended victory of L. Furius Camillus coincides chronologically with the second invasion of the Gauls mentioned by Polybius, when, according to this writer, no engagement took place, but the enemy retreated like a band of robbers on finding the Romans prepared to receive them. Livy, however, by way of a prelude to the victory of the Romans, relates the single combat of M. Valerius with the Gallic champion, in which a raven descends on the helmet of the Roman, and with his claws and beak gashes the face of the Gaul during the fight. That the whole battle and the victory of L. Furius Camillus are as authentic as this single combat is more than probable. At all events the account of Polybius throws grave doubts on a victory which is not the less suspicious as sharing the legendary character of all accounts of Gallic wars in which a Furius Camillus is mentioned.

The result of our investigations is, that the whole of the six wars with the Gauls, as Livy relates them, are not much more than stop-gaps marking points at which the historical, empty annals of the old time have been filled up with edifying and patriotic matter. We can therefore infer that a considerable part of the other wars is equally apocryphal, and we may perhaps have the satisfaction of thinking that there were no wars to relate, and that the Romans had now and then a little breathing time.

 

CHAPTER II.

M. MANLIUS, 384 B.C.

 

It has been already said that in the received account of the devastation caused by the Gauls, the mischief done by the barbarians has been very much exaggerated. The narrators have had a sort of pleasure in representing the distress of the Romans as quite overwhelming. The Gauls are said to have destroyed not only all that was combustible, but to have demolished the fortifications and the town walls. We are even assured that the greater number of citizens perished, and that, after the retreat of the Gauls, the pressure of famine led to the desperate resolution of throwing all the old men from sixty, years upwards into the Tiber. A popular legend related that Fidenae, Ficulea, and other insignificant neighbouring towns were encouraged by the distress of Rome to desire a number of Roman virgins in marriage, and advanced with an army to the town, to back their demand by the display of force; that the Romans, unable to refuse the demands of their neighbours, sent a number of female slaves, dressed as Roman virgins, into the hostile camp before the gates, and that these, having made the enemy drunk, deprived them of their arms, and gave a signal to the Romans, who rushed out of the city and cut them down in their sleep.

Such stories, of course, deserve no credence. Nevertheless it is certain that the retreat of the Gauls was followed by a time of misery and great distress. Wherever the barbarians had penetrated, they had no doubt destroyed or carried off all the corn, killed the cattle, and burnt the mischief, houses. When the Romans returned to their homes, they were in the position of men who have been visited by murrain, failure of the crops, and conflagration all at once. Yet the organism of the commonwealth was unhurt. The spirit of the Roman people still lived, and soon began to reinvigorate the body of the state, and to repeople the old sacred place. Nor was the courage of the senate broken. Only one idea animated the best men of Rome. They set to work to establish the state anew, to rebuild the town, and to reassert their commanding position among their allies and neighbours.

Yet if we can believe our authorities, the people were by no means unanimous in their resolution to restore the destroyed town, and to cling to the old centre of the state, with which the memories of the past and the hopes of future greatness were connected. The plebs, instigated by the tribunes, wished to leave the heap of ruins on the Tiber, and to emigrate to Veii. There a new Rome was to arise in a healthy, strong situation and a fruitful country, where they could hope to found a free commonwealth on new principles, free from the trammels and traditions of the past. In vain Camillus brought the power of his eloquence and the weight of his authority to bear against a plan which betrayed the un-Roman and impious spirit of its authors. The question was about to be put to the vote in the senate, and perfect stillness reigned in the curia. Then the voice of a centurion, calling to his soldiers, was heard from the Forum, ‘Here we will remain.’ These words were accepted by the senate, and also by the people, as an omen and a divine decision. The work of restoration was cheerfully begun and finished within a year. Every citizen built according to his fancy, and took the materials wherever he could find them. The direction of the old streets had disappeared among the ruins. The new streets arose without regularity, and without regard to the line of the old sewers. Thus it happened that Rome in the time of the emperors was a town of narrow, crooked, and irregular streets. Special care was, however, bestowed on the temples. They were cleared of all rubbish, restored, and newly consecrated. The Capitol, at that part where the Gauls had scaled it, was strengthened by huge substructions, which moved the wonder of succeeding generations.

The story of the intended emigration to Veii we have already met with immediately after the conquest of this town, when the question arose, how the patricians should manage to have the newly acquired lands for their exclusive use and benefit. We have already expressed “the suspicion that it is only a misrepresentation of facts by the annalists, when they speak of the intention of the plebeians of dividing the Roman state into two parts, and of making Veii the seat of half the senate and of half the Roman nation. Such an absurd plan never was conceived by the practical plebeians. What they wanted was to have a share in the Veientine land, a desire which the ruling class at last were obliged to agree to, by giving to the plebs allotments of seven jugera a head. But, after their usual custom, the patricians had tried to take away with one hand what they had given with the other; and so it appears that the seven jugera of the Veientine land were handed over to the plebeians, not as full property, but incumbered with a tithe.

Now, after the destruction of the city by the Gauls, the question in dispute, which had not yet been solved, came up again. The plebeians once more urged their claim of freehold property, but it was again rejected, and it seemed that the first brilliant conquest of the Roman arms was to be turned to the exclusive advantage of the ruling class. If, accordingly, we consider the whole story of the intended emigration to Veii as a misrepresentation of the events in the patrician interest, it is quite clear that we must look upon the subsequent story of Manlius as equally distorted to suit the views and interests of the patricians. We shall find that the policy of Manlius, far from being dangerous to the republic, and aiming at the restoration of the monarchy, was directed to the improvement of the economical position of the plebeians, that it was an attempt to settle the land question, and that it anticipated the measure of Sextius and Licinius, which was carried only eighteen years later.

The story of M. Manlius, as reported by Livy, runs as follows. When the restoration of the town had been determined upon, after the retreat of the Gauls, a bad time came for the Roman plebeians. They had to replace their houses, stables, and barns, their agricultural implements, and their cattle, at a time when it was difficult for them even to get food to support themselves and their families. There was no escape. They were obliged to borrow from the patricians, and their debts reduced them to a state of great dependence on their creditors. The high rates of interest and the cruel laws of debt drove them further and further on the downward path. The privileged class saw this misery of their fellow-citizens without compassion. Bowed down by the weight of their debts, oppressed by military service and taxes, excluded from the honours and advantages of the commonwealth, the plebeians were in a situation only too likely to foster the feeling of discontent, and to invite them to overthrow the existing order of the state. In this distress they found a friend in one of the foremost families of the patrician nobility. M. Manlius, the deliverer of the Capitol, distinguished by his heroism, which had been displayed in numberless battles, had not been admitted since his consulship 392 BC to any public honours, and had the humiliation of seeing his rival Camillus, the champion of the nobility, preferred before him on every occasion. Resolving, therefore, to join the popular party, he took counsel with the tribunes for relieving the misery of the common people by grants of land and a remission of debts. He held meetings with the leaders of the plebs in his house on the Capitol. He accused those of his own class of having embezzled the money which had been taken from the Gauls, and he tried in every way to gain the favour of the common people. One debtor, whom he saw being led away into prison, he immediately set free with his own money. Then he sold his estate near Veii, and endowed 400 poor plebeians with the proceeds. He declared that, as long as he possessed anything, no plebeian should suffer distress. These proceedings assumed at last such a threatening aspect that, in order to guard the town against insurrection, the senate recalled the dictator A. Cornelius Cossus, who was just then in the field fighting against the Volscians. The dictator summoned Manlius before his tribunal, accused him of falsely and maliciously libelling the patricians, and ordered him to be cast into prison. But now the sympathy of the people for Manlius became alarming. Tumults arose in the streets. Crowds assembled before the prison, and would leave the place neither day nor night. The senate thought it too hazardous to persist, and Manlius was set free. But the prison had not damped his courage; it had only roused his anger. He continued to stir up the multitude, and it seemed as though he could not rest until he had broken the power of the patricians. He aimed, it was thought, even higher. After the overthrow of the nobility, so at least his opponents averred, he wished to make himself king of Home by the favour of the plebs. This fear alarmed the minds even of his own friends. The people began to tremble for their freedom. Two tribunes of the people accused Manlius of high treason before the comitia of centuries. But the people could not condemn the deliverer of the Capitol in face of its very walls. The accusers then removed the assembly of the people to the grove of Poetelius, from which the Capitol was not visible, and here Manlius was condemned. He atoned for his enterprise with his life. From the height of the rocks which he had heroically defended on that memorable night, he was hurled down as a traitor to his country. Yet more; his name was branded with infamy. His cousins of the Manlian house determined never again to adopt Marcus as a name. His abode on the Capitol was razed to the ground, and it was decreed that no patrician should henceforth dwell on the Capitol. Thus ended the life of Manlius, the deliverer of Rome, the humane friend of an oppressed people, condemned by this very people to die the death of a traitor.

The preceding story is one that raises serious doubts regarding its credibility and impartiality. One thing is certain, that Manlius was an advocate of the liberties of the plebs. Is it likely that the plebeian tribunes acted as his prosecutors, and that the people in the comitia centuriata condemned him. We should have a very mean opinion of the Roman plebeians if we could think them capable of sacrificing their best friends upon charges so frivolous as those which the enemies of Manlius brought against him. But still more contemptible would they appear if we could believe the account which makes them incline to mercy so long as the Capitol is in sight, and forget his services as soon as the assembly is held in a place from which the scene of his heroism is not visible. Were they likely to be tricked so easily? Could they condemn him, and yet remain so much convinced of his innocence that they ascribed a plague which visited Rome in the next year to the anger of the gods at his condemnation 

These considerations lead as to suspect that the assembly which condemned Manlius to death was different from the comitia of centuries, which, according to the received story, refused to find him guilty. This conclusion is confirmed by some direct evidence. The assembly in the Poeteline Grove is called a ‘concilium populi,’ a term which applies exclusively to the patrician assembly of the curiae. Yet more, according to an account preserved by Livy himself, the prosecutors of Manlius were the ‘duumviri perduellionis.’ The office of these duumviri dated from the regal period, and had almost been forgotten since the establishment of the republic. The duumviri could bring Manlius to trial only before the patrician assembly of curiae. By a stretch of power the patricians might claim to exercise jurisdiction in the assembly over a member of their own body, although the comitia of centuries were competent since the decemviral legislation to try capital cases involving the life of a citizen. If so, Manlius was not put to death, as Livy reports, by being hurled down from the rock of the Capitol. This report was only an inference from the assumed fact that Manlius was found guilty on the prosecution of the tribunes, for that was the mode of execution adopted by the tribunes. It is stated by Cornelius Nepos’ that Manlius was scourged to death, as were of old all those condemned for treason to the states.

It is hardly necessary to discuss the question of the guilt or the innocence of Manlius. If he was accused, judged, and put to death by his political opponents, he stands acquitted of the crime of having aspired to absolute power. He was, no doubt, as innocent of it as the other victims of aristocratic vindictiveness before and after him, who were charged with the same offence, as Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius, and the Gracchi. We may be sure that such an accusation was not even brought against him, but that it is entirely an invention of later historians. In certain times certain crimes are inconceivable. When the republican government was firmly established and had lasted for some generations, no Roman could entertain the idea of upsetting it and establishing a monarchy in its place. There was a steadiness in the development of the Roman constitution (in glaring contrast with the oscillations to which most Greek states were exposed), which excluded even the thought of tyranny, so long as the dominion of Rome was confined to Italy. We may therefore be convinced that, whatever the charge was which the duumviri perduellionis brought against Manlius, it was not that which the annalists, writing under the influence of Greek impressions, assigned.

It was the all but general impression among Roman writers that Manlius was guilty of treason, but the opposite view has also advocates among ancient writers. Quinctilian says that it was his popularity which was interpreted as a proof of his ambition; and the annotation which the grammarian Servius made in later times to his Virgil, ‘that Manlius fell a victim to the vengeance of his enemies,’ was surely not invented by him, but extracted from some source which was not clouded by patrician party hatred. What were the real aims of Manlius, it is impossible for us to make out with perfect certainty, considering the evidence we have at our command. Perhaps he had already in view the division of the consulate between patricians and plebeians, as that had been the proposition of the popular party half a century before, and was carried less than twenty years after his death; but that he intended to relieve the pecuniary distress of the plebeians, and especially to reform the agrarian laws with regard to the use of the common lands, may be considered tolerably certain. The accusation which Livy brings against him, that, not satisfied with agrarian laws, in which the tribunes had always found matter for civil quarrels, he had begun also to undermine the public credit, agrees fully with the speeches which that historian, adopting the reports of the older narrators, puts into his mouth. Appian ascribes to Manlius a proposal according to which the debts were simply to be cancelled, or paid by the state from the proceeds of the sale of common land. Considered in this light, the report that Manlius sold his estates near Veii, and bestowed the proceeds upon four hundred poor plebeians, becomes especially significant. For if Manlius, like his successors Sextus and Licinius, wished to limit the possessions of the patricians in the common land for the benefit of the plebeians (a limitation which, as shown above, could refer only to newly acquired domains, especially therefore to domains in the district of Veii), it is possible that he began by giving the example and parcelling out his own possessions to poor occupiers. Perhaps Manlius freed from rents those of his clients who had settled on his land, making them practically freeholders. But such a proceeding was, in the eye of the nobility, treason to the interests of his own class, and deserved to be punished with inexorable severity.

If this was the object of the nobility, it was soon shown that they had protected their supposed interests only for a very short time at the expense of the noblest blood. For the moment the judicial murder of Manlius might intimidate the popular party; but where a whole people puts forward claims indisputably equitable, it is not possible to repress them long by terror. Scarcely was Manlius murdered, than we see traces again of new struggles for improving the condition of the poor citizens. As a concession of the patricians, and to avoid more extensive demands, a commission was appointed in the following year to divide the Pomptine district among the people, and another to send a colony to Nepete.

Before any general measure could be proposed for the relief of debtors on a large scale, it was of course necessary to ascertain what was the amount of debts under which the people suffered. This could be done only by means of a new census, in which the real property of every citizen was noted down, after deducting his debts. Hence we find that in the year 380 B.C. disputes began on the election of censors, the tribunes insisting on the necessity of a new census, and the patricians endeavouring by all possible artifices and manoeuvres to prevent it. When at last an election had taken place, one of the censors died, and it was necessary to proceed with a new election. This, however, was declared vitiated, because an error had taken place in the formalities. To proceed to a third election would have been an act of impiety, as it was clear that the gods would not have any censors for this year. It was of no avail that the tribunes protested and complained of a religious trick and a perversion of right. Their threats to prevent a levying of troops were powerless when the Praenestines appeared before the gates of Home and the common fatherland was in danger. The inquiry into the state of indebtedness had to be postponed, in spite of the opposition of the popular party. Two years later (378 BC) the same disputes about the census were repeated, and again with the same result. The census was prevented, it is said, by an invasion of the Volscians into the Roman territory. With such pertinacity did the Roman patricians defend a position which became daily more and more untenable, and which was destined in a short time to yield to the indefatigable attacks of the popular party.

During these long disputes the patrician class, as also that of the plebeians, underwent changes which altered the relative strength and character of parties. The number of the patricians was very much diminished. As a class which was not increased by new blood from without, the patricians paid for the privilege of forming an exclusive hereditary nobility by a continual diminution of their numbers, whereas the numbers of the plebeians were constantly increasing. The direct results of the Canuleian law which legalised marriage between patricians and plebeians could not operate effectually in increasing the patrician class to any great extent, as of course only a few of the prominent families of the plebs were admitted to relationship with the patricians. On the other hand, through such relationships a plebeian nobility was gradually formed, intimately connected with a number of patrician families. Thus the plebs gained leaders who could oppose the old conservative nobility with much greater energy than the former tribunes, supported by the plebs alone. The parties which always had existed among the patricians themselves became more marked, and the one which was favourable to reform joined the leaders of the plebs. That there was a party among the patricians well-disposed to the people is seen by the proceedings of Manlius, who probably did not stand alone. Since the establishment of the consular tribuneship, plebeians had gradually been admitted into the senate, and the formation of a plebeian nobility had begun.

Whilst thus a few plebeian families attained respectability, wealth, and power, the majority of the plebeians chap. were, since the burning of the city by the Gauls, sunk in debt and poverty, and this situation had become a weapon in the hands of the party leaders. Whoever promised relief from debt could be sure of the support of the mass of the people, who are most zealous in political reforms when they imagine they can gain material advantages by them. In the year 384 BC Manlius was put to death, and the reforms which he proposed were thrown out for the time. But only eight years later, in 376 BC, a movement began, which not merely took up his projects for improving the material condition of the plebs, but aimed at a higher object, the complete equality of the two orders of citizens, an object which the leaders of the plebs had never lost sight of since the Terentilian rogations, but which it still took a severe struggle of several years to realise.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE LICINIAN LAWS, 366 B.C.

 

The details of the constitutional struggle which led to the Licinian laws are lost to us, like most of the incidents in the early history of Rome which would contribute to make it attractive and interesting. In their place the annalists have preserved a number of irrelevant, contradictory, untrustworthy, and incredible statements, which it is impossible to work up into a smooth consistent narrative. We must therefore be satisfied if we can succeed in tracing so much of the leading outline of events as will enable us to understand the great reform effected by the Licinian laws.

Among the prominent plebeian families which had at an early period turned to advantage the liberties gained by the plebeians, were the Licinii. A certain Licinius Calvus was one of the first tribunes, in the year 493 BC. In the year 481 BC a Licinius was again elected as tribune, and if we had the complete list of these magistrates we should no doubt very frequently meet with the names of the Licinii. After the establishment of the consular tribuneship it was again a Licinius who, in 400 BC, was the first plebeian raised to this dignity, and four years later, 396 BC, we find a son of his in the same office. The Licinians had no doubt early gained wealth, and therefore it may be readily supposed that they connected themselves by marriage with the noblest patrician houses. M. Fabius Ambustus, one of the consular tribunes who had commanded in the unfortunate battle on the Allia, , married one of his daughters to C. Licinius Stolo, who filled the office of tribune in the year 376 BC. This 366 Licinius and his colleague, L. Sextius, supported, no doubt, by a liberal party amongst the nobility, now came forward with proposals of a comprehensive reform.

The first law was intended to be only of temporary effect, and to put an end to the existing distress of the poor debtors. Starting from the idea that to take interest on a loan offends a natural law (a view which was widely received in ancient times), the two tribunes proposed that the debtors should pay back only the capital lent, minus the sums paid as interest ; the rest to be paid in three years, probably with the help of the state. The second law was calculated to make such a general indebtedness as now existed impossible for the future. It aimed at creating the largest possible number of freeholders, and at limiting the dependence of the small peasants on the great landed proprietors. From this time, therefore, no single Bom an citizen was to occupy more than five hundred jugera of the state land. This law made it possible for a larger number of citizens to occupy the state lands, and it placed land at the disposal of the state for distribution. A third law provided that the office of consular tribunes should be abolished, and the consulship re-established, with the very important addition that one of the two consuls should always be a plebeian.

The struggle for this reform lasted ten years, if we may Agitation believe the tradition. During the first half of this period the patricians strove to cause a division among the tribunes, and to meet the proposals of Licinius and Sextius by the veto of some of their colleagues. These manoeuvres compelled Licinius and Sextius to avail themselves of the extreme power which their office placed in their hands. They stopped the election of all patrician magistrates during five consecutive years, so that the state during this period was in fact without government and order. Not until the ever-watchful enemies of Rome availed themselves of this state of anarchy to threaten the town, did the two tribunes consent to the election of magistrates. But from year to year they gained ground. The opposition within the body of tribunes was at length silenced. Then, instead of moderating their proposals and of dropping the law as to the election of plebeian consuls, as the patricians wished, they pushed their demands further, and proposed that the number of the officers for regulating religious festivals should be increased from two to ten, and should be divided between the patricians and plebeians. The opposition of the patricians was most pertinacious. They tried the terrors of a dictatorship to overawe the leaders of the plebs. Camillus, the champion of the nobility, was selected to throw the weight of his name and influence into the balance. It was all in vain. The perseverance of the popular party triumphed in the end. The patricians were obliged to yield, and when the bills had been accepted in the comitia of tribes, the senate was compelled to sanction them. The consular elections tools; place according to the new laws. One of the two elected was L. Sextius. But even now the contest was not ended. The senate refused to approve the election of L. Sextius. Another secession, was imminent, when the old Camillus acted as mediator and peacemaker. The office of supreme judge was separated from the consulate, and under the name of praetorship, which from the beginning of the republic had been the title of the chief magistracy, was reserved for the patricians. It may be considered a further concession to the nobility that to the plebeian aediles, who were officers of police and assistants of the tribunes, a curule office of patrician aediles was added, charged with the duty of preparing and superintending the public games. But this new office did not remain long in the exclusive possession of the patricians. It was made accessible to plebeians almost immediately.

The long dispute was thus at length brought to an end. It is true, something still remained which the patricians had saved from the wreck. They still held for themselves the censorship, the praetorship, and the principal priesthoods. But by the division of the consulate among the two orders the dispute was settled in principle. In the course of twenty-seven years (339 BC) the plebeians became eligible for the censorship, two years later (337 BC) for the office of praetor, while by the Ogulnian law (300 BC) the admission to the priestly offices was opened to them. The republican constitution had now attained its perfection. The gulf which front the beginning had separated the two classes was bridged over. The difference between patricians and plebeians, it is true, was not yet at an end, but the two classes were no longer ranged against each other as hostile parties. The old opposition was done away with. A new era began. The elements of the Roman people assumed other forms. A new nobility arose. The place of the patricians, the nobles by race and descent, was taken now by a nobility of office, less strictly divided from the mass of the people, constantly increased by the accession of new members, but not less decidedly greedy of power, avaricious and stubborn in preserving their preponderance in the state, and as consistent, firm, adroit, and unscrupulous in promoting the greatness and power of Rome abroad.

The reform effected by the Licinian laws is clear, at least in its outlines and in some of the most important parts. It was impossible for the annalists to misrepresent it, as the laws themselves remained its permanent evidence. But the details of the constitutional struggle are involved in much obscurity. We meet here with the same idle stories, exaggerations, and utterly untrustworthy and incredible statements which the annalists have generally imported into a narrative which pretends to be the early history of the Roman people. The anecdote with which Livy1 introduces his story is badly invented. M. Fabius Ambustus, it is said, had married his eldest daughter to the patrician C. Sulpicius Rufus, the younger to the plebeian C. Licinius Stolo. The two sisters were once sitting talking together in the house of Sulpicius, who happened at that time to be consular tribune, when Sulpicius accidentally returned home from the Forum, and his lictor, according to custom, knocked with his fasces loudly against the door of the house, to announce the arrival of his master. Frightened at the noise, which she was unaccustomed to, the younger sister started, and excited the mirth and derision of the elder, who informed her of the cause of the noise. Wounded in her pride and humbled that she, the wife of a plebeian, was to forego the pomp and honour of official rank, she rested not till she had instigated her father as well as her husband to change the order of things in Rome, and to bring about a reform by which she would be able to show herself equal to the noblest matrons.—This story does not stand examination. How could the daughter of M. Fabius Ambustus, who himself had been consular tribune four years before, have been frightened at the knocking of the lictor at the house door, or have felt herself degraded, by marrying a man whose family had already held the chief magistracy in the state, and who could expect the same distinction for himself? The story is one of that class by which the vulgar attempt to discover the cause of great events in trivial or accidental circumstances. It is characteristic of the ancient historians that this absurd story is repeated by Livy and his successors without the least hesitation, as if it were perfectly authenticated.

Whatever we may think of the story of the two daughters of Fabius, whether we admit or reject it, the general course of events is not affected by it in the least. But it is not so with regard to a statement which seems to have been generally received by the ancient writers—a story to the effect that, in consequence of the intercession of the tribunes, the Roman state was five years without its regular magistrates. Our difficulty does not consist here in seeing the impossibility of such a fact, but in comprehending how sensible men could assert, without hesitation, anything so foolish. Livy, having reported, year after year, foreign wars and internal disputes, now relates that the government, or rather the history, of Rome came to a standstill for five years, in the midst of the hottest party struggles, and in the midst of wars with national enemies and rebellious allies. Such an event would have been a miracle, not less palpable than the cutting of a whetstone with a razor; for not only in physical nature, but also in the social and political life of men, there are laws determined by the peculiarities of the human mind, which cannot be set aside or broken without a miraculous interference of divine power. The surging waves of the stormy sea are smoothed down more easily than the angry disputes of free citizens. The sudden appearance of an irresistible force, exercised by a dictator, a tyrant, a Caesar or a Napoleon, can silence social disorder with surprising rapidity, but such a calm cannot be produced when even the accustomed guardians of political order are wanting.

The account of the five years of anarchy is therefore to be rejected without hesitation. The disarrangement of the patricians, received chronology is the inevitable result. It appears that the compilers of the old annals found themselves obliged to insert five years in order to make their calculations meet. They thought the present moment suitable, and after ah were honest enough not to fill up the inserted space of five years with invented names of magistrates, battles, and triumphs. We must thank them for this self-control, in which we see an approach to the restraint exercised on arbitrary invention by historical evidence. As to the manner in which the tribunes brought their proposals before the people, the descriptions of the historians are by no means clear and satisfactory. By the lex Valeria Horatia of the year 449 B.C., which, after the fall of the decemvira, had entitled the assembly of tribes to legislate for the whole community, resolutions of the tribes were binding for the state as soon as the senate had given its consent (the patrum auctoritas). If therefore the senate was unanimous, it could, like an upper House of Parliament, reject every law proposed by the tribes. But the senate opposed itself by such a proceeding so openly to the will of the people that it would have called forth a formidable resistance. It is therefore not at all unlikely that the patricians, as is related, adopted the plan of opposing the measure of Licinius and Sextius, not by a direct negative of the senate, but by a party among the plebeians themselves. They gained over to their side some of the ten tribunes, and were thus enabled to oppose the tribunician veto to the tribunician bill, a proceeding by which the progress of the bill was stopped in the very first stage and which prevented it from officially reaching the senate. We are told that this opposition in the body of the tribunes, though it grew weaker year by year, was yet continued; nor can we understand how Licinius and Sextius could silence it without an act of violence, so as to get their bill accepted by the comitia tributa in due form.

A more direct opposition on the side of the senate was a sort of declaration of martial law in the form of a nomination of dictators who were to curb the plebs with their unlimited military power. For this purpose Camillus, it is said, was nominated twice, and P. Manlius once. In these transactions Camillus played no very glorious part as the champion of the old nobility: The first time he allowed himself to be intimidated by Licinius and Sextius, who threatened him with a fine; or, according to another report, he resigned, under the pretext of a fault in the formality of his nomination. The second time he advised, without hesitation, peace and compliance. On the other hand, the dictatorship of P. Manlius looks almost like an attempt at a compromise, as he had for his Master of the Horse the plebeian Licinius Calvus Stolo, evidently a kinsman of the tribune Licinius. This was the first instance of a plebeian being raised to this office, and it marks an important advance of the plebeian rights. But what P. Manlius actually accomplished, and whether he helped to bling about a final arrangement, is not stated. Perhaps he belonged to that party in the senate which, in opposition to the staunch adherents of the obsolete privileges of the nobility, understood the requirements of the times.

Such a party has existed in every aristocracy both in old and modern times, as it will always exist so long as human nature remains unchanged and the impulses of men are drawn in two different directions—in other words, so long as attachment to old-established institutions and a desire of improvement and progress divide the human breast. The Roman aristocracy was no exception to this rule. It is true we have but scanty information of the state of parties among the leading patricians in the earlier period. We do not know the strength of the Liberals amongst them. But we may be convinced that men like Sp. Cassius, the Valerii, Horatius, M. Manlius, and Appius Claudius, were not without friends and adherents. This Liberal party acquired a great accession of strength after the establishment of the consular tribuneship, and after the Canuleian law, which made marriages between the two classes lawful. There were now not only patrician friends of the plebeians, but also real plebeians in the senate, and it may be surmised that the reform question was as warmly debated within the precincts of the senate as on the Forum. The tribunes of the people were at this time no longer confined to seats outside the door of the senate-house. They had admission to the sittings, perhaps even the right to summon the senate; at any rate they could easily, through the presiding magistrates, cause their motions to be laid before the senate. If P. Manlius—as we may infer from his appointing a plebeian as master of the horse—was selected to succeed Camillus in the dictatorship, because he belonged to a less conservative party, it is clear that the popular party was at this time very largely and influentially represented in the senate, and that the time had really come when the demands of the plebeian body could no longer be evaded with safety.

The propositions of Licinius and Sextius were at length made law in due form, though not without some important modifications. If we ask what were the several provisions of the laws called, after their originator, ‘the Licinian laws,’ we are again disappointed by the unsatisfactory answer which the meagreness of the evidence at our command constrains us to give. Only one of the three principal measures stands out in perfect clearness, viz., that which provided that the consulship should in future be divided between patricians and plebeians. Of the second law, which referred to the regulation of tenures, we have but an imperfect knowledge ; and of the third, which had reference to the relief of insolvent debtors, we know hardly anything with certainty, except its general tendency. This last law was of a temporary and transient operation, and was for that reason forgotten when it had ceased to be applied. The agrarian law seems very soon to have been evaded, and later on to have been quite disregarded. Only the law as to the election of plebeian consuls, which the whole of the Roman people were called upon to apply every  year, and which, in its simplicity, stood out sharply and decidedly, was on the whole preserved intact and inviolate, and engaged public attention so much that the Licinian legislation continued to be remembered almost exclusively as a law on the plebeian consulate.

The old Roman law of debt was, in accordance with the character of the Romans, harsh and severe. It treated the insolvent debtor as a delinquent who had broken a sacred contract with society. His goods and chattels, his personal freedom, as well as that of those belonging to him, were liable to be taken in payment of his debts. He who did not pay at the appointed time fell into a state of bondage differing practically but little from actual slavery. He was led away as a slave by his creditors, compelled to work, and scourged or loaded with chains, as long as he had not fulfilled his obligations. He could be sold as a slave into a foreign country; nay, the Homan law, in its heartless consistency, is said to have gone so far as to threaten a debtor with the extreme punishment of a disgraceful death at the hands of his creditors.

A prominent feature in the character of the Romans was their intense love of gain. The highest as well as the lowest among them were greedy and avaricious. This passion blunted the feelings of kindliness and sympathy for human suffering, and inspired those harsh and even inhuman laws, which were intended to extort payment at almost any cost from insolvent or obstinate debtors. But a strict law of debt would not in itself have furnished the plebeians with any grounds for complaint, unless there had been other circumstances which had the effect of placing the plebeians exclusively in the position of debtors. By these other circumstances the laws of debt came to be a means of oppression in the hands of the patricians; and the reform of these laws, as. well as a remission of debts, was no longer a question of the civil law, but was treated as a subject of political debate and party warfare between the two classes. The tribunes became the patrons of the insolvent plebeians, and every concession, every relief of the debtor, had to be obtained from the patricians, as a class, by threats or violence.

The ancient writers have not explained how it happened that the plebeians are always named as the debtors and the patricians as the creditors. They pass it over as if it was a matter of course which needed no explanation. Modern writers have done the same. Nobody seems to have thought it necessary to inquire specially into this peculiar state of things, which made the law of debt an instrument of oppression, not of the poor by the rich, but of the plebeians by the patricians. The answer to this question is to be found in the laws which regulated the tenure of land. The plebeians—at least, those among them who were clients—were hereditary tenants of patrician families, and as such in a position of private as well as political dependence, such as must be found everywhere and at all times where the great mass of the land is altogether in the hands of the ruling class, especially at an early period of civilisation, in which public and private rights are not strictly separated, and in which the possession of political privileges is looked upon as a source of profit. Such a condition of things prevailed also in Rome. The clientela, which we meet with in the beginning of the Roman history, exhibits the peculiar form which the political and social dependence of the lower class assumed. The client was the hereditary debtor of his patron, and his debts arose not only from loans for implements, stock, and seed corn, but also from his obligation to pay an annual rent. Other plebeians also, who were not clients, might of course borrow money and become insolvent, but the great mass of debt must have been a natural consequence of the legal position of the client-plebeians, and thus the general complaint of oppression for debt became a plebeian grievance, and the remedy for it was sought by means of a treaty between the two classes.

This state of things explains the close connexion of the relief given to debtors with the agrarian laws of Licinius. It shows that the debts of the plebeians arose, not from speculative loans, but through the distress of the poor, a distress which was the natural and inevitable consequence of the laws regulating the tenure of land. If this distress was to be removed, it was necessary not only to give temporary relief, by a total or partial remission of debt, but to adopt measures by which the dependent peasant should be made a freeholder. Viewed in this light the abolition of debts appears no longer, an unjust and revolutionary measure. If the patricians had actually made loans of money to the plebeians, which the latter employed for their own profit, it would not be possible to justify; even from the plebeian point of view, a reduction of the capital equal to the amount of interest paid; for the laws of the Twelve Tables had given a legal sanction to a certain fixed rate of interest. But the case was different if the debts were in reality, a consequence of the state of dependence in which the plebeians stood as clients to the patricians, and were loans only by a legal fiction. The exclusive possession of the common, land by the patricians had long been disputed by the plebeians and branded as a crying injustice. The Icilian law, passed as early as 456 B.C., had released the plebeians settled on the Aventine from their dependence as tenants of the patricians and had changed their imperfect tenure into freehold. After the great acquisitions of land, especially those which followed the conquest of Veil, the demands of the plebeians for freehold land had become louder and more vehement.

It is not unlikely that these demands of the plebeians were the real substance of the dispute between them and Camillus, and the crime of Manlius may have been nothing more than the proposal to deliver the settlers on the Veientine territory from the duty of paying tithes. If the tribunes Licinius and Sextius entertained these questions, they were able to allege that the patrician occupiers of the new land, who had made advances to their clients for agricultural implements, stock, and seed-corn, were not entitled to more than the re-payment of these advances together with the lawful interest, that they ought never to have claimed an annual rent, and that all the payments made under this head should be deducted from the capital advanced.

Thus we can understand the principal features of the Licinian law which effected a reduction of debts. But the details are beyond our reach. We do not know whether a difference was made between debts arising from loans and debts arising from predial dependence. Nor is it in any way hinted by what means the debtors were enabled to pay within three years the debts remaining after deduction of the interest already paid. Still less are we able to discover how the law was carried out—whether it produced the intended effect, or whether, like so many other laws enacted with the best intentions, it was evaded or frustrated by the intrigues of its powerful opponents. That, at any rate, it produced no thorough change is evident from the continued distress of the plebeians, and from the repeated attempts to remedy it by legislation.

The agrarian laws of Licinius may, on account of their great importance, be compared to the abolition of villenage in several modem states. Their object was the formation, or at least the increase, of an independent peasantry, and a corresponding diminution of the seignorial rights of the great landed proprietors. These measures were carried at a most favorable conjuncture, when, by the success of the Roman arms, the original territory was more than doubled and when that class of citizens which had hitherto been dependent and labouring under disabilities found itself sufficiently strong to claim a share as well in the material gains of these successes as in the honours and distinctions of the republic. The import of the word people (populus) had changed in course of time. From the original people of the patricians it had passed over to the body of burgesses, consisting of the two classes. When the centuries had taken upon themselves all the burdens, and with them the sovereignty, of the republic, the patricians could no longer say, ‘We are the state.’ As a matter of course the old import of the word ‘common land (ager publicus) could no longer be maintained, and a continued exclusion of the plebeians from this common land became a crying injustice. Consequently, after the very first acquisition of territory in 442 B.C. which was made by the republic after a long period of distress, we meet with traces of plebeian agitations in which the exclusive claim of the patricians to the common land is called an injustice. Yet the old privilege did not give way at the first blow. The Roman patricians fought for it with all the tenacity of their character. It was only in consequence of the violent agitation for the Licinian laws that the ruling class made a concession which so nearly affected their interests.

Niebuhr was the first to show, what is now generally admitted, that the maximum of five hundred jugera of land which the Licinian laws allowed, was not private property but common land. The measure was therefore no confiscation, but a regulation of the right of occupying the public land, a right which the patricians had hitherto exercised without limitation according to their will and pleasure. It was usual for the state after a new conquest to dispose, by assignation or sale, of only a portion of the acquired territory. The greater part was left to be occupied by the citizens; the state reserving to itself only the fee simple and (at least since 406 B.C.) an annual rent. It is clear that such an occupation of land by sufferance of the state, though it could not confer the title of ownership, could nevertheless claim to be recognised and protected by law, especially in cases where the occupied land was improved by the occupier, and where capital had been laid out on it for buildings, roads, and other purposes. When, in course of time, such land passed into other hands by sale or inheritance, the state could not disturb the possession without straining its legal right even to the verge of injustice. A resumption of such lands without compensation would have amounted almost to confiscation of private property. But at the time of the Licinian laws, the occupation of the Veientine territory was comparatively recent. Veil had fallen in 396 B.C. In the year 376 Licinius first brought forward his rogations. In the twenty years intervening, the inroad of the Gauls took place, which could not but prevent all considerable investments in land. Moreover the agitation for the division of the conquered land among the plebeians, which began immediately after the fall of Veil, might serve as a warning to the patricians not to look upon any possession in that quarter as safe property. It is not likely, therefore, that many patricians had actually begun to farm more than five hundred jugera in the district of Veii, and the Licinian measure may have had no retrospective effect at all, and may have been intended rather to regulate the right of occupation for the future only. Consequently we hear of no case of a patrician being compelled to restore to the state any land that he had already occupied. The sanction for the occupation of five hundred jugera, conferring, as matter of course, a guarantee for the security of this possession, may be looked upon as a compensation for the losses which the patricians suffered by being deprived of the tithes of their clients for the future. Under these circumstances the whole measure was as free from injustice to the large proprietors as it was beneficial to the peasantry.

Livy’s statements regarding the details of the agrarian law of Licinius are extremely scanty. He mentions nothing but the legal maximum of land which an individual was allowed to possess. But there are several points with regard to which we should like to be more fully informed. Niebuhr has attempted to draw a more complete sketch of the legislation of Licinius and Sextius by borrowing some features from the agrarian laws of the Gracchi which are somewhat better known, and which were essentially re-enactments of the Licinian laws, and by gathering a few detached statements found here and there in Appian, Plutarch, and elsewhere. But his conjectures are very doubtful, because it appears that neither Appian nor Plutarch had access to any genuine traditions bearing on the older law, and that their statements are nothing but guesses and inferences.

It is very doubtful whether in the time of Licinius the employment of slaves in agriculture had become very extensive, and had threatened to ruin the small peasants by the competition of slave labour, and to facilitate the growth of large landed properties. It is well known that this was the case, in the time of the Gracchi, and that they endeavoured to counteract the evil by proposing a law which required a certain portion of agricultural labourers to be free men. It seems rather probable that at the time of the Licinian laws the number of slaves was still small, although after the conquest of Veii a change had taken place in this respect. The majority of Roman citizens here free peasants. All that he know for certain of the period of the Samnite wars points to this conclusion. In consequence of these wars, however, the number of slaves increased considerably, and after the subjection of those Italians who had rebelled in the Hannibalic war, slavery began to assume large proportions, and the free peasantry of the old time diminished more and more. Later still, when, after the conquest of Macedonia and Greece, the wealth of the East flowed towards Italy, and when the Roman nobility had degenerated into a plutocracy, the signs became manifest of a decay which the Gracchi strove to prevent, but which they were too late to arrest.

On the whole there seems to be ground for assuming that the agrarian law of Licinius was productive of good results for a considerable time, even if it failed to effect all the good intended by its author. The Roman commonwealth, if it was to grow, could, from the nature of its institutions, grow only by conquest. But every conquest in antiquity was not only an extension of the power of the victorious race, but a material profit for the conquerors by the booty and the confiscations which it brought with it. This profit naturally was accumulated in the hands of the ruling families, whilst in those of the common people it melted away. No law therefore would have been able to secure permanently an equal distribution of wealth, and it is not surprising that in the course of two hundred years a greater disproportion existed between rich land-owners and impoverished citizens than in the older times of greater simplicity and contentment.

The third law of Licinius was intended to effect a change in the constitution of the republic. The office of consular tribunes, which had been created in 444 B.C., bore from the very beginning the character of a compromise and a provisional arrangement. It was intended to alternate with the consulship according to the circumstances of the times, and plebeians were to be eligible. But in reality this concession of the patricians was found to be not a real one. Not only did the patricians manage for a long time to prevent the election of consular tribunes altogether, but they succeeded also for forty-four years (444 to 400 BC) in excluding the plebeians from the office. At length when, in 400 BC, the plebeians had carried the election of one of their class, little was gained after all, for they could not maintain the advantage which they had gained. The patrician influence at the elections was irresistible. Only on two succeeding occasions did plebeians obtain the dignity which they were entitled by law to share regularly with the patricians. It was clear that the plebeians were unable to obtain in this manner the rights they claimed. The mere concession of eligibility was of no use. It was necessary to make it by law compulsory for the people to elect a plebeian to the highest office of the state, and unconditionally to exclude the patricians from the place reserved for a plebeian. For this purpose the old consular office was re-established, which, in truth had continued to exist in a modified form in the office of consular tribunes. The very name of the latter (tribuni militum consulari potestate) had preserved the memory of the consulship, and they had differed from the old consuls more in external matters than in the real powers of the office. Now the Licinian law re-established the original republican office, and made it not only accessible to the plebeians, but divided it formally between the two classes by enacting that every year one of the two consuls must be a plebeian.

It is possible that Licinius and Sextius intended to restore the old consulship without any diminution of its original power. But this they were unable to effect. The patricians made a determined resistance, and they succeeded in separating from the consulship the judicial functions, and, in establishing for these functions, under the name of pratorship, a distinct office reserved exclusively for themselves. They saw in their acquaintance with and management of the laws a chief support of their power long after they had shared with the plebeians the command of the army. The plebeians yielded. The patricians, therefore, lost not more than a third part of the supreme magistracy, for the praetor was considered a colleague of the consuls, although his functions were not precisely the same. For about thirty years (till 366-337) the patricians remained in exclusive possession of the praetorship after they had been obliged to share with the plebeians every patrician office in the state, with the exception of those connected with religion.

It is evident that the tenacity with which the patricians clung to the judicial office after they had given up to the plebeians a share in the consulship, censorship, and dictatorship, sprung not from their pride alone, nor was justified by a supposed incompetency of the plebeians to discharge this office. We cannot avoid accusing the noble patricians of common selfishness—a selfishness the more deserving of our reprobation as it made the administration of justice serve its purposes. As long as patricians alone acted as judges, the agrarian laws and the laws of debt which had been .passed in spite of their opposition, were not easily allowed to interfere with their interests. It was possible for them to regain in detail, by the administration of the laws, what they had lost by their enactment, and we know enough of patrician recklessness in fighting for the interests of their party to feel quite sure that they knew how to avail themselves of the advantages which the exclusive possession of the judicial office for a whole generation conferred on them.

The increase of the chief offices of state effected by the establishment of the praetorship had been prepared during the time of the consular tribunes. When, in 366 BC, the patricians consented to a change by which, instead of two patrician consuls, three consular tribunes should he chap. elected from the two classes, it had evidently been their intention to reserve one of the three places for the judicial office, and not to admit plebeians to this place. This plan they now carried out; and perhaps they referred to it as a precedent when they formally separated the judicial office from the consulship, and handed it over to a praetor, to be elected from the patrician body.

In a similar manner the new office of two patrician aediles had in a manner been established in the constitution of the consular tribunes. For it is extremely probable that, when the number of these officers was increased to six, two of them had to discharge the duties which were afterwards conferred on the curule aediles. These duties were essentially the same as those of the plebeian aediles, and consisted principally in the management of the town police.

This gradual growth of the new constitution out of previously existing forms is one of the features which characterise the public life of the Roman people. In the history of the Roman constitution we never meet with a total revolution’ that breaks entirely with the past. It advances by way of reforms, and even when the spirit  and essence of the republic perished, its external forms remained, and softened for the mass of the people the transition to the monarchy, by hiding it from the superficial observer.

Even before the final triumph of the Licinian laws, during the very heat of the contest, a reform .similar to the division of the consulship between the two orders is said to have taken place, namely, the increase of the officers for regulating religious festivals (duumviri sacris faciundis) from two to ten, and the admission of five plebeians to this office. The change was of considerable political importance, because these men had in their keeping the prophetic books, which could easily be made use of for party purposes. The admission of plebeians to this semi-priestly office was, moreover, of importance to the plebs, because the domain of religion was that which the patricians guarded with the greatest jealousy from the encroachments of their antagonists.

By the passing of the Licinian laws, the relation of the two orders to each other was finally determined. The principle was established that patricians and plebeians were both citizens of the state, and equally eligible to the honours and dignities of the republic. It is true that the patricians, even after this period, made several attempts to regain the exclusive possession of the consulship, and, indeed, succeeded several times, in open defiance of the Licinian laws, in electing two patrician consuls; but after 343 366 b.c. this was not attempted again, and from that time forward the plebeians remained in undisputed possession of their share of the chief magistracy. In the first year after the Licinian laws, the exclusive right of the patricians to the curule aedileship was set aside, and there appear from henceforth alternately year after year pairs of patrician and plebeian aediles. The dictatorship became accessible to the plebeians in 356 BC; the censorship in 351 BC; though it was not till 280 BC that a plebeian censor was allowed to perform the solemn act by which a new census was made and ratified (called in technical language condere lustrum). In 337 BC the plebeians obtained access to the praetorship. Still the priestly offices remained closed to them until, sixty-six years after the Licinian laws, the law of Ogulnius divided the pontificate and augurate between the two orders; but the old offices of the Salii, of the Arvalian brethren, of the Fetiales, and lastly of the sacrificial king, which possessed no political importance, always remained in possession of the patrician order.

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR

343-311 B.C.

 

In the beginning of the Roman history we find four different races in possession of Italy—the Etruscans, the Greeks, the Gauls, and the Sabellians. All of these had immigrated into Italy, but only of the immigration of the Etruscans, Greeks, and Gauls was any accurate tradition preserved. The Sabellians, therefore, may be looked upon as the genuine Italians, and the more so as they were the parent stock whose branches gradually overspread the peninsula, and caused their language and customs to prevail over the others. The Etruscans, Greeks, and Gauls gradually lost their political independence and national peculiarities. Italy ceased to be in the south ‘a larger Greece,’ in the centre a country of the Etruscans, in the north a Gaul. It was the Sabines who made it one country, imprinted on it the stamp of one nationality, and spread that language and those political institutions which extensively and for a long period determined the whole history of the world. But before the various Sabellian peoples found in Rome their common centre and head, a collision took place between their two most powerful members, the Romans and the Samnites, who waged war against each other with few interruptions for two generations (343-272 BC). The final decision was in favour of Rome, and established for ever the incontestable preeminence of that city and its title to dominion over Italy.

That the Sabellians did originally immigrate by the land route from the north, and not by sea is clear from the fact that they had possession of the middle and mountainous part of the peninsula and in historical time moved from north to south. Their most northern tribe, the Umbrians, had been very widely spread in prehistoric times, from the Adriatic Sea to the countries which were possessed at a later period by the Gauls and Etruscans.

In the most elevated valleys of the Abruzzi, surrounded by the snow-capped summits of Gran Sasso and Velino, dwelt the Sabines, who, longer than any other Sabellian race, preserved their national peculiarities, and were therefore considered in later times as models of ancestral simplicity, hardiness, and virtue. From these high mountain lands the different races descended like streams that flood and fertilise the deep-lying valleys and plains. The Latins, whom we meet first in the neighbourhood of the Tiber, belonged to the oldest of these successive streams. Then came the Sabines from Cures, of whom the history of regal Rome, has so much to relate. To the same race belonged the Aequians and the Volscians, whose wild onset was broken by the stout resistance of the young Roman republic, as also a number of other Sabellian nations on both sides of the peninsula.

South of the highest peak of the Abruzzi, the mountain chain of the Apennines rises again in huge masses to the height of 6,000 feet. These high lands, now called Monte Matese, spread around the source of the Volturaus, and command the plain of Campania traversed by that river. Here dwelt two Sabellian races, the Pentrians in the north and the Caudinians in the south, who retained the common name of their race but very slightly changed, and were called by the Romans Samnites. The same name is occasionally applied to other tribes, such as the Hirpinians on their southern frontier, the Picentines and the Frentanians who lived on the Adriatic Sea. We must guard against supposing that common descent and kindred blood implied political union. It is even doubtful whether the Pentrians and the Caudinians always were united. At any rate we know that, when the Samnites are mentioned, it is by no means certain that all the races which shared this name are referred to

Of the social and political institutions of the Samnites The we have no authentic account. They were rude but not savage mountaineers, hardened by their mode of life, warlike, enterprising, and bold. Although inclined to pillage and plunder, in which the wars of rude nations principally consist, they did not carry on war as mere robbers and incendiaries. Not inferior to the Romans in military equipment, in the arts of war, or in strategy, they were in every respect worthy antagonists. . But they had one weak point; they had no firm political unity, and this want caused them to succumb. The individual townships or cantons, it appears, lived almost completely independent in their secluded valleys; there were no large towns in the country, and there was no centre like Rome, where the strength of the people might have been combined for common action. For the conduct of the general affairs of the nation the heads of the separate tribes met and formed a sort of senate, which, however, could not have the support of an assembly of the people, as the senate had in Rome. There were no regular magistrates chosen year by year, to whose hand the executive power might be intrusted with safety. The kingly office was unknown. In war they had common military chiefs; but it is doubtful how far these chiefs could enforce obedience among the different members of the league. We may take for granted that the confederacy of the Samnites suffered from the defects and vices which are inherent in all alliances of sovereign or partly sovereign states.

While Rome was fighting with the Aquinas and the Volscians for the dominion of Latium, the Samnites sent successive swarms of conquerors to the south of the peninsula. The Lucanians and Bruttians subdued the inland districts where along the coast the numerous Greek colonies stretched from Campania even to Tarentum. But more especially were they attracted by the fruitful plains of Campania. Here the Etruscans had founded or conquered a number of towns at the time of their national power and greatness, when they ruled over Rome and Latium. All these fell one after another into the hands of Samnite conquerors. According to the Roman tradition Capua, the most important of these, was lost in the year 331 BC, and the smaller places—Calatia, Suessula, Acerrte, Nola, Atella—which covered the plain of Campania, shared the same fate, as did also Cumae, the oldest Greek settlement on Italian ground. Naples alone was able to preserve her independence, and in this last refuge the Greek language and Greek civilisation were preserved, when in almost all other places the Greek element had been overpowered by barbarians.

The Samnite conquerors of Campania were soon estranged from their own countrymen. No political union bound the Samnite colonies to the mother country. The Campanians, like the Bruttians and Lucanians, became an independent people. They seem even to have forgotten that they were of the same blood with the mountain tribes of the Apennines. They intermarried with the original inhabitants of the conquered districts, and in its mild climate and fertile soil they lost their old simplicity and contentment, and even their bravery. In Campania the Greeks and the Etruscans had vied with each other in accumulating the products of highly developed industry and extensive commercial enterprise. In this beautiful land there had arisen, under such favourable opportunities, a refined enjoyment of life, its luxuries and comforts, unknown to the rude mountaineers of the Apennines. Capua was at this time one of the richest and most populous towns of Italy, and the bad character which the inhabitants had then and afterwards for effeminacy and indulgence, though perhaps exaggerated and in some cases unjust, was certainly not quite without foundation.

Another cause contributed to weaken the new Sabellian community of Capua. The conquerors formed a nobility factions, distinct from the mass of the people. They were constantly at variance with the common people, and seemed to regard the state and the productive industry of the people as their private property. While in Rome the patricians and plebeians had gradually become one united people, the breach between the ruling and the subject class in Capua was so widened that the two parties applied for help from abroad. The nobles directed their hopes to Rome; the people endeavoured to join the Samnites. This fatal discord could not fail to make Campania the prey of either the one or the other powerful neighbour who were lying in wait for an opportunity to seize upon that beautiful country.

Such an opportunity was found but too easily. The Sidicinians, a Sabellian people between Campania and Latium, were hard pressed by the Samnites and received help from the Campanians. But even the two peoples affairs. united were not equal to the Samnites. On the mountain of Tifata, which forms a natural stronghold near Capua, the Samnites established themselves, devastated the country, and defeated the Campanians as often as they ventured to meet them. The latter in their distress now turned to Rome, asked and received Roman assistance; and thus, in the year 343 BC, the Romans and the Samnites met for the first time as enemies in open war. The Romans had been, as we have already seen, allied with the Samnites since the year 354 BC. Of what nature the alliance was we do not know, hut it is extremely probable that it was not merely a declaration of mutual friendship, but that there was a distinct object in view. This object we may venture to suppose was to reduce the hostile nations dwelling between Rome and Samnium, especially the Volscians and the Sidicinians. The Romans had, therefore, no sort of excuse for mixing themselves up in a quarrel between the Samnites and their neighbours. This was felt by the annalists, who made it their task to represent the policy of Rome not only as successful, but as just and magnanimous. They expect us to believe, therefore, that the senate declined the request of the Campanians, because Rome would not stand in the way of their allies, the Samnites. Thereupon the Campanians, it is related, surrendered themselves in due form as subjects to the Romans, and now the senate determined to take steps in favour of the town of Capua, which had become Roman. This story is confessedly false, for Capua remained, what it had been, an independent town. The Roman senate, if it found occasion to adopt the cause of the Campanians and Sidicinians, had probably a better plea than a fictitious surrender of Capua and her territory to Rome. At any rate war was declared. The Roman annalists related long stories of fierce combats, and three hard-fought but decisive victories. But all these reports are either manifest and reckless exaggerations or downright fictions.

A connected history of the war cannot he made out of the contradictory and confused accounts. It appears that the Samnites were not equal to the Romans and their allies. At least they could not maintain their position in Campania, and at the end of a campaign of one year’s duration, a Roman army kept possession of Capua. The time seemed to have come when the republic could plant a firm foot beyond the bounds of Latium. Campania, the apple of discord between the Samnites and the Romans, seemed to have fallen to the share of the latter; and the pretended surrender of Capua seemed to turn out a real conquest, when suddenly an internal dispute arose which arrested the Romans in their bold career of victory, and conjured up indirectly a desperate contest for their existence with their oldest and most faithful allies and kinsmen, the Latins.

 

CHAPTER V.

THE MUTINY OF THE YEAR 342 B.C.

After the settlement of the civil contest, and the passing of the Licinian law, 367 BC, Camillus, we are told, consecrated a temple to Concord. But it was an illusion to hope that discord would henceforth be banished for ever. It is true, the contest was not renewed with the animosity that had been displayed before, but patricians and plebeians were equally far removed from the true spirit which should animate the members of one community. The consciousness of defeat on the one side, and on the other the feeling of having gained but half a victory, could produce an apparent peace only during the time of mutual exhaustion. The patricians had not yet entirely given up the hope of regaining what they had lost;; nor could the plebeians stop half way, and rest satisfied with a reform which reserved for the old nobility the highest judicial and other offices.

It is not reported whether the provisions of the Licinian laws regarding the relief of debtors and the common land were conscientiously carried out. We may reasonably doubt it when we learn that, twelve years after the solemn peace between the two classes (355 BC), the most important reform of the Licinian laws, the division of the consulate between patricians and plebeians, was violated. The reactionary party of the nobility carried the election of two patricians, and the same open breach of the law was repeated in the next ten years not less than six times. It was a bad time for the plebeians, and it is natural that, under such, circumstances, the material interests of the plebeian class should suffer, in spite of the provisions of the Licinian laws. The agrarian law, we may be sure, was not carried out where it interfered with the patrician interests. But it is very probable that the ruling party made concessions to the people in minor matters, so that in the main they might keep the advantage.

Thus we hear that in the year 357 the rate of interest was fixed at one-twelfth of the capital per annum, and ten years later a further reduction to one-half of this rate took place. It is further mentioned that in the year 352 a commission of five, three of whom were plebeians, was formed, who, by advancing money out of the public treasury, were to assist debtors who were in difficulties, but could give security to the state for repayment of an advance. We are unable, owing to the scantiness of our information, to ascertain exactly the effect of such measures. It is not impossible that, as Livy relates, debtors and creditors were satisfied; but we ought to know much more of the existing circumstances to feel quite sure that this was really the case. We can imagine reasons why the creditors made a sacrifice from political motives, and abated a portion of their legal demands, in order that, on the other hand, they might be allowed to have their own way in the appropriation of the state lands and in the administration of the republic. But the state continued to suffer from the great amount of indebtedness of the plebeians, and from various other evils. This was brought to light by the mutiny of 342, which was not merely the symptom of an accidental passing discomfort, but the outbreak of a long-repressed and deeply-seated malady of the state.

The accounts of this mutiny differ so materially that, according to Livy, nothing is certain but that a mutiny took place and was put down. The different reports are indeed singular and obscure, partly on account of their brevity and incompleteness, partly as contradicting one another; but to such things we are accustomed in our authorities for the history of the time of which we are speaking. It has even happened that, in several reports of the same event, differing materially the one from the other, we have been able to discover a more genuine historical tradition than in perfectly smooth and rectified accounts. Completeness of the narrative we are, at this stage, very far from expecting. We have still to deal with fragments, and may be well satisfied if among these fragments we discover here and there traces of genuine historical testimony. Let us try to discover such in the accounts of the mutiny of 342 BC.

After the victorious campaign against the Samnites, 343 BC, it is said the Roman legions wintered in Campania, in order to protect Capua and Suessula against the attacks of the Samnites during the winter. The luxurious life in that favoured country made the Roman soldiers forget their fatherland, and they conceived the treacherous plan of attacking the Capuans, of murdering them, and thus taking possession of their land, just as the Capuans themselves, eighty years before, had acted towards the former inhabitants. The plan became known, and was frustrated by the consul C. Marcius Rutilus. He discharged the most dangerous of the mutineers, and sent them home either singly or in small troops. Thus the army was purified of the most licentious soldiers. Meanwhile the men who had been discharged banded themselves together, marched against Rome, and placed by force a noble patrician, T. Quinctius, at their head, as commander. The dictator, M. Valerius Corvus, led an army against them. But instead of a battle, a friendly meeting took place, and the civil war was ended by the enactment of a new fundamental law (lex sacrata), proposed by the senate, and carried by a resolution of the people. Of the provisions of this law, which was no doubt tolerably comprehensive, only one is specified, viz., that no Roman soldier should be discharged from service without his consent, and that a military tribune should not be lowered to the rank of a centurion. Livy also mentions, as a demand of the soldiers, that the pay of the cavalry, which was three times as much as the pay of the common legionary soldiers, should be reduced. But, according to other accounts, the conditions of peace contained far more sweeping and general regulations and real fundamental reforms. One law, according to this account, forbade the re-election of a consul within ten years, and the appointment at one time to more than one office. The most startling innovation, however, is a resolution of the people, on the proposal of the tribune L. Genucius, which forbade all interest on loans.

What Livy says of the various reports as to the name of the commander of the mutinous troops, and the representative of the senate during these negotiations, is of no importance, and shows, as we have said, that many independent and different traditions existed, which on the whole confirm the fact of a grave commotion in the year 342. What is important to us is, to discover the object of the reform of this year, and to find the reason for it in the condition in which the state and the nation were. The regulations which forbade the discharge of soldiers against their will and the degradation of the military tribunes are only fragments of a general law, which was not confined to the two named classes, but included all ranks. It was intended to put an end to the caprice of the consuls, from whom, twenty years before (362 BC), the nomination of six military tribunes, out of four and twenty for each legion, had been taken, in order to transferred to the people. This limitation of the free choice of the consuls was not decided upon because those so nominated possessed less military ability than those who were elected by a majority of votes in a popular assembly. On the contrary, if military ability alone had been considered, the choice might have been safely left to the consuls, who, as commanders-in-chief, were more interested than anybody in having efficient officers under them. But other things besides military efficiency came into consideration. The rank which a man held in the legion regulated, in the first instance, his pay. Next to this it determined the share of plunder to which he was entitled—a material consideration with a Roman soldier. In the third place, it fixed the proportion of land which he was to receive in case of colonies being established in the conquered territory. It was therefore possible for the commanding consul, by freely controlling the rank of the officers, and by dismissing or retaining the soldiers at pleasure, to deprive those who were obnoxious to him, or even whole classes of citizens, of their share in the profits of a war. Such acts of injustice must have taken place frequently; and it was natural that the soldiers should seek to prevent a repetition of these wrongs, after a victorious campaign in Campania, especially if they could look forward to an allotment of land in that country. Thus may the singular phenomenon be explained, that the people protested, not against compulsory service, but against summary discharge.

How far the other parts of the reform of the year 342 BC harmonised with the leading idea just detailed cannot be determined with certainty. The demand that the pay of the cavalry, which was three times as much as that of the infantry, should be reduced, is easily understood. The consideration, that every man’s, share of the booty was regulated by the amount of pay which he received was, we may readily suppose, one motive. The prohibition of a plurality of offices in one hand, and of the too frequent re-election to the consulship, may be explained in the same way; for the movement of the year 342 was clearly democratic, and directed against the new nobility. In consequence of the recent conquests, the Roman posts of honour had begun to be, in a higher degree than before, the sources of influence and wealth; and democratic jealousy soon began an opposition which considering the rapacious character of the Roman nobility, was but too well justified.

The startling statement that at this time a law of the tribune Genucius abolished altogether the taking of interest for loans remains to be examined. Such a law, it is true, is foolish and ineffectual; but nevertheless such laws have been enacted in several countries, after the example of the Jews. Yet it is difficult to believe that such a rational people as the Romans ever adopted it, especially as the practice of taking interest was sanctioned by a law of the Twelve Tables, and again, in 356 and 343, by laws which did not forbid the taking of interest, but fixed the legal rate. We cannot believe that the Mosaic law against all taking of interest could ever have found acceptance in Rome. If, therefore, the account of the Genucian law is not entirely fictitious, it must be differently understood and explained.

The laws of loans and interest are modelled upon usages interest which were common before money existed. The first loans were land and cattle. The portion of the produce of land and of the increase of cattle given by the borrower to the lender was the natural acknowledgment of a service rendered. The Greek and Latin words for interest show this clearly. Rent, whether paid in kind or in money, is nothing but interest paid for the loan of land. The first payers of interest:, or debtors, were therefore those cultivators of the soil who were not by law acknowledged as the owners, but as tenants of others who owned the fee simple. Hence the constant indebtedness of that class of people who among the Romans were, called clients, and the manner in which clients and debtors are spoken of as one class. The old Roman clientela was a subjection of this sort. It disappeared by degrees, and was gone before the time of contemporary history. It could exist no longer than the obligation of the clients to pay an annual rent or interest lasted. If the Genucian law, therefore, had reference not to money loans—which were after all not affected by it, as interest continued to be paid, and was never considered illegal—it must have been intended to abolish client-rents, either on the old estates of the patricians, or, which seems more likely, on newly acquired land. Thus we can understand its meaning and its influence on the economical development of the Roman people. The right of occupation had been limited by the Licinian law. But it may well be presumed that, in spite of this legal limitation, many peasants actually became dependent on great landowners, not only by borrowing capital for the purpose of being enabled to cultivate the land assigned to them, but also by illegal occupation, on the part of the stronger, of lands which were taken possession of by the poorer.' It was therefore natural that the Roman citizens should endeavour to guard themselves against falling into a new clientela just at a time when there were prospects of new conquests in the fertile land of Campania. The situation of the plebeians, and of the Roman state in general, at this time, is very similar to that which existed after the conquest of Veii. At that time also the plebeians laid claim to an unencumbered free possession of land in the newly acquired country. Their claims were resisted by the old nobility, and misrepresented in the annals. It was said that they had wished to forsake or to divide Rome, and to settle in Veil. Precisely in the same way the story of the Roman soldiers intending to take violent possession. of Capua is nothing hut a tradition, distorted in the interest of the aristocracy, that the Roman soldiers—that is, the plebeians who fought in the legions—claimed, as by right, the possession of the land which they had won from the Samnites in war as free settlers. Whether the senate then intended to found a colony in Campania we cannot say. It was, however, a step which they were very likely to take after a victorious war against the Samnites, and we can easily understand that the soldiers showed an intention to put in their claims, if such a contingency should arise. The mutiny which broke out was as intense as any that had yet shaken the state. It brought forth a new fundamental law, which, it is true, is very imperfectly known to us, but which seems to have established the principle that on newly acquired lands all Roman citizens should be settled as freeholders, not as patrons and clients.

This view of the arrangement of 342 BC is borne out by a further consideration. It appears that the concessions made to the insurgent troops were not extended to the Latins. It was not the intention of the Roman senate, nor of the Roman people, to equalise the rights of Roman citizens and their Latin allies. This humiliating distinction was felt by the Latins as a grievance, and was no doubt the cause of the extreme animosity with which, immediately afterwards, they took up arms against Rome.

 

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT WAR WITH THE LATINS.

339-338 B.C.

 

We have already had occasion to remark, that the old league between Rome and Latium, besides being weak and insufficient for mutual protection, was also oppressive and prejudicial to the weaker members. The league suffered not only from the defects inherent in all federal bodies, inasmuch as the interests of the whole are often in conflict with those of a part, but there was wanting from the very beginning an essential condition for true confederation, namely, equality in strength among the members. Rome, by her preponderance over each of the other towns of the league, was the acknowledged permanent head, and rose from an equality of power to absolute dominion. Her policy was decided by her own interests, and the other towns had to serve this interest either willingly or under compulsion. The Latins, who were of the same race as the Romans, equally proud, bold, and jealous of their freedom, were conscious of the unfairness with which they were treated, and of the disadvantageous position in which they were placed as the allies of Rome. While they were always losing territory by the aggressions of the Volscians in the south of Latium, the Romans had, with their help, overthrown the powerful city of Veii on the north of the Tiber, and had incorporated this great and fertile territory, not with the Latin league, but with the Roman state. It is more than probable that the interruption of friendly relations between Rome and her allies, which took place after the burning of the city by the Gauls, was caused by the selfish policy of the Romans and not by her alleged helplessness.

Strengthened by the recent conquest of Veii, Rome had gained more than ever such a preponderating influence Home and over her allies—especially since the internal disputes between patricians and plebeians were almost settled by the Licinian laws—that in the year 358 two new districts, taken from the Volscians in the heart of Latium, could be made into Roman tribes. The Latins had to submit and to renew the old league under much less favourable circumstances. Soon after this (343 BC) the war broke out with Samnium. New acquisitions of territory were in prospect, when it was seen that the Samnites were not able to resist the united power of the Romans, the Latins, and the Campanians. The Roman legions began to get a firm footing in Campania, and it was assuredly not the intention of the senate to share with their allies the rich spoils which the Roman nobility grudged even to their own plebeian fellow-citizens. The mutiny of 342 BC, with the internal reform arising out of this, was a purely Roman affair. There was no thought of concessions to the allies. Rome had determined to proceed in this path. If Latium did not now resist, it was doomed to lose even the shadow of independence, and to be absorbed by Rome.

Then the national pride and the spirit of the brave Latins began to rise. In the Samnite war they had shown themselves equal to the Romans in every warlike quality. There were still in Latium a number of unbroken peoples and fortified towns, smaller indeed than Rome, but well able to resist an enemy. There were the ancient Tibur, the strong Praeneste, Aricia, once the head of a separate alliance, Lanuvium and the venerable Lavinium, the stubborn Velitrae—which, as it is reported, had repeatedly been conquered by Rome, and colonised, and yet had rebelled again—and other towns of less note. These were joined by the Volscians of Antium and Privernum, who in these conquered Latin towns had become Latins themselves, and shared the common danger with Latium. A new spirit was awakened in all these peoples. They prosecuted the war against the Samnites independently, after Rome had in a faithless manner concluded a separate peace. The peoples also south of the Liris, even those in Campania, had discovered the intention of Rome which was threatening them, and they were prepared to fight for their independence. The Romans had no choice but to seek assistance from the Samnites, whom they had just conquered, against such a threatening combination ; nor did they scruple to unite themselves with these their recent enemies against the Latins, who had been their faithful allies for a long series of years, who were connected with them by the ties of kindred and blood, and who were almost their fellow citizens. Of the immediate cause of the war between Rome and Latium Livy gives the following report.

In the year 341 BC the two praetors of the Latins, L. Annius, of Setia, and L. Minucius, of Circeii, came to Rome at the head of an embassy, to lay before the senate the grievances and desires of the Latins, and to specify the conditions on which they were willing that the old league should be maintained. They demanded, as once the plebeians had demanded, a share in the government; one of the two consuls and one-half of the senate were to be Latins. This proposal was rejected with indignation, as if it were a desecration of the Roman Capitol, and a sin against the gods of the town, that a Latin should dare to prefer such a claim in the Roman senate. The intercession of the magistrates was scarcely able to protect the Latin ambassadors from the rage of the people. They had to leave Rome in haste, and the Romans resolved on war without delay.

The claim of the Latins was, according to our feeling and our idea of justice, natural and equitable. They only desired a share in the full citizenship of the state, which they defended every day with their property and their blood, with which they were united by many years of common sufferings, and by victories gained in common, by blood-relationship and intermarriage, by thousands of social ties, by speaking the same language and worshipping the same gods. They did not desire to rule over Rome; they only wished for protection against unfair treatment. Their situation was almost the same as that of the plebeians towards the patricians when the latter laid claim to be alone the Roman people, to form the senate, and to conduct the government. In both cases the dispute was principally about the share in the higher privileges of Roman citizenship. Such a share was at the same time a protection against wrong and neglect in all the relations of civil life, and a title to share in the advantages which were the fruits of victory. The last point ought not, to be overlooked, although in the received story it is always passed over. It concerned the peoples of antiquity in a much higher degree than we with our present views can imagine possible. In modern times a war between two nations affects only the constituted authorities, and not every citizen in his private capacity. The state as such, with its armed public force and with the public money, carries on the war. Citizens not serving in the army take no part in actual hostilities; consequently their persons as well as their property remain inviolate. What is not actually required for the wants of the belligerent armies, remains undisturbed to the peaceful possessor, and no confiscation of private property takes place, even after the total defeat of an enemy.

All this was quite different in antiquity. Every single citizen had to stake, in every war, not only his life and his personal freedom, not only the life and the freedom of those belonging to him, of his wife and his children, but all that he possessed. In this respect the wars of antiquity were mostly predatory. They were not carried on for an idea, for religion, or to inforce a disputed succession, but for the possession of fruitful plains, rich mines and pasturage, of treasures of temples and of works of art. Hence it was that the bond which united the citizens of the states of antiquity was so strong and so important, their patriotism so intense, their wars so obstinate. He who had a share in all the privileges of a citizen—he, and he alone, had also a share of the spoils and of the conquered lands. The half-citizen, the protected ally, shared indeed the dangers of the war, but was shut out from its advantages. For this reason the Latins and the Hernicans had stipulated with the Romans, in the first treaty, that they should receive each a third of the spoils and fruits of victory. As long as the confederacy was limited to the defence of its territory, such a stipulation was of no practical importance. When Rome began to grow strong, she paid no attention to it. It must have been clear to the Latins that, so long as they were without the pale of the Roman state, they would always be curtailed in the division of the spoils. Only as Roman citizens could they hope to be treated with justice; and from this motive primarily may we explain their desire to obtain the Roman franchise.

The exact form of the demand of the Latins has been obscured in the popular account of their embassy. It differed no doubt very materially from that related by Livy. They could hardly claim that one of the two consuls and one-half of the senators should be nominated from the Latins. The internal order of the Roman state, according to which the consulate was divided between patricians and plebeians, would have been disturbed by such an arrangement. The claim would also have entailed the division of other political offices, as, for instance, that of the tribunes, between Latins and Romans, a demand of which nothing is reported. No more could the Latins claim to elect half the senate. The senate, which consisted for the most part, and certainly in its most influential members, of former magistrates, would have been made incapable of governing the state. On the other hand, something which was necessarily an important part of the demand of the Latins, and which must even be supposed to have been the primary condition of a closer union, is not mentioned. This was the reception of the whole of Latium into the Roman tribes, or more probably the establishment of new tribes out of the Latin territory. Had such a demand been acceded to, every legitimate wish of the Latins would have been gratified. Rome granted this at a later period voluntarily, but under materially altered circumstances, when it received the different districts of Latium, of the Volscian, Aequian, and Hernican territory into the Roman tribes. But before this took place a time had elapsed in which Roman law, and Roman citizens as landowners, had gained a firm footing in those districts, so that the amalgamation of that territory with the Roman did not take place until the inhabitants had really become Romans.

When the senate ungraciously dismissed the Latin embassy, it was aware that war was unavoidable and the danger most serious. It was not a war concerning the possession of a disputed territory, but a long postponed contest, which was to decide whether Rome was entitled to dominion, or whether she was destined to be simply one of several members of a league ; it was not a war with a foreign nation, but with men of the same race; in fact it was almost a civil war. For centuries the Latins and the Romans had had the same institutions, political, religious, and social. They formed one people, only accidentally distributed over different places and districts. On the high Alban mount, which overlooks the whole of the Latin plain, they celebrated every year their common festival in honour of their tutelary god, Jupiter Latiaris. The civil institutions of the towns, and their military organisation, were everywhere the same, and not different from those of Rome. There was nothing to distinguish Romans and Latins in arms or tactics. Their courage was equal, so was their military experience and practice; in numbers, too, the two armies were nearly balanced. In one point only Rome was infinitely superior, and this superiority decided the victory. Rome was a united state; the Latins formed a confederation.

One ominous sign of the weakness inherent in the Latin confederation was this, that not all the Latin towns took a share in the war with Rome. Laurentum remained faithful to Rome; other places were neutral. The Latins could still less reckon on all the Volscians and Campanians as true allies. Fundi and Formiae showed themselves friendly to the Romans, and granted them a free passage through their territory. Io Capua there was internal dissension.. The democratic party favoured the Latins. The nobility were on the side of the Romans, and rendered such valuable services during the war that after the Roman victory they received their especial reward at the expense of the democrats. Whether more dissensions occurred among the enemies of Rome, we do not know. It is certain that Rome used every opportunity to cause division among her enemies, and that if the nobles in any single state were at enmity with the people, they had only to turn towards her to find ready assistance.

The Romans opened the war by a march, which, by a long circuitous way round the east of Latium, brought them right through the country of the Marsians and Pelignians to Samnium. Being joined by a Samnite army, they invaded Campania. This plan of the campaign, which was suggested by their alliance with the Samnites, was bold but safe. The city of Rome, it is true, was left to the protection of her citizens alone, and the whole chap. armed force of four legions marched into a distant country,  where they were separated by the forces of the Latins and Volscians from their home and the base of their operations. But the Roman army had, in case of necessity, its retreat open towards Samnium, and by attacking the Latins from the south they compelled them to turn towards Campania, and thus they indirectly protected their capital. We cannot fail to recognise here a well-studied, ingenious plan. The operations are grander and more complicated than those of the former wars with the Volscians and the Etruscans. They rise to the character and the proportions which led the Romans on to victory in the successive wars with the Samnites, Greeks, and Carthaginians.

The campaign in Campania was remembered in the popular tradition chiefly by two stories, connected with campaign, the names of the two consuls, and derived, perhaps, from the family chronicles of the Manlii and the Decii. It is the horrible tradition of two human sacrifices which fell as offerings to Roman discipline and patriotism—the tradition of the execution of young Manlius by his father, the consul T. Manlius Torquatus, and of the self-devotion of the consul P. Decius Mus. 

The consul T. Manlius is one of those Roman heroes of the olden time on whom the legend growing into history loves to linger. Whilst of most of his contemporaries we know nothing more than their names, or some isolated actions, or their general character, it seems that we can discover in this man distinct features and individual qualities. He was a genuine Roman—rude, uneducated, severe towards himself and towards others, valiant in the field, without consideration for duties and feelings which were not subservient to the greatness and well-being of his country. His father had already shown the same spirit before him. When, in the year 365 BC, one of those desolating plagues broke out which so often in antiquity filled the minds of the people with fear and superstition ,when by this plague the old Camillus was carried off, with many of the noblest men, and when the people, losing all hope from human aid, sought salvation from the gods alone,1 a long-forgotten religious custom was revived, by which, according to tradition, once in former times the fury of the plague had been allayed. It had been the custom to cause the chief magistrate, at the autumnal equinox, to drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. L. Manlius was now elected dictator to drive in this nail. His dictatorship had no political object. It was merely a religious formality. But L. Manlius, who at that time, if not sooner, had gained for himself the surname ‘Imperiosus,’ endeavoured to act as a real dictator. He commanded the citizens to be enlisted, as if there were war with the Hernicans, and persisted in the levy with the utmost severity, punishing the refractory ones by stripes and imprisonment. When he was cheeked in this audacious abuse of authority by the unanimous intercession of the tribunes, and impeached by the tribune M. Pomponius on this account, and on the charge of educating his son Titus in a manner unbecoming his station, the latter hurried from his father’s farm in the country, where he was kept to ordinary peasant’s work, into the town, forced his way in the early morning into the house of the tribune, and threatened to murder him immediately if he did not swear to drop the accusation against his father. The same youth, soon after this, killed, in single combat, a gigantic Gaul, despoiled him of his necklace, and thus acquired the surname Torquatus. Now, during the rebellion of the Latins, he was made consul for the third time, and Livy puts into bis mouth the haughty speech to the Latin ambassadors in the senate : ‘If the sanctuary of the senate could be, so desecrated that a man of Setia ruled in it, h would come armed into the assembly, and strike down with bis sword the first Latin who met him.’

When the war had broken out, and both the hostile The story armies lay encamped against each other in Campania, the consuls issued orders to the soldiers to avoid all irregular fighting, and all encounters with the enemy, and to take up the combat only on the explicit command of their superior officers. They apprehended a relaxation of military discipline if the Roman soldiers and the Latins, their old companions in arms, had opportunities of meeting singly. Then it happened that the son of the consul T. Manlius, who led a troop of cavalry, approached the enemy’s camp, and was challenged by Geminus Mettius, the commander of the Tusculan horse, with whom he was personally acquainted. Stung by the contemptuous words of the Tusculan, the fiery youth forgot the injunction of his father, accepted the challenge, and killed Mettius. In triumph he returned to the camp, decorated with the arms of his slain enemy, and accompanied by an exulting crowd of his men. Before his eyes floated, perhaps, the image of his father, marching through the lines of the camp, adorned with the necklace of the Gaul he had slain, and about to receive his deserved reward. But a far different reception awaited him. With a gloomy look his father turned away from him, assembled immediately the whole army by the blast of the trumpet, and pronounced the sentence of death over his victorious son. The safety of the state was not to suffer from parental indulgence. Military discipline, which was shaken by the conduct of the consul’s son, could only be restored by the blood of the offender. In the contest of duty and paternal love, the feeling of the Roman citizen triumphed. The blood of the son flowed before the eyes of the father. Paralysed at first with awe and terror, the assembly soon burst forth into lamentations and curses against the unnatural parent. The name of Manlius was hateful for all time, and the Roman youth were never reconciled to the heartless man who had raged against his own blood.

The gods desired yet another sacrifice before they could acknowledge the Roman people as justified to rule over the various kindred tribes of Italy. A Roman consul must be prepared to sacrifice not only the life of his son, but his own life for the good of his country. This self-sacrifice was reserved for P. Decius Mus, the plebeian colleague of Manlius, a man who had once before saved a Roman army in the Samnite war by drawing on himself and a chosen band the attack of the enemy, and by exposing himself voluntarily to an apparently inevitable death. Both consuls, it is said,’ were warned in the same night by a dream, that one of the two hostile armies which were now confronting each other was doomed to perish, and that the general of the other must die. Victory would therefore he with that army whose general would devote himself to death, and with himself the army of the enemy. At a solemn sacrifice the haruspices saw in the entrails of the victims the confirmation of what had been revealed by dreams to the consuls, and neither of the two men trembled or shrunk from the task, which, as a Roman and a consul, he had to discharge. They agreed that he whose legions should begin to fall back in the battle should fulfil the command of the gods, and seek death as a pledge of victory for his country. The battle was fought by Mount Vesuvius. It was long undecided. On each side were warriors accustomed to conquer. At length the Romans on the side where Decius commanded fell into disorder and were driven back. The moment had now arrived for Decius to fulfil his fate. He sent for the chief pontiff, veiled his head, and repeated after the priest the sacred form of prayer: ‘0 Janus, Jupiter, Father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, ye Lares, ye foreign and ye our native gods, ye gods who have power over us and our enemies, ye spirits of the departed, to you I pray, you I worship, from you I hope for this grace, that ye vouchsafe strength . and victory to the Roman people of the Quirites, and strike the enemies of the Roman people with terror, fear, and death. As I have pronounced the words, so do I now, on behalf of the commonwealth of the Roman people of the Quirites, of the army, the legions and the allies of the Roman people, devote with myself to the spirits of the departed and to the earth the legions and the allies of the enemy.’ Having uttered this prayer, Decius mounted his horse, still wrapped in his toga, and plunged into the thickest of the battle, seeking death for himself and victory for his army. When he was struck to death, the resistance of the Latins grew gradually weaker, and the day remained with the Romans.

In spite of the death of the magnanimous Decius, the victory, it is said, was finally gained by a stratagem of Manlius, who deceived the Latins, kept back his last and the reserve, the triarii, and ordered them to advance when  the Latin triarii were exhausted. It appears that both families, the Decii as well as the Manlii, had their particular traditions regarding the great battle in which the Latins were overthrown, and the annalists did their utmost to combine the two. We shall not attempt to draw a picture of the battle. Such pictures belong to the latest products of contemporary history, and are not always intelligible and authentic, even if they are drawn by eyewitnesses or the commanding generals themselves. We shall have to be satisfied for a long while yet if we can only ascertain the issue of battles with certainty, for we are not nearly past the time of fictitious battles and victories. In the report of the battle of Mount Vesuvius, we are struck by the dishonesty of the Roman historians, who had nothing else to say of the allied Samnites than that they remained stationary in the distance at the foot of the mountain. We cannot believe for one moment that the warlike Samnites were idle spectators in a decisive battle. They probably fought against the allies of the Latins, the Volscians and Campanians.

At any rate victory was on the side of the Romans and the Samnites. The Latins and their allies rallied again at Trifanum, but were overthrown with little trouble, and the war resolved itself into a number of small engagements. The Latins were not able to raise another force, and to meet the Romans in the field. They threw themselves into their fortified towns and hoped by an obstinate resistance to tire out the Romans. Thus the war was lengthened out for some time. The siege of a town fortified either by nature or by art was a difficult task, which before all things required time. The Romans of this age were not acquainted with the mechanical contrivances which at a later period they learnt from the Greeks, and which, however imperfectly, represented what we call artillery. They tried to obtain their object by the pertinacity with which they held out before a besieged town; they enclosed it by circumvallations, and gradually approached the walls with their ponderous battering-rams, after filling up the town-moats with earth and wood. If this was not possible, they relied on reducing the inhabitants by hunger. Such a proceeding was, however, possible only if the besieged town had no prospect of relief from without. As long as the enemy could keep possession of the field, the conquest of a fortified place was very uncertain. On this the Latins calculated. Every single town in Latium was a fortress, defended by perpendicular cliffs or by strong walls. Some towns, such as Praeneste, were acknowledged to be impregnable. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the Romans, even after two decisive victories, had still a difficult task before they could hope to make the Latins submit. We hear of a long-continued and at first unsuccessful siege of Pedum, a town seldom mentioned, which, in comparison with Tibur, Praeneste, Velitrae, Lanuvium, and Antium, must have been very inconsiderable. In the following year a victory of the Romans, near an unknown river called Astura, is reported, over the forces of Aricia, Lanuvium, and Velitrae, and now at last Pedum was taken. About this time, the important town of Antium, which by its fleet had kept the immediate neighbourhood of Rome in alarm, fell into the hands of the Romans.

We may presume that the other towns of Latium suffered or feared the same fate. The Hernicans remained neutral, or, what is more probable, assisted the Romans, according to their duty as members of the old confederation. That neither they nor the Samnites are mentioned in the final overthrow of, Latium is, as we have often seen, to be explained from the custom of the Roman annalists, who were always bent on appropriating- all the glory .to themselves. But the victory of the Romans was by no means decided by one blow, nor was it a victory over all the Latins. It is distinctly said of the Laurentines that they remained faithful to Rome, and we may assume that Praseneste as well as Tibur terminated the war by an honourable peace which left them independent. Rome understood how to divide her enemies. She recognised the confederation the Latins no longer after she had retired from it. Only separately she negotiated with her enemies, and the different towns obtained peace under different conditions, as the interest of Rome or the ability of resistance possessed by each might dictate.

Tibur and Praeneste were treated most leniently, not because they had been less violently opposed to Rome, but because their strength was such that Rome had no hope of subduing them by force of arms. They were therefore separated from the rest of the Latins, and the old conditions of their alliance with Rome were in the main restored. They remained independent states in the full enjoyment of their own laws and separate existence. Their sovereignty was limited only in one point, and this limitation might be regarded as an advantage, and as a guarantee of their security. A defensive and offensive alliance obliged them to let their contingents join the Roman army in case of war. In other respects, they enjoyed such an amount of free action as small states can hope to possess when allied to a larger. This state of things lasted for many generations, until the time when the Tiburtines and Praenestines had ceased to feel otherwise than as Romans.

The Latin and Volscian districts which the fortune of war had made subject to the Romans received less favourable conditions. They were admitted into a more intimate connexion, which made them Roman citizens of Treatment the second class, without the political franchise and yet districts, subject to the ordinary duties of Roman citizens. They received neither the right of voting in the legislative assemblies of the Roman people, nor that of being elected to any place of honour; they formed therefore no part of the real Roman state, and were included in no Roman tribe. On the other hand, they enjoyed the private right of Roman citizens, the privilege of concluding a marriage with Romans, with all its legal consequences, and moreover the right to buy and sell in Rome according to the strict Roman forms. The most important part of this latter right was that of being able to hold landed property, and without this right, which naturally, as well as the right of marriage, was mutual, and enjoyed by Romans in Latin towns as by Latins in Rome, it would not have been so easy as indeed it was to romanise the whole of Latium and to prepare it for reception into full Roman citizenship, which happened in course of time. It is therefore clear that the concession of the Roman rights of marriage and commerce to the subject Latins, which made them nominally Romans, was not so much a concession granted to them as it was a privilege for the old Roman citizens, and enabled them to settle in Latium, and to reap the advantages which trade, commerce, and agriculture offered. This was all the easier as the Roman jurisdiction was introduced as a further condition of peace into the subject towns. A deputy of the Roman praetor, under the name of prefect (prafectus juri dicundo), was annually sent into the separate towns, and administered the jurisdiction in all civil cases in which the Roman marriage and . commercial law had to be applied. It is probable that in other respects nothing was altered in the customary laws.

On the whole, Rome was not beset by the sin of modern bureaucratic states—the sin of governing too much, of meddling with affairs which could safely be left to local self-government without endangering her supremacy. A great variety of local usages and names survived the absorption of the different towns into the Roman republic, and this wise policy contributed materially to facilitate the extension of Roman dominion and to attach the subject towns to Roman rule. Only in those places which by special acts of faithlessness or treason had drawn upon themselves the vengeance of Rome every kind of local independence was abolished.

It was now necessary to fix the duties which the Latin towns subject to Rome would have to perform. In the place of the old alliance, which was based on the principle of equality and voluntary consent of the separate members to all common burdens, the Latin towns had now to submit to complete dependence on Rome. Their contributions in money and in soldiers were neither determined by their consent, as formerly, nor fixed once for all; but they were imposed on them by Rome, according to the pleasure of the Romans, and according to the wants of the time, without their having any influence on the decision. This duty was the distinguishing mark of the subject towns, and from it arose the name ‘municipal,’ i.e. bound to services. The Roman censors made the assessment of the municipalities, according to which the taxes were raised, and Roman officers took charge of the levying of the men for the military service. In order to prevent in future the possibility of a revolt, every kind of political union between the Latin towns was dissolved. They were not allowed to combine one with another for any common purpose. The only place where Latins from different localities could meet for common action was henceforth Rome. In Rome they all enjoyed the rights of settling, of buying and selling, of marrying according to the strict Roman law; but all similar intercourse between one Latin town and another was cut off. They were destined to repel each other and to be attracted to the common centre.

Thus, isolated, politically powerless, socially dependent on Rome, the old towns of the Latins, once so proud and so free, became gradually provincial towns of the Roman territory. There was from Rome a continual influx of Roman citizens. The old Latium disappeared, and a new Latium took its place, which, by means of Latin colonies, carried the Roman institutions, in the course of two centuries, over the whole peninsula.

As we have already had occasion to remark, wars and treaties of peace produced in antiquity not only changes in the political conditions of the belligerents, but confiscations of land which were of much more importance than the loss and gain of purely political advantages. With the overthrow of the Latins, extensive tracts of state land were, as we might expect, appropriated by the Romans. Even Tibur and Praeneste are said to have been mulcted in this way, although these two towns were treated most leniently. With those towns which were changed into Roman municipalities this must have been the case in a much higher degree. It was not necessary always to send a Roman colony into such towns. The occupation of state land by Roman citizens took place in many cases where  it was not necessary to establish colonies, which, at the period we are speaking of, had primarily the object of securing an exposed frontier, and not that of providing for poor citizens. As in the large territory of Veii only two colonies, Sutrium and Nepete, were established, while all the remaining land was reserved for the use of the Roman citizens, so it is probable that but few places in Latium were now colonized. Most of the districts lay so near to Rome that they appeared to need no particular protection through colonies. But that considerable portions of land were made Roman state land cannot be doubted. Where no further severity was necessary, the confiscation of the state lands was considered a sufficient punishment, hut where, as in Velitrae, the nobility had shown themselves especially hostile, banishment was added to confiscation.

Besides the towns with which the old alliance was renewed and those which became municipia, there was a third class of Latin towns which were completely absorbed into the Roman state, two new Roman tribes being formed out of their territory. These towns seem to have obtained the most favourable conditions, inasmuch as they were fully incorporated. But a suspicion remains that perhaps they were really treated most severely, for it is not unlikely that the old proprietors were dispossessed and Roman citizens settled on their lands. What became of the former possessors is uncertain. Perhaps they entered the class of the erarii, or, in other words, became subjects without public rights; perhaps they were simply expelled or sold as slaves. 

 

CHAP. VII.

THE LAWS OF PUBLILIUS PHILO, 339 B.C.

 

Before the new organisation of Latium was completed, a disturbance took place in Rome, which showed that the old opposition between patricians and plebeians  had not yet disappeared. We have already seen that the Licinian law had failed to produce perfect peace and concord. The the mutiny of the legions in the year 342 had hardly led plebeians, to an agreement when the impending revolution in Latium opened a prospect of change in all the social relations of the people. It seems that the nobility were still as anxious as ever to secure for themselves the greatest advantages. In the senate this party possessed the majority; and as the senate, acting as an executive council, was not only intrusted with carrying out the resolutions of the people as to the organisation of the newly-acquired districts, but could by their consent or refusal (i.e. by giving or withholding the patrum auctoritas) further or retard these resolutions, the people had practically no voice as to what should be done with the new acquisitions, whether a colony should be sent out, whether a simple assignment of land should take place, or whether occupation should be permitted. Both consuls of the year 339 had quarrelled with the senate. The origin of the dispute was a measure of the senate assigning to Roman citizens in the Latin and Falernian territory the wretched pittance of from two to three jugera of land. The plebeian consul Publilius Philo, having been named dictator by his patrician colleague, Aemilius, probably in direct opposition to the senate, proposed a series of laws which had for their object to make the legislative prerogative of the people independent of the formal consent of the senate.

The first of the Publilian laws enacted that plebiscites (that is, the decisions of the plebeian assembly of tribes), should be binding on all citizens. This law looks like re-enactment of the law which was proposed by the consuls Valerius and Horatius. Whether it really was so, or whether it contained special provisions unknown to our informants, it is impossible to decide.

The second law is plainer. It declares that the resolutions of the centuries should, not depend on the consent of the senate. By this law the legitimate influence of the senate in legislation was not abolished. It continued to the end of the republic, and was rather increased than lessened, as with the growth of the state the counsel of a body of experienced statesmen naturally became more important. But it was possible that the opposition of the senate to a resolution of the people might bring about a deadlock. In such cases it was better for the law to decide which of the two should yield, than to leave the decision to chance or force, and it was quite in accordance with the constitutional theory of the ancient republics that the sovereignty should be vested in the people, and that the decision of the people should be the supreme law. When the people had succeeded in electing a popular consul, it was desirable that they should have power to enable him to carry those measures which for the well-being of the state would suffer no delay. It cannot be denied that great danger lay in this abolition of the veto of the senate. A reckless demagogue was now without any restraint but the good sense of the people, and it is a striking proof of the political wisdom of the Roman people that the Publilian law was very rarely used.

A third law of Publilius ordained that in future one of the two censors must be a plebeian. If we consider that the formation of new tribes was in prospect, and actually took place some years later, 331 BC, when Q. Publilius Philo himself was the first plebeian censor, we must infer that this law also had reference to the regulation of property caused by the new assignments of land.

The plebeians were probably also admitted to the praetorship by the Publilian law, for in the year 337 BC. Q. Publilius Philo himself first filled the office, which from this time forward was held alternately every year by patricians and plebeians. As the Roman praetor nominated the prefects, who exercised jurisdiction in the municipia, it is evident that the interest of the plebeians in this office was of particular importance just at this period.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EXTENSION OF THE ROMAN DOMINION TOWARDS CAMPANIA,

337-326 B.C.

 

The new settlement of the relations between Rome and Latium occupied some years. The allies of the Latins— the Volscians, the Ausonian tribes on the Liris, between Latium and Campania, and the Capuans—were treated as the Latins had been. But serious efforts were necessary before the Romans could succeed in gaining a firm footing in those parts. Cales was conquered in a war with the Sidicinians, and in this important place, between the Liris and the Volturnus, a colony was established of 2,500 men, which was intended to secure the road to Campania. The Romans had thus pushed their conquests into the immediate neighbourhood of the Samnites, with whom it was clear that a conflict could not long be postponed.

In the very next year two Volscian towns, Fabrateria and Luca, placed themselves under the protection of the Romans, to be safe from the Samnites, and the Samnites, at the instance of the Romans, refrained from hostilities against these new friends of their allies. They also looked on quietly while the Romans (330 BC) chastised, with the greatest severity, the two towns of Fundi and Privernum, which had tried to shake off the yoke of the limited Roman franchise imposed upon them. The leader of this revolt, a noble citizen of Fundi, of the name of Vitruvius Vaccus, atoned for his undertaking by death at the hands of the executioner. The town of Privernum was deprived of its walls, the senators were banished to Etruria, their land divided among Roman citizens, and the town ceased to be a self-governing community. At length (in 328 BC) the Romans established a colony in the town of Fregellae, a most important locality on the river Liris, on one of the two roads leading to Campania. Thus Rome pushed to the very utmost the advantages of her victory over the Latins. The Roman territory was greatly enlarged, the former allies made entirely subservient to the interests of the state, and hound to Rome with chains of iron. The subject territory, in different degrees of dependence, stretched from Tibur and Praeneste as far as Campania; new fortifications secured the frontiers. Rome had more than doubled her size. Her internal organisation had become stronger, and she was ready to break through the narrow hounds which had thus far confined the ambition of her citizens.

The Samnites did not look on with indifference at this extension of the Roman power, which could advance southwards only at their expense. Their interest imperatively demanded that they should oppose its further growth, and especially that they should protect their nearest neighbours and kinsmen, the Volscians, Aruneans, and Campanians, against the Romans. Yet they remained quiet. This peaceful disposition could not be caused by shortsightedness. The Samnites saw the danger which threatened them from the north, but their strength was at this time required for a new enemy who came from the south and threw the whole of lower Italy into a state of excitement. Alexander, the prince of the Molossians, had landed in Italy, with a Greek army, and appeared to be going to found a great Greek empire on its shores, as his nephew, the great Alexander, did in the East.

Up to this period no direct political intercourse had taken place between Rome and Greece. All the stories of former relations of the Romans to the Greeks are open to doubt and suspicion. Now, however, the Romans had come into contact with the Greeks in Campania, and the appearance of Alexander in Italy was the first event by which the Greeks influenced Roman affairs. This seems, therefore, a proper place to cast a glance over that part of the peninsula where Greek colonies had been planted, and which becomes visible more and more as the horizon of Roman history widens.

 

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREEK SETTLEMENTS IN ITALY.

 

Italy and Sicily were for the poet of the Odyssey still the fabulous land of one-eyed giants and savages, of sea-nymphs and enchantresses, of unapproachable rocks and whirlpools. In those parts near the setting sun was the entrance to the realm of shadows, where the world of the living was in immediate contiguity with the dwelling-place of departed spirits. But by degrees the mist which had hidden the west from the. eyes of the Greeks began to pass away. The time came when Hellenic mariners, seeking plunder and profit, explored the seas from east to west, in increasing rivalry with the first and boldest navigators of antiquity, the Phoenicians. The news reached Greece of a large and beautiful country on the other side of the Ionian sea, rich in luxuriant pastures and far-spreading plains, such as the poor mother country did not -contain among her bare mountain chains. Numbers of bold adventurers now poured across the sea from every part of Greece to found new homes in the beautiful country of the west. The coast of sunny Sicily was soon covered on the east and west with Greek colonies; in Italy they stretched from the beautiful Gulf of Campania to the innermost parts of that of Tarentum. The highly gifted Hellenic races quickly reached a high degree of prosperity in their new settlements, and it seemed as if a new and a larger Greece was about to flourish on Italian soil. Sybaris, Croton, Rhegium, Metapontum, Tarentum, and a number of other settlements in the southern parts of Italy vied with the Sicilian towns of Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, Leontini, Naxos, Messina and others in the arts of peace and war, and in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. far outstripped the mother county in wealth, population, and magnificence. They subdued the country from the coast inwards, and ruled over the native, races. The extraordinary prosperity which the Greek towns in Italy and Sicily had reached is evident even now. from the splendid ruins of their edifices. We can form a faint conception of what must have been the grandeur of Agrigentum, Syracuse, Croton, Sybaris, and Tarentum from the imposing ruins which fill the traveller with awe, admiration, and mournful regret, on the site of Posidonia or Paestum, one of the most insignificant of all the Greek cities.

With all their energy and activity, the Greeks were wanting in the ability to work out a stable form of government or a grand comprehensive national polity. They knew of no division or limitation in the exercise of sovereign power, no subjection of the individual will to law, no dominion over others but that of force. They pushed the rights of the individual to the extreme, and they never acknowledged in the just claims of others a barrier to their own desires. Sparta was considered in Greece, by the wisest and best men, as the most perfect realisation of an ideal state. And yet the law in Sparta sanctioned the continuance of inhuman violence. The Spartan institutions were a permanent outrage on the noblest instincts of humanity; they secured order at the cost of justice, culture, and the more refined and dignified enjoyments of life. Where the same iron despotism could not be inforced as in Sparta, public life was one constant struggle between the aristocratic and democratic parties, both of which with equal recklessness, with equal contempt of divine and human laws, expected peace, salvation, and prosperity for themselves only from the complete subjection or annihilation of their antagonists. The same feelings which animated the civil contests in each separate community inspired the international policy of the Greek states. Every conquest of land led to the enslavement of the conquered, not to the real extension of the mother town by the admission of new citizens. Thus Sparta incapacitated herself to unite the Greek races under her strong shield, for she degraded the conquered into Helots. Athens failed in her attempt to form a strong confederation, for she was only intent on making profit from her allies. Hence arose the desperate courage with which every Greek town defended itself, and that wonderful energy of the separate states, which rendered the formation of larger states impossible.

With the virtues of their race, the Italian Greeks had also brought their vices to their new homes. Had they joined for common action either in Sicily or Italy—nay, had they only refrained from mutually lacerating one another—they might have hellenised the whole country, and have found in Italy the broad basis for a Greek empire. Perhaps Greek civilisation might have prevailed over Italian barbarism, and, instead of a Roman, a Greek empire have extended itself along all the coasts of the Mediterranean. But that was not to be; the prosperity to which the Greek settlers had attained in Italy in two centuries, suffered, after many partial interruptions, the first heavy blow by the war which, about 500 B.C., broke out between the two neighbouring towns of Sybaris and Croton, and ended in the total destruction of Sybaris. This war was succeeded by a bloody revolution in the victorious city of Croton, by which the aristocratic party, and with it the political sect of the Pythagoreans, were expelled. Thus weakened, Croton suffered, in a war with the neighbouring Greeks of Locri and Rhegium, a defeat at the river Sagra, from which it never again fully recovered. Through such struggles, the Greek nationality in Italy declined. The aboriginal population of the country, the Messapians and the Sabellian tribes, the Lucanians and the Bruttians, which were spread over the south of Italy, were encouraged to a more vigorous resistance against the Greek settlers. The Greeks in Sicily frequently made common cause with them against their own countrymen. Thus in the wars of rapine and plunder with which the elder Dionysius visited the Italian coast, Rhegium was destroyed and the inhabitants were sold as slaves.

In these troubles the Italian Greeks turned for help to the mother country, but without renouncing even now the jealousy, the ambition, and the hostilities amongst themselves which were destined here, as everywhere, to be so fatal to their freedom. Of all the Greek settlements on Italian ground Tarentum was perhaps the most favourably situated. By an active industry and an extensive trade it had raised itself to a condition of great wealth, and it enjoyed a comparative security from hostile attacks. But Tarentum also felt the effect of the calamities which visited all the Greek towns, and she found it more and more difficult to defend her independence from the Italian nations. In vain the Tarentines called the Spartan king Archidamus to their assistance. At the time when Rome came forth victorious from the war with the Latins, Archidamus fell in a battle against the Lucanians. The Tarentines now applied to Alexander, the prince of the Molossians in Epirus, brother of Olympias and uncle of Alexander the Great. The time had arrived when the genuine Hellenes began to languish, and when the rude vigorous half-castes in the north of Greece, the Macedonians and the Epirots, seemed to be called upon to propagate the civilisation of Greece over the world. While Philip of Macedon and his great son gathered together in their hands the forces of Greece, and were about to direct them towards the East, the spirited princes of Epirus conceived a plan equally bold and equally worthy of success in endeavouring to unite the Italian and Sicilian Greek towns into a powerful state, and to found a Greek empire of the West. But here, on Italian ground, they met with races who, unlike the enervated Asiatics, did not submit their neck to the yoke, but maintained their freedom with stubborn resistance, and, advancing from the defence to the attack, expelled the foreign invaders, and reduced all the Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily to submission.

Alexander landed in Tarentum with an Epirotic army, organised and equipped according to Macedonian fashion, gig object was clearly nothing short of the conquest of Italy. He overran the peninsula, beat the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Messapians in many battles, took their fortified places, established himself in Greek towns, and was on the point of accomplishing his hold project when he fell by the hand of a traitor. The whole expedition was frustrated by his death  his army dispersed; his conquests were lost; the Greek towns had not the courage or the skill to maintain their superiority over the Italian barbarians; in short, the old state of things returned, and Homans and Samnites stood alone opposed to one another to fight out the battle for the dominion in Italy.

Alexander, in one of his marches through southern Italy, had come into the neighbourhood of Campania, and had concluded a treaty of amity with the Romans. This treaty was of course directed against the Samnites, whose services the Romans thought that they should no longer need after their complete conquest of the Latins, and who would be in their way if they wished to extend their dominion further south. The Romans did not hesitate to make friends of the enemies of the Samnites. Their politics were above considerations of attachment and gratitude to those to whom they owed their deliverance from the danger of the Latin war. Circumstances had changed. Rome had become strong; the Samnites caused difficulties. It was necessary to make use of this opportunity, and, by help of the Greek prince, to get rid of the rivalry of the Samnites. The death of Alexander freed the Sabellian peoples of Italy from the danger of falling under Greek dominion. The Lucanians and Bruttians could now continue their old feuds with the Greek towns on the coast, and the Samnites, had time to collect all their force against Rome. There were not wanting causes or pretexts for a new war.

 

CHAPTER X.

THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR,

326-304 B.C.

Cumae was the oldest Greek town on Italian soil. In the time of her prosperity, before she fell into the hands of the conquering Samnites, she had established settlements on the neighbouring gulf named after her, and had infused into a great many places on the Campanian plain a touch of Hellenic blood. Among the towns founded by Cumae were two cities named Palaeopolis and Neapolis, the old town and the new town, which appear to have been situated close to one another and to have formed one single political community. Palaeopolis was destined to become the apple of discord between the Romans and the Samnites. Having reduced Cumae after the end of the war with the Latins, the Romans were anxious to make further acquisitions in Campania, and accordingly were soon involved in disputes with the inhabitants of Palaeopolis. The occasion for these was alleged to be the hostility of the Palaeopolitans against Roman citizens who had settled in their vicinity. It is in the highest degree improbable that the small town of Palaeopolis should provoke the hostility of the Romans by such foolish conduct. There were, however, in Palaeopolis, as everywhere, an aristocratic and a democratic party, and we are told that the one party sought assistance from the Samnites, the other from the Romans. The Romans were everywhere the friends of the aristocracy. It was consequently the popular party in Palaeopolis which applied for aid to the Samnites, and caused a strong Samnite garrison to be sent to Palaeopolis. When this Samnite force had marched into Palaeopolis the war was in fact begun, and it was a war, not between Palaeopolis and Rome, but between the two great rival nations, the Romans and the Samnites. Thus the war between Rome and Samnium began, just as the war between Rome and Carthage at a later period became quite unavoidable, when the town of Messina, which both people were striving to take, was occupied by a Carthaginian garrison. In truth it was no longer possible after the Latin war for the Romans and the Samnites to keep up friendly relations. If the Samnites did not wish to surrender the whole of Campania to the Romans, it became indispensably necessary to make a stand, since they were no longer threatened by King Alexander. They were determined to do this, and seized the opportunity which offered itself in Palaeopolis.

The situation was very serious for Rome. They had to accept the challenge which had been offered them, through the occupation of Palaeopolis, or they must give up Campania, and perhaps much more. Without the least hesitation, they resolved on war, elected to the consulship one of their best men, Q. Publilius Philo, who, as a statesman and as a soldier, enjoyed the confidence of all, and conferred on him, without the customary decision by lot, the command of the war in Campania. Publilius had (339 BC) as dictator carried the important laws which bore his name, and which had infused more activity and energy into the state. He was moreover the first plebeian who filled successively the offices of praetor and censor. He was now able to effect a further reform. In the previous wars which had been carried on in the neighbourhood of Rome, and which had seldom lasted longer than a few summer months, it had been customary in every new campaign to place at the head of the army the newly elected magistrates, consuls or military tribunes. How, as the war had assumed larger dimensions and was more complicated, it seemed necessary to modify the old practice, and to confide the execution of one uniform plan to one commander alone. Therefore the command of Q. Publilius Philo was prolonged after the expiration of his year of office, and he was the first Roman who commanded an army as proconsul.

With a just appreciation of the greatness of the impending war, the Roman people decided to strengthen themselves by foreign alliances. They possessed the instinctive tact which is displayed even by rude and ignorant nations in their first unsteady steps on the tortuous path of diplomacy. They looked for allies among the neighbours of their enemies, especially those who dwelt in their enemies’ rear. When they had to encounter the Aequians and Volscians, they had made friends with the Hernicans; afterwards they had availed themselves of the assistance of the Samnites to crush the Latins; then they made a treaty with Alexander, the Molossian king, who was attacking Samnium from the south; now they acted on the same principle by drawing the Apulians and Lucanians into their alliance. Not much dependence, it is true, could be placed on the Lucanians. Widely spread over the southern part of the peninsula from Samnium to the Tarentine Gulf, the land of the Bruttians, and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in constant war with those Greeks who had settled on the coast, they led the unsteady life of robbers and shepherds, ready always, for pay and booty, to serve anyone who presented flattering prospects to them, the real forerunners and models of the Italian condottieri and brigands. Regular political organisation was unknown to them; they lived in continual wars among themselves and with their neighbours, without a well-defined national union. As hereditary enemies of the Greeks, they had at first fought against Alexander of Epirus; then they fell out among themselves, and one party supported Alexander and fought under his banner; soon these went over to the other side, and Alexander was murdered by a traitor from their ranks. They seemed now to be again at enmity with the Samnites, and they willingly accepted the friendship offered them by Rome. This alliance was not destined to last very long; for, according to Livy’s report, the Lucanians soon deserted the Romans and made common cause with the Samnites. Still, a nation so divided and so unsteady as the Lucanians presented a favourable field to Roman diplomacy for sowing discord, and it could not have been difficult for Rome to make the Lucanian alliance utterly useless to the Samnites. The Apulians lent themselves more readily to a Roman alliance than the Lucanians. Apulia, extending on the east of the Samnite mountain lands towards the Adriatic Sea, was indispensable to the Samnites as a pasture-ground for their numerous herds in winter, when the snow lay on the hills of Samnium. This circumstance was the cause of constant disputes between the Samnites and the Apulians, and it was therefore not difficult for the Romans to gain friends in Apulia. Even the kindred Sabellian races north of Samnium, the Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians, appeared in the beginning of the war either neutral or friendly to the Romans, a circumstance of the greatest importance, as by this means the road to Apulia was open to the legions. The friendship of the Romans with these Sabellian tribes is probably of older date, for in the Latin war we have seen that a Roman army marched through their land on their roundabout way to Campania in order to attack the Latins in the rear. The Vestinians alone made an attempt to break the alliance with Rome, but they were soon compelled to desist, and they kept quiet during the rest of the war. Samnium was thus isolated and surrounded by Borne and her allies. The Roman senate had neglected nothing which forethought and prudence demanded to secure success. All that remained to be done was to secure the divine protection, and the great struggle could with confidence be entered upon.

As the private life of the Romans was regulated with reference to the divine will and protection, so in political life more especially no important resolution was made, no great decision ventured upon, without the special consent of the gods. But the usual auspicia were not considered sufficient in cases of uncommon emergency. To avert extraordinary dangers extraordinary means were necessary for obtaining the favour of the gods, and it was on such occasions that the books of fate were consulted. Now it was determined, probably after consulting the so-called Sibylline books, to celebrate a ‘lectisternium.’ This old Italian ceremony, which was calculated to make a deep impression on the people, consisted in a solemn feast given to the gods themselves, who were supposed to come personally as invited guests among the people, as a proof of their intention to show themselves friendly and gracious. The decorated images of certain gods were laid upon rich cushions, and close by were placed tables with food. The people crowded the streets, and thronged the temples of the gods who had condescended to be present among their worshippers. It was a general day of prayer, which inspired serious thoughts, and strengthened human determination with the hope of heavenly approval. The gods were propitiated, the war could begin.

The Samnites were now called upon in due form through the fetiales to withdraw their garrison from Palaeopolis, a request which could have no other object than to call forth a declaration of war. The Samnites declined to comply, and on their part complained of the occupation and colonisation by Rome of the town of Fregellae on the Liris, which the Samnites some years before had conquered and destroyed, and which therefore by right belonged to them, and not to the Romans. Where war has been previously determined upon, the discussion of mutual grievances and of points of law is useless. But it was a contemptible piece of hypocrisy and an act of bare-faced impiety on the part of the Romans to invoke the gods to witness that it was the Samnites who wronged the Roman people by refusing redress for just complaints. How hardened must have been the consciences, or how indifferent the minds to the meaning of words and set forms of prayer, if the fetialis could pronounce without trembling the formula by which he declared war, and called down the blessing of the gods upon that of the two hostile nations which had justice on its side!

An authentic account of the second Samnite war, if we possessed it, would belong to the most instructive and attractive chapters in the whole range of history. The question at issue was not now one of paltry squabbles about cattle being driven away, or a few villages burnt, as in the tedious wars of the Aquinas and Volscians. The two most powerful nations of the peninsula struggled with each other for no less a prize than the dominion over the whole of Italy. It was a war full of unexpected changes, of triumphs and defeats, a war which called forth the highest qualities of the statesman, the citizen, and the soldier. The Roman republic had passed through numberless internal struggles and external dangers, and stood in youthful strength and conscious courage. It was now to be seen how the political institutions would answer which had been made, not by one single legislator, but by a whole people working with stubborn perseverance during several generations. On the other side stood a vigorous, unbroken people of herdsmen and peasants, proud in their independence and capable of the greatest exertions and sacrifices—a people which calls for our warm sympathy, not only on account of its magnanimity, but also on account of its misfortunes. We should like to look into the internal connexion of events, in order to follow the steps which led gradually to the exhaustion and overthrow of the mighty Samnites. But we recognise in the stories which have been preserved to us only sketchy, mutilated fragments of a tradition which in its very origin was marred by Roman partiality, by patriotic mendacity and family pride. It is difficult enough to recognise the leading events in their grand outlines, and to clear them from the false colouring of the partial annalists; but we must give up the hope of tracing all the connecting links which bound one to another. We shall therefore dwell only on the few events which stand out with clearness and certainty from the confused mass of the received narrative, and indicate in a general manner the course and character of the war.

The Romans, it seems, began the war with great energy in Campania as also in Samnium. The siege of Palaeopolis was continued, and, as already related, the command was prolonged to the consul Q. Publilius Philo. The town soon fell into the hands of the Romans, not by conquest but by treason. The leaders of the Roman party in Palaeopolis took the Samnite garrison one night into the harbour, under the pretence of manning the ships and undertaking a predatory excursion to the Latin coast. At the same time they let the Romans into the town, closed the gates of the harbour, and compelled the Samnites, who had already deposited their arms on board, to a hasty flight.

In the meantime the two consuls led their armies to Samnium, to attack the Samnites in their own land and to prevent their raising the siege of Palaeopolis. It is reported that three Samnite towns—Allifae, Callifae, and Rufrium— fell into the hands of the Romans, and that the length and breadth of the country was laid waste by the consuls. At the same time the Romans must have penetrated, probably with one of the consular armies, through the country of the Marsians towards the eastern scene of war in Apulia; for the following year, 325 BC, marks the subjugation of the Vestinians, with whom the Romans could have come in contact only if they marched through their land to Apulia. The war with the Samnites, therefore, was commenced in three different places by one proconsular and two consular armies of two legions each, and the first success was on the side of the Romans, who anticipated the Samnites in the attack.

The Roman annalists generally leave the connexion of military events quite out of sight, and like to occupy themselves with stories in which the prominent men of noble families played a great part. Thus a dispute between the dictator L. Papirius Cursor and his master of the horse, Q. Fabius Rullianus, supplies Livy with an opportunity for showing his great talent for rhetorical declamation and effective narrative. Several chapters are filled with this interesting affair, but they contribute nothing towards the real history of the war. L. Papirius Cursor was one of those favourite heroes of the old school who looked upon military discipline as the first condition of national prosperity. He was now dictator, and being obliged to leave the army and go to Rome to take the auspices anew, he left strict injunctions with his master of the horse, Q. Fabius Rufianus, to avoid all collision with the enemy during his absence. Fabius did not attend to this order. He made use of an opportunity, and won a great victory over the Samnites. For this violation of military obedience the stem Papirius threatened that he should suffer death. Fabius escaped from the camp and sought protection with the Roman senate. But the dictator followed close after him, refusing to be turned from his resolution by any entreaties or threats, until Fabius, renouncing any protection from the law, gave himself up to the magnanimity and mercy of the dictator. After the sanctity of military discipline had been solemnly acknowledged by this submission, Papirius granted Fabius his life, but removed him from his office, and appointed in his place L. Papirius Crassus as master of the horse.

The annalists of the Papirians and the Fabians, who mentioned these family disputes, were not at a loss to make a suitable framework of military events for their narrative. The Fabians told long stories of a great victory gained by Q. Fabius over the Samnites in the absence of the dictator—a victory which excited his envy and jealousy. Twenty thousand enemies were slain. That, however, was not yet sufficient. Some writers related two victories of Fabius, equally grand and brilliant. But others, as Livy honestly adds, mentioned nothing of all this. The oldest annalist of the Romans, who worked up family memorials into a history of Rome, was Fabius Pictor. To him we may perhaps attribute a great part of the many stories in which the Fabians appear, and among them the boastful narrative of the heroic deeds of Q. Fabius Maximus in the second Samnite war. But the Papirians would not be outdone by the Fabians. The dictator therefore, on his return to the army, likewise defeats the Samnites, lays waste their territory, even compels them to ask for peace, and graciously grants them one year’s truce.

If at this time a truce was really concluded with the Samnites, the Romans had most probably as good reason for desiring it as their enemies, even if it be true that hitherto the fortune of war was on their side. The edifice of the Roman supremacy over Latium was still too new to be able to weather every storm. Soon after the breaking out of the Samnite wars, ominous signs of danger appeared in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. Tusculum, which had always been so devoted, began to waver in her fidelity. Her discontent broke out into open rebellion, and this revolt spread to Privernum and Velitrae, two Latin towns whose obstinate resistance against the sovereignty of Rome had often alarmed the Romans and been quelled with difficulty. If this spirit of rebellion had extended further, the Roman power would have been endangered to its very foundations, and the war with the Samnites could not have been continued.

As to the cause of the rebellion in Latium, our authorities are, as usual, silent. We may reasonably suspect that the severity of the Romans, and the numerous confiscations after the end of the war with the Latins, were the cause of the discontent which showed itself now, and even at a later time, in various ways. The Tusculans, Veliternians, and Privernatians had become subjects of Rome. They now endeavoured either to become Roman citizens or to regain their independence, and they succeeded in carrying their point. It is quite possible that there was a party in these towns which was ready to call on the Samnites for protection. Without the prospect of Samnite help Tusculum and the other Latin towns would not have dared to defy Rome. But with the help of the Samnites, their hostility would be very serious, and so the extraordinary circumstance is explained, that the town of Home was alarmed one night, and the citizens prepare to defend themselves against an attack. Yet the danger passed away; it is not stated how. We learn only accidentally that L. Fulvius Curvus, who in this year filled the highest magistracy in Tusculum, was in the following year consul in Rome, and, more than this, that five years later—that is, at the next census—two new Roman tribes were established. Nothing is said of a forcible suppression of the revolt. It follows from this that Rome, by a wise concession, averted the threatening storm, while she received into full citizenship, on favourable terms, the whole of the rebellious Latins. Whether Fulvius, who was raised to the consulship in Rome 322 BC, belonged in the year before (323), when he was consul in Tusculum, to the party hostile to Rome, may reasonably be doubted. The Romans were not naturally inclined to lavish generosity towards their enemies, or to overcome hatred by love. Moreover it is reported by Livy that the tribune M. Flavius made a proposal to the people to punish with death or loss of freedom those Tusculans who had excited the Veliternians and Privernatians to war against Rome. This equally cruel and unwise measure was indeed rejected almost unanimously; nevertheless it can hardly be imagined that the leader of the Tusculan rebellion, instead of being punished with death, should have obtained the Roman consulship as the price of his submission. It is far more likely that Fulvius was throughout well affected to Rome, and brought about the arrangement by which the cause of discontent among a party at Tusculum was chap. removed and the Tusculans were admitted to the full Roman franchise. The boastful Roman annalists avoid, almost on principle, making the admission that concessions were made to any enemy. They looked upon concessions as incompatible with the majesty of the republic, and thought that all opposition ought to be crushed by force of arms. But we know that the Romans were wise enough to yield, when it was necessary, and we may presume that on the present occasion they accepted a compromise which was highly salutary to all parties; that the plan of rising against Rome was entertained only by a portion of the Tusculans, Veliternians, and Privernatians, and that, after their real grievances were removed, the whole population of these towns ceased to desire separation from Rome, like the Roman plebs after their reconciliation with the patricians on the Sacred Hill.

The necessity of a conciliatory policy towards their Latin and Campanian subjects appeared plainly in the course of tory policy, the war, when fortune began to favour the Samnites, and the arm of Rome appeared to be paralysed. Even in the war of Hannibal the faith of many of the subject peoples wavered; it is therefore not to be wondered at that, a century before, those communities which were scarcely brought into subjection bore the yoke with uneasy reluctance.

In the campaign of the year 322, the fourth of the war, the Roman writers boasted of a series of brilliant successes. Unfortunately they are not agreed whether these successes are to be attributed to the consuls, L. Fulvius Curvus, the Tusculan, and Q. Fabius Rullianus, the late master of the horse, or to a dictator, A. Cornelius Arvina. The Samnites, it is said, humbled by repeated defeats and losses, sued for peace. But although they came to deliver up the body of their general, Brutulus Papius, who in despair had put an end to his own life, they were unsuccessful, because they would not unconditionally recognise the supremacy of Rome. This story, so gratifying to Roman pride, can hardly be considered sufficiently authenticated. When so many of the most important and striking events were imperfectly recorded, it is not likely that we should be informed of diplomatic transactions that led to no result. The events, moreover, which took place in the succeeding year show that the Samnites were very far indeed from being fainthearted and compelled to sue for peace.

If other nations delight in remembering the days of national triumphs, and in celebrating the memory of victories by which they feel their strength was increased and their pride gratified, the greatness of the Roman people is shown much more by their keeping continually before their eyes the evil days when the god of battles was unfavourable to them, and by celebrating the anniversaries of their defeats, in a certain degree, as days of national humiliation. The day of the Allia and the day of Cannes stood before the eye of the Roman in more burning colours than the day of the victory of Zama. But by the side of those names there was yet a third in the list of evil days—a name which was more painful than any other to the proud Roman, because the feeling of national disgrace and humiliation could not be separated from it; it was the name of the Caudine Pass. At the Alia and at Cannee thousands fell in open battle; at Caudium four legions agreed to purchase life and freedom by the sacrifice of military honour, and the Roman people, when they refused to ratify the agreement, covered themselves with a load of infamy, from which no sophistry could free them, even in their own conscience.

The two consuls of the year 321 BC, T. Veturius and Sp. Postumius, advanced with their united armies of about 40,000 men from Campania towards the country of the Samnites, with the object of relieving the allied town of Luceria, in Apulia, which was besieged by the enemy. This important and arduous campaign, in the midst of a difficult mountain country, the centre of the hostile power, was intrusted to two men who appear to have possessed no eminent military qualities. The circumstance that a task of such difficulty was not conferred rather on Papirius or Fabius shows a great defect in the Roman constitution, which made the appointment of a commander dependent on a contested election in the assembly of the people. The division also of the command between two generals of equal rank cannot have failed here, as in many other cases, to have a bad effect, especially as it seemed that the whole strength of the Samnites was in the hands of one single and able man, C. Pontius, of Telesia. The Roman army suffered a severe check at Caudium, the chief town of the Caudinians, and found itself after the battle shut up in a narrow mountain valley, the outlets of which were all in the possession of the victorious enemy. After some desperate attempts to break through, the Romans gave themselves up to despair. The obstructions and circumvallations all round them became larger and stronger, and the numbers of the victorious enemy increased. The merciless code of war which the Romans understood so well and applied so unreservedly, delivered them up, even to the last man, either to the sword or to slavery. The moment had arrived when the proud hopes of dominion over Italy had to turn into prayers for mercy and forbearance.

But while on the one side discouragement prevailed, the conquerors hesitated to reap the fruit of their unexpected success. It is reported that C. Pontius, the commander of the Samnites, consulted his aged father, and that the old man advised him either to annihilate the whole Homan army or to discharge them honourably and unhurt, without any stipulation. In the first case Rome would be so crippled as to be unable to continue the war; in the second, the Roman people would be reconciled and induced to make peace. C. Pontius chose a middle course, alike removed from the barbarity of the one proposal, and from the impolitic magnanimity of the other. We would willingly believe that he shuddered at the thought of massacring many thousands of defenceless enemies, and that he hoped by proposing acceptable conditions to obtain a lasting peace. He desired, for the preservation of the Roman army, neither the subjection of Rome nor the diminution of her legitimate power. Rome and Samnium should acknowledge each other as free peoples with equal rights and privileges; only the Roman conquests and colonies on Samnite territory, including, of course, Fregellae and Cales, should be given up. These conditions were accepted by the Roman consuls, quaestors, and all the surviving military tribunes, with a solemn oath. Six hundred knights remained as hostages in the hands of the Samnites; and, with the understanding that the senate and the people should confirm the military convention, and that they would pay the price agreed upon for the discharge of the army, C. Pontius set the Roman army free.

The discharge was effected in a manner expressive of the fact that the Romans owed their lives to the mercy of their conquerors. They were passed under the yoke. On two spears placed upright in the ground a third was fixed so as to leave a low passage. Through this the Romans had to walk man by man, after they had given up their weapons, their baggage, and even their clothes, all but one under-garment. The process was a general Italian custom, and was not now invented to cover the Romans with especial disgrace. It cannot he said that, considering the rights and practices of belligerents in antiquity, it was more humiliating than a military capitulation in modern times, which deprives the soldiers of their arms, and dismisses the officers on their word of honour; but it may be presumed that Roman pride saw in it a national humiliation which was all the greater, the higher the republic just then held her head above the other nations of Italy. But this humiliation became a brand of infamy by the free and deliberate action of the Roman senate and people—a damning spot which oceans of hostile blood could not wash out, and no crown of victory could hide.

We can scarcely venture to decide whether L. Pontius acted wisely in discharging the Roman army before he was certain of the confirmation of the treaty with the with the consuls. But the fact that he expected a confirmation proves that Rome was under a moral obligation either to fulfil the conditions of the treaty or not to accept its advantages. It is difficult to realise the feeling of right and wrong of a past age, and it is a mistake to apply to it our own standard. But that the Romans of the fourth century before Christ recognised some obligation to confirm and to keep the Caudine treaty seems tolerably certain from the anxiety with which, according to Livy, they tried to justify themselves when political calculations induced them to renounce such obligations. The consul Sp. Postumius is said to have been the first to condemn the treaty on his return to Rome, and to recommend its rejection. With evident approval, Livy relates what pains be took to prove that the promise and the oath of the consuls were not binding on the commonwealth, but only on themselves, that they could only pledge their own and not the public faith, and that the Roman people were not bound to ratify the treaty unless they approved of it; that they, the consuls and vouchers of the treaty, alone were responsible if they had done wrong and transgressed their powers, and that they were willing to assume this responsibility. They and all the officers who had sworn the oath to the Samnites should be delivered up, because they were not able to fulfil what they had promised. Even two tribunes of the people who had been at Caudium, and had joined in the transaction, should be handed over to the Samnites, in spite of the sanctity of their office and the inviolability of their persons. That this patriotic fanaticism, although capable of the highest self-sacrifice, violated the divine law, Livy, in his patriotic enthusiasm, was unable to see. It is clear that Postumius and his brother officers could not bind the senate and the people by the promise they had made in Caudium; but it is equally clear that they were bound by their promise to do what was in their power to cause the treaty to be ratified. The Roman army formed a great and important part of the assembly of the people; it might even represent the Roman people. The army in the field had on a former occasion made laws which were binding on the whole state. The Samnites might, therefore, expect that each of the released Romans, from the consul down to the meanest plebeian, whether in the senate- or in the assembly of the people, would use his influence to effect the ratification of the treaty. Nor could this moral obligation be set aside by the voluntary death which the consuls were willing to suffer. For death for one’s fatherland is not the highest duty of a citizen, and in no way releases him from the eternal law of justice, which is above all considerations of political advantage.

Not with a good conscience, hut according to the forms of law, the Roman senate and the people rejected the treaty of Caudium. With the sacrifice of the six hundred hostages and the delivering up of those who had concluded the treaty, Rome considered herself released from all obligation to the Samnites. The two consuls Postumius and Veturius, who immediately on their return had resigned their office, the quaestors and military tribunes, and two tribunes of the people who had pledged their word to the Samnites, were conducted by the Roman fetialis into the country of the Samnites and given up to the enemy in fetters, as an atonement for their breach of faith. It is revolting to read, what Livy with apparent approval reports, that Sp. Postumius kicked the Roman fetialis, declaring he had now become a Samnite, and, by injuring the fetialis had given the Romans cause for a righteous war against the Samnites. Such fanaticism, combined with such perfidy, was rebuked as it deserved by the noble Pontius. He declined to receive the prisoners, and so to release the Roman people from their obligation. He would accept only one of two things, either peace on the terms agreed upon, or the restoration of the whole army to the position in which it was when in the power of the Samnites. ‘Do you consider,’ said he, ‘that it is right for you to enjoy the advantage of the treaty, but that we should forego the peace which we had stipulated for? Wage ye war against us! The gods will believe indeed that Postumius is a Samnite, that the Roman herald was violated by a Samnite, and that you have occasion for a righteous war! Are you not ashamed of yourselves so to outrage religion, and, as old men and consulars, to seek for pretexts for your breach of faith which would scarcely he pardonable in children? Go, lictor; take the fetters off the Romans. Not one shall he detained here by us against his will.’

The war therefore continued, and, as it appears, was for a number of years far from favourable to Rome, although the mendacious annalists reported brilliant successes, by which the consuls Papirius Cursor and Publilius Philo thoroughly avenged the disgrace of Caudium. It was a patriotic conviction among the Romans that a great national defeat must be immediately repaired. The fables of Camillus and his victory over the Gauls after the burning of the city are matched by no less impudent fictions on the present occasion. It is related that Papirius Cursor immediately marched to Apulia at the head of a new army, and conquered Luceria, which had in the meantime fallen into the hands of the Samnites. In Luceria he found all the Roman hostages, and the lost military ensigns and arms; and as he made prisoners of the whole of the Samnite garrison he was enabled to wipe out the disgrace of Caudium, by dismissing 7,000 Samnites, and among them C. Pontius himself, under the yoke. Livy confesses that the evidence for these reports is defective. The statement of the capture of C. Pontius was found only in some of the annals. There were doubts and contradictions as to whether Papirius was consul or master of the horse of the dictator L. Cornelius, and whether the success of this campaign was to be attributed to the dictator Cornelius or to the consul Papirius. Livy is also unable to decide whether in the following year L. Papirius Cursor or L. Papirius Mugilianus was chosen as consul.

It would be a vain attempt to clear up the confusion and the contradictions of the Roman reports. But it is apparent that even in those points where they do not exactly contradict one another, they deserve but little credence. Such a bold and successful campaign to Apulia as that which is reported of Papirius Cursor, is in itself hardly probable after the great losses which attended the same attempt in the previous year. There was a battle fought, as we have seen, at Caudium and lost by the Romans. A great part of the army was destroyed; six hundred knights, that is the horse of two legions, were in captivity; the victory of Caudium was a great encouragement for the Samnites, gaming friends for them and awakening the discontent of many Roman subjects. Luceria, the most important town of Apulia, had fallen into the hands of the Samnites, and consequently a campaign in that part was much more serious than at a time when that town, being in _ the possession of their allies, could serve as a support for the operations of the Romans. These considerations made it certainly not advisable for the Romans to venture on a new march to Apulia, however they might wish to assist their hard-pressed friends in that country. They were obliged to employ all their strength to secure their hold on Latium and Campania. It was not before the year 315 BC that Luceria fell again into their power, and in order to bring this fact into harmony with the alleged conquest of Luceria by Papirius Cursor in 320 B.C., the annalists assumed that this town in the meantime had revolted to the Samnites.

Lastly, it is hardly probable that the Samnites brought the trophies and hostages of Caudium into a conquered town, in an enemy's country, instead of preserving them in a fortified place in their own land. Prom all these reflections the conclusion is forced upon us that the successes of the year 320 BC, the conquest of Luceria, the recovery of the hostages, banners, and arms, and, lastly, the capture and discharge under the yoke of 7,000 Samnites, and of C. Pontius, belong one and all to the domain of fiction.

The defeat at Caudium showed very clearly that the power of Borne over the newly acquired districts, and even over Latium, was by no means quite secure; and when we consider that only three years had elapsed since Tusculum, Privernum, and Velitiae were in open rebellion, this is not to be wondered at. First of all, Satricum, an old Latin town and Roman colony, rebelled and received a Samnite garrison. Such a revolt of a colony is to be regarded as a successful rising of the original subject population against the Roman colonists, in consequence of which the latter were either killed or driven out. For that the Roman colonists themselves, as it is generally represented, should have endeavoured to shake off the Roman dominion is quite incredible. These Roman colonists were in the possession of lands which had been taken from the natives ; they lived and prospered at the expense of the subject population, and formed the ruling class. No doubt they gave sufficient cause for discontent and hatred to those whom they were sent to control. The frequent reports of revolts of colonies are therefore easily explained at a time when the Bowman power began to totter, and when the conquered population had a prospect of regaining their independence. But before the example of Satricum could be imitated, the Romans had taken possession of the town by treachery, had driven away the Samnite garrison, and had punished the leaders of the rebellion with the utmost severity. The fire in their own house was extinguished before it could spread. The rest of Latium remained quiet. The grant of Roman citizenship to the subjects in southern Latium and Campania, where now (318 BC) two new tribes (the Ufentina and Falerina) were formed, was not without a beneficial effect. Thus internally strengthened, Rome could encounter with more confidence the vicissitudes of war.

The Samnites had made use of their triumph at Caudium to conquer the Roman colony of Fregellae on the Liris, whose foundation had been the principal cause of the war. Fregellae lay on one of the two direct lines of communication between Rome and Campania, on the so-called Via Latina, which led on the east side of the Albanian mountains and the Volscian highlands through Praeneste into the country of the Hernicans, the valley of the Trerus and that of the Liris; while the other road, afterwards so celebrated under the name of the Appian Way, stretched southwards along the Latin plain and kept near the sea. All the fortified places on both these lines were of the greatest importance for the Romans, because on their holding possession of these their secure communication with Campania depended. By the loss of Fregellae one of these lines of communication was now interrupted, and the Romans had to make the utmost efforts to keep the other open, unless they were prepared to abandon Campania altogether.

While the Samnites thus endeavoured to reap the fruits of their victory in the direction of Latium and Campania, where, among the newly conquered subjects and the discontented allies of the Romans, they hoped to find friends, they at the same time did not lose sight of Apulia. The town of Luceria, whose distress had enticed the Romans into the pass of Caudium, fell, as we have already noticed, into their hands soon after the Caudine catastrophe, and paid dearly no doubt for her attachment to Rome. This attachment, as we have seen, was the natural and necessary policy of the Apulian towns, which had perhaps even more to suffer from the Samnites than the Sidicinians and Campanians on the western boundary. In order to protect their own independence, they had joined the enemies of the Samnites; for them the defeat of the latter was of even greater importance than for the Romans. Accordingly we see that, in spite of the battle of Caudium, and in spite of the loss of Luceria, many Apulian towns joined the Romans, such as Canusium, the Apulian Teanum, and the Frentanians. According to the boastful accounts of the Roman annalists, who could hardly relate alliances without premising victories, the various communities in Apulia, which now sought the Roman friendship, were first subdued. It is hardly necessary to remark that these victories are in the highest degree improbable, if we bear in mind that Luceria, the principal place in Apulia, was still in the possession of the Samnites, as also was the important town of Fregellae, on the western theatre of war, and that everywhere in the towns of Campania, and in the Ausonian country, the adherents of the Samnites plucked up courage, and made it more and more difficult for the Romans to maintain their position.

Under such circumstances, it is surprising when we read in Livy that the Samnites sent ambassadors to Rome to ask the senate, on their knees, to renew the alliance of friendship between them; that the senate magnanimously granted their request, but that the people would only consent to a two years’ truce. Circumstances must have wonderfully changed in favour of the Romans since the misfortune at Caudium, if the Samnites had now to implore for peace. At that time C. Pontius had stipulated for the evacuation of the places occupied by the Romans, of Fregellae and Luceria. Now these places had fallen into the hands of the Samnites by the fortune of war, and Rome was with difficulty struggling to preserve the remainder of her possessions and her influence in the neighbouring states. It would have been a proof of the greatest pusillanimity had the Samnites wished now to give up the war, and how could they be suppliants for peace without renouncing all their conquests? No allusion is made to a surrender of Fregellae. It appears that the whole story of the embassy for peace, at least in the colouring which Livy gives it, is a fiction. Moreover the truce, of two years is very doubtful, and owes its existence, perhaps, only to the poverty of the annals, as there were no materials found to fill up the blank. We need not suppose that a formal truce was made, in order to understand that the war ceased for a time. The wars of that period were not acute maladies, which, in rapid development, led either to recovery or death. They were chronic evils, to which men became accustomed, often interrupted by long pauses, when weariness or accidental circumstances caused a relaxation of warlike activity. This seems to have been the case at that time. The Romans as well as the Samnites avoided for a time a direct collision, and confined themselves to defensive operations and to smaller enterprises, to inducing the allies of the opposite party to desert, and to arranging their internal affairs. 

After the disaster of Caudium, the Romans had abandoned the plan of penetrating into Samnium. On their own side they were tolerably safe from any attacks of the prefecture. enemy on Rome, as long as the country around showed itself faithful and devoted. They had therefore leisure left them for a political reform. Capua, which had retained its own municipal constitution and internal self-government, was now made a Rom an prefecture, a prefect being sent there from Rome to decide all law-suits in which the numerous Roman citizens settled in Capua were concerned. Such a measure was clearly favourable to the Roman element among the population; and even if the new arrangement was not used to the prejudice of the natives, it was a sign that they were no longer what they had been, a free and independent people. But if, under the protection of the Roman law and the Roman prefect, the Roman settlers and tradesmen in Capua pursued their own advantages beyond just bounds, as the Romans were only too apt to do in subject countries, a strong opposition against the Roman supremacy in Capua could not fail to spring up. We shall find that this was actually the case soon after.

A second measure of a similar kind was a new organisation of the colony of Antium. This colony had been founded in the year 338, as a colony of Roman citizens. The number of colonists was only three hundred. The legal relation between the native Volscian population and the Roman citizens had probably been not very favourable to the former, and must have led to discontent, which at the present conjuncture was very serious. A commission therefore was appointed by the senate to regulate afresh the organisation of the colony, and, as we may presume, to grant concessions to the legitimate wishes of the subject population.

After the comparative rest which, according to Livy’s account, was the consequence of an armistice asked for by the Samnites and granted by the Romans, the war was renewed by both belligerents in Campania. The Samnites gained possession of several towns, either by force or by agreement with the inhabitants. We may presume that in every community there was a Roman and a Samnite party, and that when a town is reported to have joined either the one or the other nation, an internal struggle and a revolution had taken place, by which either the aristocratic, i.e. the Roman, or the democratic, i.e. the Samnite, party got the upper hand. By means of their partisans the Samnites hoped now to obtain possession also of Capua, Ausona, Minturnae, and Vescia. Fear alone restrained these allies of the Romans from open rebellion, and they did not dare to declare themselves without restraint so long as Rome seemed strong enough to punish them.

Under these circumstances we might imagine that Rome required her whole strength to defend the menaced towns and to intimidate those who were wavering in their faith. But in the year 315 BC, when the two most eminent men of the state, L. Papirius Cursor and Q. Publilius Philo were consuls, we are surprised to read in Livy that the consuls (whose names he does not mention) remained in Rome, while an army under the dictator Q. Fabius Maximus besieged, and at last reduced, the small town of Saticula in Campania. In the same year the Samnites penetrated in great force into Campania, which they compelled the dictator to evacuate. He retired by the only road still open to the Romans, which led to Latium, past the town of Lautulae, between the sea and the hills. It is probable that during these critical events the two consuls were by no means idle in Rome, but that they attacked the Samnites in Apulia, as the Samnites attacked the Romans in Campania. At this time Luceria fell, it is said, ‘for the second time’ into the power of the Romans. Now, if the alleged conquest of Luceria immediately after the Caudine disaster is an invention, we may assume that the real conquest took place in the year 315; that in this year the consuls Papirius and Publilius made the march into Apulia, which was erroneously placed in the year 320; and that, on account of their absence, a dictator was appointed to make head against the Samnites in Campania. Both nations seemed more intent on attack than defence, each aimed at the heart of the other, like the Romans and Carthaginians at a later period. Such a plan of war was sure to lead the Romans to victory, because their power was soundest and strongest in Latium and the immediate vicinity of the capital. But it was not unattended with serious danger; for if the fortune of war should decide against them, a defeat in the neighbourhood of Rome would be more ruinous to their authority over their allies and subjects than a disaster at a distance. Now, as the flower of the Roman army was far away with the consuls in Apulia, the dictator Q. Fabius had only a reserve army to oppose to the sudden advance of the Samnites. Livy has given himself much trouble to place the campaign of Fabius in the most favourable light. He makes Fabius twice defeat the Samnites, but what was the principal event of the campaign he cannot conceal, and, even if we had not the testimony of Diodorus, it would be clear from Livy himself that the Romans suffered a signal defeat at Lautulae.

Yet the victory of the Samnites does not seem to have had the important results which might naturally have been expected, considering the situation of Lautulae in the narrowest place of the only road to Campania which was open to the Romans after the loss of Fregellae. If the Samnites had profited by their victory, Campania would have been lost to the Romans, and Latium most seriously threatened. But although everything looked favourable for the Samnites, although several towns dependent on Rome openly rebelled or inclined to rebellion, wp still see that, directly after the battle of Lautulae the war took a turn so favourable for Rome that from this time forward her superiority becomes more and more evident. Whether it was only want of ability in the Samnite generals which hindered them from advancing after Lautulae, or whether the two consuls of the year 315 , Papirius and Publilius—who, as we supposed, conducted the war in Apulia and regained Luceria—compelled the Samnites to return for the defence of their own country, must remain undecided. At any rate the period now following is marked by a series of successes for Rome, which above all things fully secured to them the possession of Campania.

First of all, the threatened rebellion of Capua was averted by energetic measures. Since the time when Capua, in the first Samnite war, had joined Rome under the influence of the nobility, it had enjoyed entire self-government for internal affairs. A great number of Romans had settled in many districts of Campania, especially in Capua. The nobles of Capua had received the right of Roman citizenship. The number of Roman citizens was so large that from the year 318 a prefect was sent from Rome to administer Roman law in that place. Whether the mass of the people in Capua felt comfortable under the new system, we may reasonably doubt. Their burthens had no doubt very much increased, since Rome had confiscated the public laud, and had indemnified the nobility of Capua for its loss by commanding that each of the 1,600 knights should receive an annual payment of 450 denarii from the public treasury. By this measure the nobility of Capua were firmly united to the Roman interests, and the hopes of the oppressed nation would of necessity turn from Rome to the Samnites. It is not necessary to assume an exceptional oppression of the Capuans by the Roman officers or settlers in order to, understand that every military success of the Samnites must have endangered the possession of Capua.

On the intelligence of the agitation prevailing in Capua and of the contemplated rebellion, a dictator was immediately named to conduct the inquiry into the intended treason, whereupon the two heads of the conspiracy Ovius and Novius Calavius committed suicide. The case of the malcontents was therefore hopeless and the conspiracy was crushed. But the inquiry continued notwithstanding, and it appeared that Roman citizens, and even some of the first men of the republic, were implicated. It is clear that these men could not be charged with the design of trying to deliver Capua over to the enemies of the republic. No Roman could be capable of such treason to his country. It seems that the intended rebellion of Capua led to accusations and recriminations among the old patrician and the new plebeian nobles, each party charging the other with having caused the danger of a revolt in Capua. Such disputes arise wherever strong political parties differ about the government of dependent countries. If we remember how opposed the two great parties in England always were on such questions as the treatment of Ireland or the American plantations, we can easily understand that something similar might happen in Rome with regard to Capua. The accounts are unfortunately very imperfect, but only intelligible in the light here indicated. The inquiry led to nothing. After the danger had been removed by the suicide of the two Capuan patriots, the two parties of the Roman nobility indulged in mutual accusations. The old nobility proceeded from the defence to the attack. Even the dictator, C. Maenius, who had been named to conduct the inquiry, was obliged to clear himself of charges brought against him; Publilius Philo, no doubt the first man of the liberal party, was in the same situation. But, as a really treasonable act could not be proved against any one, the inquiry was by degrees dropped, especially as it had lost its immediate importance by the restoration of Roman supremacy in Capua.

The rapid suppression of the intended revolt in Capua was rendered possible by the great energy with which in the meantime the Romans had acted elsewhere. While Capua was wavering in its fidelity, other dependent towns had shown a leaning towards the Samnite cause. In the lower valley of the Liris, in that district which forms the connecting link between Campania proper and Latium, there dwelt a tribe of the Volscians, the Ausonians or Auruneans. The towns of Ausona, Minturnae, and Vescia seemed inclined to maintain their independence and neutrality. By a conspiracy of the aristocratic party, these towns were betrayed into the hands of the Romans, and fearfully punished for having dared to waver in their allegiance to Rome. The inhabitants were all massacred, and, as Livy says, the race of the Ausonians exterminated. It was a warning to all the subject and allied towns of what they had to expect if they should allow their fidelity to be even suspected.

About the same time, or shortly before, the colony of Sora likewise fell into the power of the Romans. The inhabitants of the town, who had betrayed the Roman colonists to the Samnites, now underwent their punishment. They were led to Rome, scourged and beheaded in the Forum, as Livy' says, to the great delight of the people, to whom it was very important that Roman citizens sent out as colonists should be safe. More important than the recovery of Sora was that of Fregellae, which commanded the upper line of road, the Via Latina, from Rome to Campania. Thus, in spite of the defeat at Lautulae, the communication with Campania was perfectly restored, and several places, such as Atina and Calatia, which had been lost after the Caudine disaster, were now recovered. The important town of Nola was also taken. The whole of Campania was now again in the possession of the Romans, and, in order to secure this possession for the future, colonies were established in several places. The colony of Cales, not far from Capua, had in all storms and dangers proved itself a mainstay of the Roman power in Campania, and had contributed a great deal to limit the successes of the Samnites, and to render possible the recovery of what had been lost. Rome now strengthened her position in those parts by colonies in Suessa Aurunca, in Saticula, and Interamna. Even a maritime colony was established on one of the islands of Pontiae intended to protect the Latin and Campanian coasts. Two years later the first appointment was made of two commanders of the fleet (duumviri navales), from which it appears that the Romans now proposed to extend their dominion also over the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Rome displayed equal energy on the eastern theatre of war in Apulia. After Luceria had been taken, a colony or rather garrison of 2,500 men was sent thither. Thus the Samnites were on each side more and more hemmed in by Roman colonies. These colonies marked the growth of Roman dominion, as the rings mark the annual growth of a tree. The colonies of the Greeks arose accidentally, without a certain plan and object, generally in consequence of civil disputes or under the pressure of distress. As soon as they were established, they formed themselves into independent communities. The Roman colonies remained, like the children of the family, under the paternal power, and, in the first place, served not their own interests, but the interests of the parent state, of which they were and remained members. Their principal object was the establishment of Roman power. Every colony was a fortress intended to protect the boundary and to keep subjects in their allegiance to Rome. Their establishment therefore was not left to chance or to the free decision of individuals. It was determined by decree of the senate and by a vote of the people, when and where a colony should be sent out, what amount of territory should be devoted to it, and how many colonists should be dispatched. The participation in such an expedition was therefore by no means always a coveted advantage, but in many instances a burthensome and dangerous service rendered by the citizen to the state. For the colonists marched out as a garrison into a conquered town, and found themselves mostly in the midst of a hostile population, exposed to the first attacks of every enemy. The reward for this troublesome service was very sparing, and, even in the times of the ancient simplicity, but few men could be tempted to join voluntarily in the establishment of a colony. The lands which were taken from the conquered inhabitants of a colony were parcelled out in lots of a few jugera to the Roman colonists. This pittance, and the right of using the common pasture, was all for which the Roman settler left his country with his family and devoted himself to life-long military service. For he was obliged not only to defend the new colony, but he was also obliged to serve in  the Roman army. He retained the full Roman franchise, if he went out as a member of a regular colony of Roman citizens (colonia civium Romanorum), which after the war with the Latins were limited to maritime towns, or he became a Latin by joining in a Latin colony. It was chiefly by these that Rome secured her dominion in Italy. In the wars of Hannibal there existed thirty Latin colonies, twelve of which began to waver in their fidelity, driven to despair by the burdens and losses of the war. In the second Samnite war the colonising policy of the Romans was first pursued with great energy, and to this in a great measure they owed the durability of their conquests. In the art of siege the Samnites were not more advanced than the Romans. A fortified place, which was not taken by surprise or by treason, could baffle the efforts of the largest army; the chain of colonies therefore which was drawn around Latium, Campania, and Apulia made it possible for the Romans to confine themselves at any time to the defensive, and either to prosecute the war energetically or to make a pause, as they pleased. They did not yet aim at the conquest of Samnium. The prize in the second Samnite war was Campania, as in the first Punic war it was Sicily. As soon, therefore, as the possession of Campania seemed secure, the war had no further object, and Rome could occupy herself with further plans for the extension of her dominion.

During all the long years of their wars with the Latins  and the Samnites, the Romans had remained unmolested by the Etruscans. Sutrium and Hepete, the two border towns, colonised and fortified after the conquest of the territory of Veii, covered the frontier as far as the Ciminian mountains. Caere and Falerii, lying south of this frontier wall, could not maintain their freedom after the fall of Veii, and soon became dependent on Rome. The towns of central and northern Etruria seem to have enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity, even after the splendour and strength of the nation had declined, and it had been compelled to yield on every side to the encroachments of foreign powers. Still Etruria proper was of all the districts of Italy the richest in large, flourishing, industrious towns, among which Volsinii, Arretium, Perusia, and Cortona were conspicuous. But these separate states, although, as it is reported, enjoying a federal union, seem never to have united for vigorous common action. Special leagues were formed among single towns for special purposes, but the strength of the whole nation was never combined to ward off a common danger.

A peace of forty years had been concluded in the year 351 BC between Rome and Tarquinii. With surprising conscientiousness this peace seems to have been observed the on both sides. The greatest dangers and troubles which Rome passed through at the time of the revolt of the Etruscans, Latins, and after the catastrophe of Caudium, were no inducement to the Etruscans to renew the war. Only towards the time when the forty years’ peace was drawing to a close, there appear traces of renewed hostilities, and in the year 311 the war really breaks out. The cause of this is, as usual with Roman writers, put down to the fault of the Etruscans; but it is difficult to believe that, if they had wished for war, they would have waited for the time when the Romans could oppose them vigorously. The war turned on the possession of the colony of Sutrium. All the towns of Etruria, with the exception of Arretium, had, it is reported,’ united to attack this strong fort, established for the defence of the Roman boundary. A Roman army that had marched out under the consul Aemilius Barbula, to deliver Sutrium, suffered a reverse. It was now evident that the Etruscan war must be carried on with all possible energy, as it was not likely that the Samnites would fail to make use of the opportunity which the division of the Roman forces offered to them.

Livy’s account of the Etruscan wars is one of the most striking illustrations of the manner in which the simple and meagre traditions of the earlier period were worked up by successive writers into long narratives, full of rhetorical ornament, audacious fiction, repetitions and exaggerations. We are able, from internal evidence, to declare that by far the greater part of the vaunted exploits of Q. Fabius Maximus is an invention or an agglomeration of successive inventions, derived probably from the family traditions of the Fabian house. The Fabians seem, on the whole, to have made free use of the several Etruscan wars for the glorification of their family. The Fabian settlement on the Cremera in the year 479 is represented as an heroic deed undertaken by this family alone for the whole Roman nation. A suspicious similarity appears between the massacre of the three hundred and six Fabians on the Cremera and the story of the consulship of C. Fabius in the year 358, when three hundred and seven Romans were made prisoners by the Tarquinians and slain. Two years later a Fabius, the consul M. Fabius Ambustus, avenged this disgrace by a brilliant victory over the Tarquinians and Faliscans, on which occasion the fanciful story makes the Etruscan priests rush into battle armed with torches and snakes, to inspire their countrymen with courage.

Many of these stories of the Fabian annals contain elements for a poetical treatment of history, such as was undertaken at a later period by Naevius and Ennius. More especially do we recognise these features in all that is related of the deeds of Q. Fabius Maximus. He defeats the Etruscans, who besiege Sutrium, in a great battle, takes thirty-eight standards from them, and captures their camp. He then pursues them across the Ciminian mountains into central Etruria. The Ciminian mountains, a line of hills of moderate elevation, now called the mountains of Viterbo, formed the northern frontier of Roman Etruria. They are represented as a terrible pathless wilderness, through which even merchants never attempted to pass. When the senate hears of the intention of Fabius to venture with his army into these mountains, they are thrown into consternation, and immediately dispatch messengers to the consul to dissuade him from so dangerous an undertaking. But it is too late. Fabius has already crossed the mountains when the ambassadors arrive. He was pursuing the defeated Etruscans, having sent his baggage on before him secretly by night, and followed with the legions, bringing up the rear with his horse. Thus, early on the second morning he reached the ridge of the mountains where the luxuriant plains of central Etruria lay stretched before his eyes. But Fabius had not entered on this hazardous enterprise without preparations before he started. He had sent his brother to explore the country. This brother had been brought up in Caere, and understood the language of the Etruscans. A slave, who, as foster brother, had been educated with him, accompanied him. Disguised as shepherds, the two spies threaded their way across the pathless mountains, carefully confining their questions to - what was most necessary, so that they might not betray themselves as foreigners; but they found that they were hardly suspected, as no one could conceive it possible that a stranger would venture through the Ciminian forest. They penetrated as far as Umbria where the Camertines declared themselves ready to receive the Roman army as friends, if it came into their neighbourhood. After Fabius had crossed the mountains with his army, he laid waste and plundered the rich country round about. The consequence was that ‘an Etruscan army larger than ever before’ assembled near Sutrium, was surprised by the Romans, and defeated with a loss of 60,000 men. How in the end Fabius appears again before Sutrium, south of the Ciminian forest, remains a mystery. What could have been the use of his celebrated march into the interior of Etruria if he had not even drawn away the enemy from the siege of Sutrium? What is improbable in this representation is avoided in other annals, which, as Livy reports, placed the victory of Fabius, not near Sutrium, but north of the Ciminian forest, at Perusia. The victory was decisive, as Livy imagines, wherever it may have been won, for it induced the towns of Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium to conclude a treaty of peace with Rome for thirty years.

The greatness of Q. Fabius is not displayed in his military exploits only. To the victory over his enemies he added the yet more glorious victory over himself. While he was overthrowing the Etruscans, his colleague Marcius was hard pressed by the Samnites. A second disaster like that at Caudium seemed impending. Only a dictator could inspire new hopes, and one man only, the old and tried Papirius Cursor, was worthy of the general confidence. But by which consul should Papirius be appointed dictator? Marcius was surrounded by his enemies, wounded, perhaps dead, and the other consul was Fabius Maximus, the irreconcilable enemy of Papirius, who, in his dictatorship, had, from jealousy and envy, sought his life, under the pretext of vindicating military discipline, and had with difficulty been prevented from shedding the blood of his rival. In spite of this, the senate sent messengers to Fabius with the request that by virtue of his office he should appoint Papirius Cursor as dictator. Silently and with gloomy looks Fabius listened to the embassy. The hatred of his enemy was struggling in him against the love of his country. But in the stillness of the night he rose, as was customary on the appointment of a dictator, and conferred on his worst enemy, Papirius Cursor, the highest office of the state, making himself thereby his subordinate. Then, without adding one word, he dismissed the ambassadors, unmoved by their praises or their thanks for the sacrifice he had made of his private feelings.

The campaign of Papirius Cursor against the Samnites was the last led by the old hero. He took the command of the army which had been formed for the defence of the city when the march of Fabius into the interior of Etruria had terrified the senate. With this army he delivered the consul Marcius from his dangerous situation, and defeated the Samnites in a great battle. He celebrated a splendid triumph. It was remembered that a number of gilt and silver shields, which in later times decorated the Roman Forum on festive occasions, were first seen in Borne in the triumphal procession of Papirius, who had taken them as spoils of war from a chosen band of the Samnites.

But the triumph which Q. Fabius celebrated was still more brilliant and more highly deserved. His campaigns had been one unbroken success. After his victory at Sutrium he defeated the Umbrians; then he gained a glorious triumph at the Vadimonian Lake over an army of Etruscans such as had never before been opposed to the Romans; and lastly, Livy mentions another victory of Fabius at Perusia. The town receives a Roman garrison, and a truce is magnanimously granted to the Etruscans by the senate. This terminates the Etruscan war, which is in reality only a series of heroic deeds done by Fabius. In the following year peace is concluded for forty years. The result is that all remains as it was before. The Roman dominion is not extended, no new colony established in Etruria, no Etruscan town becomes dependent on Rome. Thus all the great victories of Fabius Maximus, if measured by this result, dwindle down to a successful predatory invasion of Etruria which sufficed to make the Etruscans desist from all further molestation of the Roman frontier districts.

Where the principal parts of history are so much distorted and uncertain, we cannot expect to find chronological accuracy. Our authorities are not agreed whether the dictatorship of Papirius Cursor fell in the consulship of Q. Fabius, 310 BC, or whether (which would be very surprising) it filled the year after the expiration of the consulship of Fabius and Marcius, i.e. the year 309 BC. In the latter case, which is supported by the Capitoline Fasti, Fabius would have fought his three last battles, that with the Umbrians and the two on the Vadimonian Lake and at Perusia, with the Etruscans, as proconsul; in the former, which Livy seems more inclined to adopt, the march of Fabius over the Ciminian mountains, his invasion of Etruria, the conclusion of the forty years' truce with the Etruscan towns, the breach of the truce, and the renewed war and second conquest—in short, the five or six battles—would all have taken place in one year together with the triumph of Fabius. This is rather too great a tax on our powers of belief. The sheer impossibility of compressing into so short a time such a succession of exploits leads to the conclusion that we have here come upon a set of the most impudent and foolish fictions, which had, indeed, a substratum of truth, but a very moderate one, compared with the superstructure. One thing is satisfactory—that the materials we possess enable us to throw overboard the useless mass, and that something remains that seems tolerably trustworthy.

A contrast to the spurious history of the exploits of Q. Fabius Maximus in Etruria is furnished by a simple account of an episode in the great war, which, though an fleet, incident of no great importance, and involving no great results, is interesting to us on more than one account. There is no reason to doubt its truth, and it throws a striking light on the manner in which the war was carried on, while it is also the first occasion on which we hear of a Homan fleet. We should like very much to know how it happened that this genuine fragment of history was preserved in the great mass of worthless declamation and fiction. It has reference to the town of Pompeii, and we may perhaps venture to think that the same town which in our own days is surrendering vast treasures of the most genuine relics of antiquity, held in safe keeping for eighteen centuries, did preserve the authentic memory of this incident, and handed it down to be incorporated by the annalists into the history of Rome. Tin now a Homan fleet has not been mentioned. If we did not know that Home, from the year 338, was in possession of the old Volscian port of Antium, that in the year 313 a Roman colony was established on the island of Pontia, and that since 311 the office of admiral of the fleet had existed, we might suppose that the Homans had not yet ventured on the sea. But now we are told that the Homan fleet sailed to Campania, under the command of P. Cornelius, and approached Pompeii. The crew landed, plundered the territory of Nuceria, and were returning to their ships, laden with spoil, when they were assaulted by the country people, not far from their ships, and deprived of their booty. Some were killed; the rest escaped on board their vessels. This predatory expedition was surely not the only one undertaken by the Roman fleet, and the Samnites, we may suppose, or their allies, retaliated by similar attacks on the coasts of Latium and Campania. The war was not therefore carried on exclusively in the grand and legitimate style, by armies marching to meet armies in the field, or to conquer or defend fortified towns. There was a good deal left of the old practice of plundering and devastating which seems to have been the usual practice at an earlier period. We shall see further on that the same kind of irregular and barbaric warfare continued at a period when it was not only unworthy of the Roman people, but when it was fraught with social and political danger.

The first exploit attributed to Fabius, who again was chosen consul in 308, is the conquest of this town of Nuceria in Campania, against which the expedition of the fleet was directed. It had formerly been allied with Rome, but seven years before had revolted, about the time of the battle of Lautulae, when the Roman power was most seriously shaken and endangered. Since that time the Romans had, as we have seen, regained their position in Campania step by step, and had strengthened it by the establishment of colonies. The re-conquest of Nuceria in the southern part of the country supplied the missing link in the chain of fortifications between Campania and the Samnite mountains.

While Fabius was so occupied in Campania, and his colleague, P. Decius Mus, was bringing the Etruscan war to a close, Samnite troops attacked the Marsians, the allies of Rome. Fabius immediately marched to the assistance of the Marsians, and gained a victory over the Samnites. Such is the account of Diodorus, and he deserves our thanks for having preserved this authentic testimony; for if we had only the account of Livy we should have no choice but to accept his statement, that the Marsians revolted from the Romans, and joined the Samnites, and that the combined hostile armies were defeated by Fabius. We have here another instance of the perversion of truth by national or family vanity. At the same time the preservation of the simple unadulterated report of Diodorus is a proof that we are no longer entirely dependent on the caprice of any chance writer, but that the authorities begin to be more numerous, and supply the means of correcting errors.

The indefatigable Fabius conducted another war, and brought it to a conclusion in the year of his consulship 308. This was the war against the Umbrians. A victory of Fabius over the Umbrians is already referred to the year 309, in which he hurried on from one victory to another. Perhaps it is the same event which is repeated in the annals of the year 308. How the Umbrians happened to begin hostilities against Rome, we are not told. Perhaps they had joined the Etruscans in their attack on Sutrium. It was, however, by no means all the Umbrians who took part in the war. The Umbrian Camertines appear amicably disposed towards Rome in the story of the spies of Q. Fabius. The Ocriculanians entered into a treaty of friendship with Rome. But the others threatened at once to march upon Rome, and as the consul Decius was not strong enough to resist them, Fabius left his province Samnium, invaded Etruria, and defeated the enemy at Mevania in so decisive a battle that their complete subjugation was the consequence.

The war with Samnium had now lasted nearly twenty years. The Samnites had often been successful in the field, but they had made no enduring conquests, while the Romans had firmly established themselves on the eastern side of Samnium in Apulia, and more especially on the western in Campania, so that the Samnites were shut in all round by a line of Roman colonies or Roman allies, and could make no direct attack on the centre of the Roman dominion. They were gradually losing strength, when fortune seemed once more to smile upon them. Discontent showed itself in the ranks of the Roman allies. The Hernicans, who, next to the Latins, were the oldest and most tried fellow-combatants of the Romans, began to waver in their fidelity. Several towns of this small country, headed by Anagnia, the most’ important of them all, openly joined the Samnites. Only three towns, Aletrium, Verulae, and Ferentinum remained true to the Romans. The danger was great. The country of the Hernicans extended to the immediate neighborhood of Rome, and was connected with Samnium by the valley of the Trerus, which formed a convenient line of communication. An army of Samnites and Hernicans could easily break through the gap between Praeneste and the Alban mountains and appear before Borne; and if the legions were called back to protect the town, Campania would be sacrificed to the Samnites. The Romans were not without serious apprehensions, and, as in times of the greatest danger, two reserve armies were quickly formed and sent to reinforce the two consular armies of the consuls Marcius and Cornelius. These had evidently got into trouble, and were separated from one another. Cornelius was blockaded by the Samnites. But Marcius, joined by the reserve legions, attacked the Hernicans, and reduced them, after a short resistance, to complete subjection. He then hurried to the assistance of his colleague, and defeated the Samnites in a decisive battle, in which they are said to have lost 30,000 men. With thin great victory the war seemed ended. Further resistance the Samnites were not able to make. It is reported that the two consuls marched chap. through the enemy's country for five months, plundering and devastating it. The consul Marcius celebrated a magnificent triumph, and an equestrian statue was erected to him on the Forum. The relations of Rome to the Hernicans were placed on a new footing. Those towns which had remained faithful kept their own constitution and independence; the other Hernicans came into the dependent position of Roman citizens without the suffrage— that is, they became subjects of the Roman people, obliged to pay taxes and to serve in the army, without any share in the honours and advantages of citizenship. Even in the management of their local affairs they were limited, and every kind of political connexion with one another was taken from the separate communities. Thus the Hernicans, like the Latins a generation before, became the subjects of Rome, and Roman power became more centralized and stronger.

We might now expect to see the Samnites completely exhausted and resigned to submit to Rome; but either the reports of the Roman victories and the devastation of Samnium by the consuls Cornelius and Marcius in the year 306 are very much exaggerated, or despair and misery drove the Samnites out of their desolated country to exercise their revenge and to search for the means of livelihood. In short, we read of an incursion which they made in the following year into Campania. It also appears that several Roman fortresses fell again into their hands, probably at the time of the defeat of the Hernicans, through the treachery of Hernican garrisons; for it is related that, in the year 305, Sora, Arpinum, and Cesennia were again taken from the Samnites. In the campaign of this year they fought with their old courage, and not without success; for, according to the reports of some annalists, the consul Postumius, after some indecisive engagements, retired under cover of night to the mountains. Afterwards, when he was joined by his colleague, Minucius, he succeeded in defeating the Samnites, taking prisoner their general Statius Gellius, and conquering the important town of Bovianum. This last feat of arms does not seem to have amounted to much, if, as is related, it was the third time that Bovianum fell into the hands of the Romans. Be that as it may, the Samnites were by no means subdued. They were only thrown back into their own country. Their conquests beyond Samnium were taken from them, and a barrier was erected against their further plans of conquest and predatory excursions into Campania, Apulia, and the other neighbouring countries, where they were dreaded and hated as dangerous neighbours. But they remained a free people in their own mountains. They concluded at last, after a long and chequered war, an honourable peace with Rome, by which they were left in possession of their independence, standing as a nation on an equal footing with Rome.

Thus ended the longest and most trying war which the republic had ever undertaken. It had lasted for twenty-two years, and had been carried on by both nations with equal courage and perseverance. Victory was on the side of the Romans, not because they had more courage, determination, or higher military qualities, but because their conduct of the war was more systematic, because by their plan of fortified colonies they maintained their hold of the territory they had conquered, and because by the superior diplomatic skill of the senate they secured the friendship of the neighbours of the Samnites. This superiority had its root in the strong, centralised government of the Roman state, in the calm firmness and wisdom with which the Roman senate conducted its foreign policy, and in the unbroken determination with which the Romans, now as ever, kept a proposed object steadily in view.

The final result of the war, although it did not bring about the subjection of the Samnites, was in the highest degree favourable for the extension and consolidation of the Roman power. The Latins, who at the outbreak of the war had changed their condition of allies for that of subjects, became one people with the Romans during the twenty-two years of companionship in arms. Whatever was left of rancour and opposition to Roman supremacy died out. Before the end of the war the Hernicans too, like the Latins, had become Romans. The number of Roman citizens had considerably increased, in spite of all the losses in war. Four new tribes were added to the twenty-seven older ones, and eight colonies, sent out in rapid succession, prepared the change of the old Volscian country into Roman territory, while the permanent possession of Campania was quite secured by the immigration of a great number of Roman citizens, and by the different degrees of dependence in which the Campanian towns stood to Rome. Roman influence now penetrated the whole of central and southern Italy, and had for the first time made itself felt in several Greek towns. Rome had become beyond all dispute the first power in Italy; and no people could dare from this time forward, singlehanded, to oppose the conquerors of the Samnites.

 

CHAPTER XI.

INTERNAL HISTORY TILL THE HORTENSIAN LAWS. 339-286 B.C.

 

Nearly a whole generation had passed away since the admission of the plebeians to the consulship by the Licinian laws (366 BC) when, by the Publilian laws (339 BC), the last remaining purely political offices of censor and praetor were shared with the plebeians. Now at last, by the Publilian legislation, the old struggle between the patricians and plebeians was brought to an end, after it had for nearly two hundred years determined the march of reform, and regulated the internal political life of the Roman people. Nothing now survived of patrician privileges but the priestly offices, which could be left the more easily in the possession of the ancient families, as they conferred no political influence in Rome, but were entirely subordinate to the secular authority of the state. Thus the old contrast had disappeared. Whatever traces were left after this time of patrician pretensions, of patrician arrogance and conceit, we may regard as only the faint echo of a storm which has passed by, which terrifies nobody and deserves not to be noticed or heeded. There were not wanting in Rome a number of men, who from obstinacy, narrow-mindedness, or dulness were closed to all new impressions and convictions, and went down to their graves with all their old feelings and ideas, after a new state of things had sprung up around them?

The proud old patricians had not nearly given up the hope of conquest when the dissolution and decomposition of their body had already begun at the core. Being unable, by its nature, to receive new members, the patriciate was doomed gradually to melt away, by a natural law, which would have operated even without the concurrence of external circumstances, such as the frequent wars, to which the patricians sent more than their due proportion of combatants. The time was long past when the claims of the patricians to be considered the Roman nation appeared to be justified by the fact. Since the reception of the plebs into the comitia of centuries, the Roman people (the populus Romanus) was composed of the two classes, and it was in the nature of things that the plebeians, who received a constant accession of members from without, should increase in the same proportion as the patricians diminished in numbers. The original patrician people shrunk to a patrician nobility, and from this cause alone were obliged to give up the hope of preserving their old prerogative. At the same time, there arose by degrees a plebeian nobility, and even before the Canuleian law promoted the amalgamation of this new nobility with the old one by legalising marriage between the two, a process had already begun by which a number of plebeian families raised themselves to eminence above their fellow-plebeians, and formed, in connexion with the old patrician families, a new privileged class, the ‘nobility’ properly so-called. After the complete equalisation of the plebeians with the patricians in all private and public rights, this new nobility acquired more ground and a firmer organisation. It was not like that of the old patricians, limited to a certain number of families, and transmitted only by descent from these families, but it was recruited continually by those families from which the people chose the high officers of state. It was, therefore, essentially a nobility of office conferred by the people, and it was made hereditary by the solid organisation of the Roman family. If we employ the term ‘nobility’ to distinguish these new nobles from the old patricians, we must not forget that as long as the patrician houses yet formed an important part of the people, a sort of nobility must have existed within this body, in the form of a number of prominent families, who in point of fact were the rulers, inasmuch as they almost exclusively filled the offices of state.

An indispensable condition for every nobility that wishes to exercise and maintain political influence is the possession of wealth. The patricians of the older period had been the ‘rich,’ as opposed to the poor dependent plebeians. For the new nobility, whose pre-eminence was not conferred by descent, the possession of wealth was still more important, and formed, in conjunction with personal merit, their first recommendation in the eyes of the people; for even the purest democrat has respect for opulence, and bestows confidence and votes most readily on the rich. Moreover, as soon as public offices promise power and advantage, the candidates for them bribe the voters by money. For this reason alone wealth is one of the first conditions for the foundation of a noble house in a republic.’ If plebeian families had attained to great opulence at an earlier period, the struggle between the two classes would not have lasted so long. After the conquest of Veii, perhaps even in the long wars with the rich Etruscan towns, during which the military pay was introduced, it appears that a period began more favourable to the acquisition of wealth. With the new conquests in Etruria and Latium, with the abolition of the old clientela, with the gradual development of industry and commerce, with the increasing employment of slaves, riches accumulated. Rome had now become a large, powerful, and wealthy town. Since the Latin war it had become the centre of the greatest extent of country which, at that time, was formed in Italy into one united body politic. The resolutions of the Roman senate, the decisions of the assembly of the Roman people, disposed of the existence and the fortune of whole towns and populations, of the foundation of colonies, the assignment of landed property, confiscations and grants on the largest scale. It was the acknowledged principle of the Roman nobility from the oldest time downwards to the end of the republic, that the public service should he to them the source of private wealth. Hence the men elected to high offices by the people, if they were not rich already, soon became so, and every increase of power and wealth secured the continuance of their privileged position, and the permanent nobility of their family. There is no difference observable between the old and the new nobility. Generosity and self-sacrifice are never to be found among a privileged class as such. Only individuals, who rise above the interests of their own class, are capable of such virtues. The plebeian members of the new nobility were soon closely allied with the patricians for upholding aristocratic principles, and it was not from among them, but from one of the oldest and proudest noble houses of the republic, that a man arose who, with discriminating eye, saw that Rome needed renovation by the infusion of new blood, and who carried his measure with strong and defiant resolution against all opposition.

Appius Claudius Caecus, who was censor in the year 312 and twice consul, in the years 307 and 296, was one of the most eminent statesmen of the republic. As hereditary features of the Claudian family, he possessed firmness, courage, daring, pride, and haughtiness; but he, like his ancestor the decemvir, Appius Claudius, and like the greatest Claudian of the Roman annals, the Emperor Tiberius, is placed in a false light by the antipathy of aristocratic historians. If these Claudians had been genuine aristocrats in heart and soul, if they had been true to their party and known no other motives than the interest of their party, they would have been lauded as models of civic virtue. But as they were not partisans but statesmen, they were represented by historians of the aristocratic party as monsters and tyrants.

The Roman censorship, in rank the first of all republican offices, was endowed with extraordinary power and influence. On the discretion and judgment of the censors depended the political status of every Roman; and the assessment which they made of his property assigned to every one the position to be held by him and the measure of his public duties and privileges. They decided without the co-operation or interference of other magistrates, and subject only to the sanction of the people, on all questions of admission to or expulsion from the body of citizens; they selected the men whom they thought fit for the honourable service in the centuries of knights, finally they had the high discretionary power, formerly exercised by the kings, of admitting new members to the senate, and expelling those whom they deemed unworthy. In addition to this great discretionary power with regard to the composition and classification of the Roman people, the censors were intrusted with a considerable portion of the financial business of the state. It was their duty to let out to the highest bidder the public revenues from state lands, port dues, saltworks and other such sources. They had also the care and superintendence of public works and repairs, of the improvement and utilisation of the public property—of everything, in fact, which had reference to the material interests of the public, such as the construction of roads, aqueducts, markets, buildings for public use; and, like all other public functionaries in Rome, they were in all these matters not subject to any very strict control.

It was not without hesitation that the Roman aristocracy placed such power in the hands of the censors; the original duration of their office, five years, seemed irreconcilable with the security of republican institutions. Hence, nine years after the establishment of the censorship, in the year 434, the censorship was limited to one year and a half by the dictator Mamercus Aemilius, and bounds were set to the powers of the censors relative to the choice of senators by the Ovinian law, the date of which is unfortunately uncertain.

In the hands of Appius Claudius the censorship was a means of a radical reform. He undertook, in connexion with the plebeian censor C. Plautius, a measure for the reception of a large number of new citizens by granting the full franchise to all the freed men and those residents who were Roman citizens without being admitted to the public rights of citizens. It is not probable that, as it has been said, Appius in carrying this reform had any ambitious views, or wished to extend his personal influence at the cost of republican equality. It must be recollected that since the reception of the whole population of Caere into the ranks of Roman half-citizens and still more since the subjection of Latium and the grant of the same imperfect rights to a great number of Latins, Rome had become more and more the centre which attracted tradespeople, merchants, artisans, and adventurers of all kinds. These people enjoyed all the private rights of Roman citizens, and it would neither have been possible nor advisable to shut them out for ever entirely from the full franchise, whereby they were made to share not only the privileges but also the duties (especially of the military service) of the Roman citizens. To these free inhabitants of Rome who were not citizens must be added a number of freedmen and their descendants, people who supported themselves mostly as tradesmen, artists, and workmen. In the old time, when there were few slaves, the freedmen could not constitute an important part of the population. But after the successful wars beginning with the conquest of Veii, the number of slaves, as also that of freedmen, increased very much. By being emancipated, a slave became a freedman, but not a Roman citizen. Any Roman could, if he pleased, set his slave free, but the right of citizenship could only be given by the state. This could be done in various ways. The censors could put the name of an alien on the list of citizens at the general revision which took place when a new census was taken. That was the simplest and no doubt the most usual way. Such a reception of freedmen and Aerarians had probably often taken place before Appius Claudius. It must have recommended itself as an act of policy and justice, when men who were not in possession of the full citizenship had acquired landed property. But nothing is reported of a regular periodical reception into the tribes of all the half-citizens before the time of Appius Claudius. If it had been otherwise, the measure of Appius would not have excited so much attention.

No time was more appropriate for this measure than the present. The second Samnite war had very much thinned the ranks of Roman citizens. Besides those who had fallen in battle, or who had been wounded or taken prisoners, the extension town of Rome had lost many citizens from the necessity of sending out garrisons and colonists and by voluntary emigration to Campania and the Latin towns where business and profit of many kinds attracted them. The natural increase by births could not make up for such losses, and therefore it was not an injurious but a most salutary measure for the state if Appius Claudius proposed a great augmentation of the number of citizens by conferring the privileges and duties of the state on men who had long practically formed a part of it, who already enjoyed its private rights, and were in all respects entitled to he acknowledged as Romans. Of course Appius excited the jealousy and enmity of a great portion of the old citizens.

The ancient city communities insisted with great jealousy, on the exclusion of foreigners and freedmen from the sacred precincts of citizenship. Their patriotism was the bright side of a virtue the shady side of which was hatred to foreigners. Purity of race was held to be in itself an advantage; a mixture of blood was considered a corruption. The Romans, it is true, rose more above this narrow view than the Greeks. They received conquered enemies as citizens, and so became great and powerful. Appius Claudius felt himself perhaps especially called upon to carry out this policy on a large scale, for, according to a family tradition, his ancestor, Appius Claudius, had come from the land of the Sabines with his family and his clients, and was received in Rome into the rank of patrician citizens. But he met with powerful opposition, and succeeded only by a stretch of his official authority in carrying out his scheme. His political opponents saw the old constitution and, above all, the preponderance of the nobles, endangered by the admission of new citizens m large numbers, and they affected to look upon Appius as a demagogue, possibly aiming at tyranny and intent on corrupting the ‘free and independent’ electors by mixing up with them a number of his own creatures, who would in all things do his bidding. They failed, it is true, in convincing or thwarting Appius, who carried out his policy in spite of all opposition; but after the expiration of the censorship of Appius, they succeeded in materially modifying his reform. In 304 the censor Q. Fabius Maximus, in order to limit the influence of the new citizens, removed them from the country tribes into the four city tribes. By this measure the twenty-seven then existing country tribes remained under the influence of the great landed proprietors, and the town population possessed, in spite of its numbers, only four votes in thirty-one. For this wise arrangement it is said Q. Fabius received, the surname of Maximus, and it cannot be denied that by it the possibility was removed of the town population outvoting the country tribes in the popular assemblies, and so governing the whole state. It was a measure which was necessary in the absence of a representative constitution, if the Roman commonwealth was to be preserved from the danger of ochlocracy. Whether Appius resisted this modification of his reform we do not know. Perhaps we may suppose that he regarded it as an improvement on his measure, for we hear of no attempt on his part to get it repealed.

Next to the new constitution of the body of citizens, that of the senate was also in the hands of the censors. The nucleus of this body consisted of men who had been chosen by the people to a high political office, had conscientiously fulfilled its duties, and now entered for life into the highest council of state. Indirectly therefore the senate was chosen by the people, and was in reality the true representation of the people. But the senatorial rank and privilege was formally conferred by reception into the list of senators, which the censors by virtue of their office drew up at stated intervals. As the annual supply of newly elected magistrates did not equal the natural losses by death, the censors had to choose, according to circumstances, a greater or less number of men who had not yet filled a public office. That these members were selected from the families of the influential nobility was to be expected, nor was it likely that a censor, in drawing up his list, should be quite free from the influence of the political party to which he belonged. But Appius Claudius was one of those politicians who cannot be relied upon by their party, who have their own ideas, and sometimes go their own way without heeding the time-honoured practices of their predecessors. He therefore, at the revision of the senatorial list, carried out his own will, and, disregarding the prejudices of his class, admitted even sons of freedmen into the senate. We do not know his motive. Possibly he selected men of lower rank only because they possessed superior ability, for we cannot presume that he wished to satisfy personal ambition, to create a party in the senate devoted to himself, or merely to vex his opponents. In truth he only carried out in the higher regions of political life the same principle which he had adopted by admitting aliens to the privileges of Roman citizens. Perhaps he thought that the freedmen and others who had been received into the tribes must have their representatives in the senate, and, with a truly Claudian spirit, he acted boldly and paid no attention to the outcries of the noble clique who thought the senate desecrated by the reception of such men. This reform was, however, of no great practical importance. Appius, it is true, introduced a new principle, but he had no means of compelling his successors in the censorship to apply it. Public opinion in the ruling circles did not approve of the reform. The old practice was subsequently revived. Nay, the consuls even of the succeeding year are said to have gone so far as to disregard the nomination of Appius, and to have summoned the senate according to the list set aside by Appius. At any rate the senate lost neither in dignity nor in political discrimination and power, and Appius himself lived to see a Greek statesman, the ambassador of King Pyrrhus, stand dazzled before the majestic council of the Homan elders, which he compared to an assembly of kings.

The principal business of the censors was completed with the revision of the list of senators, knights, and citizens. It was closed with a solemn sacrifice on the Field of Mars, which gave the divine sanction to the new order. After this solemn act; the censors generally laid down their office, in compliance with the Aemilian law, which shortened the duration of their power to eighteen months. For the financial and administrative duties which they had to perform, as well as the erection and repair of public buildings, they usually received a special commission from the senate, and were furnished with the necessary authority and financial means.

But Appius Claudius, it is further reported, declined to lay down his office, although the other censor, C. Plautius, ashamed of the conduct of his colleague, did so. He was now sole censor, and acted in defiance of an express and special law. He paid no attention to the indignation of the senate nor to the intercession of one of the tribunes, who threatened him with imprisonment. Relying on the support of three tribunes, he appropriated the public money, without the permission or authority of the senate, to two great public works which were to immortalise his name—to an aqueduct and to the magnificent road (the Via Appia) which, almost without a turning, led through Latium and the Pontine marshes to Campania. It seemed that, by means of the numbers of public contractors and workmen whom he employed, he was going to make himself the master of the state, and he disposed of the public revenue without any reference to the senate, as if he exercised already unlimited power. He seemed intent on prolonging his power indefinitely; for, before the five years of his censorship had expired, he solicited the suffrage of the people for the consulship, and he was actually successful in being elected for the year 307 BC.

This story, which plainly is intended to represent Appius as a dangerous and violent demagogue, and which is indebted for its glaring colours to the enmity of the narrative, genuine nobility, is not only exaggerated and distorted, but without doubt in some respects utterly false. First, the accusation is absurd, that Appius wished to establish a monarchy for himself. We know from the stories of Sp. Cassius, of the decemvir Appius Claudius, of Sp. Maelius and M. Manlius, what such accusations mean. They may be looked upon as proofs that the men against whom they are directed threatened the dominion of the nobles. The story of the censor Appius Claudius is in some features identical with that of the decemvir Appius. The enmity against the aristocracy, the defiant arrogance, the usurpation of tyrannical, illegal power, and, finally, the retention of official authority beyond the appointed period, all these are points which show the intentional partisanship as well as the extreme poverty of the ancient annalists who were reduced to borrow the detail of one story from the other.

The refusal of Appius to lay down the censorship cannot really relate to the censorship as such—in other words to the regulating the census, the new ordering of the senators, of the knights, and of the tribes and centuries. All these matters were completely finished and settled before the solemn lustrum Was concluded. There was no need that Appius should act further as censor with respect to this part of his functions, nor is he charged with having done so. But great buildings could not be erected in eighteen months. For the completion of such works, which required a long time, the office of the censor was under ordinary circumstances extended by a decision of the senate. But it seems that, in consequence of his liberal reforms, Appius met with opposition in the senate, and that, even if the majority were not against him, his opponents had gained one or more of the tribunes of the people, who, by virtue of their veto, could frustrate every formal resolution which might be adopted in favour of Appius. Such an opposition Appius was enabled to resist on the strength of the fundamental principle of constitutional law, which did not sanction any process for compelling a magistrate to resign. As long as Appius, therefore, had a strong party in the senate and among the people, who on his finally resigning would guarantee his acquittal, or as long as he could reckon on a tribune who would oppose an impeachment, he could securely proceed to execute the duties of his office which had been intrusted to him. Above everything he was secure of the support of the people, on account of the popular measures he had carried, as well as of the great buildings which he had undertaken, and which directly or indirectly were intended for the benefit of the lower classes, by furnishing lucrative employment for thousands, and by supplying a poor quarter of the town with water. Appius might have carried all his measures by the support of the people alone. A resolution of the tribes was binding on the whole state. If such a resolution commissioned him to carry out the public works, and voted the funds, the senate was obliged to comply. However, the veto of a tribune, acting in the interest of the obstructive party, might have presented a resolution of the people being carried, and in that case there would have been no remedy for the people but to wait until they could elect ten tribunes unanimously in favour of Appius Claudius. Everything considered, it is much more probable that Appius had a majority in the senate, and that this body, in the very beginning of his censorship, had approved of his projects, and had voted the money for them. Without such a legal title, Appius would, not have been able to expend the sums which his public works required.

It was the indisputable right of the senate, to control the finances, and to grant to all the magistrates the supplies which they required. A violation of this constitutional law, such as has been ascribed to Appius, would not have been without grave consequences, and would have exposed the privilege of the senate to be questioned and set aside by every ambitious and unscrupulous politician. It seems, therefore, that Appius, in spite of the opposition of a strong party, had still a majority in the senate, and could carry out his measures in a constitutional way. The story of the annalists, starting from the opposite point of view, has here disregarded the laws of probability, and overstepped the bounds of what was possible.

The two great public works of Appius were, during the whole time of the republic and the empire, evidences of the enterprising spirit of their author. The Appian aqueduct brought pure water—one of the greatest necessities of hot unhealthy Rome—from the Sabine mountains, partly in subterranean passages, partly on huge arches, into the most thickly populated part of the town, between the Tiber and the Aventine. The Appian road followed in the main that which had always united Rome with the Liris, and further on with Capua; but now it was, as much as possible, carried on in a straight direction, made horizontal by mounds and by cuttings, and perhaps it was already paved in part. The Appian road was the first of those magnificent lines of communication by which the Romans understood so well how to connect their conquests with the chief town, and which afterwards, starting from Rome, traversed Italy in all directions, and extended to the furthest posts in the remotest provinces where the Roman soldier guarded the frontier. Streets and roads are always an unfading criterion by which to judge of the condition of a people with regard to its political and social development. The entire want of well-made roads is an unmistakable sign of barbarism. With the first development of agriculture, trade, and manufactures, the need is apparent of convenient ways of communication. Without good roads no states of great extent can be formed. Only as these are improved and extended can distant provinces establish a regular and profitable intercourse with one another; in fact, roads are indispensable for the administration, control, and government of a large country, and for that political unity which is the first condition of a civilised state. The want of roads in Greece, occasioned by the natural obstacles of rugged mountains, and only partly compensated by maritime intercourse, greatly encouraged the spirit of local independence in the Hellenic towns. The physical features of Italy were less unfavourable for the construction of roads, and the practical sense of the Romans made use at an early period of this means of bringing together the different parts of the state. Their roads for the most part served military purposes, and only in a less degree the wants of commercial intercourse, and by this peculiarity they characterised the Roman empire, which was based not upon productive activity, nor on the co-operation of members enjoying equal rights, but on undisputed military dominion exercised from one grand centre.

It is an agreeable surprise to learn that Rome, in the midst of a long bloody war, could find leisure, interest, and means, not only for warlike, but also for peaceful purposes, which were likely to promote the well-being and prosperity of coming generations. We see in this fact a growth of national affluence which could hardly have been expected. Certainly a great part of the means necessary for the great public works of Appius was a result of the victories of the Roman legions. The additions to the state domains, which were farmed, were no doubt great, and the booty of war had enriched many 5 the number of slaves was much increased by the capture of prisoners, and thus hands were not wanting for employment on the works. But independently of this, it seems that opulence and prosperity were continually increasing in Rome. The whole reform of Appius can be explained only by the growth of a productive, industrious population. Nor do we lack special indications pointing to the same fact. The droll story of the refractory musicians is interesting, not merely as one of the few features of humour in the history of the Romans, but as showing us a little of their social life, from which we gather that, even in the midst of a great war, there were sociable pleasures, quiet enjoyment, and even boisterous revelry.

The guild of pipers, in high repute since Numa’s time, was accustomed every year, at the festival of Minerva, the so-called little Quinquatrus, in June, to celebrate a feast in the temple of Jupiter, and then, with masks and women’s dress, to parade the town. The stem censor Appius Claudius thought proper to issue an order forbidding this perhaps objectionable and misused privilege. But in this matter he found that he had to deal with people who would not be trifled with. The guild of pipers decided to leave Rome, as at one time the plebs had done, and they betook themselves to the neighbouring city of Tibur. The case was serious. At all the great festivities, at marriages and burials, at all public sacrifices and feasts, the necessary and solemn music was wanting. How easily might this neglect give offence to the gods, who jealously insisted on the strictest and most conscientious observances in their service! General anxiety seized all the people and the senate were obliged to acknowledge themselves beaten, and to invite the exasperated musicians to return to Rome. But these felt that they had the advantage, and remained in Tibur. Thereupon the Tiburtines, wishing to oblige their Roman friends, hit upon a ruse. On a certain evening they invited all the pipers to different houses, and gave them so much wine that they were soon fit to be packed in waggons and conveyed back to Rome. When they awoke the next morning from their drunken sleep and found they had been outwitted, they consented to remain in Rome, but only under the guarantee of their old privilege, which from that time they exercised without any further interference.

How seasonable and salutary those measures were which aimed at the extension of the franchise and the doing away of the privileges of a class, we may gather from many features of the Roman history of that time. As early as 313 the last remnant of the old cruel law of debt disappeared: on the proposal of the dictator C. Poetelius imprisonment for debt for Roman citizens was abolished. This important progress towards the humane treatment of debtors, which is not yet made everywhere in the law of modem Europe, is the more surprising among the Romans, as they were formerly accustomed to treat insolvent debtors like criminals.

A further concession to the people related to the election chap, of military tribunes, the principal officers of the legion. In every legion there were six of these, and therefore twenty-four in the four legions annually levied. Originally the consuls had the right to appoint them. In the year 362 BC the election of six of them was given to the people now, tribunes, in 311, it was decided that sixteen should be annually elected by the comitia of tribes. It is not possible to explain this change from military motives. The nomination of the inferior officers by the commander-in-chief is surely preferable to a popular election. It must consequently be presumed that the election of the legionary tribunes by the people had for its object to make the advantage of higher pay, larger shares in the division of the spoils, and of grants of land dependent on the will of the people.

The same democratic tendency is expressed in the election of Cn. Flavins, the son of a freedman, as curule aedile in the year 304. Flavius was an intimate political friend of Appius Claudius, and was probably by his reform admitted to the full rights of citizenship. He had till now belonged to the influential class of public clerks, a class of men most useful and indeed indispensable to the public magistrates, who did not possess the knowledge of detail necessary in the various departments of the public service. The magistrates were elected to office through the influence of their family and party, and by the favour of the people, not on account of aptitude for or knowledge of business, and they remained in office too short a time to make up for their defects. The public clerks, on the other hand, made their living by doing all the routine work, and they devoted themselves entirely and permanently to their professional duties. They were practically acquainted with all the rules, customs, traditions, and experiences of office, with the numerous formularies and observances. There were, no doubt, among them men of great skill and ability. But they were freedmen, not freeborn Romans. Their offices were not honorary but stipendiary. It was therefore a novel and a bold step for Cn. Flavius to come forward as a candidate for the aedileship. He was elected after he had publicly declared that he would no longer practise as a clerk. The people, in electing him, showed their freedom from the old prejudices which had till then confined and oppressed them.

Flavius rendered his thanks to the people not merely by words, but by the performance of a real service. He undertook, on his own responsibility, supported by Appius Claudius, to supplement in a measure the laws of the Twelve Tables, inasmuch as he published a legal calendar and a list of formulas which had to be used in the courts of law in civil cases. The publication of information which until now had intentionally been kept secret could not have, nor was it meant to have, the effect of rendering the counsel of lawyers superfluous in future. But nevertheless much was gained if the knowledge of law was made at last accessible to all, and remained no longer the monopoly of one class. Thus the translation of the Bible into the vernacular language has not made everyone a theologian, but it has broken the spiritual omnipotence of the clergy.

A further mark of progress was the admission of plebeians to the priestly offices of augurs and pontifices by the Ogulnian law, 300 BC. This innovation was, indeed, as indicated above, not of great political importance. It concerned more the great plebeian families than the plebeians in general. But it was in some measure the ornamental finish of the newly constituted order in the state, the recognition of equality between all Roman citizens in the last recesses of privilege. Of the patrician offices there remained now none but that of the sacrificial king, those of the three high flamines and the Saliarian brethren—in which the old order was left untouched out of historic veneration for these honourable relics of antiquity—and the extraordinary office of interrex.

The Roman citizens seemed now to have no materials left for internal struggles. Nevertheless, hardly ten or fifteen years elapsed in perfect peace. After the end of the third Samnite war, in the year 287, the old dissensions were renewed. The wound which had long been healed broke open again. We hear once more of an excess of debt, of an insurrection, of a secession of the plebs, and of new concessions, by which the worst was prevented and peace again restored. This fourth secession of the plebs, and the laws, connected therewith, of the dictator Hortensius, belong to the many mysteries of the internal history of Rome, of which we can hardly expect a satisfactory explanation. Still the attempt must be made, as far as our imperfect information will permit, to understand them.

We must anticipate a little the foreign history of Rome, and connect our narrative with the victorious conclusion of the third Samnite war. The war had cost immense sacrifices, and it is quite conceivable that a considerable part of the people was in great distress. Now, however, there was a prospect of remedying this distress. Large tracts of land had been conquered, and were at the disposal of the Roman state for colonisation and division to impoverished citizens. An agrarian law was introduced by the plebeian consul, Manius Curius, the conqueror of the Samnites and the Sabines, the model of old Roman contentment and honesty. He proposed giving assignments of land to the citizens of seven jugera each. That he found great opposition is certain,4 but of the causes of this opposition we are not informed. Did the question turn on the selection of the land to be divided, or on the conditions of the proposed assignments of land, or, even as Zonaras hints, on an immediate liquidation of debts. We do not know for certain. Still we may perhaps venture to suppose that the question was, whether assignments of land with full right of property should be made in districts which the great land-owners wished to keep as state lands, in order by occupation to appropriate them to themselves. Whatever the proposal of Curius may have been, the senate and the nobility opposed the execution of the plan. By two previous laws, the Valerian-Horatian of the year 449 and the Publilian of the year 339, it was decided that the plebeian assembly of tribes should be permitted to exercise the right of legislation. But whether these laws, as probably was the case, were so limited by particular clauses that they were not applicable to the case in question, or whether the nobility tried to set them aside as antiquated, the opposition was strong that the radical measure of a formal secession was resorted to by the popular leaders in order to break it. The people retired to the Janiculus, and could only be induced by the danger of threatening war to consent to the proposals of the dictator Q. Hortensius. The condition of peace was a further confirmation or extension of the old laws, which placed the comitia of tribes on a par with the comitia of centuries in legislative matters.3 That is all that we know with certainty of the Hortensian law, and this is in no way sufficient to enable us to see distinctly the extent and the meaning of it, and especially to determine the relation in which it stood to the two earlier laws of similar import. We do not know either how the dispute about the agrarian law was settled, and we can only suppose that in this also the nobles

The legislative omnipotence which, by the Hortensian law, was given or confirmed to the assembly of tribes, changed Rome, in point of form, into a pure democracy. The comitia centuriata, in which the citizens were divided into five classes and divisions of classes, according to property and age, and which therefore retained the principle of inequality and were in some respects aristocratically organised, had now only the election of consuls, praetors, and censors as their exclusive privilege. In all other matters the purely democratic comitia of tribes, where heads only were counted, and from which the patricians were even excluded, had concurrent authority. The tendency had been for a long time in favour of an increase of the power of the assembly of tribes. The election of the newly-established magistrates, with the exception of that of praetors and censors, was given to the tribes. The civil legislation seemed quite to have passed over to them, and even questions of foreign policy, involving war and peace, were regularly laid before the tribes. The cumbersome comitia of centuries, with all their troublesome apparatus of auspices, and their complicated divisions of seniors and juniors, of knights, musicians, smiths, and carpenters, seemed antiquated and useless for common convenience. The time for their transformation and adaptation to the altered circumstances was approaching. In the meantime the comitia of tribes developed an ever increasing activity. They were free, from those religious formalities from which the mind of the people turned away more and more, especially since they had become aware of the hypocrisy practised by the ruling class. The tribunes of the people, not burdened with arduous administrative functions, such especially as those which kept other officials away from the town, and now no longer called upon to render legal protection to the plebeians against patrician magistrates, had leisure, opportunity, and means, as it appears, completely to rule the republic through the comitia of tribes. How easy was it for them to propose and to carry laws for grants of land, for the reduction of debt and the distribution of money! Was it to he expected that the people would control themselves, and how could there be wanting demagogues ready to avail themselves of so favourable a state of things ? How was it that the republican liberties were not now already undermined by ambitious men, with the help of the tribunes of the people and the assembly of tribes? Yet the danger lay still far off. What might have been expected did not happen. The republican spirit was yet too strong; and the position of the republic with regard to foreign states required the co-operation of all parties.

But more especially the Roman nobility governed as a compact body, and suffered no isolated opposition to show itself; they kept strict discipline among themselves, and, in spite of all democratic innovations, they were more than ever the real masters and rulers of the commonwealth. Rome was a complete aristocracy with democratic forms. The  Roman republic was practically governed by the senate,  which was composed of the representatives of the noble  houses. The popular assemblies, which had neither the right of initiative nor of free discussion, were only the machinery by which the nobility marked their measures with the legal stamp. It is in the nature of things that the population of a town cannot govern a large country. The small peasants and tradesmen of Rome had not the knowledge necessary for the regulation of public affairs, now that the state was so much extended. The professional politicians, who composed the senate, took the reins into their hands, and justified this usurpation by the wonderful wisdom, firmness, and circumspection with which they governed. They controlled the election of magistrates, and admitted no one easily of whom they were not perfectly sure. The magistrates so chosen they kept in strict obedience to their own will. Even the tribunes of the people bowed to the authority of the senate, and were from this time forward more and more the most important servants of the new government. Through them the senate had the sanction of the assemblies of the people at their disposal, and their right of intercession was a means always ready to overpower the resistance of any refractory magistrate. Thus unity of will was infused into the heterogeneous mass of authorities which seemed so admirably contrived to cause mutual hindrances and obstructions. The senate kept this position until the end of the republic. The time came at last, however, when it was compelled to abdicate its power. The empire became too large even for the senatorial government as it was organised in Rome. When the nobility could not resist the temptation to turn the power of government to their own advantage, monarchy stepped in, and transformed the freedom of the few, which had become a sham and a nuisance, into an equal slavery for all.

 

CHAPTER XII.

THE THIRD SAMNITE WAE, 208-290 B.C.

 

The second Samnite war, which ended in 304 BC, had put an end for the time to plans of conquests in Campania, and even to the predatory invasions of the mountain tribes. The Romans and their allies, the neighbours of the Samnites, especially those in Campania and Apulia, had not fought the war for the conquest of Samnium. The policy of Rome did not yet contemplate the subjection of the Samnites. In the treaty of peace the independence of the Samnites was acknowledged. Nevertheless an extension of the Roman power took place indirectly at the expense of the mountaineers. The whole district on the Liris and Volturnus, where the Volscian and Ausonian nations lived, was withdrawn from their influence, and had to submit to the arrangements which Rome found it in her interest to make. The country was secured against future attacks by numerous colonies. A great part of the land changed hands. Roman citizens and Latins settled on it in great numbers. The towns that remained independent, or at least in the enjoyment of their own local self-government, were drawn more closely to Rome, as Roman municipia and allies, and furnished henceforth a part of the Roman army. Simultaneously with this increase of the colonies and the subject population, the state grew at its centre, as the tribes were increased from twenty-seven (332) to thirty-one (318), and stretched now over almost every part of ancient Latium. These thirty-one districts, together with the colonies and the dependent municipalities and prefectures, formed now the enlarged Roman state, a state which in size was already the largest in Italy, and which in centralised organisation and readiness for action surpassed, far more than in mere dimensions, all other Italian states.

This Roman state had, moreover, a number of allies on whom, in case of a war, it might reckon with tolerable certainty. The Sabellian tribes of central Italy, the Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians were, as before, friendly to Rome, as were also the Apulians and Lucanians, from their hatred of their neighbours, the Samnites. These peoples, it is true, were not at all times to be relied on. Their political institutions were shifting and irregular. They formed confederations, which were unable to resist the strain of a great war, and were swayed by the individual interests and views of the different cantons among the mountains, or the several towns in the Apulian plain, or the leaders of opposite parties. The Lucanians, above all the rest, were divided among themselves and uncertain in their resolution and action. It could not, of course, be expected of these people that they should hold the interest of Rome dearer than their own; and if Rome committed errors by leaving them exposed to the common enemy, or by treating them harshly, or calling upon them to make too great sacrifices, the natural consequence was, that they felt the protection of the Romans more burdensome than the enmity of the Samnites. Thus, in the course of the second Samnite war, there had arisen hostilities between Rome and her allies which the Roman annalists took advantage of, in order to be able to relate victories of the Romans over these nations.

After the termination of the second Samnite war, in the year 304, these alliances were renewed, first with the Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians, and a few years later with the Picentians, the Lucanians, and the Apulians. Thus Samnium was completely hemmed in, on the one side by Rome herself, and on the other side by her allies. The Romans had full liberty to complete that organisation of the state which was commenced by changing the Latin allies into Roman citizens, by extending the Roman tribes over Latium, by the establishment of colonies, dependent municipalities, and prefectures. In this direction the Romans now proceeded further. Immediately after the close of the war with the Samnites, the Aequians, the old obstinate enemies and tiresome neighbours, who had so often harassed and alarmed the Roman republic in its infancy, were subdued and quieted for ever. The town of Alba, in their country, near Late Fucinus, was changed into a Roman colony, and a strong garrison of 6,000 men was placed there. The town of Sora in the country of the Volscians, on the Liris, which had been temporarily in the possession of the Romans during the war, received a garrison of 4,000 Latin colonists. These colonies could not be founded without large confiscations of laud and spoliation of the former owners. It is therefore clear why the Aequians, in the year following, made a desperate attempt to destroy the colony of Alba. They remembered the time when by their attacks they were able to terrify even Rome, and probably they forgot the great changes which had taken place since. By this act they hastened their complete subjection. In spite of their obstinate resistance, their country was incorporated with Rome in the eyar following (300 BC), and two new Roman tribes were formed of it.

The Volscian towns of Arpinum and Trebula received the Roman citizenship, without honorary rights (the civitas sine suffragio)—that is, they were made subject towns or municipia; the town of Frusino, in the country of the Hernicans, was punished by having a third of its land confiscated, because the inhabitants were charged with colonies, having excited the Hernicans to revolt. The beheading of the leaders of this alleged conspiracy ended this episode, and re-established peace in the small town of Frusino, of whose sad fate we only hear accidentally. Probably it was not the only place in which the Romans established peace and submission in that effectual but inhuman manner which was peculiarly their own. The next colony to be established was Carseoli, in the country of the Marsians, to which in 301 BC. no less than 4,000 colonists were sent. This foundation also called forth, like that of Alba, the opposition of those at whose expense and in whose country it was made. But the Marsians resisted in vain. They were subdued by the dictator M. Valerius Maximus, and their old alliance with Rome, it is said, was renewed; by which we are to understand that Rome, for the present, forbore to take from them more than the town and the district of Carseoli. The frontier of the republic was now sufficiently protected on the south and east by the chain of colonies, which extended from Campania, along the valley of the Liris, as far as the Anio, and which consisted of Cales, Suessa, Interamna, Fregellae, Sora, Alba, and Carseoli. In the north Sutrium and Nepete were still the only military strongholds, and between these towns and Carseoli the valley of the Tiber offered the easiest and most natural road for an advance upon Rome, should the Etruscans or the Umbrians be in a condition to undertake a war in that quarter. Hitherto it had not been found necessary to stop this approach to Rome by a fortified place, because the northern neighbours of Rome gave no cause for serious apprehension. They had not materially affected the war of Rome with Samnium, for the alleged exploits of Q. Fabius Maximus against the Etruscans and Umbrians, in the course of the second Samnite war, were, as we have seen, in reality of very small importance. If the Romans found it necessary now to erect a fortification on the northern frontier, the cause must be looked for in the movements of the Gauls, who, strengthened by reinforcements from beyond the Alps, now began again to harass northern Italy. Since the conquest and destruction of their town by the Gauls, the Romans entertained a deep-rooted terror of these impetuous barbarians.1 Nothing was so calculated to produce uneasiness and undignified anxiety, not only among the mass of the people but in the senate itself, generally the model of firmness and resolution, as the news of the approach of the Gauls. They had marched along the Tiber in the year of the battle of the Allia. It was therefore for the defence of this road that the Romans now took possession of the Umbrian town of Nequinum, which lay close to the river Nar, near its junction with the Tiber. This town, from henceforth called Narnia, impregnable by its situation on steep rocks, and almost surrounded by the Nar, became a Roman colony, and filled up the gap which till now had existed between Sutrium and Nepete on the one side, and Carseoli on the other.

A further precautionary measure of the Romans against the dangers which threatened them from the Gauls was the keeping tip or the renewal of the good understanding with the Etruscan towns which formed the bulwark of Rome against the barbarians. Even during their first disastrous invasion, the Romans, it is said, had made an attempt to interpose on behalf of the town of Clusium. They now availed themselves of internal disturbances in Arretium to establish in that town a government entirely dependent on themselves. A civil war had broken out in this town, which led to the expulsion of the noble house of the Cilnii, and probably raised the democratic party to power. The Romans showed themselves here, as everywhere, the friends of the nobility, and sent out an army at the request of the expelled Cilnii to bring them back again. This was effected without much difficulty, and we may presume that the nobles, now in possession of the government of Arretium, had from this time forward a double reason for clinging to Rome, because they were safe only by Roman assistance against their internal enemies as well as against the attacks of the Gauls. This intervention in Arretium was, as Livy says, in some annals represented as a regular war of Rome with Etruria. The dictator M. Valerius Maximus is made the hero of this war. It is related with much detail how he repaired a fault of the master of the horse, how he defeated the Etruscans in great battles, and compelled them to accept a humiliating peace. The domestic annalists of the Valerians have undoubtedly enriched the history of Rome with this war, and they found ready credence with a public so ignorant and so incapable of critical discrimination as the Romans. Fortunately we learn from Livy that some of the annalists did not relate these mendacious stories.1 We owe these annalists our best thanks. Their silence enables us to clear away the fictions which render the Roman policy of that time completely incomprehensible and absurd. We may now maintain that the Roman senate was not guilty of the folly of undertaking a war with the Etruscans and Umbrians, in addition to that which threatened them from the Samnites and the Gauls, and moreover that the former two nations saw the necessity of seeking Roman protection against the greatest, danger to which they could be exposed, the danger of being extirpated, like their kinsmen in the north, by the savage barbarians of Gaul.

Rome had thus made use of the six years of peace, when, in 298 BC, a new war threatened to break out with the Samnites. The cause was furnished by the Lucanians. This people was agitated by incessant internal dissensions; the democratic party were averse to the connexion with Rome, and sought among the Samnites a support against their political enemies. It was decidedly in the interest of the Romans to keep the Lucanians, as their allies, in a sort of dependence, and to allow no Samnite influence to supplant their own. They sent a message therefore to the Samnites, requesting them to desist from interference in Lucania. The Samnites declined to obey this arrogant injunction, which assumed a superiority they were in no way ready to concede, and the war broke out anew.

The relative strength of the two belligerent states was in the year 298 very different from that which it had been thirty years before. Rome had during that time become indisputably the first power in Italy; the Samnites were internally weakened and cut off all round from their cognate races. Their attempts to make conquests in Campania, in the country of the Volscians, and in Apulia, had been frustrated, and these countries had come altogether into the possession or under the influence of Rome. The Samnites owed only to the wild mountains which they inhabited the preservation of their independence and the continued importance of their friendship or hostility. When we recollect how long the mountain tribes of the Caucasus defied the colossal power of Russia, how the mountains of Switzerland were strongholds of independence, we can understand that the rude inhabitants of the highlands of the Apennines, though often beaten, could make themselves again terrible. The loss of the pasturage on the Apulian plains and the devastations of the long wars compelled the Samnites more and more to live by plunder, and their predatory expeditions became a general grievance. The Romans therefore always found allies, ready under their guidance to keep off these troublesome neighbours.

The first year of the third Samnite war, 298 BC, is of particular interest for the Roman history. In the epitaph of L. Cornelius Scipio, the consul of this year, which, was. found in Rome in the year 1780, we possess a valuable, if not the oldest, document of the republic which has come down to posterity in the original. On this account alone the inscription deserves especial respect and attention ; at the same time it exhibits so fully the characteristics of the oldest family traditions, from which mostly the annalists have gleaned their facts, that we may pause for a moment to, examine the epitaph. Composed in the Saturnian verse— the rude Italian rhythm which was afterwards superseded by the refined and elaborate metres of the Greeks—the epitaph runs thus:—

Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus,

A noble lather's offspring, a brave man and wise,

Whose beauty was equalled only by his virtue, 

Who among you was consul, censor, and aedile, 

Took Taurasia and Cisauna in Samnium, 

Subdued all Lucania, and carried away hostages.

If we compare this eulogium with the historical narrative of Livy we meet with contradictions which appear irreconcilable. According to Livy, Scipio never commanded but in Etruria, where he fought a drawn battle in the with the Etruscans at Volaterrae, gaining great spoils but narrative. making no conquests. His colleague in the consulship, Cn. Fulvius, on the other hand, fought, according to Livy, with success against the Samnites at Bovianum. The towns of Taurasia and Cisauna are not mentioned, and are altogether unknown. Finally, Livy says nothing of a defeat of the Lucanians. It might seem, then, that we are compelled to pronounce the story of Livy to be erroneous, or the epitaph to be forged. Yet, on a closer examination, we find that there is in both a nucleus of historical truth, that in one point they mutually confirm one another, but that both suffer from the fundamental fault of the Roman annals—from boundless exaggerations and misrepresentations.

The treaty of Rome with the Lucanians was renewed in the year 298 BC, when the latter, owing to the attacks of the Samnites, thought it advisable to call in the assistance of the Romans. On this occasion the Lucanians, as a pledge of their fidelity, sent a number of hostages to Rome—a precautionary measure which the Romans, knowing the inconstancy of the Lucanian character, from their experience in former wars, found quite necessary. This took place during the consulship of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, and he was himself probably intrusted with receiving the hostages. So far the annalistic accounts of Livy and Dionysius agree with the epitaph of Scipio. But the family vanity of the Scipios was not satisfied with such an insignificant part played by L. Cornelius. With the usual and unscrupulous exaggeration of Roman family chroniclers, a war and the subjection of the whole of Lucania were premised as preliminary steps to the reception of hostages. For could it be supposed that Rome should conclude a treaty of peace with a foreign nation unless she had first defeated them? That such an exaggeration ’is first found in a family document is quite natural, and it is almost to be wondered at that the fable of the entire subjection of the Lucanians was not received into the current history of the nation compiled from such materials. This would certainly have been done if, there had not been in existence in the time of the third Samnite war some independent historical records, which to some extent controlled the licence of the family panegyrists.

The conquest of Taurasia and Cisauna in Samnium, which is mentioned in the epitaph, may be received as historical, although Livy does not refer to it; but these places may have been very small and insignificant, as they are not further mentioned and their locality cannot be determined.

It is strange that the epitaph of Scipio says nothing of his alleged campaign in Etruria, which Livy dwells upon at length, and in which a family eulogist would surely have found materials for ample praise. We are justified by this discreet silence in supposing that the whole of that Etruscan campaign is a fiction, and to this conclusion we are led by general considerations. The Etruscans and the Umbrians were, by their geographical situation, exposed to the first attacks of the Gauls, and had no choice but to look to Rome for assistance. They always did this when an invasion of the Gauls was expected. Accordingly we cannot conceive any of the Etruscan and Umbrian wars to have been possible. The alleged campaign of Scipio is one of these. It is moreover condemned as unhistorical by the character of the narrative itself. Livy describes a number of warlike operations which have neither meaning nor object nor result, except that in the end the Romans make much booty. He relates that the Etruscans had intended to break the peace with Rome, but were prevented by an attack of the Gauls from carrying out this intention. The Gauls, then, as is further related, were persuaded by money to desist from attacking Etruria, but would not consent to march upon Rome. Now the Etruscans, having narrowly escaped a war with the Gauls, began, without provocation, a war with Rome, and this war ended without any result. If such Wonderful vagaries were recorded by trustworthy contemporary witnesses, we should accept them with astonishment and try to understand them; but the evidence which we possess is not of a character to bear down the doubts suggested by the narrative; and even if the epitaph of Scipio, instead of being silent on the Etruscan war, were to agree with Livy’s account, we should feel justified in doubting its truth.

The great migration of the Celts, which in the first half of the third century before Christ threatened the civilised countries of antiquity on the Mediterranean Sea, and which terminated in the foundation of the Galatian State in Asia Minor, affected Italy also, and the Gauls actually took a part in the wars of the native populations. The news of the approach of new Gallic hordes had already occasioned some anxiety in Rome, and, as we have supposed, given cause for the establishment of the colony of Narnia. But principally the Umbrians and Etruscans were threatened by the invaders. The Samnites had, on account of their geographical position, their wild mountains, and their poverty, nothing to fear from the Gauls—on the contrary much to hope, if they could only ally themselves with them against Rome. It is not unlikely that just now the threatened invasion of the Gauls induced the Samnites to try again the fortune of war, for in a division of the Roman forces lay their only hope of success. For this purpose they sent, in the third year of the war, an army to Umbria, under Gellius Egnatius, to join the Gauls. The Romans, it seems, turned their attention also towards the north, and the war in Samnium was carried on with but little energy, so that in 396 the Samnites were able to undertake another plundering expedition into Campania, and the Romans established two colonies, Sinuessa and Minturnae, for the protection of this country. The consul Appius Claudius was sent to Etruria in the year 296 but was not very successful, until his colleague L. Volumnius came to his assistance. The danger became more and more serious, and for the year 295. the first general of the time, Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus, was elected consul. He requested the people to give him as colleague the plebeian P. Decius Mus. All preparations were now made which seemed required to meet the coming danger. The senate ordered the courts of law to be closed. Troops were levied, freedmen and freeborn Homans, old men as well as young, were called to arms. This terror was probably caused by a most disastrous calamity which had overtaken L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, then propraetor in Etruria, and which had awakened afresh the old terror of the Gauls. A whole legion had been surprised and annihilated by the barbarians, so that, according to some reports, not one man escaped who could have brought the intelligence, and the fact was known only by the Gallic horsemen galloping up to the consuls’ army, carrying on their lances the heads of their enemies, and shouting songs of triumph.

The consuls Fabius and Decius marched against the enemy. They had under their command two consular armies, that is, four legions and a still greater number of allies, among whom one thousand Campanian horsemen are mentioned. One legion of volunteers was quickly raised by Fabius, probably in the place of that which was annihilated under Scipio. Besides these there was a third army as a reserve, under the proprietor Cn. Fulvius, at Falerii, and a fourth covered Rome on the Etruscan bank of the Tiber. Rome had never before set such numerous armies on foot; but the danger was great, for, after the defeat of Scipio, the day of the Allia—the day so quickly followed by the devastation of the town—was present to the imagination of every Roman. In times of excitement and danger there is seldom a lack of miracles: nor was there any now. Blood, honey, and milk flowed from the altar of the Capitoline Jupiter, and a bronze statue of the goddess of war on the Forum sprang from the pedestal on to the ground. The people turned to the Etruscan soothsayers for comfort, and to the gods for help. The senate set apart two days for supplication and prayer, and supplied, as Livy says, at the public cost, wine and incense for the sacrifices. On this occasion, the ancient pride of the patrician matrons showed itself once more. While their husbands and sons were side by side in the field with their plebeian comrades, they could not bring themselves to pray with plebeian women in the temple of the goddess of chastity. The plebeian matrons, excluded from the patrician temple of chastity, established a sanctuary of their own, and thus the old fire of discord continued to smoulder in the hearts of the women and on the altars of the gods.

The Roman army did not wait for the march of the Gauls upon Rome. It crossed the Apennines and ventured into countries which no Roman soldier yet had trod. Without the assistance of the allied Umbrian towns, in whose territory the passes were, the Romans could not have hazarded such a bold march, especially after the defeat of Scipio. At Sentinum, on the eastern slope of the Apennines, near to the pass by which afterwards the Via Flaminia crossed the mountains, they met the united forces of the Gauls and the Samnites. A description of the battle such as that given by Livy is only a play of the fancy. We will not reproduce it. But one part of Livy’s description seems to deserve credit. He speaks of the Gallic war-chariots, which the Romans encountered here for the first time, and which caused great consternation. The consul Decius died in the battle, it is said, like his father in the battle near Mount Vesuvius, a voluntary death, having devoted himself with the hostile army to the gods of earth and of the grave. The enemy were completely beaten, their army destroyed, and the war with the Gauls terminated at one blow. It was a great deliverance. Rome breathed afresh, as it did again in a later age after the victory of Marius over the Cimbrians and Teutons. For the first time the dreaded enemies were beaten in the field, and so beaten that they relinquished, at least for the time, every idea of continuing the war. Ten years passed before the barbarians had so far regained strength as to venture on another invasion of the centre of Italy. The Romans felt themselves to be quite a match for their other opponents, their old Italian neighbours and accustomed enemies, and now, after the defeat of these foreign invaders, they might entertain the hope of soon bringing the Samnite war to a close.

While the Roman armies were fighting the Gauls and their Samnite allies in Umbria and Etruria, they had not only recalled their troops from Samnium, but had also left their colonies and allies without sufficient protection. The Samnites did not fail to avail themselves of this opportunity. They made inroads into Campania, and laid waste the fruitful districts on the Volturnus. But they did not confine themselves to plundering. They tried to get possession of the forts which the Romans had built all along their frontier. In the west they besieged Interamna on the Liris, and in the south-east the important colony of Luceria, which commanded the Apulian plains. It is evident that the, diversion of the Gauls had benefited them, and that they had not suffered much by the battle of Sentinum, in which only a small number of Samnite troops can have been engaged. It was fortunate for Rome that the war in the north ended so quickly and decisively. The consuls of the following year, 294, L. Postumius Megellus and M. Atilius Regulus, could now both turn their attention to the scene of war in the south. But fortune did not favour them. From the confessions of Livy we see clearly that the Romans were more than once in great distress. The accounts of the several annalists differed in many particulars. But, according to Livy, all were agreed in this, that the Romans, in their attempt to deliver Luceria, suffered a decided repulse, and that the total destruction of the army was warded off only with the greatest difficulty. Luceria, it is true, seems not to have fallen into the power of the Samnites, but of more than this the Romans could not boast in this year. Yet the annalists related the conquest of some places in Samnium. In Livy’s account every disaster is compensated by victories, and one of the consuls can actually be spared in Sanmium, marches with his army to Etruria, defeats the Etruscans, and compels Volsinii, Perusia, and Arretium to sue for peace. The inevitable triumphs are not wanting. According to the Capitoline Fasti—the most mendacious documents of Roman history—both consuls triumphed; according to Livy, Postumius triumphed, but not Atilius; according to Claudius Quadrigarius, it was just the other way—Postumius did not triumph, but Atilius; according to Fabius, neither the one nor the other triumphed, and this testimony of the old annalists seems alone to deserve credit; We may be sure that the year 294 was, on the whole, not favourable for the Romans, that they sustained much loss in the field, but that the Samnites were not in a condition to take the Roman fortresses and to attack the Roman territory.

This result is confirmed by the great exertions which both parties in the following year found it necessary to make. At Interamna, on the Liris, which had been sacked and plundered by the Samnites, a Roman legion was stationed, in order to protect those parts from new attacks. Both consuls of the year 298, L. Papirius Cursor, the son of the Papirius so often mentioned in the second Samnite war, and Sp. Carvilius, conducted the war in Samnium, conquered the Samnites in a great battle at Aquilonia (situation unknown), took many fortresses, and laid the country waste. The reports of their exploits, especially those of Papirius, are of the kind which might lead us to fancy that the war must practically have come to an end. But to our surprise we hear not only that at the close of the campaign the legions of Papirius wintered in the neighbourhood of Vescia, to protect Campania, but that the Samnites had in the following year an undisputed superiority over the Romans. We must therefore entertain serious doubts with regard to the victories of Papirius, and we suspect that the domestic annals of the Papirians have done much to extol and to exaggerate the victories of the Roman arms and the heroic deeds of their own family. At the very outset, a striking family likeness is observable between the story of L. Papirius Cursor’s victory and that of his father in the second Samnite war, 309 BC. In each of these years the Samnites make extraordinary preparations, and, contrary to their usual habits, take refuge in religious fanaticism. In both eases a consecrated body of warriors is chosen, distinguished from the rest of the army by a peculiar dress, and sworn with the most solemn oaths to conquer or to die. In both accounts the Samnites, whom we can only imagine to have been poor mountaineers, are represented as covered with gold and silver. The triumphs of the two Papirii are distinguished by the splendour of the spoils. In the first case the Forum is hung with gold and silver shields; the younger Papirius decorates not only the temple of Quirinus and the Forum, but distributes the spoils also to the allies and to the colonies, to ornament their temples.

In spite of the losses which it is reported that the Samnites suffered in the year 293, they were neither exhausted nor discouraged. They appeared, on the contrary, in the new campaign, 292 BC, again decidedly to have the advantage. The newly elected consul, Q. Fabius Maximus Gurges, the son of the chief hero of the war, suffered a reverse in which the Romans lost 3,000 dead and many wounded. The numbers of dead and wounded which are reported in these battles are of no historical value, but a confession of this kind shows at least that the Romans were decidedly beaten. The disaster, however, is said to have been repaired very soon by a victory over the Samnites; the old Q. Fabius, the consul’s father, requested to serve under his son as legate, and now the Samnites were defeated. The consul triumphed; and before his triumphal car walked in chains the victor of Caudium, the high-minded C. Pontius, whom the Romans, destitute of all magnanimity and humanity, delivered up to death by the hand of the executioner. But the Samnites were not yet broken to the yoke. They were only driven back into their mountains by the preponderance of Roman strength. Their resistance was at length overcome in ‘great battles’, by M. Curius Dentatus, the consul of the year 290, as we learn from the only authority extant, the meagre abridgment of Eutropius, and from the short argument of the lost eleventh book of Livy. But after all they concluded an honourable peace, which acknowledged their independence.

The third Samnite war appears, therefore, even in the Roman reports, which are alone handed down to us, by no means as an unbroken series of victories on the part of the Romans. On the contrary, it almost seems that the Romans, in spite of repeated defeats in the field, only maintained on the whole the upper hand through their greater perseverance, their political and diplomatic superiority over the Samnites, and through the greater inherent strength of their state, which, as we have said before, was the most powerful in Italy at that time; and, like the wars with Pyrrhus, with the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Spaniards, and the Lusitanians, the third war with Samnium plainly shows that the Roman constitution, with its rapid change of military commanders elected by popular suffrage, was labouring under disadvantages, scarcely outweighed by the thorough military training, the calm heroism, and the common obligation of the citizens to serve in the army.

The Romans concluded peace without having completely defeated the Samnites. Samnium retained even now its independence. No Roman colony was established in the country of the Samnites, no portion of it was taken from them. Still the success of the Roman policy was great. It was proved now that the Samnites were unable to shake the republic. These brave mountaineers were exhausted at last. From this time the Samnites did not venture again to take up the struggle against Rome with their own unaided strength. Their only hope for the future was, by uniting themselves to some of Rome’s powerful enemies, to avenge themselves on the hated town which had stopped them in their progress, and had snatched Campania from their grasp. Among the mercenaries of Pyrrhus, among the allies of Hannibal, and even in the civil war in their dying struggle with the iron Sulla, they showed even to their last breath their old courage and inextinguishable hatred of Rome.

As after the end of the second Samnite war, so now, the senate was intent on securing by Roman colonies the ground that had been gained. On the borders of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, the colony of Venusia was established, and the extraordinarily large number of 20,000 colonists sent there. Thus they had a stronghold in the midst of former enemies and doubtful friends; its position in the neighbourhood of Tarentum pointed to the direction from which the next war-storm would burst over Italy. ’

The long wars with Samnium were followed by the subjection of the Sabines. These had been quiet and gibing hardly mentioned for a century and a half. What their policy had been during the Samnite wars is nowhere stated. They were certainly not among the enemies of Rome; for we should in that case have heard of Roman victories over them. Most probably they were, like the Marsians, Apulians, and Lucanians, allied with Rome, though their services are never mentioned. They were now made Roman citizens without the full franchise, i.e. subjects of Rome, preparatory to their reception into the tribes and to the enjoyment of all the rights of Roman citizens.

Our knowledge of the last three years of the war and of the subsequent events, is extremely scanty, for the tenth book of Livy breaks off with the year 292, and as the whole of the second decade, containing books eleven to twenty-one, is lost, we are deprived for the time from 292 to 218 of the guide who has accompanied us far in doubtful and intricate paths. We begin to feel his real worth at a time when his history is wanting. It is true he has often disappointed our expectations. He has omitted conscientiously to collect, compare, and sift the materials for the ancient history of Rome, which were accessible to him in abundant stores. He did not give himself the trouble to solve doubts and remove difficulties, even where it was possible for him to do so. Partly owing to indifference for historical accuracy in the older parts of his work, and partly because he preferred to occupy himself with narratives of' dramatic effect and with the display of rhetorical skill, he is silent as to the contradictions that present themselves, and passes quickly over wide gaps. The spirit of the ancient times of the Roman people is beyond his grasp. His feelings and opinions are those of the declining republic. These he applies to the old time. That which has disappeared or faded away he cannot conjure up and invest with new life. He is moreover a partisan and a Roman patriot. He stands always on the side of the aristocratic party, and has nothing but blame for the wicked tribunes and the despicable, selfish crowd. Towards the enemies of Rome he is heartless and unjust, while he loses no opportunity of praising Roman virtue. The degeneracy of his contemporaries made him an enthusiast for the old heroes, and guides his pen when he paints antiquity in the golden light of bygone days. But we take Livy with all his faults, for with them he gives us rich historical materials which without him would have been entirely lost to us. He worked with perseverance, love, and enthusiasm. He neither falsified nor misrepresented anything knowingly, Where he has erred, it has been from want of observation, critical discrimination, and trustworthy materials. These faults become of less and less consequence the further he leaves the legendary times behind and approaches those of contemporary witnesses. We should only learn fully to appreciate his worth if an unhoped-for piece of good fortune could restore to us the one hundred and seven lost books of the grandest historical work of Roman antiquity.

CHAPTER XIII.

EXTERNAL HISTORY TILL TARENTINE WAB, 290-282 B.C.

 

After the decisive overthrow which the Gauls suffered at Sentinum, 293 BC, they were quiet for ten years. But in the year 285 the Senonian Gauls invaded Etruria again, and besieged Arretium, which was in friendly relations to Rome. The Romans came to the assistance of the Arretines, but were completely overthrown, and lost 13,000 men, including the praetor L. Cecilius Metellus and seven military tribunes. The remainder of the army were made prisoners. This defeat—one of the most disastrous in the older Roman history—was calculated to revive the ancient terror of the northern barbarians. It was scarcely a consolation for the Romans  who suffered such blows, that in this school of war they were trained into soldiers fit to encounter the enemies who were soon to try their metal. The detailed account of these events is unfortunately lost with Livy's books. Otherwise we should have heard what impression the fearful news created in Rome, and how it called forth not only pain and grief, but at the same time the determination to defy and resist the enemy. Above all things new legions were levied, and it was then determined to send an embassy to the Gauls to negotiate for the release of the prisoners. But the intoxication of victory had completely maddened Britomaris, the savage chieftain of the Gauls. Reckless of the law of nations, he caused the ambassadors to be put to death, as an atoning sacrifice to his father, who had fallen in the last battle. This inhuman deed met with an inhuman punishment. The new Roman army, under the consul P. Cornelius Dolabella, entered the country of the Senonians to carry on a war of extermination. The whole race of the Senonian Gauls was destroyed, the men were put to death, the women and children became slaves, the country was declared public land of Rome, and a colony of Roman citizens established in Sena, to people the devastated country and to prevent for all future time a new settlement of Gauls (285 B.C.).

Besides Sena, the colonies of Castrum and Hatria were founded on the coast of the Adriatic, and thus, for the first time, a firm footing was obtained on that side of the peninsula which looked towards Greece. The intention of the Romans was plain. From defence they had proceeded to attack. The Apennines had been crossed. Three Roman fortresses had been established on the other side. The country of the Gauls in Italy lay open before them. It was necessary for them to consider how they would oppose the further encroachments of Rome. The Boians, a race of Gauls dwelling between the Apennines and the Po, tried once more the fortune of war. Reinforced by the remnants of the Senonians, and by bands of Etruscans, who probably belonged to the democratic party hostile to Rome, they crossed the Apennines, but were defeated near the Tiber, on the Vadimonian Lake, and a second time at Populonia, so decisively that they relinquished all hope of success for the future, and concluded peace with the Romans, whereby the latter gained liberty to meet the dangers threatening from the south of the peninsula.

It is a very important question which side the Etruscans took in these wars of the Gauls against Rome. In the received account the Etruscans are the ancient hereditary enemies of Rome; it is they who call in the Gauls to make common cause with them. How mistaken this view is with regard to similar events in the third Samnite war we have already seen. It is possible that isolated bands of Etruscans, driven from their homes, joined the Gauls. Political parties have seldom shrunk from making common cause with the enemies of their country, and we have many indications of violent internal struggles in the Etruscan towns, which led to the interference of Gauls or Romans. The first invasion of the Gauls in the year 391 was occasioned, according to the legend, by a plebeian of Clusium, Who, finding no protection in the laws against patrician violence, tempted the Gauls to cross the Alps by making them acquainted with the productions of his fertile country, especially with the southern wines. This story is of course invented, but the invention presupposes a state of things favourable to the interference of foreigners. Such was also the case in Arretium, where the ruling house of the Cilnians, shortly before the third Samnite war, 301 BC, being expelled by the people, sought and found help with the Romans. The Romans were at all times the friends of the aristocratic party in the Italian states, and were prepared to draw political advantages out of this friendship. Thus the popular party were driven to join the enemies of Rome, and therefore in every collision between Romans and Gauls in that country, Etruscans were ranged against Etruscans in the ranks of foreign armies. The state of things in Etruria, and the relation of political parties there to Rome, are illustrated more especially by the events which took place in Volsinii, a town that may be considered to have been about this time the head of the Etruscan confederation. The events to which we refer, it is true, belong to a somewhat later period, the year 265 BC, twenty years after the battle of Arretium, and only one year before the outbreak of the first Punic war; but the state of things in Volsinii which called them forth is clearly of a much older date, and they were evidently not isolated or exceptional phenomena, but were only indications of the development which for a long time had been going forward in the political life of the Etruscan states.

After long internal struggles in Volsinii a revolution broke out in the year 265. The nobles lost all share in the government, which they had obstinately refused to share with the commonalty. A democratic government was established, and it is very likely that the revolution was carried out with much severity and cruelty. The lower class of people in Etruria were no doubt incapable of the moderation of the Roman plebs, and the Lucumones or nobles had not the political wisdom of the Roman patricians. The old contrast between masters and serfs had remained, and had lost nothing in the course of time in bitterness and harshness. Hence the revolution, when it came at last, was violent, although the descriptions of it given by the Roman historians are manifestly great exaggerations. It is represented by the moralising writers of the later time as a consequence of the extreme luxury and dissoluteness of the Volsinians. The citizens, becoming effeminate and weak, allowed the power to be wrested out of their hands by their own slaves, who, after having gained admittance into the senate and to the public offices, seized the whole power of the state, and retaliated upon the nobles by all sorts of exactions, spoliations, and cruelties. They put themselves in possession of the property of the rich by compelling them to make them their heirs, they forbad the social gatherings of the free-born citizens, married their daughters, committed adultery with impunity, and violated the honour of every noble bride. It is not difficult to recognise in this caricature the real features of the Volsinian revolution, and to see that its course was not unlike the political development in Rome. The changing of the original slaves into freedmen, into clients and citizens with an inferior franchise without any share in the government and legislation; then the admission of these to the senate, to the public offices, and to all the privileges of the old citizens; the granting of the right of intermarriage, with which the right of inheritance was connected; the limitation of the patrician assemblies and clubs,—all these are steps in the development of plebeian rights with which we are sufficiently acquainted in the internal history of Rome. The nobles of Volsinii would not abide, unfortunately, by the results of their internal revolution, but sought to make themselves masters of their hated opponents by foreign aid. They secretly sent an embassy to Rome, to bring about the intervention of the Roman government in their favour. The conspirators, on their return to Volsinii, were seized, tortured, and executed, together with the chief men of the aristocratic party. A Roman army now advanced before the unhappy town. Sanguinary combats took place. A fortified town like Volsinii, defended by men who were driven to despair and doomed to die, could not be taken at the first onset. The Roman consul, Q. Fabius Gorges, was killed. M. Valerius Flaccus followed him in the command, blockaded the town, and reduced it at last by hunger. A bloody sentence was now passed on the leaders of the popular party. In this fatal revolutionary war the venerable and wealthy town of Volsinii perished. It was sacked and destroyed; the democratic party was annihilated, the wretched remnants of the nobility were restored to power over the ruins of their native town. Volsinii never rose from the ashes. A new town was built in the neighbourhood, in which the aristocratic party had the satisfaction of establishing a government to their liking. Thus dealt the Romans with a friendly town which had sought their help in her domestic troubles. The intervention in the civil war and the destruction of Volsinii were extolled in Rome as a victory over Etruria. Triumphs were celebrated, and innumerable works of art and rich spoils, which, in the lapse of ages, had been collected in the metropolis of Etruscan art and civilisation, were carried off ta adorn the Forum and the Capitol.

If at this time the Gauls had been in a position permitting them to oppose the Romans, they would most assuredly have befriended the oppressed popular party in Volsinii, but after their defeat at the Vadimonian Lake, they kept quiet for forty-five years. This was the period during which swarms of Gauls overran Macedonia and Greece. Rome knew how to make use of this respite, by overthrowing one of the now useless bulwarks against which, in former years, the Gallic onsets had been broken.

The Romans succeeded in the destruction of Volsinii and in the subjection of Falerii, which took place in the year 292 BC, without any attempt on the part of the other Etruscan towns to oppose their aggression. The Etruscans exhibited now the same indifference to the fate of their countrymen as a hundred and thirty years earlier when Veii was attacked, and, after a siege of ten years, destroyed by the Romans. The warlike spirit of this people had evidently fled. They lived now only for sensual pleasures. For a period of nearly two hundred years history has next to nothing to relate of them. Their pacific relations to Rome remained unbroken, and this enabled them to practise the arts of peace, to cultivate their land like a garden, and to create innumerable works of art, which attest their superior talent and great wealth. They joined in no conspiracy against Rome with the peoples of southern Italy, with the Samnites, the Lucanians, the Tarentines, or with Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus appeared in the neighbourhood of Rome, after his victory at Heraclea, and hoped to find the Etruscans willing to join in a war against Rome, all was tranquil in the whole of Etruria. Rome was quite safe on this side, and could direct all her energies to the south.

The strength of the Samnites had been broken in the third war. They could no longer hope to oppose the extension of the Roman power in the southern districts of the peninsula. The establishment of the colony of Venusia was the first step by which Rome prepared her lasting dominion over that district. The turn was now come for the Greek towns on the coast, which till now had taken no part in the wars of the Romans and the Italians, and who, conscious of their own weakness, entertained the hope of prolonging their own independence through the internal struggles of the Italian nations. As soon, however, as a decided superiority of one or the other of the belligerent powers was established, it became clear that the independence of the Greek towns was gone. There had been a time when they might have hoped to Hellenise Italy. They could have accomplished this object if they had been united, and prepared to sacrifice a portion of their local independence for the common good. That time was past. They had now no choice but to be absorbed by the natives of Italy. This was the unavoidable consequence of their mutual jealousy and their murderous wars among themselves.

Thurii was the first Greek town which was drawn towards Rome. Hard-pressed by the Lucanians, who were in the habit of breaking into the wealthy Greek settlements as the animals of the forest invade the fields and the flocks of man, the people of Thurii applied to Rome for help.

The Lucanians had rendered much important service to the Romans in the third Samnite war. They probably thought themselves justified, after the peace with the Samnites, in paying themselves, by laying under contribution Greek cities which were at the same time wealthy and unable to make a stout resistance. Perhaps they contemplated even the conquest and lasting possession of Thurii. They had just seen a Greek town seized by countrymen of their own, and were no doubt eager to follow such a shining example. The Sabellian mercenaries who had served in Sicily under Agathocles had surprised the Greek town of Messana in Sicily, had massacred all the men capable of bearing arms, and lived now in abundance and luxury. The Romans could not allow a similar capture of an Italian town by a warlike people like the Lucanians, and so they had no hesitation in declaring war against their old allies the Lucanians, and espousing the cause of the Thurinians. In this war with the Lucanians, as might be expected, Samnites and Bruttians took a part. Caius Fabricius gained great victories, raised the siege of Thurii, and, after placing a garrison there, returned laden with spoils to Rome.

The success of the Romans, however, was not confined to the military occupation of Thurii. Locri, Croton, and hegium received Roman garrisons. All of the most power important Greek towns along the coast were thus in the power of Rome, with the exception of Tarentum. The possession of this town would have completed the military supremacy of Rome over southern Italy, and it seemed now a natural and legitimate object of the Roman policy, to add this keystone to the edifice. Tarentum was doomed ; hut, before it fell, events took place calculated to test to the uttermost the courage and energy, the perseverance and self-devotion, of the Roman people

 

 

CHAPTER XIV

THE WAR WITH TARENTUM AND PHYRRUS, 282-272 B.C.

 

After the decline of Croton and the destruction of Sybaris, Tarentum was decidedly the most flourishing and the most powerful town in Magna Gracia. It was originally a Spartan colony, but had, like the other Greek towns in Italy, received in course of time a very mixed population, embracing also native Italians. The primitive aristocratic constitution had given place to a democracy, when a great number of the nobles had fallen in a bloody engagement with the neighbouring Iapygians. The constitution of Tarentum was, however, by no means a licentious or unreasonable democracy, as it is represented by the flatterers of the Romans. Aristotle speaks of it approvingly. On the whole, the Tarentines have not deserved the bad name they bear. Their history is perhaps the most creditable among all the Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily. If they were not so conspicuous for military virtues and brilliant exploits as the Syracusans, they were at least not exposed to the same political calamities, and were not always tossed about between tyranny and anarchy. They seem on the whole to have proceeded calmly and quietly in the regulation of their internal affairs, although among them, as in all free states, but especially in the Greek city republics, the struggle between an aristocratic and a democratic party was the mainspring of political life. We hear of no bloody collision of parties in Tarentum, which may perhaps he accounted for by the undisputed dominion of the democracy. That the Tarentines took an active part in the intellectual life of the Greek people they could prove by pointing to their fellow citizen Archytas, who so far enjoyed their confidence that he was intrusted for years with a leading influence in the state. Nor is it to be doubted that in this rich and flourishing commercial town, the fine arts and literature found a fruitful soil. The situation of Tarentum was extremely favourable. A narrow tongue of land, which in the northern comer of the gulf extended from east to west, and on its western extremity nearly touched the opposite coast, formed a safe and almost dock-like harbour, secure against all storms from the sea, while the open roadstead outside offered good anchorage. At the entrance of the inner harbour was a hill, on which the citadel rose as on an island. The town covered the narrow tongue of land between the inner and the outer harbour, and was so built that the cross streets led to the water on each side. No single town in Magna Graecia had a more favourable position for navigation and commerce. In addition to this, the sea in those parts was full of fish, and thus furnished a great portion of the food of the people. The districts round Tarentum were excellent pasture and arable land. The diligence and skill of the Tarentines knew how to turn these natural gifts to their utmost advantage. To their extensive commerce they joined an important manufacturing industry, and Tarentine textile fabrics and dyed stuffs enjoyed a great reputation.

The foreign policy of the Tarentines appears to have been on the whole peaceable. They could not, of course, avoid all conflicts with their neighbours, especially with the Thurinians, but we find no trace of their having ambitious intentions with regard to the extension of their dominions. Nevertheless they did not give themselves up, as has been said of them, to indolent luxury. They knew how to maintain their position against the rapacious Lucanians and Messapians, as also against the far more dangerous tyrants of Syracuse, who visited so many Italian towns with fire and sword. It is said that the Tarentines at the time of their prosperity brought an army of 20,000 men into the field. In addition to this they had a respectable fleet, and if they did not claim to rule the sea, they were at least in a position to protect their own commerce and their town, which was impregnable so long as the harbour was open. Yet the continually repeated attacks of the Italians sorely tried Tarentum at last. Exposed to the harassing depredations of the mountaineers, agriculture became more and more precarious. It was not possible to defend effectually the whole territory, and to deprive trade and industry of thousands of hands which would have been necessary to keep the enemy everywhere in check. Hence the Tarentines called first the Spartan king Archidamus, then the Molossian prince Alexander, and at last Cleonymus of Sparta, to fight for them against the Italians.

Thus the Tarentines successfully kept off their enemies, whilst the Samnite wars occupied the Sabellian nations in other parts, and they were of course well satisfied that these wars continued so long. In fact they could wish for nothing better than that the Romans and Samnites should continue to keep each other in check. It is related1 that they made an attempt to act as arbitrators in the third Samnite war, and that they required both Romans and Samnites to lay down their arms. But they had neither the courage nor the strength to inforce obedience to a sentence of arbitration, and so they were obliged to look on whilst Samnium was more and more exhausted by the wars with Borne. Now, after the termination of the third war, it was no longer their flocks and their country-houses alone which they had to defend from the rude hands of the spoilers. The goal of the Roman legions was the citadel of Tarentum; the Romans could only aim at possessing what the Lucanians had contented themselves with spoiling and plundering.

There was peace and amity between Rome and Tarentum. However clearly the instinct of self-preservation might have urged the Tarentines not to allow the Samnites to be utterly crushed, they had still abstained from all acts of hostility towards Rome. Samnium bled to death before their eyes, and the Romans established themselves at Venusia, close on the frontier of the Tarentine territory. It was hardly to be expected that they would stop there; and sober men, who saw clearly the hopelessness of a continued resistance, probably thought a union with Rome the only chance of being able to save the independence of the town. The city of Naples furnished a precedent. Naples preserved her own local self-government and her Greek nationality under Roman supremacy. This view was supported chiefly by the better and wealthier class of citizens, who with a greater insight into the political position and the relative strength of Tarentum and Rome united aversion to a war which could entail no other consequence than the utter ruin of their native town. There was thus a Roman party in Tarentum, which, as everywhere in the Italian towns, consisted naturally of the adherents of aristocratic institutions. These were opposed by the democrats, who, having nothing to lose, were prepared to hazard everything for the defence of the independence of their town and of the popular form of government, which, under the influence of Rome, would have had little chance of continuing long; but even the most reckless demagogues were not so blind that they expected to be able to withstand the Romans with their own unaided strength. Accordingly they directed their hopes towards Greece, from whence three times already help had come to the Italian Greeks. Whether negotiations had commenced with King Pyrrhus in the very commencement of the quarrel with Rome we cannot tell. It is, however, very probable that this was the case, for as early as 289, i.e. eight years previously, the Tarentine fleet had assisted Pyrrhus in the defence of Corcyra against Demetrius, and therefore they could expect help in return. The Romans therefore were in danger of seeing the best harbour on the coast of Italy, and the richest and most influential town, fall into the hands of a foreign power, which might put the greatest obstacles in the way of the consolidation of their dominion in Italy.

This was the state of things when, in the autumn of the year 282 , suddenl and unexpectedly, a Roman fleet of ten ships of war appeared before the harbour of Tarentum. The treaty of 301 forbade the Romans to sail beyond the Lacinian promontory at the furthest southern extremity of the Tarentine Gulf. The excitement among the Tarentines, produced by the sudden, appearance of the Roman fleet, was therefore natural and justifiable. If the foreign fleet was allowed to sail into the inner harbour, Tarentum, was in the power of the Romans! The Tarentines interpreted the proceeding of the Romans as an open act of hostility. Nor could they view it in any other light, considering the stipulations of their treaty with Rome, and considering the laws of legitimate warfare, as they were understood and accepted at that time. They stood bravely on their defence, manned their ships, and sailed out to attack the Romans. Four out of ten Roman vessels were sunk, one was taken, the others escaped. The Roman admiral fell, a number of seamen and soldiers were taken prisoners; the former were sold as slaves, the latter put to death.

It is strange that ancient as well as modern writers have represented this attack on the Roman fleet as an act of lawless violence, as a treacherous and unjustifiable surprise of harmless, defenceless, and unsuspecting men, by a demented and infuriated people. Surely it was not the Romans, approaching with a fully equipped fleet, ready for action, who could be considered unprepared, but the Tarentines, who, expecting no enemy, were assembled in the theatre, and whose ships, lying in the harbour, could neither be ready manned nor in a state fit for an engagement. If it had been the intention of the Romans to avoid a collision—if they really, as it is stated, sailed up to the port of Tarentum without any hostile intention, out of mere curiosity, and expecting a friendly reception, they had surely time enough to discover their error and to sail back before a single Tarentine vessel could get out of port or near them. The fact that they accepted and fought a battle shows that they were not the harmless strangers they are represented to have been. But, supposing that the action was fought in the heat of excitement, and without justification on the part of the Tarentines; is it likely that, instead of cooling down when the battle was over, they should have persisted in a course of folly and madness. We cannot imagine the democratic government of Tarentum to have been so utterly savage and brutal, so regardless of the laws of civilised warfare, as to think that they murdered in cold blood a number of innocent men, whom they had enticed into a snare and attacked contrary to the law of nations. They regarded the Romans and treated them as pirates, and they were fully justified in doing so. Not only was the treaty with Rome which excluded Roman ships of war from the Tarentine Gulf in full force; it was even at this time of the utmost importance to the Tarentines, since the Romans had shown their intention of establishing themselves in southern Italy, since they had founded maritime colonies on the coast of the Adriatic, and since they had occupied Thurii. If the Romans, as is highly probable, had made use of their fleet for the occupation of Thurii, and had since then established there a station for it, this was in itself a violation of the treaty with Tarentum, which must have galled the Tarentines all the more as they had not the courage or the means to wage war with Rome on that account.

Quite irrespectively, however, of any special treaty, the entrance of foreign ships of war into the Tarentine harbour was an open violation of the laws of war as then universally recognised. When, in the Peloponnesian war, the Athenian fleet, on its way to Syracuse, sailed along the coast of Italy, all the harbours and towns, and amongst them that of Tarentum, were closed against it. The people of Camarina declined to receive into their harbour more than one single Athenian war vessel. The Corcyraeans likewise would not consent to more than one Athenian or Lacedaemonian war vessel entering their harbour; if more approached, they were to be regarded as hostile. The Romans showed the same jealousy themselves, when, some years later, a Carthaginian fleet appeared before this very harbour of Tarentum. They warned the Carthaginians off, though the latter offered their co-operation to drive away the garrison of Pyrrhus, a service they were bound to render, according to the terms of alliance between Rome and Carthage. The Romans demanded even an explanation and satisfaction from Carthage? Is it probable that they were ignorant of the breach of law which they had committed by sending their fleet into the harbour of Tarentum?

The proceeding of the Romans, their unexpected appearance before Tarentum, and the decision and exasperation of the Tarentines, admit only of one explanation. There was, as we have said, in Tarentum a Roman party, consisting of the upper classes. This party had formed a connexion with Rome, and hoped, just as the same party had done in Thurii, to deliver up the town into the hands of the Romans. The democrats of Tarentum, in possession of the government, were therefore perfectly justified in frustrating the treasonable intentions of their opponents, who wished to deliver them into the hands of the Romans, and in treating them as men guilty of an act of hostility without a previous declaration of war. The subsequent events showed that they were right, that an agreement existed between the Romans and the aristocratic party, and that their object was to bring Tarentum into the power of the Romans.

However, whether the Tarentines were in the right or not, that was no longer of any consequence. The die was cast, and the war with Rome was now inevitable which Tarentum had, with unpardonable supineness, postponed from year to year, at a time when decisive action might have saved the Samnites from being overpowered. Now that their blood was roused, they resolved to repair by vigour and rapidity their past neglect, and to follow up their defensive proceeding against the Roman fleet by an attack on the Roman garrison in Thurii. The occupation of Thurii by the Romans had been a thorn in the flesh to the Tarentines. With the Thurinians, their near neighbours, they had fought out many an old grudge. The fertile territory of Metapontum, lying between the two towns, had been the apple of discord. The mutual jealousy of the two Greek towns had turned out to the advantage of the Lucanians, and had rendered it possible for them to injure and to weaken both. Now the Thurinians, to save themselves from the Lucanians, had called to their aid, not their countrymen, the Tarentines, but the Roman barbarians, and had given up the town to them.' This called for revenge, a revenge which was recommended also by policy. Thurii was attacked and taken by the Tarentines, probably with the aid of the fleet which had just discomfited the Roman squadron. The Roman garrison of Thurii capitulated, and was allowed to retire. The aristocrats were expelled,2 and the town plundered. A democratic government was established, as a matter of course.

Thus the war with Rome had in fact begun—a war which the Tarentines felt was more than they could carry on with their own unaided strength. The negotiations with Pyrrhus, which were begun probably much earlier, were now resumed. But it would take a considerable time before the conditions of the alliance could be agreed upon, and before Pyrrhus could complete his preparations for an expedition across the Ionian Sea. In the meantime the Romans might hope to anticipate Pyrrhus, and in one way or another to make themselves masters of Tarentum. Their first step was not a declaration of war, as might have been expected after what had taken place at Tarentum and Thurii, but an embassy, commissioned to prevent the breaking out of a war , and to re-establish the old friendly relations between Rome and Tarentum, which had been destroyed by that untoward event in the harbour of Tarentum. Rome demanded the release of the prisoners, and the delivering up of those who had instigated the attack on the fleet—that is, the leaders of the democratic party; moreover the restoration of the expelled Thurinians, and compensation for the damage done to that town. Had the Tarentines consented to these conditions, Thurii, as well as Tarentum, would have fallen at once into the power of the Romans. For, after the surrender of the heads of the democratic party, the Roman partisans would have come into power, and the consequence would have been that they would have put the town under the protection of the Romans, just as the democrats afterwards gave it over to Pyrrhus. Both parties tried their strength for some time. At length the democrats prevailed, and rejected the Roman conditions. Of these internal contests we find but slight indications in our authorities, but there is ground for supposing that the parties were not so violently opposed to one another in Tarentum as in other Greek towns, where contests of this sort generally ended with slaughter, confiscation, and the exile of the weaker party. The aristocratic party in Tarentum, which advocated a treaty with Rome, could not carry out their policy, but they must have been very near doing so, as appears from the course of events which followed.

The most extraordinary anecdotes are related about the reception of the Roman embassy in Tarentum. L. Postumius, who was at the head of it, was greeted, it is said, with scoffing and abuse by the assembled Tarentine people. His foreign costume and the mistakes in his broken Greek furnished some mountebanks with materials of ribaldry and insult, in which the assembled people joined, amidst shouts of merriment. At last a vulgar wretch is said to have thrown dirt on the white toga of the Roman, and this infamous treatment of the sacred person of an ambassador, instead of causing general indignation, was applauded as a merry trick. In a moment, when the highest interests of the state were being discussed, when every man knew that on the decision depended the safety of his property, his freedom, and his life, the whole people are said to have behaved like a dissolute company of revellers and rioters in the midst of a drunken debauch.

It is hardly necessary to say that these anecdotes do not belong to history. They carry on themselves the very stamp of falsehood. They owe their origin to the servile spirit of those Greek historians who made it their duty to flatter and extol the Romans. Nowhere is that spirit more apparent than in this part of the history of Rome. Roman virtue appears nowhere so exalted, by contrast with the degenerate Greeks, as in the numerous anecdotes with which the story of the war with Pyrrhus is filled. It moves our disgust to observe the sycophancy to which the Greek writers could stoop. And in order to celebrate Roman virtue, Greeks had to be represented as cowards, traitors, and fools, as gluttons .and drunkards. The Tarentines owe their bad reputation partly to the spirit which pervaded these stories. But that they were not such despicable, wretched, and low scoundrels as Plutarch, Appian, and Dio Cassius represent, appears with sufficient evidence from a sober examination of the recorded events.

The embassy returned to Rome without having accomplished its end. The dignity of the Roman people clearly demanded an immediate declaration of war, even if the disgraceful treatment of the embassy by the Tarentine mob had not taken place. But the senate hesitated for for several days in its decision. The situation of the republic was not difficult. After the victorious termination of the war with the Boii in Etruria, no more danger threatened on this side, even if the condition of Etruria and the precarious nature of all treaties of peace with the Gauls demanded the presence of a Roman army on the northern frontier. The Samnites were exhausted, and unable, if not unwilling, to renew the war; the Lucanians had only just been defeated. But even if these peoples had given cause for anxiety, they could not have prevented Rome from declaring war against Tarentum without further deliberation. The delay of the Romans must be attributed to other causes. They knew that a war with Tarentum, if it did not lead to a conquest of the town, would be of no use, and that of such a conquest there was not the slightest hope so long as the Tarentine fleet protected the entrance to the harbour. The Romans, utterly inexperienced in the art of besieging a large town, could accomplish nothing by force against a place like Tarentum. It could not be blockaded, isolated, and reduced to surrender by hunger. If an ingenious coup de main did not succeed, treason was the only means by which Tarentum could pass into their hands. By treason the Romans took Tarentum twice at a later period, but never by force of arms. Through an understanding with a friendly party inside the walls, Tarentum, like so many other towns, might perhaps be won. The attempt certainly had once failed, but the Romans were not the sort of people to be frightened from their object by one failure. They therefore decided to possess themselves of the town, if possible, by the help of their friends. The attempt by means of a fleet could not be repeated. An army was now sent by land into the Tarentine territory under the consul Q. Aemilius Barbula, commissioned to repeat the offers of peace made by Postumius, and at the same time to support these offers by suitable operations in the field. The Tarentines were to understand clearly what they risked if they continued to reject the treaty with Rome, and to look elsewhere for support. The consul scattered the Tarentine mercenaries and native troops, and laid waste the country, but spared the property and persons of the adherents of the aristocratic party. While the war was thus exercising its pressure on Tarentum, the Romans still offered peace on the previous terms. The democrats were in a difficult position. Some of their most influential men were absent on an embassy which had been sent to Pyrrhus. Their opponents gained ground day by day, and they succeeded at last in appointing Agis, the head of the Roman faction, as commander-in-chief. The moment had now arrived when the shrewd and persevering policy of the Romans was on the point of being crowned with success. As soon as Agis should have entered on his office, the Romans might hope to be admitted into the town. But in the very moment of success, their hopes were dashed to the ground. The precious prize, after which they had already stretched forth the hand, was wrested from them by one more rapid in the race. Kineas, the ambassador and confidential minister of King Pyrrhus, appeared in Tarentum with the promise of immediate support from his master. Agis was deposed from his office before he had even entered on it. The democratic party gained the upper hand, and from henceforth the fate of Tarentum was placed in the hands of the adventurous prince who boasted of having sprung from the race of Achilles, and believed himself destined to be the champion of the Greeks against the barbarians and the descendants of the Trojans.

 

CHAPTER XV.

THE EARLIER ADVENTURES OF PYRRHUS.

 

The first hostile collision of the Romans with the Greeks of the mother country obliges us to cast a glance at the condition of that country, the history of which from this time forwards is gradually bound up with that of Rome, and whose intellectual life was to fertilise the Roman, and to exercise a great and lasting influence on the course of civilisation in antiquity and in modern times.

When Rome emerged from the narrow limits of Latium, and, by the conquest of Samnium, became the first power in Italy, when she glowed in youthful vigour and was thirsting for action and dominion, Greece was already at the end of her political career. The brilliancy of the free commonwealths of the olden time had faded away before the rising sun of the Macedonian kingdom, which, after a wonderfully rapid and victorious course, set in the storm-clouds of a period as calamitous as the last ages of the republics, but less glorious. Alexander the Great, the deified conqueror, had, with the aid of the Greek nation, overthrown at one blow the decaying edifice of the Persian monarchy, and had formed a gigantic empire, whose unwieldy body was dissolved as soon as his spirit animated it no more. His example had fired his generals with a mad passion for conquest and dominion, and there arose everywhere, from the Adriatic Sea to India and from the Euxine to the Falls of the Nile, Greek kings in barbaric lands, all emulating the great Alexander, and striving not to fall short of their illustrious model either in virtues or in vices. Their ambition was directed to form states and to found dynasties. It was a time of gigantic struggles, wild passions, and rapid and astonishing changes. Nothing seemed to be enduring. Kingdoms rose and disappeared again in quick succession; they grew, expanded, fell to pieces, and were formed again in different combinations of the constituent parts, as the blind fortune of war directed, or the genius of the Macedonian generals shaped them.

In vain did the very best among Alexander’s successors strive against the inert opposition which Nature herself, in the extent, position, and character of the countries of the great Macedonian empire, brought to bear against every attempt to restore the ill-cemented monarchy of Alexander. Even the genius of Alexander himself would not have been able to keep together for a continuance the state which military success had formed for the moment. The empire was broken up in several fragments, the form and extent of which were chiefly determined by geographical conditions, by seas, mountains, and deserts—the natural boundaries, which can seldom be overstepped by human efforts for a long time. Egypt separated itself first from the great mass of countries with which it was connected only by a narrow ligament, and Egypt owed principally to its geographical seclusion a period of steady development under the shrewd Ptolemies. In the same manner Europe broke loose from the Asiatic parts of the monarchy. The original country of Macedonia shrunk gradually as a separate state almost within its old limits, and, after long and chequered wars, fell to the house of the chivalrous Demetrius Poliorcetes. Asia, with its unfavourable geographical formation and enormous extent, intersected and as it were rent asunder by deserts and mountain chains, inhabited in parts by warlike tribes whom neither the Persian kings nor Alexander had brought to real obedience,—Asia itself proved too large and unwieldy for one single state, and was broken up into several parts. Even the great empire of the Seleucid, extending from the mountains of Media to the Mediterranean Sea, could make no pretensions to represent the empire of Alexander. The eastern provinces of the Persian dominion as far as the Indus had never been properly conquered, and after Alexander’s death they soon fell again into the power of native princes and peoples. In Asia Minor there sprang up a number of independent states, such as Pontus, Bithynia, and Pergamus. The mountain tribes in the Taurus, and in the highlands of Armenia and Cappadocia, had always preserved their independence. The town republics of Greece and the islands, hut especially the trading city of Rhodes, which soon became a naval power of the first rank, were never reduced to such a state of slavish subjection and obedience to the new monarchs as the subdued nations of Asia, who were never accustomed to any but a despotic government. They were neither despoiled nor enslaved. They retained their own constitutions and a degree of political independence which appears hardly consistent with a state of complete subjection. The internal party struggles and the neighbourly feuds were limited, democracy, was mitigated ; and if the Greeks could have forgotten what they had once been, if they had understood the times and modestly resigned themselves not to rule and tyrannize over others, they would still have enjoyed a full measure of happiness and national glory. Greece was still the home of the arts and the nursery of civilisation. The Greeks were called by their high gifts to teach the nations around the Mediterranean to aspire to the higher enjoyments of humanity and to true freedom. They were chosen and fitted by nature to take the lead in spiritual and intellectual aspirations; and no barbarian power could have interfered with them or hindered them if they had only understood how to subdue their own evil passions. The Greeks themselves, not the chances of an adverse fate, are to blame that unfortunately the task which they seemed called to perform was performed but partially and imperfectly.

The north-western part of the country had taken hardly any share in the national development of the Hellenic nation. Aetolia and Akarnania were regarded in the Peloponnesian war as still barbarian countries. This was still more the case with the district north of the Ambracian Gulf, extending along the Ionian Sea to the Akrokeraunian promontory and inland as far as the mountain range of the Pindus, a country which, by way of contrast to the adjacent islands, was called Epirus, that is, the continent. Still the peoples who lived here—viz., the Molossians, Chaonians, Thresprotians, and others—were in no essential points different from the Greeks. They were, on the contrary, of a kindred race, and the difference between them and the Hellenes was chiefly this, that they bad remained behind in their development while the Hellenes had made rapid strides forward. In the older times there was therefore no great diversity between these peoples and the other Hellenic races. On the contrary, these districts were rather drawn to Hellas in the primeval period by community of religion and by national intercourse. Here was one of the most venerable and most ancient sanctuaries of the Greeks, the temple and the oracle of Zeus in Dodona. Here the impulse was given to the Dorian migration, which changed the aspect of Greece, for from this part came the invaders and conquerors of Thessaly. In these wild mountains and narrow valleys, cut off from intercourse with the other races, they had preserved, almost in its original purity, the simple manners of the heroic age. While everywhere else in Greece hereditary royalty had given way to the dominion either of the nobles or of the people, most of these small tribes of Epirus lived under hereditary princes, of whom sometimes one and sometimes another laid claim to a sort of supremacy over the rest. The Molossians, were governed by a king who traced his origin back to Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. The chief men of the people, assembled every year in the village of Passaron, the principal place of the country, brought to their king the customary presents of choice cattle, and renewed with him mutually the oath of fidelity.

The country was but ill fitted for agriculture. The mountain slopes gave pasture to numerous flocks, in which consisted the wealth of the people. The inhospitable rocky coast of the Ionian Sea was not inviting to Greek settlers. Trade, industry, the arts, which were developed in the busy life of Greek towns, found no home in these inclement highlands, where the inhabitants lived only in small open villages. The most fertile part of the country, which lay on the Ambracian Gulf, was politically isolated from the rest. The kings of the Molossians therefore, even if they were able to enforce the obedience of the numerous races of the interior, were not great potentates, and had but little prospect of being able to take a leading and honourable part in the national affairs of Greece.

Epirus emerged from this isolation at the time when the neighbouring country of Macedonia, which had long stood in a similar relation to Greece, began to take part in Grecian politics. Olympias, the wife of Philip of Macedonia, was the sister of Alexander, the king of the Molossians. In this way the royal houses of Macedonia and Epirus became related to one another, and this relationship could not fail to have a great influence on both countries. After Alexander of Epirus had fallen in the war with the Lucanians, his cousin Eakides, who succeeded him in the government, became involved in the troubles which broke out in Macedonia, after the death of Alexander the Great, respecting the succession to the throne. He supported the claims of his relations of the royal house of Philip, and in their cause lost his throne and his life. The wretch Kassander, who never carried on a war without treason and assassination, and who saw that he could secure for himself the Macedonian throne only by the extermination of the family of Alexander, had instigated in Epirus a rebellion against Eakides.

Pyrrhus, the son of Eakides, was at that time a child in the arms of his nurse. The rebels sought his life. A few faithful servants barely succeeded in saving the boy. Glaukias, king of the neighbouring Illyria, espoused his cause, protected him from the revenge of Kassander, and, when Pyrrhus was twelve years old, he conducted him back to Epirus and set him on the throne of his father. But a child was not equal to the task of governing such an unruly nation as the Epirots. After a few years Pyrrhus was again an exile. As a youth of seventeen he joined Demetrius Poliorcetes, who had married his sister Deidamia, and was just then preparing to leave Greece and go to Asia, to the assistance of his father Antigonus, who was threatened by the alliance of Kassander, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. Pyrrhus fought with courage by the side of his brother-in-law Demetrius in the great battle at Ipsos. But victory was on the side of his enemies. Pyrrhus was sent as a hostage to Egypt. Here, at the court of Ptolemy, fortune began at length to smile upon him. His handsome, manly person, his youthful courage and heroism, together with his royal bearing, won for him the favour of the royal ladies. The Queen Berenice selected him as the husband of her daughter Antigone, and Ptolemy was very glad to gain in the young prince a friend for himself who would be a useful ally as king of Epirus. With Egyptian money and troops Pyrrhus returned home, where he found his cousin Neoptolemus in possession of the government. The two princes agreed to govern in common. But the unavoidable consequences of such an unsatisfactory arrangement soon began to appear; they produced at first mutual suspicion, then fear of treachery, at last assassination. Neoptolemus was the victim, probably because Pyrrhus anticipated an act which the other was meditating. However, this murder casts a deep shadow on the character of Pyrrhus, who seems to have been on the whole remarkably free from' the vice then too common among the successors of Alexander, of shedding innocent blood.

Pyrrhus, at length in undisturbed possession of the throne of his fathers, made use of the continual disorders of the time to enlarge his kingdom. The two sons of Kassander, Antipater and Alexander, were fighting for the possession of Macedonia. Alexander purchased the cooperation of Pyrrhus at the price of the frontier districts of Paranaea and Tymphaea, and of the country on the Ambracian Gulf, which was most important for Epirus. Now Pyrrhus acted, on a smaller scale, like the great Alexander. He enlarged Ambracia, which became from this time the principal town of the country, and he established harbours and towns. Now, for the first time, Epirus had access to the sea, an easy communication with Greece, and a fertile district, the want of which had been felt before. He acquired also Corcyra by marriage with Lanassa, the daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse, who had taken this island in one of his predatory expeditions. He lost it again when Eanassa ran away from him and married Demetrius, who thereupon took possession of the island; but, with the help of the Tarentine fleet, Pyrrhus succeeded in regaining Corcyra, and thus the friendly relations were formed between Tarentum and Pyrrhus which were to lead to his future collision with the Romans.

Pyrrhus reigned six or seven years in peace, enjoying a remarkably long respite from war in the midst of a stormy period. He was then drawn again into the vortex of disputes about the possession of Macedonia, which Demetrius, his former friend and present enemy, had for the moment conquered. A league was formed by the other princes, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus, against Demetrius. Pyrrhus joined this league, and succeeded in driving Demetrius out of Macedonia. But he was not strong enough to keep the spoils for himself. He had to resign them to Lysimachus, and he retired into his own kingdom, where he again lived in peace and quiet for a number of years (from 286 to 280). If we reflect that Pyrrhus for the considerable time of from twelve to thirteen years occupied himself with the quiet government of his country, we shall hardly be able to agree with those who call him a mere military adventurer, without any higher or nobler object than fame and aggrandisement. He was indeed a soldier of the first rank, a true soldier, of personal lion-hearted courage—a courage which called forth admiration at a time surely not deficient in brave warriors. War had a peculiar charm for him, for he loved the din of battle like an Homeric champion, without thinking of the gain it might bring. He was at the same time acknowledged to be the first general of the school of Alexander, and we can easily believe the story related by Plutarch, that Hannibal considered him the greatest military genius. The Epirots, who were inspired with enthusiasm for him, called him ‘The Eagle,’ and followed his bold flight with the enthusiasm that leads to victory. But he was at the same time a great politician, with a talent for organisation, and an able ruler of his country and people. He created a civilised state in the wild highlands of Epirus, where formerly at least fourteen rude tribes had led a half predatory, half pastoral life. How well this state was knit together and how admirably it was organised may be gathered from this, that, during the absence of the king for more than five years in Italy and Sicily, his son Ptolemy, a boy of fifteen, could conduct the government at a time when nothing seemed constant, and when, in addition to old enemies and rivals, the Gauls threatened to invade the land. Ambracia owes it to him that it became the seat of Greek civilisation, so that it deserved to be named with the most celebrated Hellenic towns. He knew how to draw towards himself men of talent and character, and to employ them in his service. The Thessalian Kineas—the first, but surely not the only one in his council—was not a mere rhetorician and talker, but a statesman whose choice reflected credit and honour upon him. If his contemporaries compared Kineas to Demosthenes, they conferred on him the highest praise which a man could aspire to. His eloquence no doubt was not of that kind which roused or calmed the waves of a popular assembly, but it was powerful in the council of kings and in negotiations with ambassadors of foreign states. Pyrrhus said of him, with that modesty which is peculiar to conscious merit, that the speeches of Kineas had conquered for him more towns than his own sword. In one thing especially Kineas was worthy to be compared to Demosthenes—that he was a man of decided character. He was no obsequious servant; he spoke openly with his master, and devoted himself to him with his whole soul. That Pyrrhus knew how to gain the attachment and friendship of such a man shows that he possessed a spirit capable of subduing the hearts of men. It was not from calculating dissimulation, but from the impulse of his inmost nature, that he approached his inferiors' with affability, that he showed himself superior to derision and insult, that he forgave conquered enemies and recognised willingly true greatness in his opponents.

Qualities like these mark Pyrrhus as a man far above the mere rude soldier. This is still more apparent from what we are told of his literary pursuits. He spared time and had taste enough to write an account of his eventful life. He who in many things emulated the great Alexander had no doubt also a high appreciation of the glories of Greek art and poetry, and he felt a genuine enthusiasm for the people whose supremacy over the barbarians in the west he endeavoured to establish.

If we put all these features together and try to realise the picture of Pyrrhus, we shall find on comparison with what we know of Kassander, Ptolemy Keraunus, and most of their contemporaries, who distinguished themselves chiefly by their ungovernable cruelty and faithlessness, that Pyrrhus was not only one of the ablest generals and princes, but amiable also as a man, and worthy of our sympathy and respect. The boldness with which he ventured on an undertaking to which his own strength and that of his people were not equal cannot degrade him in our eyes. It is an easy matter nowadays to designate as a great mistake the expedition of Pyrrhus into Italy. We are wise because we know the result. But if we can realise the times and circumstances of the expedition, and place ourselves in the position of the king of Epirus, we shall probably judge differently. 

Pyrrhus had hitherto been attended by great political plans of and military success. He had created, one may say, a mighty empire. His Epirots were, as soldiers, quite equal to the Macedonians, and he thought himself not unworthy of being compared, as a general, to Alexander the Great. The foundation of a western Grecian empire in Italy and Sicily was no unreasonable project. If his predecessor, Alexander of Epirus, had almost succeeded in uniting the whole of Larger Greece and in subduing the Lucanians—an undertaking which was frustrated only by the hand of an assassin; if the tyrant Agathocles had conquered almost the whole island of Sicily with the limited forces of the town of Syracuse, and had nearly overthrown the proud and mighty Carthage, then certainly the king of the new enlarged and strengthened Epirus might hope to bring such an undertaking to a successful termination, assisted by the Greek towns who implored his help. His calculation was based on such a knowledge of facts as the history of the previous events in Italy had brought out. Rome was to him an unknown quantity which he did not rate sufficiently high. He looked upon the Romans simply as one of the many Italian nations, not more nor less powerful than the Lucanians or the Samnites. If we can believe the reports about the war (and some of them were most probably from the pen of Pyrrhus himself), he was both astonished and disappointed when he became acquainted with their military organisation, their state and their policy. Here was the great error in his calculation, an error for which he can hardly be held responsible; for there cannot be a doubt that an accurate knowledge of Rome at that time was nowhere to be met with among the Greeks. 

 

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WAR OF PYRRHUS IN ITALY AND SICILY.

 

The arrival of Kineas in Tarentum, as we have seen, altered at once the situation of affairs. The Roman party lost power and influence; the democrats received as their deliverers a force of 3,000 Epirotic soldiers under Milo, forming the first detachment of the army of Pyrrhus. All prospects of a peaceful settlement of the Roman difficulties were at an end, and a war was commenced in which the independence, perhaps the existence, of Tarentum was at stake. The consul Aemilius retired from the neighbourhood of Tarentum, to pass the winter in Apulia. His project of getting possession of the town by an agreement with the Roman party had failed, and he could now effect nothing more.

Pyrrhus himself soon landed on Italian soil. During the course of the year 281 he had completed his preparations. With Ptolemy and Antiochus, the rulers of Egypt and Syria, and with Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, he had concluded treaties, by which he not only provided for the security of his own hereditary kingdom of Epirus, but obtained promises of assistance for his campaign in Italy. His rivals were glad to see him embark on a distant expedition, because he was the most formidable of all the competitors for the possession of Macedonia. After a very dangerous passage, in which he lost many of his ships, Pyrrhus landed in Italy before the beginning of spring (280 BC), with an army of 20,000 heavy-armed soldiers, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, 3,000 horsemen, and twenty elephants. He acted at once as king and absolute ruler, and enforced the strictest military discipline. There was an end now to the democratic disorder in Tarentum. The assemblies of the people, the clubs, the theatre, the gymnasia were closed; all public amusements were at an end. Tarentum was changed into a camp and an arsenal, and the young men were pressed into military service. Sentinels guarded the gates, to prevent the escape of those who would withdraw themselves from the common cause. That there were such people is natural; they may have been especially the adherents of that party which had opposed the war with Rome. But that the whole people of Tarentum were effeminate and unaccustomed to military service, that they held back through cowardice and hoped to buy themselves off with money, is doubtless a gross exaggeration. The Tarentines knew very well that Pyrrhus would not come over as the hired leader of an army, but as the head of a coalition, and that all the resources of the allies must be at his disposal. They had made brilliant promises to him. It had been said that a hundred thousand Greeks and Italians awaited his arrival to rise in a body against the hated dominion of Rome. But of this general rising there was nothing to be seen. Neither the Samnites nor the Lucanians nor the Bruttians moved a hand. Pyrrhus had nothing but his own army and the reinforcements which he could obtain from Tarentum and perhaps from Thurii. The Romans had taken care that amongst their allies and subjects there should be no sympathy shown for Pyrrhus. All the towns which were in the least suspected received Roman garrisons, or were obliged to send hostages to Rome as pledges of their fidelity. Even from the neighbouring town of Praeneste, some citizens were brought to Rome, and forfeited their lives on account of the suspicion cast upon them, whether justly or unjustly, of wishing to betray the cause of Rome.

It was not long before a Roman army appeared in Lucania, under the command of the consul P. Valerius Laevinus, to commence hostilities. It appears the Romans had no more than Pyrrhus any just idea of the formidable struggle which lay before them. A single consular army, that is, two Roman legions, with an equal number of allies, altogether from twenty to twenty-five thousand men, was considered sufficient to take the field against the Greeks. Two legions under the consul T. Coruncanius, were left in Etruria, without any apparent necessity; 86 two more legions, commanded by a praetor, were in Samnium, where no serious opposition was in prospect so long as Pyrrhus did not assist the Samnites. If the whole of the Roman forces, which easily might have been raised to ten legions, had been directed against Pyrrhus, to crush him with one blow, the danger of a rising among the Italians would have been removed, and the war, if not terminated at once, would have been confined to the districts along the southern coast. But perhaps the Romans thought that they would have to encounter only the Tarentines, or an Alexander or Kleonymus, and therefore ventured with insufficient strength, though covered in the rear by the fortress of Venusia, far into the neighbourhood of the Tarentine Gulf.

Now, for the first time, Romans and Greeks faced each other in battle. But the latter were no longer the genuine Hellenes, not the heroic citizens of free states, whose sharpest weapons were enthusiasm and patriotism, but professional soldiers, subjects of a king, most of whom fought for pay, some against their will. Military discipline and warlike training had to supply the love of country. War had become for them a trade and an art, and now it was to be seen whether and how long a standing army of drilled soldiers could keep the field against a nation in arms.

The highest development of the Macedonian phalanx had been reached in the Macedonian tactics which had overthrown the Persian empire and kept Asia in subjection, even after Alexander’s death. Armed with long spears and arranged in deep masses, the Macedonian phalanx was immovable as a wall. The light-armed troops, the horsemen, and, since Alexander’s time, the elephants, waited behind this wall of men for the moment of attack, and in case of necessity took refuge behind them as in a fortified camp. Thus firmness was combined with agility, although it appears that the phalanx was rather unwieldy, and the light arms too weak to make an impression on solid troops.

The original order of a Roman army was, as it seems, similar to the phalanx; but the long unbroken line had been divided into smaller detachments since, and perhaps by Camillus. The long wars in the Samnite mountains naturally caused the Romans to retain and to perfect this organisation, which made their army more movable and pliable without preventing the separate bodies quickly combining and forming in one line. The legion now consisted of thirty companies (called ‘manipuli’) of the average strength of a hundred men, which were arranged in three lines of ten manipuli each, like the black squares on a chessboard. The manipuli of the first line consisted of the youngest troops, called ‘hastati;’ those of the second line, called ‘principes,’ were men in the full vigour of life ; those of the third, the ‘ triarii,’ formed a reserve of older soldiers, and were numerically only half as strong as the other two lines. The tactic order of the manipuli enabled the general to move the ‘principes’ forward into the intervals of the ‘ hastati,’ or to withdraw the ‘ hastati ’ back into the intervals of the ‘ principes,’ the ‘ triarii ’ being kept as a reserve, and only moving on when the younger troops were broken and forced to rally among the ranks of the veterans. The light troops were armed with javelins, and retired behind the solid mass of the manipuli as soon as , they had discharged their weapons in front of the line at the beginning of the combat. The cavalry, though considerably strengthened by the contingents of the allies, was the weak part of the Roman army, and seems never to have contributed much to victory.

The difference between the Roman army and that of Pyrrhus lay not alone in their organisation and tactics. There was another and a very important feature in which the Roman they differed. The Roman army was a militia; it consisted of men who were soldiers only for a time, and who for the most part longed to return to their families, and their peaceful avocations. The Epirotic army consisted, to a great extent, of professional soldiers, who made war the business of their lives. Such an army has a great advantage over an army like the Roman. It is likely to be victorious in the beginning. But it is difficult to keep up its numbers, especially at a distance from home, whereas a militia drawn from a numerous population can be renewed easily. If the war, therefore, is not decided quickly by a few great battles, a standing army, however admirable in quality, and however well led, will be overpowered in the end by the strength of a whole people in arms. This was shown now in the war with Pyrrhus, and on a larger scale in the gigantic struggle with Hannibal.

The Roman consul P. Valerius Laevinus had taken the field with a consular army of about 20,000 to 25,000 men. His line of retreat was covered by the strong fortress of Venusia, in the south of Samnium, and his advance against Tarentum was calculated to prevent Samnite and Lucanian troops from joining Pyrrhus. At the same time the Romans succeeded in throwing a legion, consisting of Campanian allies, into Rhegium, thus closing the Strait of Messina against Tarentine ships.

The hostile armies met at Heraclea, about midway on the coast between Thurii and Tarentum. We would willingly suppose that, of the detailed account of the battle which Plutarch gives, some parts may be traceable to the report of Pyrrhus himself, or at least to other contemporary testimony. It would be desirable to know with certainty whether, as it is related, Pyrrhus really wished to put off the engagement, whether Laevinus urged on a decision, whether the field of battle was fixed by accident or by choice, whether the decision was long pending, and how it was at length brought about. The Romans, it is said, forced by their cavalry the passage of the river Siris, and at first defeated the Thessalian horsemen. Pyrrhus, in close order of battle, awaited the attack of the Romans, who attempted seven times to break through the rigid wall of the Epirotic phalanx. He then advanced to the attack, and launched his admirable cavalry, with the elephants, on the exhausted Romans. This decided the battle. The terrific monsters, which the Romans now saw for the first time, filled them with fear and horror. In disorderly flight they returned to the Siris, which presented to the defeated army a fatal obstacle. If one of the elephants had not been wounded, and if this incident had not caused confusion among the pursuers, the slaughter would have been much greater than it was. The camp could not be defended. It fell into the hands of the victors. The remains of the army were probably collected in Venusia. Pyrrhus had won a great and decisive battle, to which strategic talent had no doubt contributed as much as the bravery of his army. We may presume that he intentionally enticed the Romans to cross the Siris, and forced them to an engagement on ground where an easy retreat was cut off. That he, by his own example, inspired the Epirots with heroism we may take for granted, but none of the anecdotes which are related about this and other details are worth repeating.

The losses on both sides were very considerable. If, as reported, 7,000 Romans were left on the field of battle and 2,000 were taken prisoners, there has seldom been a battle fought which, in proportion to the number of combatants, was more destructive. The Romans lost almost one-half of their army. The conquerors too suffered severely, if it is true that 4,000 were killed. This was a loss which must have been the more severely felt by Pyrrhus, because he carried on war in a foreign country, and could not easily replace the loss of his tried old warriors by new ones. We may readily believe the report that he was amazed when he saw with what courage the Romans fought and died, and that he was anxious to terminate the war as soon as possible.

Yet, whatever may have been his losses, Pyrrhus had cause to be satisfied with the result of his first battle on Italian soil. He had justified the confidence of the Italian Greeks, who had called him to their assistance. Every word of discontent was now silenced in Tarentum, and the resources of that town were at his disposal without reserve or grudge. The other Greek towns joined him. The Roman garrison in Locri was surprised, and the town was given over to Pyrrhus. The eighth Roman legion, consisting of Campanians, was, as we have seen, stationed in Rhegium. Perhaps they had good reason to apprehend a similar act of treason on the part of the Greek population of Rhegium. They anticipated the danger by massacring all the men of Rhegium who were capable of bearing arms; and, after the example of their countrymen, the Mamertines, in Messina, they took possession of the town for themselves. If, after committing these atrocities, they had not thrown off their allegiance, but had kept possession of Rhegium for Rome, they might have expected reward instead of punishment. But they may have thought that after the battle of Heraclea the power of Rome was gone down. They hoped to keep Rhegium for themselves, and, like the Mamertines in Messina, to be able to form an independent state. Thus Rhegium was lost to the Romans, and it seems they retained not a single town of Magna Graecia in their power.

The Bruttians, Lucanians, and Samnites had only waited for a signal to rise against Rome. They flocked now in great numbers to Pyrrhus. But it appears, from the following events, that they rendered hardly any real service. They may have been of some use as guerillas, and may have done much damage to the Romans; but if Pyrrhus tried to enrol them into his regular army he would not fail to find them untrustworthy n and lukewarm. They knew the indomitable perseverance of the Roman people, and the inconstancy of the Greeks. They did not feel any attachment to either. Romans as well as Greeks were their hereditary and natural enemies. The fear of Roman retaliation was, no doubt, much stronger than the hope of gain which the victory of Pyrrhus could hold out to them. It is therefore probable that the Samnite and Lucanian peoples did not formally resolve on a war against Rome, but that only volunteers joined Pyrrhus, and did so on their own account for the sake of plunder, without affecting materially by their co-operation the course of events.

Pyrrhus judged rightly of the state of things. He wished to make use of the fresh impression of his victory, and to conclude peace with Rome, in order to devote himself to the further execution of his plans regarding Sicily. Whilst slowly advancing, he sent Kineas to Rome, and offered peace on the most favourable terms. The freedom of the Italian Greeks was the first and most important of his conditions. Pyrrhus could not ask for less, and he might have been satisfied with this concession. He had not the slightest inducement to protect the Italians against Rome. It was doubtful whether the Greek towns, once assured of their safety from Roman aggression, would not rather have seen these peoples under the power of Rome than in a state of independence; for only the fear of Rome could, as in former times, prevent them from turning their arms against the Greeks. If, then, in the various meagre accounts of the negotiations for peace, it is said that Pyrrhus demanded for the Samnites, the Lucanians, the Bruttians, and Daunians the restoration of all that the Romans had taken from them, all that can be meant must be, at the outside, the withdrawal of the Roman colonists from Luceria and Venusia.

The embassy of Kineas to Rome was celebrated in antiquity and was a favourite topic for rhetorical declamation. It is said that he took with him beautiful presents for men and women, but offered them in vain. Rome, which in a later time the Numidian king Jugurtha declared to be ready to sell itself if only a purchaser could be found, was still, as is related, pure and virtuous. It was the time of Manius Curius, the conqueror of the Samnites, who, sitting by his own hearth and eating his simple peasant’s food, had proudly rejected the tempting presents of the Samnites; it was the time when C. Cornelius Rufinus was cast out of the senate by the censors because he had silver plate to the weight of ten pounds in his use. And was not Fabricius, the first soldier and statesman of his time, a pattern of simplicity and contentment, and superior to all temptation? What a contrast to the mercenary Greeks, whose greatest patriots and statesmen were publicly accused of bribery, and were compelled to defend themselves against such charges before the public tribunals! But Kineas was a shrewd, experienced negotiator. Where one scheme failed, he tried another. He discovered the point where the stout Romans were vulnerable. He flattered their pride. On the second day after his arrival he knew the names of all the senators and knights, and had something obliging to say to each. He visited the influential men in their houses, to get them secretly to favour his propositions. At length, when he appeared in the senate and made known his commission, when he brought offers of peace and friendship from the powerful king of Epirus, the redoubted warrior, the victor of Heraclea, the senate wavered in its decision; the deliberations lasted many days, and it appeared that the advice of those would prevail whose courage was damped and whose confidence was small. At that critical moment, the blind Appius Claudius, bowed down with age and infirmity, appeared, supported by his sons, in the solemn assembly. He had for some years retired from public life, but his haughty temper could not brook the idea that Rome should accept laws from a foreign conqueror. The Claudian pride, which animated him was the genuine Roman pride, the first national virtue. He summoned all his strength once more to raise his voice in that council which he had so often swayed by his wisdom, and had subdued by his indomitable will. As if from the grave, and as if inspired by the genius of a better time, his words, echoing in the ears of the breathless assembly, scared away all pusillanimous considerations and infused the spirit of resistance which animated the men of Rome when, from the height of the Capitol, they beheld the Gaulish conquerors rioting in the ruins of their town. The speech of Appius Claudius was a monument of a glorious time, the contemplation of which warmed and inspired succeeding generations. It is the first speech of the contents of which there has been preserved a substantially correct report. Later generations believed they possessed even the exact words, and Cicero speaks of it as of a literary composition of acknowledged authenticity. This view is hardly tenable; but it may be believed that the general purport and some of the arguments of the speech were faithfully preserved in the Claudian family books, and we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of listening to the faint echo which introduces us for the first time into the immediate presence of the most august assembly of the old world.

According to the tradition, Appius spoke something as follows: ‘Hitherto, assembled fathers, I used to mourn that I was deprived of the light of the eye; now, however, I should consider myself happy if, in addition to that, I had lost the sense of hearing, that I might not hear the disgraceful counsels which are here publicly proposed, to the shame of the Roman name. How are you changed from your former estate! Whither have your pride and your courage flown? You that boasted you would have opposed the great Alexander himself, if, in the period of your youth, he had dared to invade Italy; that he would have lost in battle against you the fame of the invincible, and would have found defeat or death in Italy, to the glory of the Roman name,—you now show that all this was nothing but vain boasting ; for you fear now the Chaonians and Molossians, who have always been the spoil of the Macedonians, and you tremble before Pyrrhus, who passed his life in the service of one of Alexander’s satellites. Thus one single misfortune has made you forget what you once were. And you are going to make him who is the author of your shame your friend, together with those who brought him over to Italy. What your fathers won by the sword, you will deliver up to the Lucanians and the Bruttians. What is this but making yourselves servants of the Macedonians? And some of you are not ashamed to call that peace which is really slavery!’

When Appius had spoken, the negotiations with Kineas were broken off. He was warned immediately to leave the town, and to inform his king that there could be no idea of peace and friendship between him and the Roman people until he had left the shores of Italy. That was the answer of a people conquered, but not broken in spirit, a people prepared to stand up for their honour and their greatness, even to the last man. The impression which the Romans made on Kineas is described as very powerful. It is said that he compared the town of Rome to a temple, and the senators to kings. Indeed, the dignity, the calmness, and firmness of the Roman people could not have failed to convince him that the Romans were barbarians of a peculiar type; although in refinement and polish, in art and the higher enjoyments of life below the Greeks, still as citizens and soldiers very superior to them. The day of Heraclea was far from damping their courage. A new army was formed in Rome, probably under Kineas’ own eyes, from volunteers, who, full of enthusiasm, poured thither from all parts to fill up the gaps. The consul T. Coruncanius was recalled from Etruria. The Latins and the Italian allies showed no inclination to desert Rome. The colonies, the military bulwarks of Roman power, stood firm. Nothing was tottering in the great edifice. The Romans heard without ’ fear the sounds of the approaching storm.

Pyrrhus had begun to move, probably at the same time at which he had sent Kineas to Rome. He directed his march through Lucania to Campania, and tried by a coup de main to seize Capua and Naples. Failing in this, he turned northwards, crossed the Volturnus and the Liris, occupied Fregellae, and reached, on the Latin road, Anagnia, in the country of the Hernicans. He nowhere met with a friendly reception. He was in an enemy’s country, and with every step that he made forwards the difficulties and the dangers of his situation increased. His army, which had been joined by Samnite and Lucanian hordes, was encumbered with spoils and numerous prisoners. It is doubtful whether he was in a condition to venture on a battle with Roman legions; a reverse at such a distance from Tarentum would have been ruin. It is nevertheless probable that not Pyrrhus but the Romans avoided a collision; for they knew that, even without a battle, the hostile army would be compelled to evacuate Latium. They confined themselves to harassing the enemy in the flank and rear. On all sides there appeared newly formed legions, so that Pyrrhus exclaimed in despair that he had to fight with the Hydra. Still the Romans ventured on no attack. The enemy marched with their spoils to Campania, where they passed the winter. Pyrrhus went thence to Tarentum.

After the termination of the campaign, which, in spite of the important events, had brought no decision, both sides made their preparations for the anticipated struggle of the ensuing year. The losses of the Romans in dead, wounded, and prisoners had been great. They now sent an embassy to Pyrrhus to treat with him respecting the exchange or ransom of the prisoners. Pyrrhus had not yet given up the hope of concluding peace, and he made use of the presence of the Roman ambassadors to make new proposals. His negotiations with Fabricius, the head of the embassy, supplied the inventors and collectors of anecdotes with favourite topics wherewith to eulogise in the Usual manner the civic virtues of the Romans. Pyrrhus, who, as a Greek, naturally thought every man had his price, offered Fabricius, it is said, a large sum of money, from mere friendship and respect, which, however, Fabricius, proud in his poverty, rejected; it is even said that Pyrrhus wished him to enter into his service. At last he put his presence of mind to the test by placing his largest elephant behind a curtain and then causing the curtain to be drawn, so that Fabricius found himself immediately under the monster’s trunk and tusks. But this test also the undaunted Roman stood: he only smiled when the elephant began to roar. While Roman writers amused themselves with such silly stories, they neglected to investigate and to report the truth about the result of the embassy. According to some of them, Pyrrhus released all the prisoners without ransom, in the hope of inducing the Romans, by his magnanimity, to make peace; according to another, he released only 200 prisoners; according to a third, he allowed the prisoners to celebrate the feast of Saturnalia among their relatives at home, on condition that they should return to their captivity. It is said that the Roman senate accepted this with thanks, and threatened those with death who should break their solemn promise.

Whatever may have been the result of the negotiations regarding the exchange of prisoners, Pyrrhus failed in his endeavours to conclude peace. It was now necessary to commence a new campaign. Pyrrhus did not, as in the first year, march towards Campania and Latium, the centre of the Roman dominions, but to Apulia, in the hope probably of conquering Venusia. Here a second great battle was fought near Asculum. Pyrrhus was again victorious. But the Romans were able to retire into their fortified camp, and lost fewer men than in the fatal battle of Heraclea. This sufficed for some of the mendacious annalists to represent the battle as indecisive, and even as a Roman victory; and as it happened that one of the Roman commanders was the consul Decius Mus, the story of the self-sacrifice of his father and grandfather was furbished up anew to suit the grandson. We shall not expect to find trustworthy detailed accounts of a battle which has been handled so freely by the successive historians, nor shall we endeavour to reconcile inconsistent narratives. The loss of the king is computed at 3,505 men by Hieronymus of Cardia, a contemporary writer. This loss cannot be supposed to have, weakened the victorious army to such an extent as to prevent the vigorous continuation of the war. The expression put into the mouth of Pyrrhus, ‘ Another such victory and I am lost,’ is one of those worthless anecdotes which occupy the place of historical record. Yet we hear nothing of any further operations after the battle at Asculum. What paralysed Pyrrhus, we cannot guess. Whether, as is reported, he was wounded at Asculum, and for that reason remained inactive in Tarentum; whether the affairs of Epirus, which was threatened just then by an invasion of the Gauls and by domestic troubles, occupied his attention; whether he was already tired of the whole war in Italy, and was making preparations for his Sicilian campaign, we know not. One thing is plain, that the vigour of his attack relaxed, while the resistance of the Romans was on the increase. The difficulties of a war in an enemy’s country far from all native resources were felt more and more. Such a war can, indeed, only be carried on successfully when the population of the country are either quite neutral or sympathize with the foreign invader. Where that is not the case, it is only by constant and large reinforcements from home or by the greatest talent in a commander that a speedy catastrophe can be averted. Thus Agathocles and Regulus in Africa, Alexander of Epirus, and even Hannibal in Italy failed, in spite of all their success in the beginning. That the war of Pyrrhus in Italy took the same course is a further proof of the lukewarm disposition of the Italian nations, of whom it has been falsely reported that they had formed with him a regular alliance against Rome.

One event had great influence on the progress of the war. At this time (about 279 BC), probably before the battle of Asculum, the Romans concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Carthage. Already, seventy years before (348), these two states had concluded a treaty of navigation, by which they might regulate their commercial intercourse on amicable terms. About half a century later (306 BC) they renewed this treaty. Now they were united by their common interests to oppose the ambitious plans of King Pyrrhus, which were directed no less against Sicily than against Italy. Carthage had for centuries possessed settlements on this island. It had subjugated the western part, which lay almost opposite Carthage; but the chequered wars with the Sicilian Greeks had hitherto led to no decided success. Now at length the time seemed to have arrived when they might possess themselves of the whole island. After the death of Agathocles (286 BC) the power of Syracuse rapidly declined. Torn by parties, confined to the defence of their walls, the Syracusans seemed doomed to the yoke of Carthage, and the conquest of Syracuse would easily have been followed by that of all Sicily. Pyrrhus was the last hope for the Greeks in Sicily, and he was moved not only by sympathy for his countrymen, but by his own ambition and the claims which, as husband of the daughter of Agathocles, he might in some measure put forward to the inheritance of the murdered tyrant. The greater therefore his interest and his desire to bring the war in Italy to an end, that he might go to the assistance of the hard-pressed Syracusans before it was too late, the more was it the interest of Carthage to detain him in Italy. Hence this alliance with Rome—an alliance by which Rome, after the defeat at Heraclea and after all the successes of Pyrrhus, was not a little encouraged to persevere in the war. The co-operation of the Carthaginian fleet, which was agreed upon, was of incalculable importance for Rome, though, on the other hand, it was hardly advisable to give to such a power as Carthage an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Italy. Of the distrust and the mutual jealousy of the allied powers we have a proof in the conditions of the treaty preserved by Polybius,1 which prescribe minutely how and when assistance should be rendered. The same is evident from a statement preserved by Justin and Valerius Maximus, to the effect that when a Carthaginian fleet made its appearance on the coast of Latium (probably while Pyrrhus was marching upon Rome), the Romans declined the proffered assistance. They were placed between two dangers, and it was not less in their interest to hasten the departure of Pyrrhus from Italy than it was in the interest of the Carthaginians to keep him there. We cannot be far wrong in supposing that the Roman politicians did all in their power to shift the scene of war from Italy to Sicily. We may therefore readily believe what Appian reports, that the Romans made an agreement with Pyrrhus, in consequence of which the prisoners of war were exchanged and an armistice concluded. The offensive and defensive alliance with Carthage did not allow the Romans to conclude a separate peace. But they were at liberty to conclude an armistice, whereby they obtained freedom to act against the allies of Pyrrhus in Italy, whilst he had the same freedom to act against the allies of Rome in Sicily. We do not know whether a condition of the armistice guaranteed Tarentum against hostilities on the part of Rome, but it seems highly probable that Pyrrhus did not sacrifice this town, the safety of which concerned his honour no less than his interest. Milo remained in Tarentum with an Epirotic garrison, the son of Pyrrhus, the youthful Alexander, was left in Locri. The other Greek towns in Italy were likewise secured by Epirotic garrisons, whilst the native troops of those towns probably accompanied Pyrrhus to Sicily.

In Sicily the arrival of Pyrrhus produced a rapid and complete change. Enthusiastically received by the Greeks as their saviour from the hands of the barbarians, he reconciled the hostile parties amongst them, organised the military force of the Greek cities, and in a short time swept the Carthaginians from the greater part of the island. They retired to their fortified places in the west, but even here they were not safe. The town of Eryx was stormed, Pyrrhus being the first man on the wall. Soon after Panormus and Ercte were taken. Lilybaeum alone resisted, being protected by its favourable situation and by a Carthaginian fleet. In the north-east of the island the Mamertines were blockaded in Messina; and all Sicily therefore, with the exception of these two towns, was now in the hands of Pyrrhus. The plan of founding a great Greek empire in the west seemed to be approaching realisation. The lord of Ambracia, Tarentum, and Syracuse, the conqueror of the Romans and Carthaginians, seemed to be entitled to hope that, after such results, he would succeed in completing his work and in establishing a lasting dominion.

But so near the accomplishment of his plans Pyrrhus saw all his hopes dashed to the ground, and was deprived of all the fruits of his victories and labours. The flood which had borne him along began to ebb, and soon he found himself carried back to the point from which he had started. Carthage, unlike Rome, had lost courage and self-confidence, and had offered Pyrrhus peace and friendship, ready to give up to him the whole of Sicily with the sole exception of Lilybaeum. This offer Pyrrhus refused. He and his friends in Sicily knew that, as long as the Carthaginians had possession of one stronghold in Sicily, they would watch the first favourable opportunity to reconquer from this point all that they had lost. The war therefore continued. Pyrrhus contemplated not only the conquest of Lilybaeum but even a landing in Africa, hoping to realise the bold plan of his father-in-law Agathocles, who had all but succeeded in overthrowing the dominion of Carthage. But, in spite of all his efforts, he failed even to take Lilybaeum. Having continued for two mouths his siege operations, he was obliged to give np the attempt of taking the town by force. His great triumphs over the Carthaginians, and the universal enthusiasm of the Greeks, were now succeeded by discouragement, discontent, discord, and mutual complaints.

The strict military discipline and the inforcement of unconditional obedience, which, under such circumstances, were more necessary than ever, appeared an unbearable burthen to the Sicilian Greeks, when the fitting out of a fleet for the African expedition demanded new efforts. Pyrrhus was inexorably severe, perhaps even cruel, though cruelty was not generally in his nature. At any rate he was accused of it by those who refused to submit to his commands. Fickle, inconstant, and faithless as the Greeks always were,1 they now opened negotiations with the Mamertines of Messina, and even with the Carthaginians. The newly created kingdom of Sicily passed away like a shadow. The Carthaginian army issued out of Lilybaeum to overrun the island. Once more the king of Epirus, summoning all his strength, encountered them and drove them back into their strongholds, after inflicting a bloody defeat. Nevertheless he seemed tired and dispirited. The war in Sicily had lost its charm for him when, at the end of almost three years, he found that he had not been able to gain even the attachment, fidelity, and ready cooperation of the Greeks. He saw that personal passions and the interests of parties were dearer to them than all national aspirations; he therefore turned his back upon them as soon as he found a pretext for leaving the island.

The situation of his allies in Italy was sufficiently alarming to urge him to return. During the three years of his Sicilian expedition the Romans had not only recovered from the great sufferings of the disastrous war, but they had even begun to reconquer the ground that they had lost. The attempt, it is true, to punish the Samnites for the share they had taken in the war ended in their humiliation and severe loss; for the consuls of the year 277, C. Junius Brutus and P. Cornelius Rus, ravaging Samnium with fire and sword, and venturing too far among the mountains, had been attacked by the mountaineers and totally defeated. But, in spite of this reverse, the superiority of the Romans became more and more manifest. They gradually regained possession of the Greek towns which had been lost in the course of the war. Heraclea surrendered on obtaining favourable conditions. This example was followed by others. In every town a Roman party was astir, which demanded an alliance with Rome, as they had done even before the war.

Whilst this party in the town of Croton was calling in the Romans, their opponents sent to Tarentum to ask Milo for aid. The Epirot general forthwith dispatched Nikomachus to Croton with a body of troops, who anticipated the Roman consul Rufinus in the occupation of the town, and fell upon him, inflicting a serious loss, when he appeared before the gates in the hope of being received within the walls. Rufinus, who had no prospect of taking Croton by force, forthwith marched in the direction of Locri, and contrived to make Nikomachus believe, by some pretended deserters, that he had friends in Locri who were about to surrender the town to him. Nikomachus hastened again to anticipate him, and reached Locri by a shorter way, perhaps by sea. Thus Croton was again deprived the greater part of its garrison. Rufinus immediately returned, and succeeded in surprising the town under cover of a mist. Soon after the Epirot garrison of Locri was set upon and massacred by the inhabitants, and the town surrendered to the Romans. Thus the whole coast, with the exception of Tarentum and Rhegium, was again in Roman hands. Both parties had arrived at the same point which they had occupied in the beginning of the war.

This was the condition of affairs in Italy when Pyrrhus, oi listening to the entreaties of his allies, sailed, probably in in Italy, the autumn of 276 B.C., from the port of Syracuse. The Carthaginians lay in wait for him, and in a smart naval engagement he lost a number of his ships. Having landed on the southern extremity of Italy, he was obliged to fight his way through the territory of Rhegium, where the Mamertines of Messina and the Campanian mutineers, now masters of Rhegium, endeavoured to intercept him. If the latter thought by this act to gain the favour and pardon of Rome, they were grievously mistaken, for Rome could not overlook or compromise the faithlessness of her allies and the mutiny of her soldiers, and she was even now meditating what punishment she should inflict on them. Pyrrhus forced his way, with his usual good fortune and his accustomed bravery; he succeeded even, on his farther march to Tarentum, in regaining possession of the Greek towns on the coast. In Locri severe punishment was inflicted on those who had surprised the Epirotic garrison and delivered the town to the Romans. For the third time this unhappy town changed its masters, and, as usual, the change was accompanied by an internal revolution. It is impossible to imagine a more lamentable condition than that of these Greek towns, once so flourishing and now doomed to destruction. Torn by factions which had sold themselves to the belligerent foreign powers, they were crushed in the violent, collision which they had been instrumental in bringing about. Their wealth, their splendour, their large population were gone. In their helplessness they could not even protect themselves from the wild hordes of Campanian filibusters. Caulonia and Croton were laid waste and sacked by them. Croton, once swarming with a numerous population, dwindled now to the dimensions of a village, which, in a corner of the wide space encircled by the ancient walls, prolonged a precarious existence among the mouldering ruins of her former grandeur. Whatever treasures, the remains of forfeited wealth, were found in these towns were carried off either by the Romans or by the Epirots. Pyrrhus, on this occasion, plundered even the sacred treasure in the temple of Persephone at Locri, and, it is related, was only induced to restore the spoils when his ships were driven back into the harbour by a storm.

After an absence of almost three years, Pyrrhus appeared again in Tarentum at the head of an army which, in point of numbers, was equal to that with which he had commenced the war against Rome, five years before. But the quality of his troops was different. In the place of his devoted Epirotic veterans, whose bones were now bleaching on the battlefields of Italy and Sicily, his ranks were filled with foreign mercenaries, or men pressed into his service, both Greeks and barbarians. Many of his best officers had fallen in battle. A different spirit animated the army and the king. The enthusiasm and the hope of victory had given place to the depression of spirits which arises from failure and shattered hopes. The actions of the king betrayed a want of firmness and decision ; he was more inclined to severity, contrary to his original disposition. His good spirit seemed to have forsaken him. Kineas was no longer living; it seems that he had died in Sicily. A second friend and adviser like him Pyrrhus found no more.

The return of the king of Epirus produced a deep impression in Rome. Here also the enthusiasm had vanished with which, after the battle of Heraclea, the young men that occasion had vied with each other in enrolling themselves in the newly-raised legions. Instead of zeal and eagerness for the service of the country, a general apathy was manifested. It was necessary for the authorities to resort to the most rigorous measures and punishments, in order to compel the reluctant to military service. The general terror increased, as usual, the superstition of the people, and made them see the anger of the gods, in extraordinary phenomena. The clay statue of Jupiter on the roof of the Capitoline temple was struck by lightning and its head hurled into the Tiber. We may be sure that days of supplication and prayer were appointed to calm the terrified spirits of the people, and to implore the favour of the gods. Meanwhile the armies took the field for the last decisive campaign. Whilst one consular army, under L. Cornelius Lentulus, marched into Lucania, where in all probability it had to encounter only some irregular troops of Samnites and Lucanians, the other army, under Manius Curius, suddenly fell in, near Beneventum, with the main body of the enemy, under the personal command of the king. It seemed advisable to avoid an engagement, until the consul Lentulns could approach with his army, for the support of Curius. The Romans therefore occupied a fortified position on the hills. Pyrrhus, being anxious to anticipate the arrival of the second Roman army, ventured, with his unwieldy phalanx and his untrustworthy troops, to storm the position of the Romans. The circumstances were all unfavourable to Pyrrhus. Neither the phalanx, nor his cavalry, nor his elephants could act with advantage on the uneven ground. A total repulse was inevitable. The elephants were thrown into disorder on being received by the Romans with burning projectiles. Two of them were killed, four were taken, to be led in procession in the triumph which Manius Curius celebrated for this glorious victory.

The army of Pyrrhus was shattered to pieces. He had no prospect now of being able to continue the war any longer. Italy offered him no resources. Neither the Samnites, nor the Lucanians, nor the Italian Greeks appear to have been able or disposed to make further efforts. Pyrrhus applied in vain for assistance to Macedonia, Syria, or Egypt. Deserted on all sides, maligned and threatened, he had no choice but to give up the unequal contest, which nothing but his eminent military talent had enabled him to carry on with credit for five years. He took leave with a heavy heart of the land which he had come to deliver from the barbarians, and where he had hoped to establish a great kingdom. Yet he did not abandon all his plans at once. To give up Tarentum would have been equivalent to surrendering if to the Romans. He therefore left Milo and his son Helenus in Tarentum with a strong garrison, and embarked with an army of 8,000 foot and 600 horse to return to his own country; not, however, there to repose’ in peace, but to plunge into new ventures one after another, to stretch out his hands for the throne of Macedonia, and at last to fall in the wild uproar of battle. He fought for a while very successfully against Antigonus Gonatas in Macedonia. Then he was induced to make an expedition into Peloponnesus ; here he failed in a desperate attack on Sparta, and when thereupon he turned against Argos, to wrest it from Antigonus, he was hit by a tile thrown from a roof by a woman. Lying on the ground, wounded and helpless, he was recognised by a wretch and murdered. Alkyoneus, the son of Antigonus, hastened in triumph to lay his head at his father’s feet, but the king of Macedonia, when he saw the features of his enemy, hid his face and reproved the barbarity of the young man. He was overcome by the sudden change of fortune, and remembered sorrowfully his father Demetrius and his grandfather Antigonus, both of whom fortune had raised high to let them fall low. He caused the remains of Pyrrhus to be honourably buried, and treated his son Helenus as a friend and protector.

The life of Pyrrhus is a true picture of the time, a time Hellenic full of the grandest ventures, of violent passions and unsatisfied ambition. The successors of Alexander the Great were not worse than other conquerors. If their deeds had not been described by tedious historians, but sung by inspired poets, they would stand before our eyes in the brilliant light of Homeric heroes. It was not a happy period for the welfare of the peoples. They were the helpless booty for which the ambitious princes fought. Their wealth, their culture, their morals deteriorated. The Hellenic civilisation, as it spread eastward into Asia, was adulterated by foreign elements, and in the west it was gradually crushed out by barbarism. A revolution took place in the principles which regulated social and political order. The small civic communities, in which the Hellenic civilisation had sprung up and flourished, were absorbed by larger states. In the east there were formed the various monarchies of Syria and Asia Minor, where the Greek spirit of personal freedom received a strong admixture of oriental despotism. In the west was growing up the empire of the Homan republic, where fixed rules equally repressed personal greatness and personal government. What military and political organisation was able to accomplish in a contest with the greatest personal qualities had been shown in the course of the first collision between Homans and Greeks. The next three centuries completed the triumph of the Homan arms and of Homan policy, and at the same time the triumph of the Greek mind.

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CONQUEST OF ITALY.

 

The decisive battle of Beneventum compelled Pyrrhus to evacuate Italy, and removed all the apprehensions which the Romans had entertained after the first and the second Extension landing of Pyrrhus. Their perseverance, backed by the of Roman solidity of their power, had prevailed. They were now enabled to gather at leisure the fruits of their hard-won victory, conscious of their superior strength and perfectly sure of the result. The Sabellian nations were punished for the hostile disposition which they had manifested by supporting Pyrrhus. They were humbled by several defeats, and a new curb was applied to keep them in subjection. In the midst of Samnium, where the great victory had been gained over Pyrrhus, a colony was established in 268 BC, and the name of the town, for a good omen, changed from Maleventum into Beneventum. Even before this period, in 273, the maritime colony of Pastum was established on the site of the Greek town of Posidonia, which had been destroyed by the Bruttians; Cosa, situated on the western coast, and sometime after the important town of Ariminum, on the Adriatic, received a garrison of colonists for the protection of the country conquered from the Senonian Gauls. It became more and more evident that the Romans aspired to dominion over the coasts and seas, and this tendency was the natural result of the preceding contests, which had drawn the Homans into the vicinity of the Adriatic, the Tarentine and Sicilian waters. It was not possible for Rome to remain entirely a continental power. The weakness of the Roman fleet had become apparent in the war with Tarentum. An alliance with Carthage had become necessary for the purpose of securing the co-operation of the Carthaginian fleet. If Rome wished to deliver herself from this dependence, and to secure the possession of the newly-conquered maritime towns, it was necessary that she should aspire to naval power and to an equality with the great maritime nations of the Mediterranean. The first steps in this direction were now taken by the foundation of the three maritime colonies.

But the key-stones of the edified were still wanting. The dominion of Rome over the continent of Italy could not be considered complete or secure so long as Tarentum and Rhegium were in hostile hands. How important was the possession of a single fortified maritime town had just been shown in Sicily, where the Carthaginians had lost every place except Lilybaeum, and were enabled by the secure footing which Lilybaeum gave them rapidly to reconquer almost the whole island. In a similar manner, Pyrrhus, or some other enemy of Rome, might at any time issue from Tarentum to attack the Homan dominions, and the days of Heraclea and Asculum might be repeated. The Romans, therefore, in the year 272, made great efforts to gain possession of Tarentum. Again they acted in concert with their own party inside the town, for, just as in the beginning of the war, they felt unable to take by a regular siege a maritime town which they could not blockade at the same time on the sea side. The Homan party in Tarentum made the attempt to overpower the opposite party and the Epirotic garrison. But their attempt failed. They were obliged to leave the town and occupy one of the neighbouring places, whence they continued their hostilities against the garrison of Tarentum. A Roman army, under the consul Papirius, joined them and began to blockade the town on the land side. At the same time a Carthaginian fleet appeared before the harbour, ready to assist the opposite party. Like two wild animals ready to pounce upon their prey and to snatch it from each other, the Romans and the Carthaginians each tried to get possession of Tarentum. Rome had sought the Carthaginian alliance in order to rid herself of Pyrrhus with Carthaginian aid. But she was determined not to allow the Carthaginians to obtain a footing in Italy as they had done in Sicily. They looked upon the allied fleet before Tarentum as if it were the fleet of a rival or an enemy, and they were right in doing so, and in supposing that its object was not to take Tarentum and then to hand it over to them. It is very curious that the state of things was almost precisely the same as that which had existed in 282 BC. The Romans had hopes of securing the possession of Tarentum by the co-operation of their party within the town, but a foreign power was on the point of anticipating them. If on this as on the previous occasion, the decision had been in the hands of the democrats of Tarentum, the town would have been surrendered to the Carthaginians; for the leaders of the Tarentine people had to expect the most severe retribution from the Romans if they got possession of the place. But the democrats were no longer masters of the situation. Milo, with his Epirotic garrison, held the castle and had unlimited sway. He cared little for the wishes of the one political party or the other. As soon as he had lost all hope of keeping the town intrusted to him for his own sovereign, the question for him was, which of his enemies would offer him the most favourable conditions. Whilst Pyrrhus was alive, a second Italian expedition was at least possible. Now the news arrived of his death, and it spread among his faithful soldiers discouragement and fear. Milo, despairing of relief, could not do better than preserve to the son of his sovereign an army which was now useless in Italy. The Romans showed themselves ready to offer. the most acceptable terins. They allowed the garrison to march out of Tarentum, carrying with them their arms and all their booty. Probably the leaders of the democratic party left the town at the same time, as they had to dread the revenge of the Romans and of their political antagonists, who now returned to power. The town and citadel of Tarentum were given up to the Romans. The Carthaginians, after the failure of their plan to get possession of the town, sailed back to Carthage, and when the Romans complained of the appearance of their fleet before Tarentum, the Carthaginian senate cast the responsibility on the commander of the fleet, declaring that he had had no authority to approach so near the town Tarentum, deprived of her arms, her ships, and her walls, had from henceforth a Roman garrison in the citadel, and was treated with forbearance in consideration of the services of the aristocratic party. It is true the prosperity of Tarentum was gone for ever. Its trade was more and more drawn to the new port of Brundusium. But, like the other Greek towns under Roman dominion, Tarentum retained a shadow of its former republican freedom in its local self-government.

After the fall of Tarentum, the long-delayed retribution overtook at last the freebooters of Rhegium. Since the Roman legion consisting of Campanian allies had treacherously seized the unhappy town, and had cast aside the allegiance to Rome, along with all regard to decency and humanity, Rhegium had become simply a robber state. The mutineers of Rhegium, joined by their kinsmen of Messina, who were guilty of a similar crime, lived by surprising and plundering their neighbours. They had at last attacked Croton, cut down the Roman garrison, and sacked and devastated the city. About this time Hiero had gained supreme power over Syracuse. He supported the Romans with troops and materials of war, to enable them to carry on the siege of Rhegium with greater energy. It was a severe struggle, for the mutineers were well aware what punishment was in store for them if they fell into the hands of the Romans. The Carthaginians might have assisted them by sea, but this would have been in open violation of their treaty with Rome, which they did not venture upon after having failed to get possession of the far more important city of Tarentum and after they had solemnly declared they had not entertained any ambitious views with regard to the latter city. The siege of Rhegium was therefore carried on without interruption. The town was at last taken by storm. The mutineers who did not fall sword in hand were immediately executed. Only three hundred of them, probably the remnants of the Campanian legion, were sent to Rome in chains, and scourged and beheaded in the market-place. Their bodies were cast to the dogs. Thus Rome avenged her offended majesty, and punished the violation of the military oath, to give a warning to those of her subjects who might possibly entertain similar projects.

The deserted Rhegium was restored to the old inhabitants that still survived. These collected gradually from all sides. The favourable position of the town no doubt attracted others. Rhegium revived once more. It obtained its local independence and favourable terms of union with Rome, and it appears that the Greek language and Greek customs survived for some centuries in this locality.

The struggle was now ended. Without meeting more than isolated resistance, Rome now ruled supreme over the whole of Italy from Ariminum to the Sicilian Straits. The Etruscans, nominally free and independent, were protected by Rome alone from the Gauls, yet in reality they were the subjects of the Roman republic. Roman influence was supreme in the internal government of the Etruscan cities. It supported the aristocratic government, and wherever it was threatened, as for example in Volsinii, 265 BC, it interfered with force of arms and ruled the country by means of these aristocracies, who were in reality the servants and creatures of Rome. The Sabellian nations who had been subjected to the Roman power during the last two generations lost their international independence. In their foreign policy they were henceforth entirely dependent on Rome : Rome’s friends and enemies were theirs. In so far therefore they had lost their original sovereignty. They were no longer their own masters, and yet they entered the Roman state neither as slaves nor as tributary subjects. They all of them retained their local self-government, their hereditary laws and manners; they became members of a great confederation which protected them, gave them peace and tranquillity, and asked of them only such services as the military security of the new empire required. The members of the confederation were bound, in fixed proportions, to send their contingents to the Roman army. Nor was their strength taxed too highly; Rome demanded from the aggregate of her allies hardly more troops than were furnished by her own citizens. Besides arming and paying these men, the allies had no burdens to bear. They paid no tribute. Though many of them suffered by the confiscation of part of their domain land, as for instance the Bruttians, from whom half of the forest of Sila was taken, and those in whose territory Roman colonies were established, yet the Roman republic did not systematically plunder them. It seems not improbable that, in all material respects, they were much better off under Roman rule than in the time of their independence, when the everlasting small wars made the accumulation of wealth impossible. The Greek towns on the coast were in a similar dependence on Rome. The terms on which they were admitted into the confederation differed in detail, and were more favourable in some cases, those of Naples and Heraclea for instance, than in others. But on the whole they also retained their self-government, chap. their jurisdiction, language, and customs. Their military services were regulated and were confined, it seems, to the furnishing and arming of ships. The period of their national splendour as Greek cities was over, but they now began to exercise a powerful influence on Borne and Italy as the chosen missionaries of Hellenic culture. The previous intercourse between Romans and Greeks had been isolated and had produced but trifling results. The antiquity of this intercourse has been greatly exaggerated by both Greek and Latin writers, both of whom took a pride in believing that Romans and Greeks were of a kindred race and had from very ancient times known each other. In truth, however, a regular intercourse between the two nations began at the present period, and the effects of it were soon visible in the religion, customs, and literature of Rome.

For the purpose of binding together their conquests and Latin of penetrating them with the spirit of Roman citizens, the Romans made use of their own peculiar system of colonisation. Since the subjection of Latium, they had begun more and more to send out, not colonies of Roman citizens, but colonies of Latins, who spread over the whole of Italy the same sort of confederation which had existed .originally between Rome and Latium, and were the connecting link between the ruling city and the various conquered nations. The Latin colonies consisted partly of Latins and partly of Roman citizens, who sacrificed their higher privileges as Romans for the material advantages which were offered to them in the colonies, and which consisted chiefly in assignments of land. They retained the private rights of Romans, and could under certain conditions acquire the full franchise. But their public rights they exercised in their new homes, which, as copies of the Roman community, had each a senate, a popular assembly, and magistrates. By their descent, their language, and the difficulty of their position in a conquered country and in the midst of a hostile population whose lands they occupied, they were of course compelled to cling closely to Rome. They were in some sense members of the ruling people, and in another sense they were, with regard to Rome, in a position similar to that of the allied Sabellian and Greek towns. The Latins and the allies furnished for every Roman legion an equal number of foot, a double or treble number of horse. It was a natural consequence that this political community, coupled with the active intercourse between the colonies and the other towns, produced a uniformity of sentiment and interests, which led to a gradual assimilation of these various kinds of Roman subjects, and to a most intimate union of them with one another and with Rome.

The most important Latin colonies which were established since the organisation of Latium in 336 BC till the commencement of the first Punic war 264 BC, were Fregellae, Interamna, Sora, in the country of the Volscians, Cales, Suessa Aurunca, Cosa in Campania, Luceria and Venusia in Apulia, Alba in the country of the Marsians, Narnia in Umbria, Carseoli in the country of the Aequians, Saticula, Aesernia, and Beneventum in Samnium, Hatria, Castrum Novum and Firmum in Picenum, Paestum in Lu-cania, Ariminum in the country of the Gauls. If we bear in mind that to some of these places 4,000, 6,000, nay to one 20,000, colonists were sent, we shall be able to appreciate the importance of these numerous foundations within a comparatively short time. By this wholesale emigration of Latin citizens Italy was Romanized. The kindred nations of Sabellian descent easily and quickly adopted Roman customs, and exchanged their local dialects for the Latin tongue. The old peculiarities disappeared more and more in the uniformity of Roman customs and institutions which now spread over the whole peninsula. The time was not far distant when an Ennius, born and grown up in Apulia, should sing in Latin hexameters the great exploits of the Roman people. The confederate nations, as well those of foreign origin as also the Latins, formed as it were the outer circle or shell of the Roman empire. The kernel consisted of the body of genuine Roman citizens. The double division of the state, the contrast between patricians and plebeians, was repeated on a larger scale, and was spread over the whole of Italy when it had ceased in Rome itself to be of any political importance. The Roman citizens, whether patricians or plebeians, now succeeded to the exclusive possession of political rights from which the Latins and the other allies were excluded. This exclusion was inevitable so long as the newly-formed empire retained the old constitution, which was adapted only for the government of a small territory or a single town. It was physically impossible to assemble on the Forum the population of the whole of Italy. A line had to be drawn for the purpose, of separating the sovereign people of Rome from those who were members of the state only as allies. This line included the most southern part of Etruria, almost the whole of Latium, and parts of the land of the Volscians. It was, in truth, too large already, and placed the representation of the more distant parts in the hands of a few who had the means and the leisure to devote themselves to the political life of the capital. An equal division of civil rights and duties, even if it had been contemplated, would have been impossible, unless the town constitution of the republic had been changed into a representative constitution or into a monarchy. The solution of the difficulty by the representative system seemed to be very obvious; for, if from the senates of the separate towns deputies had been sent to the Roman senate, a representative body would have been formed. But the essence of republican institutions appeared to the ancients to consist in a direct participation of every member of the community in the exercise of sovereign power. It was therefore impossible to do away with the public assemblies of the Roman people for the purposes of legislation, and the election of magistrates and for the highest judicial functions, and it was equally impossible to swell the people of Rome by the aggregate of all the peoples of Italy.

Nor was this by any means intended, if it had been possible. The city of Rome and the men who constituted the Roman tribes had acquired by force of arms the dominion over Italy, and they had no intention of sharing it with others. Rome remained not merely the head, but the sovereign head, of the confederation. The Roman senate alone conducted the foreign policy; the magistrates elected in the Roman Forum or in the Campus Martius administered the government, raised the revenue, superintended the census and the distribution of the military burdens. The Roman people claimed for itself the right of legislating for the whole state, a right to which all local rights and privileges were expected to bend. The conduct of the common affairs of the confederation was centred in Rome, and not liable to be influenced by the special interests, wishes, or opposition of the allies. It was determined by one interest alone, the interest of Rome, and to this interest the wishes and claims of the allies were subordinated without hesitation. Such a government would have been an unbearable tyranny if the Romans had been addicted to the modern vice of governing too much, or if they had cruelly or recklessly drained the resources of their allies for their own benefit. They did neither the one nor the other. They demanded no services but military aid in war, and they left the regulation of all internal affairs to local self-government. The systematic spoliation which the proconsuls and the farmers of the public revenue introduced at a later period was yet unknown. For a long time the Italians did not feel their inferiority to the Roman citizens to be an injustice and a hardship. For the present they were firmly attached to Rome, and this attachment is a proof that the Roman dominion was felt to be a benefit.

The body of Roman citizens consisted of three classes. First, those who inhabited Rome itself or the country tribes and who constituted the governing people; secondly, those citizens who had emigrated into Roman (not Latin) colonies (coloniae civium Romanorym), who retained all their civil rights, hut, on account of their absence from Rome, were unable to exercise them. Thirdly, those citizens who possessed only the private rights and not the public franchise (cives sine suffragio), and were in reality subjects waiting for the time to be admitted to all the privileges of Roman citizens. The towns on which this lesser privilege was conferred, and of which the chief were Caere, Anagnia, and other communities in the countries of the Hernicans, Volscians, and Campanians, were more limited in their self-government. The Roman law was introduced among them, and the jurisdiction passed into the hands of a prefect sent from Rome, whence they received the name of prefectures. The people of these towns served in the Roman legions, and shared all the burdens of the Roman citizens, although they were not admitted to their political rights. Only their local administration was left in their hands. They were, therefore, almost in the same position as the so-called confederate states in the more distant parts of Italy ; but by their greater proximity to Rome, by being included in the Roman census, by being draughted into the Roman legions, and by the use of the Roman law, they were far more intimately connected with Rome. Accordingly, although they were called Roman citizens, their position was less free and satisfactory, and it is no matter of surprise that a few towns in the country of the Hernicans, who had the option of being admitted into this category of Roman citizens, preferred to remain confederate towns.

The Roman republic consisted therefore of citizens and Roman allies. The citizens were subdivided into—1st, citizens with the full franchise; 2ndly, citizens in the Roman colonies; 3rdly, citizens without political rights. The allies were, 1st,  Latins, in some old Latin towns such as Praeneste and Tibur, and in the Latin colonies; and, 2ndly, Sabellian and Greek towns enjoying municipal self-government, but subject to furnish troops to the Roman army, or ships to the Roman fleet, and deprived of a political intercourse with other nations. The several towns of Etraria were nominally sovereign, but their political dependence on Rome was such that we may look upon them as de facto members of the great Roman confederation.

Of the population of the federal territory we have no means of speaking with accuracy. Enumerations deserving of credit existed only of Rome itself; of the several Italian populations and of the Greek towns we know nothing but what we can gather from occasional statements of the strength of their armies and the numbers reported to have been slain in battle. It is evident that such statements cannot be trusted. They are in general exaggerated, and the exaggeration increases with the more recent historians. Even with regard to the battles of Pyrrhus we have no trustworthy accounts of numbers, although contemporary writers could consult the reports of King Pyrrhus himself. Hieronymus, who wrote at the same time, gives the number of Romans killed in the battle of Asculnm as 6,000, that of the Epirotes as 3,505; whereas later Roman writers state that Pyrrhus lost 20,000 men, and the Romans only 6,000. If such uncertainty prevails in the accounts of the war of Pyrrhus, what can we expect of the statements with regard to the Samnite wars? If we add up the numbers of slain Samnites reported by Livy, we are startled by the result; for no war of modern times, even among the most powerful nations, ever resulted in such wholesale slaughter. The exaggeration is obvious. We cannot believe that the mountains of central Italy, where the Sabines and their kindred races, the Marsians, Vestinians, Pelignians, and further south where the Samnites lived, were able to support a dense population. These mountains were then and are now to a great extent unproductive. The breeding of cattle was the chief resource of the inhabitants. Agriculture was not practised on a large scale, and therefore there were no means for the subsistence of large numbers. The climate and geography of their country explain to some extent the restlessness of the Sabellians, their wanderings, and their expeditions for plunder or conquest. The legend of the sacred spring has reference to this state of things. No doubt it often happened that numerous bands left the country to escape the misery of hunger and to obtain by plunder the means of living which the sterile soil refused them at home. This poverty of the country leads us to reject as idle tales what is related of the gold and silver ornaments of the Samnites. The nations of central Italy were poor, not because they were virtuous and abstemious, as the moralising writers of a later period delighted to relate, for the purpose of contrasting the luxury and the vices of their contemporaries: they were poor because in their country the sources of national wealth were wanting, and because, instead of cultivating a peaceable and profitable intercourse with their neighbours, they lived in continual hostility with them and among themselves. Under such circumstances the. population cannot have been dense.

The districts along the coast, especially of Campania and many parts of Larger Greece, were, when compared with the mountainous interior, exceedingly fertile, and colonies, consequently well peopled. They were covered with several large and a great number of small cities. Among them Capua was pre-eminent by its wealth and population. Of the extraordinary prosperity of the Greek colonies wonderful stories were related. Croton and Sybaris are said to have led armies into the field consisting of hundreds of thousands of men. Even so late as at the beginning of the war with Rome, the single city of Tarentum could dispose of a force of 20,000 foot and 2,000 horse. However much we may be inclined to suspect these accounts of exaggeration, we shall yet have no reason to doubt their substance on the whole. Even after the numerous devastations and butcheries of the last unhappy years it is probable that the fertile districts of southern Italy attracted again and again a numerous population, and more especially Campania, both on account of its superior fertility and because it seems to have suffered less than the more southern parts.

Of the number of Roman citizens we can speak with more certainty, because the enumerations of the census of this period have been authentically preserved. About the year 33, after the great Latin war, the number of citizens is stated to have been 165,000. Since then the numbers grew rapidly, and amounted towards the end of the Samnite wars to 250,000, and at the end of the period to 280,000 or 290,000 men capable of bearing arms. In those numbers are included, however, not only the Homan citizens enjoying the full franchise, but also the citizens of the second class, especially the Campanians. If we reckon the number of old men, women, and children to have been five times that of the men in the vigour of life, we find that the total number of free Romans was not much more than about a million and a half. Supposing that the slaves amounted to about half a million, and the foreigners settled in Rome to a few thousand, the total population of Rome and her immediate territory was little more than two millions. How many of these lived in the city of Rome itself we have no means of telling. The statements of the enumerations made in the time of the kings and the first years of the republic are not to be relied on; otherwise we might infer from them what the population of the town and the immediate neighbourhood could have been. If we consider the extent of territory over which the population of about two millions was spread, and which extended from the Ciminian hill in Etruria over the whole of Latium as far as Campania, and eastward as far as the country, of the Sabines and Marsians,—if we bear in mind that at that time Latium was covered with a number of small hut populous cities, and that Campania had probably a still denser population, we shall come to the conclusion that the city of Rome itself could hardly have contained more than about 200,000 souls, a number which would make Rome the most populous Italian city of the time.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONDITION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF THE VARS WITH CARTHAGE.

 

Having followed the political development of the Roman people to the time when the republican institutions reached their maturity, and when the whole of Italy was incorporated with their dominion, we will now try to draw a sketch of the condition of the Roman people, of their social and intellectual life previous to the beginning of the long struggle with Carthage. Our information with regard to this side of the national life of the Romans is indeed still more scanty than that which has been preserved of political transactions. Many questions must remain unanswered, but, imperfect as our sketch will be, it will yet indicate the principal features and the general outlines of the development which the Romans had attained at this period of their existence.

The religion of Home, as it appeared in the regal period, as well with regard to its external form as to its inmost character, was the product of a development of many generations which preceded the origin of the civil community. At the time when the primeval inhabitants of Italy did not yet form large political communities, but lived in small groups formed by families, houses, or tribes, more or less independent of each other, every house had its own gods and its peculiar worship. The hearth was the altar, the father of the family the priest. None but the members of a family shared in the worship of the family deity, and none but they were objects of its care and protection. In proportion, as families united and formed larger communities, there arose common sanctuaries as religious symbols of political union. The foundation of a temple of Vesta, and the lighting of a sacred fire on the common hearth marked the commencement of a new commonwealth. It is for this reason that Romulus is represented as the son of a vestal virgin. The dominion of the Etruscans introduced the worship of the Capitoline Jupiter, and placed it at the head of the Roman state religion. The worship of Ceres united the plebeians into a political body. The league of the Romans with the Latins was ratified by their worshipping in common Jupiter Latiaris on the summit of the Alban mountain.

As the state was enlarged by conquest, the number of the national deities increased. The polytheistic religions of foreign antiquity were not adverse to the reception of strange gods. The protecting deity of a conquered town or of a subjected people was received into the circle of the national gods. There was no material difference between the religious conceptions of the various Italian nations, so that the religions system of one state was not disturbed by the introduction of deities belonging to another. Though the names by which the different peoples designated their gods varied greatly, yet the fundamental notions were the same, and the foreign elements easily and rapidly blended with the native.

Not only from the neighbouring Italian countries, but from Greece also new deities were imported to Rome. The received narrative does not hesitate to assign the deities. reception of Greek modes of worship to the very oldest period, long before any regular intercourse took place between Greeks and Romans. These statements originate in the desire to make it appear that Rome was a Greek town, or at least partly Greek, a desire which has led to numerous misrepresentations. Hence the fable that, in prehistoric times, even long before the foundation of Rome, the Greek Herakles, in the course of his wanderings, came to the banks of the Tiber, and that an altar was erected there in his honour. There was worshipped in Rome a genuine Sabine deity called Semo-Sancus, identical with Jupiter This deity was identified with Herakles, and the forms of worship at his altar were assimilated to those of the Greek demigod.—In a similar manner the Greek Apollo is said to have been known in Rome in the regal period. The second Tarquinius, it is alleged, sent an embassy to Delphi to consult the oracle; the same was done at the time of the last war with Veii, 358 BC. Apollo is said to have had a temple in Rome as early as the year 431 BC, but this date is too early by eighty years, and the worship of Apollo was not recognised by the state before the second Punic war, when the Apollinarian games were established.—The Sibylline books of prophecy were composed in the Greek language and introduced from Greece. But before their introduction there had existed in Rome native Italian prophecies of a similar kind, which were partly amalgamated with and partly superseded by those of foreign growth. As the authority of the Sibylline books was supposed to increase with their reputed age, the keepers of them endeavoured to make it appear that they were brought to Rome at the time of the Tarquins— Serious doubts are suggested by the story which refers to the introduction of the worship of Castor and Pollux. The legend was that these genuine Greek twin-gods came to the assistance of the Romans in the great battle of Regillus (496 BC), and that in consequence a temple was built for them on the Roman Forum. Unfortunately we have no evidence to show when this temple was really erected. Perhaps it was originally dedicated, not to the Greek heroes Kastor and Polydeukes (Pollux), but to the genuine Italian deities, called Lares Prastites, who bad some resemblance to the Greek heroes and were easily identified with them.

The first introduction of a Greek deity which is historically certain beyond all doubt took place in the year 291 towards the end of the third Samnite war. A contagious disease had ravaged Rome. The Sibylline books were consulted, and on their advice an embassy was sent to Epidaurus in Peloponnesus, for the purpose of bringing away the healing god Asklepios. The sacred serpent from the temple of the god, it is said, willingly followed the ambassadors on to their ship, and when this had sailed into the Tiber and was nearing Rome, the serpent swam to the island in the river, where a temple was erected afterwards to the god Aesculapius. This solemn reception of an inferior deity like Aesculapius, resolved by a formal decree of the senate and carried into effect with ostentation, contrasts surprisingly with the introduction of the service of Apollo, which took place noiselessly and quietly, so that the inference seems justified that the latter was effected by the gradual assimilation of a national deity with the Greek god of light.

Simultaneously with the reception of foreign gods, it State appears that the worship of several deities, which had been peculiar to individual families, was taken up by the community at large. Appius Claudius, the bold reformer, who admitted the great mass of half-citizens and freedmen to the full franchise, caused the service of Hercules, which had been confined to the family of the Potitii, to be taken up by the state. We are not informed if the same change was effected with regard to other family cults. It is a reform which shows that the state as such asserted more and more its superiority over the various parts, such as families and houses, which had combined to form it, and which at an earlier period had retained many of the functions of independent sovereign communities.

Whilst the objects of the public worship at Rome were multiplied, no essential change took place in the religious conceptions of the people and in the external forms of worship. Religion and morality were still considered to consist in the observance of a complicated system of ceremonies, and the relation of man to God was viewed more in the light of legal than of moral obligations; the gods were entitled to certain stipulated services, and man, in his turn, duly discharging these duties, was considered equally entitled to the consideration and protection of the gods. Religion exercised no influence whatever on the actions of individuals or of the state, because the heart and the conscience were not touched by it. The sense of justice was blunted by exclusive attention to mere formalities. The spirit succumbed to the letter. When war was declared, the strict formalities of the ritual prescribed by the fetiales were observed. If nothing was neglected in the mode of formally announcing hostilities, the war was considered just and the Roman people believed themselves entitled to claim the assistance of the gods as a due. This scrupulous attention to prescribed forms caused a serious difficulty when the war with Pyrrhus broke out. It was prescribed that the fetiales should proceed to the frontier of the hostile territory, and, after repeating the formal declaration of war, should throw a spear on it. The land of King Pyrrhus, however, lay far distant across the sea; how was it possible to comply with the strict form of the law? The mode adopted to solve the difficulty was characteristic. A field in the neighbourhood of Rome was purchased by an Epirot and declared to be hostile land. Now the spear could be duly thrown on it, and the Roman people had the conviction that they were waging a just war.

The sophistry with which the conscience of the Romans extricated itself from the toils of the ceremonial law, enabled them to preserve the old forms long after they had ceased to have any meaning or even to be respected. From year to year they were felt to be more troublesome in proportion as public and private life lost their old simplicity and monotony. When religion was employed more and more as a political engine for the purpose of thwarting progress or for supporting the influence of faction, the people, in spite of their superstitious regard for old institutions and forms, began to pay less attention to what they had formerly respected as divine commands. Yet even then the old ceremonies were not abolished. The auguries, the sacrifices, and formal prayers were scrupulously repeated, even when they had ceased to command respect or to satisfy any religious cravings. The obstructions to a liberal development of the constitution which religion opposed were overcome but slowly and with difficulty. As the sovereignty of the state passed from the . assembly of the patrician curiae to that of the centuries which contained both orders of citizens, and further to that of the tribes, from which the patricians were excluded, serious religious difficulties had to be encountered and overcome; for every political institution was fenced round and guarded by religious sanctions, whicf it was sacrilege to touch. How could plebeians perform the solemn sacrifices, take the auguries and commune with the gods in the forms which were the exclusive and hereditary possession of the patrician families? However much the political institutions might require change and adaptation to new circumstances, the gods were eternal and their service could not suffer any interruption or modification for reasons of political convenience. Yet such pretensions were in the long run not strong enough to stem the tide of reform. Plebeians were admitted to the sacred duties; they did take the auspices, as the patricians had done, and yet the gods were not less propitious than before. The plebeian assembly of tribes left the religious formalities in the possession of the more ancient and more dignified bodies; it was satisfied with minor, less solemn, and less burdensome auspicia, but it nevertheless exercised the sovereignty which the law conferred on it all the same. The cumbrous old system of auspices was modified to suit the wants of a less scrupulous age. The signs given by the wild birds of the air were supplemented by those of the domesticated fowl, which, by its greater or less eagerness in swallowing food, indicated the amount of approval vouchsafed by the gods to any undertaking. Nothing could be more convenient than a prophetic animal kept in a cage and indicating by its appetite the will of the gods. No wonder that religious formalities of this kind soon became contemptible. Perhaps no other nation, in ancient or in modern times, would, under similar circumstances, have patiently continued practices so derogatory and injurious to the essence of religion.

But the innovations in the ceremonial observances and the increasing doubts as to their efficacy, did little to shake the deep-rooted faith and superstition of the Roman people. The first traces of scepticism and irreligion, directed to a denial of a divine government of the world, occur in the succeeding period, and were caused by the contact with the literature and philosophy of Greece. Simultaneously with the Greek freethinkers and atheists, a host of Greek and Oriental magicians, conjurors, prophets, and religious jugglers of all sorts made their entry into Rome. The capital of the ancient world became a Pandemonium for all the unclean spirits, cast out from their old abodes by the master spirit of all, the spirit of lucre, which drove them to a promising locality. Loud complaints arose from the defenders of the old national religion. The spirit of intolerance awoke. The sanction of the state was obtained to purify Rome from the foreign intruders. But the religion of Rome was not so well organized for selfdefence as the state. It lacked unity of system, precision of doctrine, and administrative organisation. It could not act like a Church militant, and all its efforts were fruitless. It may be doubted whether this was an evil. If foreign religions found admittance into Rome, it was because they satisfied a religious craving of the people which the native religion neglected. The complaints of ancient and even of modern writers that the virtues of the Roman people suffered from these foreign influences seem groundless. Our knowledge suffices to show that the earlier period was the good old time only in the imagination or in the meaningless phrases of sentimental moralists.

Agriculture and pasturage continued to be the principal occupation of the people, and they were carried on, as of old, by free peasants on farms of moderate extent. Towards the end of the Samnite wars, when thousands of prisoners of war had swelled the number of slaves, farming on a larger scale seems, to have been attempted. Extensive landed estates were formed by the wealthy nobility and swallowed up the smaller holdings of the peasantry. Slowly but surely this social and economical revolution was consummated. It was possible only by a violation of the Licinian laws,' which had restricted the amount of public land that an individual was allowed to occupy. The guardians of the law frequently inforced fines, and endeavoured to curb the greediness of the rich and the powerful. The time was not yet come when the public good was borne down by the interests of private men, when the Licinian law became obsolete and forgotten, and when the free peasantry was swept away from the soil and slaves cultivated the vast estates of the wealthy. If the law had continued to be inforced, as it was before the Punic wars, the Gracchi would not have found a state of social disorder that was beyond all cure. The anecdotes of the poverty of Fabricius and Curius seem to show that wealth was not absolutely necessary, even as late as the war with Pyrrhus, for a man to obtain the highest honours of the state. The story of Cornelius Rufinus, who was expelled from the senate for having in his house silver plate to the extent of ten pounds, would prove, if true, that in the same period the ancestral simplicity of manners was still maintained. But the ostentation with which these stories are repeated shows that even then a change was taking place, and that men like Fabricius and Curius were not the rule hut the exception.

When Rome grew to be the capital and centre of a large empire, it was necessary that the character of the town population should undergo a change. Industry and trade supplanted agricultural pursuits. The soil of the town was too valuable for growing com, wine, fruit, or grass. Workshops and sale-rooms superseded stables and granaries. The houses of the nobility assumed larger dimensions. Foreigners and freedmen carried on a lucrative trade, which the genuine Romans were too proud or too dull to engage in. What they thought of such occupations, we learn from Cicero,1 who looks upon the useful crafts as a mild sort of slavery, upon retail trade as a continued practice of puffing and cheating, and barely admits that the wholesale merchant is not utterly contemptible, hut may even deserve commendation if, satisfied with his profits, he gives up his business to retire into the country, and to live at last as a gentleman. We may be sure that such views of industrial and commercial pursuits were not peculiar to conceited philosophers or self-complacent aristocrats like Cicero, but that they expressed a national prejudice and prevailed even more generally before the Punic wars than at a later period.

The external appearance of the city of Rome was in keeping with the economical and social condition of the inhabitants at a time before the wealth of conquered provinces had flowed thither, and before the nobles had begun to vie with each other' in displaying the spoils of their rapacity. Whilst the private dwellings were mean, the buildings erected at the public cost were worthy of the greatness of Rome. Numerous temples adorned all parts of the town. In the short space of twelve years, from 302 to 290, not less than eight new ones are said to have been vowed or built; Some of these no doubt were insignificant. None could compare with the magnificence of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol; but it appears that a large portion of the booty made in the wars with the Samnites and with Pyrrhus was devoted to the adornment of the town. The first great pictorial decorations were executed at this time. It was a Roman from one of the noblest families who devoted himself to the art of painting. C. Fabius, surnamed Pictor, showed his fellow-citizens, and especially the men of the noble houses, a new way of distinguishing themselves and of benefiting their country. He proved that it was not unworthy of a noble Roman to cultivate the arts. The Fabian house produced afterwards also the first historian of Rome. But these attempts to cultivate the arts and literature had but little effect. The genuine Romans looked upon such pursuits as interfering with the first and all-engrossing duty of a citizen and a soldier; for a long time they frowned upon the polite arts of the Greeks, and even after this prejudice was overcome, it was an exception when a true Roman devoted himself to them.

From the Gallic conflagration Rome gradually rose to greater splendour. The huge substructions of the Capitol dated from this period. By degrees the Forum assumed a more imposing appearance. In the place of the butchers' shops beautiful porticoes were erected, where silversmiths and bankers carried on their business; on festive occasions the columns were ornamented with captured arms. The platform for the public orators was decorated with the beaks of the ships taken at Antium (338 BC). Various works of art and statues were erected all around. The statue of the famous augur Attus Navius, who opposed the reform of Tarquinius Priscus, was among the number. Ignorance and credulity ascribed the erection to the regal period. There were also the statues of Horatius Codes, of Cloelia, of the four ambassadors murdered in Fidenae (438 BC), of Hermodoros of Ephesus, who is said to have assisted the decemvirs in the drawing up of their laws. All these, and moreover the statues of the kings of Rome, of T. Tatius and Junius Brutus, were most probably set up about this time. In 296 the aediles Quintus and Cneius Ogulnius placed under the Romulean fig-tree a bronze figure of the suckling she-wolf, of which a copy, perhaps the original, has been preserved to our own day.

Most of the works of art which were then put up in Rome were probably not of Roman origin. They were either bought in Etruria, like the four-horse chariot of clay which decorated the summit of the Capitoline temple of Jupiter, or they were spoils from Etruscan and Greek towns, and were falsely given out for Roman works. Nothing was easier than to give such statues Roman names. Almost any Greek male statue might pass for Romulus. There can he no doubt that the practice of carrying away works of art from conquered towns was practised long before Tarentum, Syracuse, and Corinth fell into the hands of the Romans. Apart from the inborn rapacity of the Romans, there was an inducement for such robbery in the national religion. It was customary to convey solemnly to Rome the principal deity of a conquered town, and to give it a place in the Roman worship. Thus the Veientine Juno was transferred to Rome. What was more natural than that other works of art should share the same fate? As soon as Rome was mistress of the Campanian towns, rich spoils of this kind fell into the hands of the conquerors, both there and in the several Greek colonies of southern Italy.

Care was now taken not only to adorn Rome with works of art, but also to make improvements for the convenience, health, and comfort of the inhabitants. The grandest public work of this class was the great sewer, which is stated to have been constructed in the Etruscan period under Tarquinius Priscus. It drained the lower parts of the town between the hills, and made it habitable. Before the Gallic conflagration, the streets are said to have been regularly laid out with regard to the direction of this sewer; but when the town was hastily rebuilt, no attention was paid to the old line of streets, and accordingly Rome consisted of a maze of narrow, crooked, and irregular streets. It seems, however, that the statement of the original regularity of the Roman streets is a mere conjecture, for how could the knowledge of it have been preserved? Rome was, most probably, from the very beginning, like all other towns which rise spontaneously, built irregularly and inconveniently; and the Gallic conflagration, whatever alterations it may have caused, did not cause a change in this respect. The streets were too narrow for the constantly increasing traffic. They were not originally planned for carriages any more than the lanes of our mediaeval towns. It was for this reason, and not only for the purpose of restraining luxurious habits, that the privilege- of driving in carriages was confined to the vestal virgins and to the Roman matrons. Gradually the aediles began to pave a few streets from the proceeds of fines inflicted for the violation of the Licinian land laws. Appius Claudius constructed the first aqueduct, and after the termination of the war with Pyrrhus, Manius  Curius began to build a second with the spoils taken in that war, 273 B.C. 

While Rome, in consequence of the extension of the Growth of Roman dominion, became more and more the seat of industry, trade, and art, while increasing wealth banished the old simplicity and rustic contentment, and changed the external appearance of the city, a greater freedom showed itself in the observance of the old customs and in the rules of social and family life. The active intercourse with foreign nations, the enlarged knowledge, the new problems and experiences produced by the novel situation of the republic, had the effect of making it impossible to preserve the narrow, obstructive, and troublesome rules, which in a rude age had seemed necessary to preserve the family and society at large from anarchy. The strict laws of the paternal authority (the patria potestas) were relaxed; the ties which bound together the members of a house (gens) and of a family (familia), to make of them a small political community within the state, were loosened. The solemn form of marriage by ‘confarreatio,’ connected with auspicia and sacrifices, which had been originally peculiar to the patricians, was more and more superseded even in patrician houses by a kind of civil marriage.1 At the same time the freedom of disposing by will, which had formerly been subject to the consent of the members of the house, or of the curia, was enlarged. In every way the barriers were broken down which in former times had confined the individual within the limits of his family, had hampered his freedom of action, and had placed an intermediate authority between him and the state. In the natural course of development, the sovereign power of the state superseded or absorbed the remnants of those institutions which had preceded the formation of the political union. The ancient tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres became things of the past and were surrendered to oblivion; the members of the different houses ceased to act for common political or social purposes; religious ceremonies alone preserved y faint memory of what had once been a vigorous institution. 

It is the usual complaint of shallow moralists that with the old austerity and more rigid discipline, with the original poverty and limited enjoyments, nations lose their purity of morals, while they acquire wealth, culture, and refinement. Such a view as this prompted the absurd and useless sumptuary laws, of which Rome at a very early period had a great number. The Romans with their narrow views of life, their rustic parsimony, and their military liking for coercive measures, delighted in meddling in the affairs of private life, in prescribing how many flute-players should be allowed at a funeral, how much silver plate people should have in their houses, what ornaments they might exhibit in their dress. Even in the Twelve Tables there are traces of very minute regulations of this kind; and in spite of all the teaching of experience and all the evidence of the uselessnes of such restrictions, the Romans continued to hope that such scarecrows would keep off immorality, and to think that virtue was safe if wealth was prevented from supplying its owners with the means of gratifying their tastes and vanities. History has taught us that rude and barbarous tribes are not more virtuous than nations advanced in civilisation, but that their vices are mori coarse, fierce, and unblushing, because they are not controlled and reprobated by higher knowledge, delicacy of feeling, and the restraints of public opinion and refined culture. The Romans, as far as we can see, were even in the most ancient times hard-hearted, cruel, selfish, rapacious, and unscrupulous in taking advantage of the weakness of others for their own profit. It is not likely that increasing refinement, culture, and wealth made them worse in any respect. At any rate, in the period of which we speak, the change in the mode of living was not yet very great. What we hear of the extravagance which was then considered a sign of degeneracy is rather a proof of simplicity and contentment. The consul Cornelius Rufinus was excluded from the senate by the censor C. Fabricius for having a few pounds of silver plate in his house. We should have a higher opinion of the censorial office if we could think that Rufinus was deemed unworthy of the rank of senator on account of his covetousness and rapacity, for which he was notorious.—A curious illustration of the state of Roman society and manners is given by the story of an act of wholesale poisoning with which at the time of the great Latin war a number of matrons were charged. In the year 331 several of the first men of the republic died of a malignant disease. On the evidence of a female slave, some noble matrons were charged with having poisoned them, and were compelled, in proof of their innocence, to drink the poison which they said that they had prepared as wholesome medicines. When they died in consequence, a general suspicion was engendered, and at last about 170 Roman matrons were convicted of poisoning and suffered death. Such an aberration of mind seemed like a disturbance of the laws of nature, and a dictator was appointed to drive a nail into the wall of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, a ceremony by which, as on former occasions, the anger of the gods was appeased and general confidence restored among the people. It appears, however, from Livy’s narrative, that, even among the superstitious Roman annalists, there were some who attributed the numerous deaths of the year 331 to natural causes. We have no hesitation in upholding this sensible and humane judgment. It is but too well known by frequent experience that by great calamities, by unexplained and noxious natural phenomena, not only individuals, but whole populations, are demented with fear, and frantically rush into the wildest excesses of cruelty to save themselves. Even in the present age we have heard madmen shriek that the wells or even the medicines were poisoned with, which benevolence attempted to rescue them from the grip of death. Fear, ignorance, and superstition have at all times generated cruelty, and nothing but these failings of the human mind invented the crime of poisoning in Rome and caused so many victims to suffer innocently an ignominious death.

During the Samnite wars the great mass of the Roman people retained the old simplicity of life in their dress, their dwellings, their food and drink. Their recreations and rejoicings, the popular festivals and domestic pleasures, were essentially the same as before. The number of festive days appears to have been very great even in ancient times. The Romans were always fond of holydays and religious shows. They never tired of public processions. Hence the popularity of the triumphal entries of the victorious generals, and the pomp and magnificence which were displayed on such occasions. The triumphal procession and the triumphal arch are genuine and characteristic productions, and owe their origin to the warlike spirit and the national and family pride of the Romans. No people but the Roman had triumphal fasti. The highest aspiration of the most ambitious citizen was to enter Rome at the head of a victorious army, exhibiting rich spoils and captured enemies; to pass along the Sacred Way and the Forum amidst the acclamations of the people dressed in their holyday attire; to ascend the Capitol, and in the temple of Jupiter to render thanks, in the name of the people, for the victory which the god had vouchsafed to them. Such days were the most glorious festivals of a warlike people, and they would have been days of honour if, by the native cruelty and inhumanity of the Romans, they had not too often become the day of death for defeated enemies. Whilst the triumphant consular general ascended the steps to the Capitol, the captive leader of the enemy was led into the dismal dungeon to die. If it be true, as Roman annalists have related, that chap. the noble Samnite, C. Pontius, twenty-seven years after he had spared the Roman legions at Caudium, trusting in Roman honour and justice, was led captive through the streets of Rome by Q. Fabius Gurges, and then put to death, this fact alone is enough to make us avert our eyes with loathing and horror from the most glorious of Roman triumphs.

The triumphal processions were the first public rejoicings of the warlike people of Rome, but at a very early period—according to the legendary history, in the reign of the elder Tarquin—the so-called Great or Roman games (Ludi magni, Ludi Romani) were established, and several others in course of time. These games consisted at first of chariot races and boxing, and were celebrated in the great race-course (Circus maximus), between the Aventine and the Palatine. For a long time the Romans were contented with these innocent and bloodless exhibitions. But, in the beginning of the Punic wars, the hideous gladiatorial combats were introduced, which tended to brutalise the feelings and to deteriorate and blunt the taste for the enjoyments of genuine art.

The first theatrical performances took place in the year 364, when, according to Livy’s account, a great pestilence desolated Rome. It was for the purpose of averting the divine displeasure that the first artistic dances were introduced from Etruria. They were executed by Etruscan players, with an accompaniment of the flute, and were at first nothing but graceful rhythmical movements without song or dialogue, or any adaptation for mimic representation of a plot. If the account is correct, the first scenic performance wanted the very germ of dramatic art, which consists in action expressed by words or songs, connected with expressive gestures. It is not possible to understand how the drama could be developed from such a beginning. We are therefore compelled to question the correctness of Livy’s opinion, especially as we find that the elements of the drama were imported from elsewhere. The Greek tragedy and comedy were simply imitated by the Romans. The native Italian drama grew out of the oldest popular amusements, which had not, like the Dionysian festivals of the Greeks, an essentially religious character, but were of a social and economical nature, connected with the harvest, the vintage, the marriage feast. On such occasions the popular Italian poetry took the form of improvised mockery and jocular lines—the so-called Fescennine verses —and of harmless effusions, and sarcastic remarks on persons and things, called satires. All this poetry had reference to the actual life and present experience of the people, to matters with which they were familiar; and it differed therefore fundamentally from the choral poetry of the Greeks, which emanated from the religious ideas and the mythological conceptions of the past. The Italian games were therefore genuine carnival amusements or farces: they had neither dignity nor sobriety, neither depth of thought nor elevation of feeling. In various parts of Latium and Campania there arose different forms of such plays, containing both dialogue and action. All of them had this in common, that they were acted not by trained and paid artists, but by amateur players. They were all improvised, and could not, therefore, claim to be literary productions. The Fescennine verses and the satires had no direct influence on the regular drama of the subsequent period. But the popular farces called Fabulae Atellanae, cultivated originally at Atella in Campania, as their name seems to indicate, and transferred afterwards to Rome, were developed by poets and professional actors into a regular drama, and enjoyed a high degree of popularity by the side of the plays imported from Greece.

The period of which we speak contained other elements of poetry, which, if the Roman people had been gifted with a poetic vein, might have been developed into worthy branches of a national literature, but which remained neglected and despised by the higher class of minds, and therefore never emerged from the low sphere of unlettered society. First there were the funeral songs (neniae), which were repeated by paid female mourners, and which seem to have consisted of general exclamations of wading and sorrow with which the name of the departed was connected. If, instead of repeating the old lines over and over again, the merits of the great men had formed the subject of new compositions, what heroic songs might have been composed! As it was, the ‘neniee’ were considered the worthless poetry of silly old women.—Secondly, there is said to have been the practice at great banquets of letting youths sing songs in praise of departed worthies. But we cannot form an idea of these poems, as they were never committed to writing, and were forgotten in historical times. If .they had contained any elements. of beauty, they would probably not have perished. Perhaps they were dry enumerations of personal virtues, qualities, and distinctions, of discharged public offices, of victories and triumphs, and they may have contained in a poetical form, i.e, in the rude Saturnian metre, the substance of family chronicles and traditions.—Thirdly, there were the couplets which the soldiers used to sing on the occasion of a triumph. They  were not always complimentary to the triumphing general, but often the reverse, the licence of the day permitting the men to express their opinions freely. The Romas had great talent at all times for biting sarcasm and caustic , satire, and some specimens of such poetry belonging to a later period exhibit these qualities in a sufficiently clear | light, but show at the same time that the national literature was not likely to be enriched by wits from the ranks.—Still less can we look for a poetic element fin various kinds of popular poetry which exist everywhere among the lower strata of society, such as proverbs, popular maxims, peasants’ rules of the weather and the crops, nursery rhymes, and spells for conjuring and healing. No degree of culture in the higher classes of society seems to affect these compositions. They are clung to with a wonderful tenacity, and survive the greatest intellectual and political revolutions.

While thus the genuine national elements of a poetical literature were left in Rome entirely to the care of the lower classes, while all poetic compositions were of a fugitive nature, and, having arisen in the excitement of the moment, passed away quickly to give place to another equally trivial and ephemeral, no progress and development could take place. The art of writing was indeed known and practised assiduously, but it was not applied for the purpose of preserving the popular poetry. It was in the service of the state, and was almost the monopoly of the men who worked in the public offices; of lawyers and of priests. The national literature of Rome was therefore originally prosaic. The lists of magistrates, the year-books of the pontifices, the formularies and official rules of the different offices of state and religion, the treaties concluded with neighbouring nations, the tables of the laws, formed the fundamental element of the oldest permanent literature. No attempt was made in these writings to please the taste. The chief requisite was accuracy in the wording, and thus a style originated somewhat like the jargon of English lawyers, which must have been even in antiquity as unintelligible and repulsive to the uninitiated as legal documents are nowadays. It is only when language is applied to address the general public, that it can be emancipated from the unnatural distortions, obscurities, and blemishes of purely technical diction.

Nothing is so well calculated to give flexibility and ease to a language as the custom of public speaking.

Where a select body of experienced and cultivated men determines the policy of a state in free debate, there is an admirable school for the cultivation of prose language. Such a school was the Roman senate. Here it was felt that clear, convincing speech was a weapon with which every statesman was obliged to be familiar. Unfortunately . no reports of speeches of the early period have been preserved. The alleged speech in which Appius the Blind dissuaded the peace with Pyrrhus was indeed looked upon in Cicero’s age as an authentic document of ancient oratory, but it could not have been faithfully reported. Yet, even without genuine specimens of the speeches of that time, we have no reason to doubt that the art of public speaking had reached a considerable degree of development.

While, as we have seen, neither the poetical nor the Roman prosaic literature of Rome had even begun to be embodied in a permanent form in writing, it appears that the private records of the noble families, the meagre rudiments of historical works, were very numerous. The outlines of these records were the inscriptions under the images of the great men preserved in every noble house, which gave the titles and dignities of each. The substance was supplied chiefly by the orations (laudationes) which, on the occasion of a funeral, the next of kin used to deliver over the bier of the departed.

When a noble Roman had died, the body was adorned with the insignia of the public offices which he had discharged, and with the honorary distinctions he had gained in war; it was laid out in state in the great hall (the atrium) of his house, where in niches all around were exhibited the images of his ancestors. The funeral procession moved solemnly, like that of a triumph, to the sound of music and the loud wailing of the women. The bier was preceded by a line of men, who represented the predecessors of the departed, wearing their masks and the insignia of their office. Thus the deified heroes of every house, returning as it were from the grave, accompanied the dead on his last way, to conduct him into the spiritual world. On these occasions the nobility of every house was exhibited before the people in all its splendour. A long line of ancestors, a great number of honours and distinctions, were so many documents of nobility; and the people delighting in the greatness of their great men, and pleased with the show, were not over critical in examining too closely the validity of all the documents thus publicly passed in review. After the line of ancestors came the bier, carried by the nearest relatives of the departed, and followed by his friends and admirers. Thus the procession moved 'slowly to the Forum. Before the public platform the bier was put down; the ancestors ranged themselves around on ivory chairs; the train of mourners stood around in a circle; a son of the departed, or some other near relative, ascended the platform and delivered the funeral speech, the ‘laudation,’ which, as its name indicated, was intended to set forth the great deeds of the departed and those of his ancestors. All that the whole family had done for the glory and greatness of Home was on such solemn occasions duly recorded. 

It is evident that such speeches formed in themselves a kind of popular historical literature. They stood in the place of heroic songs, epic poetry, or ballads, which with other nations embodied and preserved the popular traditions of the past. Out of them grew the family chronicles, and these were the single threads out of which the history of the nation was woven. Specimens of them were preserved in later times, and even in Home there were found critics who discovered that they were full of exaggerations and inventions.

The national development of the Roman people, so far as we have now followed it, was in all essential points of Italian growth, independent of foreign influences; and in this respect the period over which we have travelled forms a contrast to that which followed it. The political institutions contain nothing that was imitated or borrowed from abroad; they were evolved from the original Italian germs by a process of gradual steady reform, and not subject to violent revolutions and reactions. They had now reached their maturity and completely satisfied the existing wants. Italy, united by a federal union, but not enslaved under the supremacy of the Roman senate and people, enjoyed internal peace and the means of developing the abundant sources of national wealth and prosperity. The old religion of the people was still dominant, and simplicity and purity of life, moderation and contentment—the virtues of poverty—were not yet extinct; intellectual culture, literature, art, science were in their infancy, and there was hope that they might grow with the greatness, the wealth, and the power of the nation.

But at this moment a great revolution took place. The Punic wars led to the conquest of provinces; the contact with the Greeks was fatal to the further development of Punic the native Italian intellect. The foreign conquests enriched and demoralized the governing classes. Political power was more and more monopolized by a contracted oligarchy. Whilst the military strength of Greece succumbed to the Roman legions, the Hellenic mind triumphed over the Italian, and the union of the two generated that literature and that art which for many centuries were dominant in the greater part of Europe. Thus, whilst the republican institutions decayed, the mind of the people was invigorated and ennobled, till, under the first imperial ruler, the Roman state assumed a new form, and Graeco-Roman civilisation reached its most perfect development.